Building an operating system for private market investors, Berlin-based startup bunch raises €7.3 million. The fintech company is making the private market asset class easier to access amid the explosion of investment in this space.
While the financial world has been undergoing tidal wave forces of change and private market investment has exploded over the past decade – there has been something missing. We are yet to see considerable progress in how investments into private assets are made and managed. It’s meant that private market investments have remained available to a specific group. Bunch aim to change this, with a tech platform that allows investors to easily pool investments across private market asset classes.
Bunch: Building the OS for private market investors
Foudned in 2021 by Enrico Ohnemüller & Levent Altunel, the fintech startup is building the OS for private market investing. The bunch OS is an asset & jurisdiction agnostic investment platform, enabling investors to set up and manage their investment entities in a seamless way while at the same time offering investors more professional tools.
It was born out of a shared frustration with the lack of innovation in the private asset investment space. Enrico’s prior experiences at finleap, the fintech company builder, as well as Goldman Sachs made him acutely aware of the significant barriers involved in accessing private markets. Meanwhile, Levent worked for Citigroup and Roland Berger before becoming an early-stage investor for a Berlin-based VC fund, where he experienced the difficulty of setting up investment entities first-hand.
Levant commented: “Investors have been waiting for a solution like this that takes away all the admin work of investing and helps investors to become more professional at the same time.”
A sentiment which was echoed by co-founder Enrico: “We are giving our customers access to a toolset that previously was only available for the largest private investors, including pro-rata monetisation protecting dilution on your winners and risk diversification through collective investing. We are building on top of larger tech organizations for scalability which allows us to focus on customer value and process flexibility from day one.”
Bunch’s platform enables investors to create their own investment syndicates and track all of their investments in one place. It’s democratising access to this exploding investment space, previously limited to only those with access to both opportunities and large amounts of capital. Individual investors have been struggling to get in on the private market boom and bunch wants to change this. The platform helps remove the barriers to investing collectively which diversifies risk and democratizes access to unique investment opportunities.
Over the past three months, the platform which is currently live in beta in Germany and the Netherlands has transacted close to €150 million of assets under admin across startup investments and funds.
Filip Dames, Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures said: “The bunch team, led by Levent and Enrico, is unlocking private markets for investing with, first, their one-stop-shop solution — the bunch OS. We know how cumbersome gaining access to these markets can be, so we were immediately impressed when we witnessed bunch’s streamlined, simple solution. We believe that this tool is the first step on the journey to provide liquidity to private markets and become a true operating system for investors. We’re thrilled that this round will further revolutionize how all private market stakeholders — be it founders and funders — invest, interact, and exchange.”
The funding
This new funding round for the Berlin-founded startup was led by European early-stage fund Cherry Ventures. embedded/capital, who led bunch’s previously undisclosed pre-seed round, also participated.
Ramin Niroumand, Managing Partner at embedded/capital added: “We know from our experience as founders, operators and investors that private markets are far from digitized, with limited liquidity and fragmented access contributing to a generally painful process for all market participants. When we first started our conversations with Enrico and Levent last year, we collectively saw the potential of building on existing fintech infrastructure to launch a holistic suite of financial products across jurisdictions and assets – the bunch OS – to transform the way we interact with private markets. We are thrilled to be part of bunch’s journey from the very beginning, as well as happy customers.”
Additionally, a number of European angel investors got in on the action. Including, Adyen, Klarna, Juni, and Moonfare as well as private market investment and fintech experts such as Cristina Stenbek (lead shareholder at Kinnevik, chairperson of the Zalando Supervisory Board and non-executive director of Spotify), Pip Klöckner (investment influencer & Host at Doppelgänger Tech Talk), and Jan Deepen’s Discovery Ventures.
The capital boost will be used to expand the platform across additional geographies and asset classes. Also, the team will continue to advance the technical and product development of its holistic software platform to make it easier for all investors to participate in private markets.
via https://www.AiUpNow.com
July 26, 2022 at 05:20AM by contact@bcurdy.com (Patricia Allen), Khareem Sudlow
