Taiwan’s crypto-fiat fintech company XREX closed US$17M pre-Series A
Investors: CDIB Capital Group (lead), SBI Investment, Global Founders Capital, ThreeD Capital, E.Sun Venture Capital, Systex Corporation, Metaplanet Holdings, AppWorks, Black Marble, New Economy Ventures, and Seraph Group.
Plans: To expand its fiat currency portfolio, acquire additional licenses, and forge partnerships with more financial institutions and digital wallets. To roll out a user Reputation Index next year to bolster safety, transparency and accountability while encouraging social networking.
About XREX: Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Taipei, XREX fosters global financial inclusion by leveraging blockchain technology in solving the dollar liquidity shortage issues of cross-border merchants and SMEs in emerging markets. It claims to pioneer tools such as BitCheck and MyXchange to help these organisations reduce forex loss, gain access to US dollars and seamlessly cross over from informal to formal economy.
In the last eight months, XREX successfully detected and prevented fraud rings from Russia and Nigeria from using the platform. The company boasts itself as “one of the safest crypto-fiat currency platforms in the world.”
In 2019, XREX closed a US$7 million seed round led by Taiwan-based incubator cum accelerator AppWorks, which also joined this pre-Series A round this year. Other existing investors of XREX include Skype’s late-cofounder Toivo Annus, WI Harper, BitoEx, and the Taiwan government’s National Development Fund.
Revenue-based financing and growth platform Choco Up bags US$120K funding
Investor: Malaysia-headquartered social e-commerce platform Poptron.
Plans: Choco-Up’s funding, part of a larger funding round by Poptron, will support Poptron in their expansion plans in Singapore and other countries in the region at a peak time for the e-commerce industry.
Poptron will also become a channel partner of Choco Up, enabling the small and micro merchants on the platform to gain access to Choco Up’s data-driven financing platform and receive the immediate and accessible financing these brands – which may not otherwise be able to receive necessary capital – need to grow.
About Choco Up: Founded in 2018, Choco Up offers flexible non-dilutive funding solutions and business analytics across eight countries and 10 sectors. With offices in Hong Kong and Singapore, Choco Up leverages data analytics and vast integration to automate growth fund deployment and risk management, providing fast-growing companies with rapid capital deployment to fuel their growth.
About Poptron: It connects socially conscious consumers in Malaysia with ethical, sustainable and socially responsible brands on its platform, which currently hosts over 100 microbrands with more than 2,000 different types of product listings.
Frontiers Lab Asia launches cross-border training programme in gender lens investing
The story: Frontiers Lab, an incubator for solutions to complex, persistent challenges in entrepreneurial ecosystems, has launched “Beyond 2021: Investing across borders and innovation”, a training programme in South and Southeast Asia to connect global angels to women-led ventures and cross-border investing.
The programme focuses on regional entrepreneur support organisations (ESOs) and intermediaries, and the challenges that they face in supporting small and growing businesses (SGBs).
The objective: This series to be held on September 8-9 provides educational workshops on investing, gender lens investing (GLI), and cross-border investing to demystify the GLI opportunity. It is open for application from angel investors across South Asia and Southeast Asia.
Local hosts include ANGIN, Indonesia’s angel investors network; Villgro, a Philippine early-stage impact incubator; KisStartup, a Vietnam-based ecosystem builder; Invest2lnnovate, Pakistan’s female-led venture capital fund; and Spring Activator, a Canada-based incubator-cum-accelerator.
The non-profit project aims to increase access to capital for female-led early-stage startups, as well as create financial equality and independence within the investment community.
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Image Credit: XREX
The post In brief: Taiwan’s XREX rakes in US$17M, Malaysia’s Choco-Up raises funding from Poptron appeared first on e27.