British company Fintech Farm closed Series B round at $22 million, as AIN.Capital learned. The Nordstar fund was the lead investor of the round, which was a combination of equity and convertible loan.
What’s the company about?
Fintech Farm was founded by three Ukrainians Dmytro Dubilet, Oleksandr Vityaz, and Mykola Bezkrovny in 2020. It is a platform for launching neobanks in partnership with traditional banks around the world. The first Fintech Farm project was Leobank, which the company launched in Azerbaijan with the local bank Unibank. Today, this project has almost 1 million active customers and has already turned a profit.
Dmytro Dubilet and Oleg Horohovskyi (as well as several other co-founders) jointly launched Fintech Band and monobank. Subsequently, Dubilet left the Fintech Band team and the shareholder board. Fintech Farm is one of his new projects.
In January 2022, Fintech Farm raised $7.4 million in investment. The round was led by the venture fund Flyer One Ventures and fintech company Solid. African marketplace Jiji and funds TA Ventures, u.ventures, AVentures Capital also participated.
In March 2023, Fintech Farm launched Liobank in Vietnam, where Orient Commercial Joint Stock Bank (OCB) became the company’s partner. The project itself is at the beta stage and operates only in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. The third market for Fintech Farm was Nigeria, where Fibo was launched in the beta stage, which so far only works in Lagos.
The details of the deal
The lead investor of the deal is the Nordstar fund, which has headquarters in London. It has about 20 companies in its portfolio. One of the last companies in which the fund invested together with other investors is the Dubai platform Silkhaus, which raised $7.75 million in November 2022.
At the time of writing, the investment in Fintech Farm is still the largest for Ukrainian projects in 2023 and one of the largest in Ukrainian fintech for its entire history. Dubilet does not disclose the company’s valuation. According to AIN.Capital, the valuation of the company may exceed $100 million.
- One of the participants in Fintech Farm’s new round is the Chrome Capital fund, as AIN.Capital learned. Like Nordstar, the fund is also headquartered in London. Among the co-founders is Alexander Savin, who acts as its GP. Savin was among the co-founders of the Elbrus Capital venture fund, which operated in the Russian Federation. We asked Dmytro Dubilet to talk about Chrome Capital and its participation in the new round.
- According to Dubilet, Savin has been living in Britain for more than 20 years and has British citizenship. After the start of the full-scale invasion, he ceased operations in the Russian Federation and did not invest there, this was also confirmed by Elbrus Capital.
- The editors of AIN.Capital also asked for proof that Chrome Capital does not have Russian money under its management. Dubilet showed Chrome Capital’s audit from a European company, which confirmed that the fund does not have money from Russian LPs or from companies that are operating in the Russian market, receiving profits there.
Dubilet also emphasized that all investors Fintech Farm completed a new round with have undergone due diligence and are not related to Russian finances. According to Dubilet, the company refused to cooperate with the funds, even if those managing the money of the trust LPs continued to invest in the Russian Federation after the start of the full-scale invasion.
