The early stage players raising funding this week include Peppy, Planet24, Likvido, Doctorly etc. We also feature a Q&A with Ben Shaw, Director of Programs at the InsurTech Hub Munich and Shane Riedel of Elucidate.
Meet the first set of startups and investors who will be on stage at the 12th FinTech Forum, on 19th Nov. 2020 in Frankfurt- click on their names to read our Q&A with them.
KlickOwn: blockchain-enabled platform offering a superior real estate investing experience for everyone
CommneX: a digital brokering platform for credit- and deposits from municipalities and municipal enterprises
Finteum: a platform for interbank intraday lending, enabling treasurers to borrow and lend for hours at a time
We are pleased to have leading investors on stage, sharing investment trends and opportunities in their space, including Astrid Freier, Partner, DACH, Vidici Ventures, Paula Blazquez Solano, Head of Investments at InnoCells/ Banco Sabadell, Manuel Silva Martinez, Partner, Head of Investments, Santander InnoVentures and Daniel Andemeskel, Head of Innovation at Universal Investment.
If you are a startup- or know one- that is building the next big thing in FinTech, apply to present at the 12th FinTech Forum, 19th Nov. 2020 in Frankfurt: email contact (at) fintechforum.de or reach out to us via LinkedIn: Frank Schwab or Samarth Shekhar. Investors & corporates: register here directly http://ftf12.eventbrite.com
7 Minute Pitch Template Essentials
In the past 7 years we at FinTech Forum have evaluated over 3,500 pitches and given a lot of feedback. More than 350 FinTech startups have presented their business models in 7 minutes each.
From this we developed a template. We recommend that all founders cover at least the following eight themes in their presentation.
http://www.fintechforum.de/7-minute-pitch-template-essentials/
7 Questions with Shane Riedel of Elucidate
1. Please tell us a bit about yourself, both at work and leisure.
I spent most of my career in diplomacy with the United Nations and in finance (spread between London, Zurich and Singapore) and, as such, the shift to a FinTech start up has been both challenging and liberating. The cultural and operational contrast between a bank and Elucidate could not be more extreme, but for me it has been deeply satisfying to build a dynamic team and a product that transcends the capabilities of any one person or function.
I live in Berlin, which is a fantastic FinTech hub and offers a great quality of life. In my spare time I enjoy cycling and spending time outside of the city…perhaps harkening back to my upbringing in rural Ohio in the US.
http://www.fintechforum.de/7-questions-with-shane-riedel-of-elucidate/
7 Questions with Ben Shaw, Director of Programs at the InsurTech Hub Munich
1. Please tell us a bit about yourself, both at work and leisure.
Difficult to separate the two: For work my team and I connect all dots needed to accelerate the insurance industry. We bring structure through proven frameworks to companies attempting to reach product/market fit, help insurers open up to outside talent and work with investors to better understand a companies’ potential.
Prior to the InsurTech Hub Munich I ran FinTech Innovation Programmes for Barclays in London and New York, connecting the bank to FinTech founders.
I also connect for leisure – I love festivals and concerts and am passionate about organising parties or group trips, the most recent one being with more than a dozen young professionals to Lithuania.
Peppy raises £1.7M for its employee healthcare benefits platform
Peppy, the U.K. employee healthcare benefits platform focusing on family support, female health and mental well-being, has raised £1.7 million in seed funding.
Leading the round is Outward VC, with participation from Seedcamp, Hambro Perks, Form Ventures and various unnamed angel investors. The London-based startup says the new funding will support the next stage of Peppy’s growth as it begins to expand its team and the platform with “new fertility and mental health support.”
Founded in 2018 by Mridula Pore, Evan Harris, and Max Landry, Peppy is building an employee healthcare benefits platform for businesses, specialising in providing employees with access to “expert support” through critical life transitions.
https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/11/peppy/
Planet42, an Estonian fintech operating in Africa that focuses on providing access to mobility to the underbanked, has raised €2.2M ($2.4M).
The seed round was led by Change Ventures. Private backers include Martin Villig (Bolt), Ragnar Sass (Pipedrive), Marko Virkebau (MeetFrank), Kristjan Vilosius (Katana MRP), and several other Estonian tech entrepreneurs.
The company launched as CarGet in 2017 to service South Africa, a market well-known to co-founder and CFO Marten Orgna, who ran African Investments for Trigon Capital. Planet42 partners with dealerships across South Africa to offer access to a personal car to its largely underbanked clientele (9 out of 10 of customers).
https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/82918/estonian-fintech-planet42-raises-24m
Danish Fintech Likvido Secures €2.5 Million, Will Help SMEs Avoid Bankruptcy After Going Bankrupt Itself 2 Years Back
Danish Fintech firm Likvido has reportedly secured €2.5 million in seed funding from BlackFin Tech in order to assist SMEs that might be struggling to maintain their operations.
The company’s founders say they want to help business owners avoid bankruptcy after going bankrupt themselves only two years back.
Established in 2018 after founders Maximillian Frimmer and Lars Holdgaard went bankrupt, Likvido aims to help small businesses with typical challenges that come with maintaining operations.
Berlin-based health tech startup Doctorly scores $5.6 million in seed funding
Berlin-based health tech startup Doctorly has raised a $5.6 million seed round to try and get rid of disk-based operating (DOS) healthcare systems. The round was led by Speedinvest and joined by Seedcamp, Target Global, Force Ventures and UNIQA Ventures. Also backing doctorly are Calm/Storm ventures and Plug & Play.
Founded in early 2018, Doctorly says 130,000 medical practices in Germany alone still rely on a DOS-based system to manage patients’ records. With its solution, it aims to change the way doctors process and manage patients’ medical information by replacing the legacy software.
https://tech.eu/brief/berlin-based-health-tech-startup-doctorly-scores-5-6-million-in-seed-funding/
Axiom Raises $7M in Funding To Date
Axiom, a London, UK-based provider of an enterprise-grade solution to manage and analyse machine data at any scale, across any type of infrastructure, has raised $7M in funding to date.
Since it was founded in 2017, the $7m funding has included a new $4m seed round led by Crane Venture Partners with participation from Fly VC, Mango Capital and LocalGlobe, which led the previous round of funding. Notable angel investors include former Xamarin founder and current GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and Heroku co-founder Adam Wiggins.
The company will use the new funding to build out its product, sales and marketing functions to bring its enterprise-grade solution to the market.
http://www.finsmes.com/2020/06/axiom-raises-7m-in-funding-to-date.html
Mindler, Sweden’s largest digital service for mental health raises €8M funding
Mindler, Sweden’s largest digital service for mental health, has raised €8 million to meet the increasing demand for psychology services and accelerate its international growth. The Series A round was led by Ventech and co-led by Schibsted Growth.
Existing investors BackInBlack, Luminar Venture, and Kichi Invest reaffirmed their commitment to Mindler’s growth by joining Ventech and Schibsted Growth in the startup’s €8 million series A round.
London’s APEXX Global secures $8 million Series A for ‘one-stop’ payments API
London-based payments platform APEXX Global has raised an $8 million Series A from new and existing investors, including Forward Partners, MMC and Alliance Ventures, who all participated in the startup’s $4 million seed round back in 2017.
APEXX has created a ‘one-stop solution’ for customer-facing businesses, who use the API to link acquirers, payment gateways, shopping carts, and alternative payment methods in a simple transaction process that’s designed for higher sales conversion. The goal is “increasing efficiency and reducing costs” for merchants, according to Peter Keenan, the fintechcompany’s co-founder and CEO.
https://tech.eu/brief/apexx-global-series-a/
Dutch bank spin-off Cobase banks €10 million from two other banks for its multi-banking solution
Amsterdam-based fintech startup Cobase, spun out of the Dutch financial services group ING after participating in its accelerator program, has secured €10 million in Series A funding to boost the development of its multi-banking platform and further expand its network of commercial partners.
Cobase offers a single platform for corporate customers to access all their accounts at the various financial institutions with which they do business, also enabling them to integrate their own ERP system(s) into the solution.
To facilitate this, Cobase relies on ‘open banking’ APIs and existing networks such as SWIFT. The company is licensed as a PSD2 payment service provider and supervised by the Dutch Central Bank.
Data privacy start-up Ethyca raises $13.5m
Ethyca, which is led by Irish engineer Cillian Kieran, has raised a total of $20m for its data privacy technology.
Today (11 June), Ethyca announced that it has raised $13.5m in Series A funding to automate data privacy and compliance for businesses. To date, the New York-based start-up has raised a total of $20m.
Ethyca, which was previously featured in our Start-up of the Week series, was co-founded by Irish engineer Cillian Kieran with Miguel Burger-Calderon.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/start-ups/ethyca-funding-data-privacy-compliance-startup
Belgian-French fintech startup iBanFirst raises €21M funding to simplify international payments for SMEs
In the latest development, iBanFirst, a global financial services provider has raised €21 million in a Series C round from Elaia and Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund. Previous investors including Serena and Breega, Xavier Niel, also participated in the funding round. In total, the startup has raised €46 million to date.
Pierre-Antoine Dusoulier, CEO and Founder of iBanfirst, said: “Elaia and Bpifrance, notably through its Large Venture fund, are two major players in French venture capital and their ability to support the entrepreneurs and companies they invest in is well established. This is a decisive step towards achieving maturity as a company and pursuing our goal of becoming the leading platform for B2B multi currency financial services.
https://siliconcanals.com/crowdfunding/belgian-french-fintech-startup-ibanfirst-raises-e21m-funding/
Belgian fintech startup Silverfin raises $30 million Series B to continue international expansion
Belgian fintech startup Silverfin has raised a Series B round of $30 million, according to De Tijd. The round was led by Hg Capital with participation from Index Ventures and SmartFin Ventures.
The cloud-based financial planning software consolidates several data sources into one hub, so that finance and accounting teams can automate the administrative tasks and focus on analysis and strategy.
“We’ve made the core reporting work they do easier but we’ve also made it easier to give the advice their businesses really need, particularly now, like financial modelling, risk monitoring, benchmarking and scenario planning,” says Joris Van Der Gucht, one of the co-founders.
Founded in Ghent in 2013, the startup has over 650 customers in 11 countries and plans to continue its global expansion.
https://tech.eu/brief/silverfin-series-b/
New York, France agreement for fintech startups
The New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) and the France-based Autorite de Controle Prudentiel et de Résolution (ACPR) have partnered to help fintechs.
The memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed on 3 June 2020 and it seeks to further advance the two locations’ status as innovative hubs for fintechs and the financial services sector.
The MoU will promote cross-border collaboration in fintech between New York and France and encourage the sharing of regulatory best practices.
https://thepaypers.com/payments-general/new-york-france-agreement-for-fintech-startups–1242831
We are proud to partner with Money20/20 Europe, taking place on 22nd – 24th Sep. 2020 in Amsterdam.
Tell FOMO where to GO 👉 With over 2,500 of FinTech’s power players already attending #M2020EU, can you afford to not be one of them? Join us using discount code MP20FOR https://bit.ly/2Ag9QKv
Meet us at:
Swiss FinTech Fair, Zürich, 8 Sep. 2020 https://www.swissfintechfair.com
EY Startup Academy, Frankfurt, 15 Sep. 2020
https://start-up-initiative.ey.com/en/academy/program
Money2020 Europe, Amsterdam, 22-24 Sep. 2020 https://europe.money2020.com
South Summit, Madrid, 6-8 Oct. 2020
https://www.southsummit.co/en/home
FinTech Junction, Tel Aviv, 21-22 Oct. 2020
https://www.fintechjunction.com/annual/
Digital Insurance Agenda, Amsterdam, 28-29 Oct. 2020 https://next.digitalinsuranceagenda.com/dia-amsterdam-2020/want-to-attend/
MoneyConf / WebSummit, Lisbon, 2-5 Nov. 2020 https://websummit.com/moneyconf
12th FinTech Forum, Frankfurt, 19th Nov. 2020 http://www.fintechforum.de/events/
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Heussen https://www.heussen-law.de | Money2020 Europe https://europe.money2020.com | InsurTech Insights https://insurtechinsights.com | Finovate Europe https://informaconnect.com/finovateeurope/ | FN FinTech 40 https://www.fnlondon.com