Know Your Customer and Botsync close first $2.5m on Hong Kong's AngelHub

Know Your Customer and Botsync close first $2.5m on Hong Kong’s AngelHub

Written by Ruby Hinchliffe
13th January 2020

AngelHub, a start-up funding platform based in Hong Kong, has closed its first two fundraising with local start-ups Know Your Customer and Singapore-based mobile robotics firm Botsync. The rounds come to a total of $2.5 million.

The rounds are part of a larger $50 million Series C round which AngelHub – the first and still only crowdfunding platform to be licensed by Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) – is heading up in a bid to “democratise” funding for start-ups in and around the region.

Know Your Customer and Botsync teams with AngelHub

Know Your Customer, with offices in Ireland and Shanghai as well as Hong Kong, works with online banking services such as ConnectPay and prepaid cards service Axiom to fully digitise and streamline the onboarding process for both individual and corporate customers.

Now with a customer base stretching across ten countries, and having graduated from accelerator programmes such as Plug & Play and Accenture’s Fintech Innovation Lab, the start-up saw raising funds as a natural next step.

“AngelHub added value to our business before we even formally started the round,” says Know Your Customer’s CEO Claus Christensen, who reveals even at interview stage the start-up gained “valuable feedback and contacts”.

Botsync, a start-up backed by the Singapore’s government agency Enterprise Singapore, turns autonomous mobile robots (AMR) technology into off-the-shelf solutions targeted “especially” at small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to help them with the supply chain.

Specifically vetting growth stage start-ups scaling in Asia for professional investors, AngelHub offers them equity ownership in exchange.

The funding platform says it wants to “bring meaningful, positive impact to the Asian start-up ecosystem by closing the funding gap, enabling start-ups to scale, and pushing start-ups to the next phase of growth to initial public offering (IPO) or exit through strategic partnerships”.