The JB Financial Group has acquired a minority stake in Vietnam-focused retail investing app Infina, while local VC firm VIC Partners and VC-backed game publisher Funtap have announced a strategic investment in Communi.io
JB Financial buys minority stake in Infina
South Korea’s JB Financial Group has acquired a minority stake in Vietnam-focused retail investing app Infina, according to an announcement.
Under the terms of the partnership, JB Financial Group will initially acquire 3.9% of Infina’s shares, with the potential to increase its stake to approximately 5%. This expansion is contingent on the success of the collaborative efforts between JB Securities Vietnam and Infina.
With this investment, JBFG is taking its strategy of enhancing collaboration with fintech companies to the next level, following successful partnerships in the Korean market with Finda, a local financial comparison platform, and Hanpass, a foreign money transfer platform. Infina is the first fintech company in Vietnam to receive investment from this Korean group.
In 2022, Infina raised an additional $4 million in seed funding bringing the total corpus raised in the said round to $6 million. Investors participating in the round include Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Y Combinator, Saison Capital, Starling Ventures, Alpha JWC, and AppWorks. Additional investors who have backed Robinhood, Coinbase, and similar models in other markets also participated in the funding.
Founded by James Vuong, a Silicon Valley engineer turned SE Asia VC investor, the Infina app seeks to make investing more accessible to the first-time young, tech-savvy Vietnamese who are looking to start their investing journey.
VIC Partners and Funtap invest in Communi.io
Local VC firm VIC Partners and VC-backed game publisher Funtap have announced a strategic investment in Communi.io, an innovative AI-powered communication toolkit designed to significantly enhance customer lifetime value for businesses across various sectors.
The transaction details were not disclosed.
According to the announcement, this investment will enable Communi.io to accelerate its growth, expand its technological capabilities, and scale its solutions to meet the needs of a broader range of businesses looking to enhance their customer communication strategies.
Communi.io provides a comprehensive in-app communication SDK for mobile and web applications, along with an integrated, flexible AI chatbot platform.
These solutions are designed to solve critical communication challenges for clients, enabling seamless integration of chat functions, data protection, and a superior user experience across various platforms, including iOS, Android, Web JavaScript, React Native, and Flutter.
VIC Partners is a Vietnam-based VC founded by a powerful and passionate group of serial entrepreneurs and corporate leaders to back early-stage startups. Its portfolio companies include: TopCV, GeneStory, Reti, Coolmate among others.
Founded in 2015, Funtap is a VC-backed game publisher. The company last secured seven-digit funding in its Series A round in 2020 led by Makers Fund. The round had also seen the participation of South Korean venture capital firm DT&Investment (DT&I), and Colopl Next, the corporate VC arm of Japanese gaming company Colopl Inc and existing backer Soulbei.
