In a new move to penetrate the Asian markets, Russian fintech fund Life.Sreda has inked a memorandum of understanding with Marvelstone Partners, a Seoul, South Korea-based investment group. The two partners intend to launch a $20 million fund targeting fintech startups in South Korea and other Asian countries.
Marvelstone will share its expertise in Asian markets while Life.Sreda will support the startups with its fintech expertise and international networks.
The memorandum also involves the companies’ respective startup accelerators: Marvelstone’s 10K in South Korea and Life.SREDA’s InspirAsia in Singapore.
“We’ve chosen to work with Life.Sreda because they are experts in fintech investments and know global fintech markets and trends well,” Marvelstone CEO Gina Heng said in a statement. “They understand the potential and opportunities of Asia’s fintech sector, and we share the same vision for growth in Asia.”
South Korea is the first destination for this collaboration. This country is characterized by a healthy fintech ecosystem and an innovating banking sector, according to Life.Sreda Managing Partner Vladislav Solodkiy.
Services such as LoopPay, which was acquired by Samsung, and messenger KakaoTalk, which has implemented payment functions in partnership with several banks, are successful models to export, Solodkiy said in an exchange with Asian tech blog Tech In Asia. He cites the South Korean banks’ scaling down of ATMs and other self-service machines in favor of personal, web, and mobile banking as an indication of their ability to innovate quickly.
Russians go Asia
Launched in 2012 as the venture arm of Russian financial group Life, Life.SREDA closed its first fund in December 2014, after having invested over $40 million in a number of fintech startups from Russia and other countries.
Amid signs of contraction of the Russian venture market, Life.Sreda launched a second fund targeting exclusively foreign startups with a $100 million target. It is now independent from the Life financial group.
Over the past few months, the fund has dramatically increased its presence in Asia, first and foremost Singapore where it opened an office and launched the InspirAsia accelerator.
In a separate move last month RVC, the Russian state-owned fund of funds dedicated to innovation, signed a cooperation agreement with the Korean Techno-Venture Foundation (KTVF), which is a part of the Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST).
The two partners will “share information and cooperate in the field of technological innovation,” which includes “mutual support in developing innovative businesses and promoting technological cooperation between universities.” The memorandum is expected to “foster cooperation between [Russia and South Korea], including joint access to markets in Russia and Southeast Asia.”
Sources: Fintechranking.com, RVC, Tech In Asia
- Update April 29, 2016 — Life.Sreda and Marvelstone cancelled their plans to cooperate in this field a few months after the MoU was inked, a Life.Sreda representative told East-West Digital News.
