OweMe, a blockchain-based B2B payment platform owned by Sabstone Ltd in London, raised $ 1 million in a seed funding round from Pi Ventures. He plans to use the funds raised to strengthen his product and his team, a statement said. The agreement marks the first foreign investment by the venture capital firm based in Bengaluru, Pi Ventures.
Founded in 2016 by Nishant Singh and Nisha Singh, OweMe allows banks and businesses to lend to their supply chain. The platform is registered with the Financial Conduct Authority, a UK financial regulatory body, to issue electronic money that allows companies to create, pay, and track their currency anchored to Fiat currencies to reduce friction and increase credit. financial efficiency.
"The founders founded the company in India, but the regulatory framework in London has been a great help to their business and so they have decided to change base, this is a one-off investment and not a shift in strategy (for More Ventures.) We will continue to focus on India-based artificial intelligence investments, "said TechCircle Abishek Surendran, partner of the venture capital firm.
OweMe has been part of FCA Sandbox, an initiative that allows fintech companies to test products and services in the real market, Accenture Fintech Innovation Lab and is supported by Capital Enterprise.
Pi Ventures focuses on investments in the Applied IA and the Internet of Things (IoT). In August of this year, the company raised a crore of Rs 225 ($ 31 million) for its debut fund, exceeding the initial objective. The UK CDC group entered as a limited partner in August. The fund has so far invested in start-ups such as SigTuple, Niramai, Ten3T and Locus.sh and has come out of the Zenatix energy management start-up in May.
In an interview with VCCircle in September, founding partner Manish Singhal spoke about the lessons derived from the Zenatix outcomes and issues related to startup evaluations, AI-based startups in India.