LBS Ventures Funding Recap | March 2022
Venture funding rounds involving LBS founders contracted during March. Nonetheless, 5 promising ventures were able to close their fundraising this month:
M-Kopa, an African connected asset financing platform for the underbanked (and protagonist of a case study in the Marketing class for LBS MBAs), raised a $75M round led by Broadscale Group and Generation Investment Management
SteadyPay, a platform helping freelancers and gig workers stabilize their income, raised a $5 million Series A round led by Digital Horizon
Breedr, a UK precision livestock management application for farmers, raised £12M between debt and equity funding in a deal led by Investbridge Capital
Cascador Health, a Belgian platform collecting structured, anonymized data on patients and healthcare delivery, raised €3.4m from Qbic, Volta Ventures, Theodorus, and Hirslanden Private Hospital Group
FabricNano, a UK biomanufacturing company using a DNA-based flow reactor that produces artificial cells to speed up chemical reactions, raised $10m from undisclosed investors
The Spotlight
Our March edition spotlights two great ventures, both of which are currently fundraising:
▶️ KripTonic, a fintech product aiming to protect LATAM savers from inflation and currency depreciation, founded by Juanes - Juan Jaramillo and Juan Beltran, both in the MBA 2022 class
▶️ ProComps, is a drafting analytics tool for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) teams, founded by Eyüp Can Özbek, MBA 2023
KripTonic - Juan Jaramillo & Juan Beltran, MBAs'22
KripTonic aims to improve financial inclusion and lead crypto transition and adoption in Latin America, bringing the best of this ecosystem to everyone through reliable, transparent and simple investment vaults.
Did you know that the Argentinian peso depreciated ~510% vs. USD during 2017-2021?So did the Colombian Peso (by ~30%) and the Brazilian Real (by ~60%), making purchasing power of LatAm’s savers decrease over time.
It is a reality that current investment alternatives in LatAm are unreliable and require high transaction costs and long complex procedures, and this is why Kriptonic created KT Vaults, a simple fintech product that maximizes savings by hedging against inflation.
With KripTonic, users deposit local currencies, which are exchanged for stablecoins and invested in DeFi protocols (mainly lending, staking and liquidity provision for exchanges), achieving a 10% fixed Annual Percentage Yield in USD to its customers. Kriptonic also protects its customer’s money through third-party insurance policies.
The team is at MVP stage and preparing to go live in the next few months. They are now raising a $3m seed round, which will close on the 2nd week of April.
The funds raised will be used to hire CTO (if you know anyone that could be a fit reach out below!) and an internal technical team, develop and launch the app, fuel growth, and test market fit on a significant scale. Education modules, themed portfolios (e.g. NFTs, gaming) and DeFi expansion and a transition to web 3 company are on KripTonic’s roadmap.
Like what you read? Get in touch with the KripTonic team by email.
ProComps – Eyüp Can Özbek, MBA'23
ProComps is a drafting analytics tool for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) teams, founded by Eyüp Can Özbek, currently an MBA’23 at LBS.
MOBA is a ~$40B industry and the largest segment of e-sports, in which teams compete in a 5v5 game with different characters. Popular MOBA games include League of Legends and Dota 2.
Currently, players face several issues when drafting champions - i.e., selecting the characters to play the game as - ranging from picking complexity and time constraints on decision making to frequent patch updates and drafting unawareness. Further, most analytics tools today focus on individual players to improve their game rather than teams – leaving an untapped market for ProComps.
As a drafting app designed for teams, ProComps gives players live drafting suggestions taking into account game style, synergies among champions, and recalculating in real-time based on enemy picks to present a AI-based shortlist for the team to decide on. In MOBA games, where players have 30 seconds to chose among 150+ characters, ProComps provides a great headstart to teams, that are also equipped with a pre-game summary guide once the drafting is completed.
ProComps has seen great signs of early traction with over 5K+ users, ~1.2K Monthly Active Users (MAUs), 100 Premium members, and growing quickly to $5K revenue to date. The company has a freemium model, and charges €10/month for Pro features, which significantly lower than the cost of a coach (typically at $50 per hour or $10K a month). ProComps is currently raising $250K SAFE round led by angel investors.
Interested? Get in touch with the team by email.
eClub Podcast - Crypto Deepdive
New episodes alert! In the last two episodes of the eClub Podcast, our guest host Grace Guan dives into the world of web3 and cryptos.
In episode 3, Grace talks to Altan Tutar, analyst at Antler, about Antler's approach in nurturing web3 startups including what to look out for if one wants to start a business in this space.
In episode 4, Arun Sugumaran, co-founder and CEO at ArtWallSt, talks about how to build a business in #web3 space, what his #inspiration was, how Antler helped him find the right #cofounders and what to look out for during #fundraising stage.
Follow us on Season 1 of the London Business School Entrepreneurship Club's podcast 'Those who launched 🚀: The pilots and the propellant' where our hosts talk with venture capitalists and founders from their portfolio companies to learn the tricks and challenges of building a business.
🎙 Listen now
Thanks for reading, see you next month! 👀 Do you have any comments or feedback? Get in Touch!