Vietnam-based Anfin, a fintech firm with its proprietary stock trading platform, announced today that it has raised US$1.2 million in a seed round led by Goodwater Capital and Global Founders Capital (GFC) – the latter coming in as a returning investor.
Joining the round is a new investor, XA Network as well as First Check Ventures, another existing investor of Anfin’s. The fresh injection will be channelled into doubling down efforts to further develop Anfin’s platform to provide its retail investors real-time fractional share trading.
The investment comes at the heels of a recent agreement inked in December 2021 with Viet Tin Securities (VTSS), a State Securities Commission licensed brokerage firm in Vietnam.
Anfin will collaborate with VTSS to tap on the firm’s expertise and portfolio to expand its range of financial assets brokered on its platform – in addition to gaining VTSS’ support to integrate and optimise its trading systems.
According to a recent report published by VinaCapital, Vietnam’s government aims to increase the country’s stock brokerage penetration rate to 10% by 2030 from its current rate of 3%.
Founded in June 2021, Anfin’s ambition is to democratise access for retail investors in Vietnam to a variety of financial assets ranging stocks, bonds, and structured investment products among others.
Phouc Tran, CEO and Co-founder of Anfin said,
“We are very excited to have Goodwater Capital and XA Network join our journey with the ambition of bringing access for new and enthusiastic retail investors in Vietnam to stock trading. The strong track record and expertise from both investors as well as our existing backers who have also participated in this round reinforces the confidence for Anfin to bring about a new way of investing as for us to promote responsible investing and financial literacy to our country’s new investors.”
Anfin raised a US$510,000 investment in October 2021 from GFC, First Check Ventures, and R2 Venture Partners.
The former two firms are returning investors that have participated in this seed round. In November 2021, the firm raised another US$125,000 from Y-Combinator (YC) and will be joining the YC Winter 2022 (W22) Batch from January to March this year. Anfin has 30 people in its team in Vietnam and aims to grow its headcount to 200 by the end of 2022.
Featured image: [Left to Right] Chi Pham, Director of Operations, Phuoc Tran, Co-founder & CEO, Michael Do, Co-founder & CPO and Hiep Nguyen, Tech Lead