Anfin, a Vietnam-based fintech firm with its proprietary stock trading platform, announced Tuesday that it has raised $1.2 million in a seed round led by Goodwater Capital and Global Founders Capital (GFC)

New investor XA Network as well as existing investor First Check Ventures also joined the round, Anfin said in a statement.

The fresh injection will be channelled into doubling down efforts to further develop Anfin’s platform to provide its retail investors real-time fractional share trading, Anfin said.

The investment comes at the heels of a recent agreement inked in December 2021 with Viet Tin Securities (VTSS), a State Securities Commission licensed brokerage firm in Vietnam.

Anfin will collaborate with VTSS to tap on the firm’s expertise and portfolio to expand its range of financial assets brokered on its platform – in addition to gaining VTSS’ support to integrate and optimise its trading systems.

Founded in June 2021, Anfin’s ambition is to democratise access for retail investors in Vietnam to a variety of financial assets ranging stocks, bonds, and structured investment products among others. The firm launched its stock trading platform in October 2021 and is the first in Vietnam to offer users real-time fractional share trading.

This comes at a time when the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HoSE) is looking to reduce the minimum lot of shares per trade, however for new retail investors, this may still be expensive. Thus, Anfin providing fractional share trading becomes a feature to not only teach but ease new investors to trade at a significantly lower capital at risk.

“We are very excited to have Goodwater Capital and XA Network join our journey with the ambition of bringing access for new and enthusiastic retail investors in Vietnam to stock trading.

“The strong track record and expertise from both investors as well as our existing backers who have also participated in this round reinforces the confidence for Anfin to bring about a new way of investing as for us to promote responsible investing and financial literacy to our country’s new investors,” said Phouc Tran, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Anfin.

Anfin raised a $510,000 investment in October 2021 from GFC, First Check Ventures, and R2 Venture Partners. The former two firms are returning investors that have participated in this seed round.
In November 2021, the firm raised another $125,000 from Y-Combinator (YC) and will be joining the YC Winter 2022 (W22) Batch from January to March this year. Anfin has 30 people in its team in Vietnam and aims to grow its headcount to 200 by the end of 2022.

“We feel that Anfin’s foresight in tapping on a rapidly-growing addressable stock brokerage market in Vietnam very timely amidst the country’s strong fintech prospects. The founders and their team show great promise in identifying and addressing the pain points faced by Vietnam’s new investors which is shown by Anfin’s focus in offering a lower barrier of entry through fractional share trading,

“This portrays a long-term mission on Anfin’s part to improve the country’s financial literacy amidst the uptick in investment sentiment,” said Yaw Yeo, a XA Network investor.

XA Network is an investment network comprising tech leaders from companies including Alibaba, Gojek, Grab, Google, Amazon, Netflix, YouTube amongst others, with a focus on the tech community in Southeast Asia. As a collective, the network is embodied in their purpose to foster inclusive innovation beyond simply investing in startups. Some of the network’s board advisors include Steven Che, co-founder of YouTube, Maya Hari of Twitter, David Thevenon of Balderton Capital (ex-Google) and John Wood of Room to Read (ex-Microsoft).

Goodwater Capital is a US-based venture capital firm that has invested in over 200 companies, including Indonesia’s Bukuwarung, the Philippines’ NextPay and Vietnam’s MoMo. The team brings over 30 years of global experience and recently announced its new US$1 billion fund to invest in global early and growth stage consumer tech startups.

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