Fintech Dominates a Big Year of Funding for Australian Startups

Techboard, Australia’s Startup and Tech Data company has just published its latest Australian Startup and Young Tech Company Funding Report for the 2017/18 financial year. The report revealed that over the course of the financial year $3.5B of funding flowed to Australian Startup and Young Tech Companies (up to 10 years old). Fintech Companies featured very prominently in the report, accounting for $988m of funding events over the financial year making Fintech the most funded category of company overall.

Peter van Bruchem, CEO and Co-founder of Techboard said: “We were not surprised that Fintech dominated Australian Startup and Tech funding to the extent it did. There were large number of high value funding events throughout the year, with the non-bank lending space being particularly active, with these companies utilising a variety of funding mechanisms, with a heavy emphasis on debt funding”.

Fintech funding events captured in the report represented a broad range of funding types however three types dominated with debt 30% leading out private investment (mainly venture capital) at 28.2% and initial coin offerings making up 28.6%. Over the period 111 funding events were recorded with an average value of just under $9m with 25 funding events of more than $10m. The report captured twenty six VC investments, twenty seven ICOs, three IPOs, nine placements, ten angel deals, ten accelerator places and thirteen grants being recorded. New South Wales led in fintech funding with over 62% of all funding raised. Victoria was the only other state to secure a significant portion of fintech funding.

Notable fintech sector funding events captured in the report include major VC rounds, Debt facilities, IPOs, placements, ICOs and equity crowdfunding raises. The largest fintech funding events was MoneyMe with a $120m an oversubscribed asset-backed securitisation deal. The largest recorded initial coin offering was gold backed crypto company Goldbitscoin which raised $66m ($50mUSD). The largest IPO was RaiseInvest (ASX:RZI) which recently parted from US based Acorns and which raised $15.1m. The largest placement was by ZipCo (ASX:Z1P) who raised $40m. The two equal largest VC deals were Lendi and uno who both raised $25m. Neo bank Xinja raised $2.4m on equity crowdfunding platform Equitise. Three significant acquisitions took place of Proviso, CreditorWatch and MoneyPlace all for undisclosed amounts.

Alan Tsen, Chair of Fintech Australia noted “The fintech industry has shown immense growth and it’s great to see this reflected in the funding events that occurred last year. We’re excited to see what the year ahead holds with further opportunities emerging due to the changing regulatory landscape.”