Digital Securities Platform iSTOX Bags US$50 Million From Japanese State-Backed Investors
by Fintech News Singapore January 21, 2021Digital securities platform iSTOX announced that it had closed its Series A funding round with a total of US$50 million joined by two state-backed investors in Japan.
The new investors include the venture capital arm of Japan Investment Corporation (JIC) and Development Bank of Japan Inc (DBJ), which is a financial institution wholly owned by the Japanese government, Juroku Bank and Mobile Internet Capital (MIC), a venture capital firm.
Existing investors Singapore Exchange (SGX), Japan’s Tokai Tokyo Financial Holdings, Korea’s Hanwha Asset Management, Temasek Holdings’ subsidiary Heliconia Capital Management and Thailand’s Kiatnakin Phatra Financial Group also made fresh investments.
Founded in 2017, iSTOX is a fintech startup regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as a multi-asset platform for the issuance, custody and secondary trading of digital securities.
iSTOX graduated from the MAS Fintech Regulatory Sandbox in February 2020.
Oi Yee Choo, Chief Commercial Officer of iSTOX, said,
Oi Yee Choo
“With the new financing, iSTOX will expand our footprint both geographically and in terms of investment offerings. We will roll out private issuances by blue-chip issuers that individual investors on our platform can subscribe to in bite-size portions.
Our expansion in China, where we recently signed an agreement with Chongqing city, will continue apace. Also in the iSTOX pipeline are issuance deals involving other regions, including Europe and Australia. The digital securities space will grow by leaps and bounds in 2021.”
iSTOX signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Chongqing Monetary Authority in November 2020 to set up a digital securities exchange in Chongqing to serve the Chinese market, marking the first overseas expansion by iSTOX.
In December 2020, iSTOX listed the world’s first unicorn fund in digital securities form.
Featured image: Oi Yee Choo, Chief Commercial Officer of iSTOX
