Santander and LSE instrumental in Nivaura’s $20m funding
Nivaura, a platform for the issuance and administration of legally enforceable financial instruments using blockchain technology, has just closed a $20 million funding round.
Looking for large-scale projects in 2019
This investment – a mix of seed and seed extension capital – is led by London Stock Exchange Group but also includes capital markets law firm Allen & Overy, Linklaters, Santander InnoVentures and Transamerica Ventures.
Nivaura’s CEO, Dr. Avtar Sehra, comments: “Our focus for 2019 is on conducting a series of high profile, large-scale projects with high calibre partners to demonstrate our platform as a valuable solution across the full spectrum of capital markets primary issuance activities. Working with such partners with their wealth of experience will underpin our next phase of growth.”
Founded three years ago, London-based Nivaura says it can connect and automate manual processes involved in the issuance and administration of instruments – such as any form of debt, equity and structured products.
For certain transaction types, it reckons this can reduce time to market by 60-80%, cutting costs and ensuring compliance.
The investment will be used to expand its leadership, business development and technical teams. For example, it needs technical staff to “ramp up expertise” across machine learning and natural language processing.
It doesn’t offer specifics, but the company also plans to enter new jurisdictions and to cover new asset classes.
Nivaura explains that one “success” it achieved was the “world’s first” automated cryptocurrency denominated bond issuance supported by Allen & Overy.
The firm has also participating in all of the first four Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) regulatory sandboxes, where it gained its MiFID and CASS regulatory approvals.
