Standard Chartered supercharges two Asian start-ups
Standard Chartered has given a big boost to two Asian start-ups with two proof of concept (PoC) projects.
Bambu, a Singapore-based robo-advisory for wealth management firm, and KYC Chain, a Hong Kong-based digital identity management firm using distributed ledger technology, were selected from SuperCharger FinTech Accelerator 2.0 – a 12-week accelerator programme in Hong Kong sponsored by the bank and Fidelity International.
Shameek Kundu, Standard Chartered’s global head of data, technology strategy and innovation, says these PoCs give it the “opportunity to team up with the brightest technology companies in our Asian footprint”.
There are no more specifics yet, but more details could arise as the PoCs progress.
Founded two years ago, SuperCharger says it is focusing on Asia as it is now the “largest market in the world for fintech” with $10 billion invested in 2016.
Standard Chartered says over 200 applicants from 33 countries applied for Accelerator 2.0, of which eight (including the two above) were selected:
- Clare.ai – a white-label chatbot for banks, based on machine learning algorithms and natural language processing;
- Entersoft – an Australia-based application security provider;
- FinChat – a mobile-compliance monitoring service provider based in Singapore;
- Foris – a Singapore/Hong Kong based company that offers a multi-currency account to enable users to manage money at perfect interbank exchange rates;
- Squirro – a Zurich-based firm focused on big data and data visualisation;
- Xnotes Alliance – provides “business-driven, currency-agnostic and energy-efficient enterprise class blockchain-based solutions”.
Accelerator 2.0 was also supported by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX), Visa, Amazon Web Services (AWS), InvestHK, the University of Hong Kong and other organisations.
Accelerator 3.0 will open for applications in the summer of 2017.
