CXi sets course for scale up
CXi Software has ended the financial year with a strong quarter of activity, as it moves from a “start up” to a “scale up” business model. The company made a number of new senior management appointments in March and April – which preceded a move to new (and larger) premises on Queen Street in Melbourne’s CBD. The company also completed a Series A capital raising over the same period. New staff Adam Gernon was recently appointed as Chief Technology Officer, joining CXi from CenITex, where he was General Manager, Innovation and Delivery. Prior to CenITex, Adam had over 10 years’ experience in financial services technology at organisations such as NAB, […]
Australian FinTech and GreySpark Partners to collaborate on Research & Strategic Advisory for the Australian Financial Industry
GreySpark Partners, a global business and technology consulting firm, and Australian FinTech, an online space dedicated to promoting the development of the fintech industry in Australia, are pleased to announce a new partnership in which the Australian FinTech portal will serve as a conduit for accessing GreySpark-produced research reports and information related to the firm’s strategic advisory services on the use of and investments in new technologies and financial applications. Founded in 2009, GreySpark – which is headquartered in the UK, with offices in Sydney, New York, Edinburgh, London and Hong Kong – provides its base of financial markets clients with a range of traditional and niche services and products. […]
Meet the Australian corporate initiative empowering India’s Top Women Entrepreneurs
An Australian-first program is helping a new wave of Indian women break through the cultural glass ceiling to put globally-scalable businesses in front of Aussie Investors. In what is the first Australian initiative of its kind, Sydney-based corporate advisory firm – CEO Strategic has launched a specialist program to support some of India’s most innovative women entrepreneurs raise investment capital directly from international investors. The Project shines a light on some of the best innovators from India where, although the number of women entrepreneurs is on the rise, parity when it comes to the support of female entrepreneurship, is still one of the lowest in the world. The program, […]
Brighte set to accelerate growth with $18.5m in funding
Sydney-based home energy fintech, Brighte, closes 18 months of strong growth with a Series B equity round of $18.5m. The round was led by Airtree Ventures and also includes Skip Capital, the Milgrom Family and further investment from Grok Ventures. Brighte is a digital credit platform offering affordable point-of-sale payment solutions for home energy improvements such as solar panels and batteries. In its first eighteen months it has over approved over $50m of applications from 6,000+ Australian homeowners. This stellar growth has been the result of a fully digital, innovative product being brought to the home improvements market as demand surges from everyday Australians for solutions to rising energy costs. […]
Macrovue thematic global share portfolios available as SMAs via Praemium
Thematic global share investing business Macrovue announce the first 3 of its 22 managed portfolios are available as SMAs via the industry-leading managed accounts platform, Praemium. Thematic portfolios are becoming more and more important for advisers to consider when thinking about a client’s overall portfolio. Having the Macrovue thematic global share portfolios available for advisers delivers leading investment solutions and global diversification for advisers managing clients’ investments. Macrovue’s investment management fee of 80bps with no performance fees provides access to global markets at reasonable cost for clients. Leveraging the more than 50-years’ global stock-picking experience of the Macrovue Investment Team, Macrovue’s portfolio construction process combines inputs from a proprietary quantitative […]
HashChing puts its hand out to go it alone
Online mortgage marketplace HashChing is looking to raise up to $5 million by the end of June through the power of crowd-funding, in a bid to ensure that it is immunised from the influence of any big bank, says CEO Mandeep Sodhi. Instead, HashChing has partnered with equity crowd-funding platform Equitise to issue its first round of shares to interested investors. According to Mr Sodhi, the crowd-funding route will help HashChing remain an independent voice in the mortgage market. “Unlike many other online mortgage platforms who are backed by a lender, we are and will continue to stand separate from the banks,” he said. “We want our customers to become […]
Angel investor group Investible raising $20m to back early stage start-ups
Member-based venture capital firm Investible is halfway through raising its first VC fund of $20 million, which will be used to back early stage start-ups, as it claimed its existing portfolio was delivering market-leading growth. Investible’s co-founder Creel Price told The Australian Financial Review the four-year-old operation had so far achieved an unrealised compound return of 66.2 per cent per annum, based on its investments in start-ups such as Canva, Ipsy and Car Next Door, which he said made it one of the best in the industry. This means the value of the companies it has backed has grown on paper, and he said it compared favourably to high-profile funds […]
Fintech adoption speeds up in Australia
Australia is growing faster than most of the global markets and is now outplacing the US in terms of fintech adoption, says Noah Breslow, the chief executive of US online SME lending company OnDeck Capital, which has delivered more than $US8 billion in loans to 80,000 small businesses globally. He told the third AltFi Australasia Summit in Sydney on Monday that Australia is now the second-largest alternative finance market in the Asia-Pacific region. “We are looking at an industry that did $10 million of annual volume – these are numbers from KPMG in 2013, and in 2016 that had grown to $220 million.” Breslow said according to OnDeck estimates, “based […]
