Your Tech Story

fintech startup

Fintech Unicorn Bunq Secures €29M to Fuel UK and US Expansion

Fintech Unicorn Bunq Secures €29M to Fuel UK and US Expansion

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News, Tech Story / By

In its annual report for 2023, Bunq, a European online bank with a mission to transform banking, reported a noteworthy accomplishment. The firm reported an impressive €53 million net profit for the year, with impressive development and advancement in client assets rising from €1.8 billion to over €6.9 billion.

Injection of Capital for Development and Adherence

In compliance with its legal obligations and aggressive development strategies, Bunq has obtained a new capital infusion of €29 million from its current owners. Bunq’s major goals, such as its entry into the US and UK markets, depend heavily on this money.

Strategic Licencing and Market Entry

Fintech Unicorn Bunq Secures €29M to Fuel UK and US Expansion

Image Source: deadline.comsiliconcanals

Ali Niknam, the founder and CEO of Bunq, outlined the company’s goals for strategic worldwide expansion, including intentions to expand into the US and the UK. Following previous regulatory setbacks, Bunq will be able to more easily reapply for a United States banking licence via the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) because of its recent investment.

Sound Financial Position and Support from Shareholders

Bunq’s financial stability and development possibilities are reinforced by the capital commitment letter of €29 million, which shows the dedication of the company’s owners. Along with helping Bunq achieve its expansion goals, this cash infusion guarantees adherence to the rules established by the Dutch Central Bank.

Adaptability Amidst Regulatory Obstacles

Bunq’s choice to reapply for a banking licence in the US is indicative of the company’s resolve to get over regulatory obstacles and successfully enter new markets. Bunq seeks to negotiate the challenges of global expansion by addressing distinctions between Dutch authorities, the OCC, alongside the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC).

Improved Cash Flow

Bunq announced a stunning treble rise in interest income, rising from over €41 million to reaching €127 million in 2023, alongside its profitability goal. The increase in interest income highlights Bunq’s developing market position and financial stability.

Creative Product Offers: Finn

Finn, a state-of-the-art GenAI platform that uses large language models (LLMs) to improve user experience, was unveiled by Bunq in December, last year. Finn enables Bunq customers to efficiently manage their funds, create effective budgets, and get tailored financial guidance within the app.

Also Read: Elon Musk Plan to Charge New X Users to Tweet

The Vision of Ali Niknam

The founder of Bunq, Ali Niknam, set out to transform banking and give priority to customer requirements when he launched the firm in 2012. Bunq’s self-funding pledge till 2021 underscores the business’s dedication to providing customer-focused banking solutions.

In conclusion, Bunq has reached a major turning point in the development of digital banking with its recent financial successes and wise investments, which open the door for strong expansion in foreign markets. Bunq has the potential to completely transform the current banking industry with its unwavering innovation and dedication to customer-focused banking.

 
klarna

Sebastian Siemiatkowski : The Founder of Swedish Buy-Now-Pay-Later Fintech Klarna

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

There have been many rags to riches story, among which, Jack Ma’s rejection story is on the top. In almost every such story, the people who have succeeded once had difficulty in even earning their one time meal. But as time changes, their hard work takes them to new heights, and they only set up new examples for other people. One such story is of the founder of Klarna, a Swedish version of Paypal, which was founded by Sebastian Siemiatkowski in 2005. Siemiatkowski was not rejected, but had a similar humble background and worked at Burger King. And now, like Ma, he has also established himself as one of the successful entrepreneurs in the tech industry.

Early Life

Sebastian Siemiatkowski met his future partner and friend Niklas Adalberth, at Burger King, where both worked as part-timers. Later, the two went on to join the Stockholm School of Economics to pursue a graduate degree in Economics. At the college, they even met the third co-founder of Klarna, Victor Jacobsson.

The two while studying and working together always discussed new startup ideas, but none of them was sure about what they should really do. During their college, they decided to take a year’s off and travel the world without flying. The two went to explore the world through road trips and on ships. This way, they got extra time to think about their career.

Klarna founder
Image Source: businessinsider.com

Founding Klarna

While back from the trip, Siemiatkowski joined sales job and came
across the emerging concept of e-Commerce. While working with the
sales department, he got to know that it is quite difficult to sell
things online, as people do not trust the online payment systems.
This problem later became the basis for Klarna.

Siemiatkowski discussed the problem with Niklas and decided to build
a new payment system for people to make the purchases. Jacobsson also
joined in, and they participated in the Stockholm School of Economics
annual entrepreneurship award with the idea. Though Siemiatkowski and
his partners had a lot of faith in the idea, it could not make to the
finals. In fact, it was one of the lasts. But Jane Walerud, an angel
investor, showed interest in the idea and invested in it. He even
helped the three co-founders to meet a good development team.

Finally, in the mid of 2005, Siemiatkowski along with his partners
founded Klarna and opened its first office in Sweden. They started by
offering the option of paying for the goods after receiving them.
This led the consumers to trust Klarna faster, as they were hesitant
about buying things online. But with Klarna, they could pay after
deciding if they wanted to keep the goods.

The Success

The company received another investment from AB Öresund in 2007. In 2010, the company expanded its services to Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. The same years, Klarna also received investment from Sequoia Capital, and the company’s revenue raised by 80%.

In 2011, the company was named as one of Europe’s 100 most promising
young tech companies by The Telegraph. In a round of funding, led by
General Atlantic Klarna raised a $155M investment. The company also
acquired the Israeli company Analyzd specialising in risk management
and online payments. Klarna then expanded its services to the US.
This expansion has contributed a lot to the growth of Klarna. In the
same year, the company’s revenues made it one of the Unicorns in
the country.

By 2018, the company registered around 60M users, and around 90,000
online merchants were using Klarna to carry out their payments. In
the latest round of funding held in 2019, Klarna raised $460 million,
Dragoneer Investment Group, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HMI
Capital, Merian Chysalis Investment Company Limited being the major
investors. This funding round made the company value at $5.5 billion,
and it became the largest fintech start-up in Europe.

Through the story of Klarna, we definitely can say that hard work can
really change one’s life if it is put in the right direction.

UPI

Mandar Agashe : The Man Who Brought a Revolution in the Indian Digital Payment System

Leave a Comment / Founder, India, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Receiving rewards for paying your bills is like the smartest scheme ever to digitalize the payment system of our nation. Most of us make payments through UPI apps like Tez to earn digital scratch cards and cash backs. The growth of UPI has been unbelievable from only 92,000 transactions in August 2016 to 105 million transactions in November 2017. Today, almost everyone with a smartphone uses these UPI apps for the transaction. And, the biggest advantage of UPI is you don’t have to walk to your bank to deposit money into someone’s bank account. From transferring money to bank accounts to paying for movie tickets, UPI has become the most convenient and the most successful initiative in terms of online banking.

But, who is the person behind this massive success that turned the entire scenario of digital payment in no time?

Mandar Agashe, the founder of Sarvatra Technologies, a company that provides financial and payment solutions to the Indian banking sector, came up with the idea of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and launched it in 2016.

Early Life of Mandar Agashe

Mandar Agashe
Image Source: Facebook

In 24th May 1969, Agashe was born into an influential family of Mumbai to an Indian businessman, cricketer and philanthropist, Dnyaneshwar Agashe, and Rekha Gogte. Agashe had two other siblings, Ashutosh Agashe and Sheetal Agashe.

When Agashe was pursuing his B.E. degree in Computers, he created Musicurry.com, an online radio website. After completing his college, Agashe joined his family business in 1994 and started working in the firms. By 2000, he established EBZ Online in association with Oracle, followed by establishing Brihans Natural Products Ltd., and finally, Sarvatra Technologies in 2000.

Sarvatra Technologies

Agashe established his startup in Pune. The startup was basically to provide payment solutions and promote online banking through UPI and IMPS (Immediate Payment Service). The main goal of the company was to get the rural and semi-urban population connected to banking as well as the system of digital payment and get every citizen of India accustomed to EFT (Electronic funds transfer).

Since Mandar Agashe belonged to a family full of successful business tycoons, he had a clear idea of how the corporate sectors function. He wanted to come up with a solution that can be affordable to every single person out there and can easily carry out online transactions with minimal knowledge.

Oracle was the first company to invest in the strategies of Agashe, and eventually, investors like Vallabh Bhanshali and ICICI Bank participated in the following funding rounds. By 2018, the company brought 450 co-operative banks on National Financial Switch.

Agashe realized that both, the banks and the customers, faced a lot of issues during online transactions because of the poor connectivity. So, he provided the banks with SaaS-based technologies to enhance better performance, and also, reducing the operating cost at the same time.

The success of UPI and other payment solutions

After UPI was launched in 11th April 2016, the transaction volume increased unexpectedly. Transactions through the leading UPI apps like Google Tez, PhonePe and BHIM increased exponentially. By 5th December 2017, two months since the launch of Tez, the transaction volume hit 140 million, and the amount processed through PhonePe summed up to 100 crores per day.

Another advantage of Tez which accounts for 70% of the total UPI transaction is that the money one pays through it directly gets credited in one’s bank account instead of getting dropped into the wallets. By 2017, the apps that use UPI reached 20 million downloads from Play Store.

In the financial year 2017-2018, Mandar Agashe announced that they had a gross transaction value of 27,000, and by the next financial year, they will be going to make it 40,000 crores.

Agashe’s Musical Career

Apart from being an entrepreneur, a philanthropist and a successful businessman, Agashe is also a renowned singer. Releasing Musicurry.com was his first step towards the musical world, which led to launching his very own music album. His first role in the world of music was as a co-director with Pandit Hridayanath. He sang his first playback song with Asha Bhosle, and in 1998, his album ‘Nazar Nazar’ was recorded and released in Hindi and English. In 2005, another album, Jaan Le was released followed by 82 in 2016.

Robinhood

Robinhood : The Platform that is Democratizing American Financial System

Leave a Comment / Founder, Product, start-up, Story, Tech Story / By

Stock exchange and cryptocurrencies, both have proved to be the most beneficial financial industries, where people can invest and earn. But, it has always been tough for people to understand the whole process and make their investment wisely. Using some of the eCommerce platforms costs a big amount, and most of the time does not help the way it should do. This had always been the pain point, and the 2008 financial crisis also became the reasons for the two U.S. based immigrants, Vladimir Tenev and Baiju Bhatt, to work on a new platform that would allow users to buy and sell shares free of charge. The platform that they created is Robinhood.

Early Life

Vladimir Tenev was born in Bulgaria, in 1987. At the time, his father was studying at the University of Delaware, the U.S. After one year, when Tenev was four, he moved to the U.S. to live with his parents. He spent most of his childhood in Virginia, and later, moved to the Bay Area. The family was quite drawn towards studies, and Tenev himself loved to study maths and science.

In 2004, Tenev joined Stanford University, where he met his future co-founder Baiju Bhatt. Both had opted for physics and maths as their degree’s majors. Bhatt is also an immigrant from India. The two shared a common interest, i.e. maths, that helped in building the bond between the two, stronger.

Robinhood founders
Image Source: glassdoor.co.in

After graduating from the Standford University, Bhatt joined a finance firm as his first job in San Fransisco, whereas Tenev joined UCLA to complete a PhD in Mathematics. While working at the financial firm, Bhatt realized that there was a great business opportunity in hedge funds.

Entering into Entrepreneurship & Founding Robinhood

So the two started their first venture, Chronos Research, in 2011 and got a small apartment in San Fransisco, where they started working on their project. The business they started offered tools for hedge funds and banks to build automated trading strategies. While working for their first joint venture, the famous 2008 financial crisis took place. The Lehman Brothers went under, and the market got collapsed.

The financial crisis inspired the two to move to New York City and find a better solution for share market trading. Their joint venture was the first step for their new startup Robinhood. Thus, they brought their existing technology to the retail brokerage market and started Robinhood in 2013.

Being the Millenials, they knew that smartphones will play the prime role for their new ventures, so they worked on different layouts of a mobile app for the platform, and sent it for the regulatory approvals. Before the app, they launched their website, that would do the same work as the app. They wrote “commission-free trading, stop paying up to $10 per trade” on the front page of the app, and worked on a waitlist, that would show people their position among other traders.

The Biggest Turning Point

The waitlist got Robinhood a mention in the Hacker News, that too at third after news on China moon mission and Google in a single day. The specifying in Hacker News got the company its first maximum traffic. After one day, Robinhood had its press lunch, following which, the platform got 10,000 signups, and in the next week, the signup reached 50,000. The company offered free membership to the users for their sign-ups. It only charged the users with a monthly fee instead of charging a particular fee on every single transaction.

The next task was to get the investors on board. The company raised $3 million in its seed round, led by Index, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, after pitching their startup in front of about 75 investors. Even before the company launched an official app, it had gained over 1 million signups, in the first year of its launch. After a year and a half, the company launched its app in March 2015. The Robinhood app offered the easiest interface for the users, such that it got most of the users under the age of 35.

The app has helped people to recover 90 per cent of their investment in the trade market, which is impossible with the traditional method. By the beginning of 2017, the platform had carried out the transactions of over $30 billion. In April the same year, the company raised another $110 million through a funding round led by DST Globa that made the company value at $1.3 billion.

The next year, on January 25th the company started to trade in cryptocurrency and announced a commission-free waitlist for the users from California, Massachusetts, Missouri, and Montana. By the end of the day, the waitlist had over 1,250,000 names registered. In May 2018, Robinhood raised $363 million Series D financing round led by DST Global and valued at $5.6 billion.

The Company Today

The company partnered with the Ohio-based Sutton Bank, such that to provide its users with checking and savings accounts as well as debit cards. The company raised an additional $200 million in a round of funding in 2019, that has led the company to value between in the $7 billion to $10 billion.

The company is registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Before 2019, the company’s primary source of revenue was from payment for order flow, but now, the source of revenue has been changed. The company earns its revenue from the interest earned on customers’ cash balances and margin lending.

Currently, the two co-founders are serving the company as the co-CEOs. Tenev was named among ‘30 Under 30’ in 2016, by Forbes. Robinhood became the first financial app to receive an Apple Design Award and was also listed among the top US FinTech startups of 2015 and various other rankings.