The blockchain fintech Agora Innovation from Frankfurt secured its first investment of 750,000 euros in a seed round of financing, announced High-Tech Gründerfonds on 25 February.
The semi-state early-stage financier High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) provided the complete sum as the sole investor. Equipped with this start-up capital Agora Innovation wants to grow from the current nine to at least 15 employees by the end of 2019, as founder and CEO Phong Dao told WirtschaftsWoche founders.
The software developed by the fintech startup should also be brought to market maturity with the help of the capital.
Agora Innovation aims to help other companies
Starting by funding what they call Security Token Offerings (STO), which will issue digital promissory notes at Blockchain.
Agora Innovation wants to enable its corporate customers to issue and trade security tokens across national borders while providing legal certainty. For this purpose, the legal requirements of the individual countries should be integrated into their own application.
According to its founder, the startup is planning a first product launch at the Token 2049 crypto conference in Hong Kong in March. In May, a first full version will come on the market. According to WirtschaftsWoche Agora Innovation already connects its first companies to its platform.
The HTGF is convinced of the business model of the blockchain startup and justifies its investment with a positive expectation with the still young security tokens:
“We believe that the security token market will develop strongly and at the same time face the challenge for issuers to meet the evolving regulatory requirements for security-type tokens across multiple jurisdictions.”
The first European security token was launched in January by the Liechtenstein blockchain startup edeXa. A few days ago, BaFin issued a license to Bitbond, the first German startup, to issue security tokens on Blockchain.