sourcing of startups in fintech from emerging countries · wallet, workonanyoperatingsystem or pos...

Sourcing of startups in Fintech from

emerging countries

BitPesa The startup headquartered in Nairobi (Kenya) is a bitcoin trading platform. It provides an online platform to convert digital currency such as bitcoin into local African currencies. That allows individuals and businesses to send payments to and from sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda and Tanzania). BitPesa’s bitcoin services take monetary remittance fees down compared to the cost of conventional money transfer services (banks). The startup is facing an important challenge as a dispute is ongoing against M-Pesa operator Safaricom for the abrupt cut-off of BitPesa from M-Pesa platform which served BitPesa until the 12th of November 2015. As at November 2015, it offers instant payments to and from 7 different mobile money networks and over 60 banks. BitPesa has offices in London and Lagos. It is being widely adopted by people in the region and the service is growing rapidly at the rate of 60% new users per month.

SUMMARY Type: B2C Date created: November 2013 Team: 19 Funding: $1.1 million Users: 4000 (dec 2015) Markets: sub-Saharan Africa Contact: Elizabeth Rossiello (CEO) [email protected] ANALYSIS By using the famous digital currency Bitcoin, BitPesa is entering the remittance market and solving an important issue for the African diaspora around the world.

ESG FINANCE / INNOVATION IS EVERYWHERE January 15th, 2016

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WeLab (WeLend) Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Hong Kong, WeLab operates the online platform WeLend, the first peer-to-peer lending platform in Hong Kong. It has offices in China and India as well. It enables users to borrow money on a personal loan from other individuals, at a lower interest after the completion of an online application form, and “without the confusion and administrative hassle associated with borrowing from banks and consumer finance companies” as stated on their website. In addition to WeLend, WeLab also operates Wolaidai, a mobile P2P lending platform for top-tier university students in China. The founder, Simon Loong is a former commercial banker with 15 years’ experience at Citibank and Standard Chartered.

SUMMARY Type: P2P Date created: January 2013 Team: 100 Funding: $20 million Traction: Over $120 million processed in loan applications Markets: Asia Contact: Simon Loong (Founder) [email protected] ANALYSIS The march of P2P lending over the financial services landscape continues. WeLend’s lower interests loans gets traction from the property buyers of one of the most expensive residential city in the world.


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ToneTag ToneTag software development kit (SDK) allows mobile payment solutions to initiate in-store purchases using sound or NFC. Compared to Apple Pay or Android Pay, ToneTag works on any mobile device, even old brick phones, and no internet is required on user device during the transaction. It can integrate with any digital wallet, work on any operating system or POS terminal, and power any mobile payment application.

Mobile payment in India is a huge market with 900 million mobile phones users.

The co-founders of ToneTag are an ex-Infosys employee with 8 years experience in the internet and mobile banking sector, and a chartered accountant. The ex-head of cloud for Infosys in Europe invested in the company and joined as a director. Indian conglomerate Reliance Capital’s venture fund arm invested US$1 million in ToneTag.

ToneTag is the result of 1,5 year of rigorous research and few prototypes to study the mobile and cashless payment ecosystem in India. It is on a pilot run currently. It has partnered with 14 customers (banks, mobile wallets and POS providers) in India, APAC, Europe and Middle East.

SUMMARY Type: B2B Date created: January 2014 Team: 15-20 Funding: $1 million Traction: 14 customers Markets: Global Contact: Kumar Abhishek [email protected] ANALYSIS Many startups are competing to win the mobile payment market, but most solutions are device specific (Apple Pay or Android Pay). This is where ToneTag enters the game, with its interoperable and extremely user-friendly solution.


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8 Securities 8 Securities is the leading mobile trading and investing service in Asia. It launched in April 2015 the very first robo-investing service 8 Now!, allowing anybody to get an automated global investment portfolio at a fraction of the cost of banks and investment advisors. Investors must complete a short online survey to assess their investment time horizon and objectives, then are immediately presented with a personalised global portfolio of exchange traded funds. The portfolio is designed and automatically optimised for an annual fee of 0.88% of the investor’s total portfolio size. Investors choose the amount they want to invest, starting from $1000 USD. “We believe that everyone deserves the same access to world-class investing as the big guys. We believe that the time has come to shake up an outdated system that’s all too happy to create complex products to justify their inflated fees” says the Executive Chairman of 8 Securities.

8 Securities holds over $800 million USD in assets. It has offices in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

The founders were managing the financial services company E*TRADE across Asia, Europe, the Middle East, India and Canada.

SUMMARY Type: B2C Date created: May 2012 Team: 50 Funding: $17 million Traction: $800 million USD in customers assets Markets: Asia Contact: Mikaal Abdulla �� [email protected] ANALYSIS Automated investment services, sometimes called “Robo-advisers”, are expanding rapidly in Asia, especially China, after US and Europe. Its main competitor is Tencent, which proposes a wealth management service through its famous messaging app WeChat.


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Coins.ph Philippine startup Coins.ph is a mobile platform allowing anybody to transfer digital money such as Bitcoin without having to deal with a bank. The startup uses existing retail infrastructure (10,000 locations) for deposits and withdrawals and recently launched a new service called “Teller”, which turns anyone with a smartphone into an ATM, where you can deposit money. Tellers can be people or small retail establishments like convenience stores. Upon meeting, the teller collects your cash and transmits the equivalent amount in bitcoins into your mobile wallet, while charging a small fee in the process.

Founded in 2014 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Coins.ph’s mission is to accelerate financial inclusion in Southeast Asia through mobile and the Bitcoin blockchain technology. Filipinos based overseas send home about $24 billion USD in remittances each year

and pay 8% of this amount in fees. Using Coin.ph significantly lowers these fees.

Coins.ph now processes thousands of transactions per day, including remittances, bills payment, mobile top-ups, and other services provided by third-party covered financial institutions.

SUMMARY Type: B2C Date created: 2014 Team: 30 Funding: undisclosed Traction: thousands of transactions per day Markets: Southeast Asia Contact: Ron Hose�� xxx ANALYSIS Philippines could lead the way in the field of digital currencies because of the absence of regulatory constraint on transactions such as remittances, micro-payments and loans, because it is one of the largest remittance market in the world, after China and India, and because Filipinos are heavy users of mobile phones.


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Kopo Kopo The Kenyan Kopo Kopo platform is a web based mobile payment gateway that enables SME owners to accept mobile payments through a variety of electronic methods. In Kenya, for example, they have enabled merchants to accept Airtel Money and Safaricom’s M-Pesa.

Kopo Kopo aggregates payments from multiple mobile money systems, reflects those payments on an intuitive online dashboard and automatically posts those payments to a back-office system via a notification API.

As of March 2014, it was generating more than USD 3 million in transaction volumes per month.

Its most recent service GROW enables customers to take cash advances, with the borrowers paying a 1% interest fee to Kopo Kopo. To expand to this new market, it partners with mobile money service providers to roll out merchant payments. To direct this shift in focus, the company has appointed a new CEO, Ken Kinyua. He has more than two decades of senior financial services leadership, having been Managing Director of Afro Asian Bank and led a major business transformation at Housing Finance. The 2 co-founders left the company but remain shareholders and ambassadors of Kopo Kopo.

SUMMARY Type: B2B Date created: August 2010 Team: 40 Funding: 5.86 million $ Traction: 10.000+ merchants Markets: Sub-Saharan Africa Contact: Ken Kinyua (new CEO) [email protected] ANALYSIS Kenya is home to the most advanced mobile money market in the world with the M-Pesa. Mobile payment acceptations has then become crucial for merchants in the region.


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Crowdo Crowdo offers a portfolio of crowdfunding solutions including Equity Crowdfunding and P2P lending. Established in 2012, the startup is headquartered in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. It is the largest platform on a membership basis with a community in excess of 17,000 members. It has helped to launch crowdfunding campaigns from 5 continents and facilitated financial support from 50+ countries around the world.

The Management Team has a combined experience of over 30 years in the finance and technology space from institutions such as McKinsey & Co or Accenture.

SUMMARY Type: B2C Date created: April 2012 Team: 10 Funding: undisclosed Traction: 17,000+ members Markets: Global Contact: Leo Shimada (CEO, Co-Founder)��[email protected] ANALYSIS Interesting case as Crowdo as pivoted twice, first from B2C crowdfunding – which never took off in Asia – then white-labelled crowdsourcing tools, then equity crowdfunding


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Lenddo Lenddo has developed an algorithm that determines people’s credit worthiness based on their social media presence. Lenddo’s platform also helps employers quickly validate the information work applicants provide them. The platform is optimized to service emerging markets, where traditional credit scores and collateral frameworks may not exist.

The business initially marketed itself as a new way to obtain loans, lending money to individuals mostly from the emerging middle class. It has stopped lending and opened up its technology to third parties in January 2015. Banks, card issuers, telcos, P2P lenders and fintech startups are now using Lenddo to better evaluate the borrower’s risk.

Lenddo has offices in the Philippines, Colombia, New York and India. It has live deployments in more than 10 countries.


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SUMMARY Type: B2B (previously B2C) Date created: 2011 Team: 50-200 Funding: 14 million $ Traction: 500.000 users Markets: Emerging markets Contact: Richard Eldridge (CEO & Co-Founder)��[email protected] ANALYSIS With the growth of smartphone and social media penetration in developing countries, Lenddo is innovating by using non traditional data to help solve one of the biggest financial challenges in the credit market.

Zoom Charts ZoomCharts, based in Riga (Latvia), has developed a big data visualization software. The software is 100% interactive and responsive, allowing users to see only the information they need, and drill down further into the data when necessary. It is able to support massive data sets, works with any modern device and performs at fast speeds with no lag or waiting time.

ZoomCharts has 40+ B2B clients worldwide and is now expanding international sales. The startup is growing fast at a growth rate of around 37% (Business Insider Australia).

The company is preparing for a new round of funding in 2016.

SUMMARY Type: B2B Date created: 2013 Team: 10 Funding: 898.630 $ Traction: 40+ Markets: Global Contact: Janis Volberg (CEO) [email protected] ANALYSIS Zoom Charts solution allows any company dealing with data, like the FinTech industry players, to create easily identifiable charts that anyone can use to visualize the Big Data, which is an invaluable asset to take better and quicker financial decisions.


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IndiaLends IndiaLends is an online marketplace that connects consumers and SMEs looking for low rate loans with investors looking for good returns. They use a combination of analytics and judgmental oversights to screen potential borrowers, ensuring that only the best loan listings are made live. By using big data, deep analytics and machine learning algorithms, IndiaLends is able to help more borrowers secure loans (cheaper and faster) and help lenders make better credit risk decisions.

The team has over 15 years of combined experience in unsecured credit at Capital One.

IndiaLends processes over 9,000 loan requests on a monthly basis and offers loans between INR 50K and 1.5 million (700 to 20.500 euros). The company has tied-up with close to 10 financial institutions and recently expanded its services to Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi.


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SUMMARY Type: P2P Date created: 2014 Team: 15 Funding: 1 million $ Traction: 9,000 loan requests/month Markets: India Contact: Gaurav Chopra (Co-Founder) [email protected] ANALYSIS While organised lending was only available to a lucky few in India, this fast growing startup is making lending available to anyone at lower rates and faster. It has seen an explosive growth in demand since it launched.

sourcing of startups in fintech from emerging countries · wallet, workonanyoperatingsystem or pos...

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