The fintech startups tackled various segments of the financial industry, including insurtech, personal finance management, loans CRM, and much more
At LATTICE80 — a fintech hub located at the heart of Singapore’s CBD — yesterday, 11 fintech startups pitched their products to a room packed with investors, entrepreneurs, and other industry professionals.
The startups, which were selected from over 500 applications across APAC, went through a three-month accelerator programme. The whole thing culminates in a regional Demo Tour aptly called The Odyssey. It spans four markets: Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Singapore is its first stop.
“Our objective with this group of startups is to give them as much exposure as possible to banks, brokers and the investors that can support their continued development and growth. To do that effectively, we need to go where these people are,” said Samuel Hall, Programme Director, Startupbootcamp Fintech Singapore, said in an official press statement.
All of them have designed financial solutions designed to boost productivity and profitability for both small financial institutions such as moneylenders, as well as large conglomerates such as banks.
Without further ado, here are the 11 esteemed startups!
AIM (South Korea)
Automated Investment Service (AIM) is targeting middle-income workers who want to invest. Investing in mutual funds is costly and entails some risk, so many of these people end up leaving their money in banks — safer but lower-yield.
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AIM provides a digital investor that delivers investment algorithms with risk management capabilities. Its beta currently has more than 5,000 signups.
CherryPay (Taiwan)
People in Taiwan find remitting money across borders a hassle. A lot of time is wasted waiting in queues, and administrative fees are both opaque and expensive. Additionally, receivers must wait about two days to receive the remitted funds.
CherryPay’s p2p money transfer platform offers mid-market rates that are updated every 10 minutes. It charges only between 1.5 to 2 per cent per remittance. These rates, according to the founders, are cheaper than Alipay. Receivers can also expect to receive the remitted money instantly.
CherryPay plans to raise around US$1 million in Q1 2018.
Fugle (Taiwan)
Fugle touts itself as the “Google for brokerage”. Investors can use its platform to search for vital information about a company such as their EPS or revenue figures to help them better analyse stocks. All the data is updated in real time and is taken from different outlets, including news media, web crawlers, and other databases.
There is also a page ranking system that displays the most relevant and searched results that are aggregated by tracking users’ behaviour.
Fugle wants to raise US$1.2 million by the end of the year.
Jumper.ai (India)
Jumper.ai a conversational commerce company that helps drive sales through social marketing and personal engagement. For example, by incorporating Jumper.ai’s API into their platforms, e-commerce companies can enable customers to buy items through Facebook Messenger.
Jumper.ai also facilitates a range of payment options from over 135 countries.
The company wants to raise US$1 million in seed funding by August.
Morakot (Cambodia)
Morakot is a B2B company that provides a platform for micro-financing solutions.
The problem with many of these companies, which includes moneylenders, is that they rely on basic software, such as Microsoft Excel, to track customers loans. Some even rely on pen and paper. This problem is especially prevalent in emerging markets.
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Morakot’s platform is a cloud-based solution that helps these companies automate and manage their customers. Since it is all on cloud, they do not need to purchase servers.
Morakot is planning to raise between US$500,000 to US$1 million to expand into Myanmar this year.
Scalend (India)
Scalend is an AI-enabled data analytics company that gathers customer financial data from over 50 sources, including online sources such as Twitter, Facebook, as well as offline sources such as ATMs, insurance claims.
By analysing this huge chunk of data, Scalend can run predictive models to accurately map out the profiles and behaviour of different bank customers. Additionally, it can use this to build fraud detection and credit scoring systems.
Scalend says it has already partnered with large banks in Singapore and crowdfunding platform CrowdGenie.
It is looking to raise US$1 million.
Smallticket (South Korea)
Smallticket is an insurtech company that revolves around community-driven programmes.
Basically, it groups insurance products based on a community’s specific needs as well as their lifestyles. This allows consumers to get the most suitable policies and helps insurance companies save on marketing and administrative costs. The insurance companies can then pass on the savings to the consumers.
Smallticket runs global programmes with travel agents. So for example, if a bunch of people are going to Hong Kong to study, Smallticket can group them together and have insurance companies insure them as a whole.
Smallticket also runs its own Yoga events. By promoting a healthy lifestyle, it can reduce the risk to policyholders, thereby reducing the cost of their premiums.
It plans to expand to Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. To do this, it is looking to raise US$2 million.
Smartfolios (Singapore)
Smartfolios is a financial and investment advisory platform. Users can personalise the platform by setting their personal risk profiles, selecting portfolios, customising trading and rebalancing their financials according to performance.
One notable fact about Smartfolios is its UX is genuinely “beautiful” and gives the fintech company’s platform a more approachable feel.
It is looking to raise around US$500,000.
SmartTrade (Japan)
Smart Trade is a trading platform that provides tools to help people to test and implement investment strategies. Users can also view historical data to see what strategy works well and what does not. The platform offers China and Japan stock market data.
Investors can also sell strategies in its store. For example, they can check out strategies for tech stocks and find out what is their risks and returns.
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Smart Trade says its interface is easy to use because there is no coding involved. It uses a simple, intuitive visual interface.
Smart Trade’s Japan chapter has already received funding, but its China arm is still looking to raise money.
Tixguru (Taiwan)
Currently, stock trading is quite time-consuming. Many retail investors don’t know what perimeters they need to find their preferred stocks.
Tixguru has built a solution to screen the stocks and then feed recommendations that have a high probability of an upside or downside. The company claims that investors only need five minutes to look at its recommendation list to find out what they need to buy or sell.
It wants to raise US$1 million to expand to China and ramp up business development and marketing efforts.
Vesl (Philippines)
Vesl allows companies to buy trade credit insurance products in bite-sized chunks. Currently, premiums are paid at the beginning of the year, and they cost a lot because it covers the whole year.
Vesl came up with a pay-as-you-use system so they can get the benefits of trade credit insurance without breaking the bank.
It is seeking a seed capital funding of US$900,000.
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Image Credit: Startupbootcamp FinTech Singapore
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