Participated · Seed · Oct 2023

Circular operates a consumer-facing tech subscription service offering new and refurbished phones, tablets, laptops and now gaming products, with features like free damage protection up to 90% of repair costs and refurbishment partnerships. Its core product is flexible device subscriptions (three- to 24-month plans) and a purchase option that offsets half of subscription payments against retail price. The company says it has grown 3X in the last 12 months and targets another 3X growth in Singapore and Australia over the next year. Circular aims to keep devices in circulation for about six subscription cycles before recycling and emphasizes sustainability and lowering upfront costs for consumers. It also offers a B2B product, Circular for Business, serving startups and SMEs. The team plans to use new funding to deepen product-market fit in Singapore, expand further in Australia, and double down on its B2B offering.

Led · Series A · Aug 2021

elopage provides an end-to-end SaaS platform and payment provider for digital entrepreneurs, creators, SMEs and larger media platforms, offering content delivery, payment processing, and tax-handling services. Its microservices allow users to build and host tailored websites and sales funnels, collect payments, and manage taxes. The company's user base ranges from solopreneurs to businesses with annual sales between €5k and €40m. elopage operates a proprietary platform it plans to invest further in following its Series A. The company planned to scale headcount from about 70 to 190 employees by the end of the year and to expand across Europe. elopage was founded in 2015 by Özkan Akkilic and Tolga Önal.

Participated · Series A · Jul 2021

Tinvio is a communication and B2B transactions platform originally built to consolidate orders and digital ledgers for supply chain merchants across channels such as email, SMS and WhatsApp. The app targets F&B suppliers (and also serves healthcare and automotive) and has grown its client base fourfold to more than 5,000 businesses across Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and other Asian markets. Tinvio recently added on-platform digital payments collection and reconciliation, supporting credit cards, direct debits and automated bank transfers via regional gateways, with 95% of suppliers continuing to use Tinvio to collect payments over the past two months. It has a 12-month roadmap to launch additional financial services, including transaction financing, credit card issuing and invoice factoring, with pilots planned for the next two quarters. The company was founded in July 2019 and is preparing to commercialize real-time payments and credit features as it builds out its fintech stack. Tinvio is partnering with MUFG bank to accelerate go-to-market for these financial services. Tinvio provides a real-time messaging and commerce app that consolidates orders from email, SMS and WhatsApp into a single interface and creates a digital ledger for invoices, fulfillment and finances. The platform is targeted at small-to-mid-sized merchants, with many customers in food & beverage, retail and healthcare supply. Since launching it has grown to over 1,000 businesses across more than 10 cities. The company was founded in July 2019 and is based in Singapore. Over the next 12 months Tinvio plans to add more cities and languages and to introduce digital financial services. During the COVID-19 pandemic order volumes on the platform fell about 30–50% in most cities, though retention rates have remained high.

Participated · Series A · Feb 2021

Mai provides a fully-automated video fashion shopping solution that leverages AI computer vision, personalization, and e-commerce bidding systems to let consumers buy on-trend products. Led by founder Joy Tang, the company is live with two of the largest social content platforms in Asia and reports access to 800 million consumers. Mai enables shopping across more than 200 million product SKUs from retailers such as Farfetch, Revolve, Yoox, Bloomingdales, SHEIN, SSENSE, Forever21, Shopbop, Cafe24, Mark Styler, Alibaba, JD, Vipshop and Pinduoduo. The company is also working with luxury brands to convert online social traffic and allow viewers to instantly discover and shop products. Mai raised $5M in a Series A+ and intends to use the funds to expand operations and broaden its business reach.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2019

Upvest provides an investment infrastructure platform that facilitates asset classes such as stocks, ETFs and some mutual funds and is built on a fractional trading engine. The platform can be extended to additional asset classes including bonds, derivatives and crypto, and to other investment use cases enabled by fractional trading. Upvest partners with fintechs and digital wealth managers — including Revolut, Raisin Bank and Plum — to offer savings plans, tailored portfolios and real-time fractional investing. Led by CEO Martin Kassing and based in Berlin, the company plans to use recent funding to enhance its product offering and pursue regional expansion with leading fintechs, banks and wealth managers. The company recently raised €30M in funding to support those efforts. Upvest offers a simple gateway API that integrates with existing infrastructure to let fintechs deliver capital market products — from ETFs and stocks to crypto assets — to their end customers. The company holds BaFin licenses for securities and crypto brokerage and custody, allowing clients to avoid building their own brokerage and custody infrastructure. Upvest positions its platform as delivering significant time and cost savings for both neo and traditional banking players. Recently it signed a deal with ABN AMRO to provide payment rails and transaction banking services, and it could win BNP Securities Services as custodian for B2B clients. The new $42 million Series B will be used to further develop and optimize the API, support internationalisation goals, and augment the team. Upvest is based in Berlin. Upvest offers an API-first Investment API designed to let any business provide investment opportunities to its customers, effectively embedding brokerage into apps. The platform is positioned to simplify and lower the cost and regulatory complexity of traditional European investment structures. Upvest says its API is "battle-tested" and has been reviewed by a selected group of experts. The company reports it is in talks with more than 30 companies interested in its offering. Management expects the product to go live in Q4, contingent on receiving a securities trading bank license. Financially, Upvest has raised a total of €20 million to date, including a recent Series A extension. Upvest provides a plug-and-play, pan-European securities API that lets fintechs create investment products such as ETFs, equities, and commodities with faster integration while complying with European regulations. Its API is designed to be easy to integrate into existing infrastructure, enabling greater flexibility and speed for clients. The company recently closed its Series A with an additional €5 million, building on an earlier €7 million tranche. Upvest will use the fresh funding to add a brokerage bank license (Wertpapierhandelsbank) and extend its product into investment brokerage and traditional securities custody. The startup plans to grow its team from 14 people to about 40 by the end of the year. No operating metrics (revenue/users) are disclosed in the article. Upvest offers fintech-ready, blockchain-agnostic APIs that enable companies to store financial assets on the blockchain and lower barriers to investment. The platform allows users to invest with minimums as small as €1 and to manage investments from anywhere. Upvest says its solution reduces issuance, distribution and custodial costs—clients report saving up to 85% in custodial and security issuance costs. Founded in 2018 by Martin Kassing and based in Berlin, the company has attracted API sign-ups from over 80 countries. The platform has processed €50 million in volume to date, and investors noted the company generates real revenues with a clear ROI for customers. Company and investor statements position Upvest as an enterprise-grade asset tokenization provider aiming to scale globally without compromising user experience.