In November 2018 the Uruguayan fintech Bankingly (owned by Inforcorp) specialized in digital financial services had obtained US $ 5.25 million from Elevate Equity (Indian funds) and from The Rise Fund (one of the largest in the world) from which part the Irish musician Bono, vocalist of U2.
Raise Equity will again invest in the fintech who will receive US $ 5 million this time. The founder of Bankingly (and also president of the Chamber of Fintech of Uruguay), Martín Naor, explained that initially the company was presented to the fund Orestes Fiandra, constituted by the National Agency for Research and Innovation (ANII) and the Bank Republic.
Fernando Brum, president of ANII highlighted that the project was attractive to the agency because of the solidity of the proposal, which showed real knowledge of the market and stressed that the new investment that this company receives from the fund Elevar Equity “means that other international organizations and investors are betting, as we do, on the strengthening, growth and global development of a Uruguayan company and that the confidence that the ANII gave to the project is now supported by other investors “.
He added that, in terms of capital contributions, the first is the most difficult to achieve, because “almost nobody wants to do it alone”. “You invest when you saw someone else did it or when you do the analysis and the project is good and interesting, but when you know there is someone else who thinks the same, that reinforces the decisions,” Brum emphasized.
For its part, the Vice President of Investments in Latin America of Elevate Equity, Paula Arango, explained that Elevar is an impact fund, focused on people, characterized by making investments in projects that solve a need for users who do not access financial services. , education or health.
He highlighted his business model in which the client pays for the number of users that use the platform, a business model that also has scalability potential with high economic performance.
“We evaluate the talent and capacity of the company, the political environment and the possibility of doing business with a Uruguayan company and that the company has the capacity to receive resources from abroad to carry out its operations,” said Arango.
Also published on Medium.