What’s going on here?

Bangkok-based fintech company Lightnet has nabbed $31.2 million in a Series A funding round to further develop a blockchain financial mobility network.

Blockchain financial mobility network: by connecting existing financial systems with its vast network of non-bank agents and fiat-transaction network, improve the efficiency, convenience and affordability of legacy remittance and payment systems.

Who are the participants?

Investors who participated in the round include:

• UOB Venture Management,
• Hanwha Investment and Securities,
• Seven Bank (7-Eleven owner),
• Uni-President Asset Holdings,
• WanXiang Group’s investment arm HashKey Capital (Chinese automotive and financial conglomerate), and
• Hopeshine Ventures (Singapore-based),
• Du Capital and Signum Capital.

They have been active investors in fintech:

• UOB Venture Management has recently invested in Indonesian lending startup Amartha. Its parent bank UOB earlier debuted TMRW (claiming as ASEAN’s first mobile-only bank) in Thailand. It has also launched Asia Impact Investment Fund II, which has the mandate to invest in financial inclusion platforms.
• Hanwha is targeting more SEA investments in fintech as well as other sectors through its $200-million partnership fund with Singapore-based Golden Gate Ventures.

What does this mean?

• This marks one of the largest Series A rounds in Southeast Asia. Following large financing rounds in companies such as aCommerce, Pomelo and Finnomena, this significant investment could heat up interest in the ecosystem.

Thailand has a more mature financial sector than its peers in the region, but overall funding into the country’s startups has been modest compared to neighbours such as Indonesia and Vietnam. 

About Lightnet

• Lightnet was co-founded by Chatchaval Jiaravanon, a family member of the Thai conglomerate CP Group.
• The startup offers smart contracts and distributed ledgers on its Stellar Network to target the $1 trillion remittance market. Lightnet started with addressing the $150 billion market in SEA, where unbanked migrant workers still rely on outdated, costly and fragmented services, by offering low-cost and instantaneous financial inclusivity and mobility.

• A distributed ledger is a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, or institutions. There is no central administrator or centralized data storage.
• A remittance is a transfer of money, often by a foreign worker to an individual in their home country.

• Tridbodi Arunanondchai, the firm’s vice-chairman projected that “within three years, Lightnet will facilitate over $50 billion worth of annual transactions.”

Content source: Ngoc. N. T. B. (2020) Thai fintech startup Lightnet banks $31.2m in Series A round. Available from: https://www.dealstreetasia.com/stories/lightnet-funding-169769/ [Accessed 18 January, 2020]