Volatility Group acquires finance news website Small Caps to boost “infrastructure-as-a-service” platform
Sydney-based fintech startup Volatility Group has completed its acquisition of Small Caps, a leading Australian website for news and information about ASX-listed small cap companies.
The acquisition boosts Volatility Group’s dual-platform strategy to offer “infrastructure-as-a-service” to quoted companies, stockbrokers and professional investors, and support shareholders and issuers on both sides of the small cap market.
Small Caps was founded by Filip Karinja in 2017 as an investment news and content platform focused on Australian small capitalisation companies. Since then, it has expanded to cover Canada, USA, UK, China and Germany. In addition to news, the site offers investing tools, such as calendars for company announcements, and trackers for dividends, director trades and shorted stocks.
“We’re solving the twin problems of under-serviced investors and under-covered stocks,” said Ivan Tchourilov (pictured), Volatility Group’s Co-Founder and Managing Director.
Volatility Group has also launched InvestHouse as the second element of its dual platform.
InvestHouse is a digital platform for stockbrokers and investment firms to bring equity capital markets deals – such as IPOs and private placements – to the institutional and sophisticated investor market, benefiting from InvestHouse’s technology platform, and access to fund managers, family offices and high net worth investors.
“InvestHouse allows brokers to replace a dedicated syndicate desk and in-house equity research team, so they can focus on relationships, and structure the right deal for their corporate clients to bring to the market via the InvestHouse digital platform,” said Tchourilov. “It’s broking infrastructure-as-a-service.”
InvestHouse’s capabilities include deal origination, comprehensive sell-side research, and deal syndication streamlined by technology to facilitate direct bidding, real-time allocations, and digital documentation that bypasses wet ink signatures.
“Going forward, Small Caps will power retail engagement, and InvestHouse will provide institutional rails, to reinvent how ASX companies connect with the market, whether that’s in the context of ongoing investor relations or a deal,” said Tchourilov.
Small capitalisation stocks encounter several challenges, such as annual listing fees, regulation, mandatory disclosures, limited equity research coverage, stagnant liquidity, and the popularity of ETFs over individual stocks.
“We’re already making plans to take our dual-platform model overseas, because small cap stocks face similar hurdles internationally. Our first overseas focus with be the TSX in Canada, and then we’ll look at AIM in the UK,” said Mr Tchourilov.
Volatility Group’s acquisition of Small Caps, plus its local and international expansion, is supported by a $2.5 million private credit raise led by Tractor Ventures and offered to wholesale investors ahead of a Series A equity round later this year.
“Tractor Ventures is excited to back Volatility Group’s vision of combining retail reach, independent research and broker-ready infrastructure,” said Matt Allen, Co-Founder and Head of Capital & New Markets at Tractor Ventures.
With annualised revenue now exceeding A$3.5 million and growing at 30%+ quarter-on-quarter, Volatility Group is reshaping how capital, research, and trust flow through the equity capital markets, with open architecture, and aligned incentives for all parties.
It has set a goal of offering full equity research coverage to 2,000+ small- and mid-cap ASX-quoted companies by the end of this year and expanding its multi-channel syndication of over 500,000 investors and 100+ licensee groups.
