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The Turkey-based payment solution and micro-crediting platform Colendi has successfully raised $30M in its latest funding round. The Series A round was joined by key international investors, most remarkably a $12M investment by previous Getir backers Re-Pie, the Turkey-based alternative asset management firm investing in startups with Unicorn potential. Initial investors in Colendi were Boğaziçi Ventures who showed a remarkable performance in spotting promising opportunities in Early-Stage deals in Turkey in 2021.
Operating at a highly conducive time for FinTech innovation in light of governmental Financial legislation improvements, the Turkey-based FinTech has cracked the code to scale. Colendi offers customers from, businesses to people, financial services, such as payment systems and credit opportunities powered by its grading algorithm using artificial intelligence and big data.
As most recently recorded in our August 2021 Venture Investment Dashboard, even though the FinTech industry raised the second-highest number of deals over 2021 YTD after Gaming, it was overshadowed by larger funding rounds in Gaming and E-commerce (the most funded industry in Turkey in 2021 YTD). To put things into perspective, however, if we are to exclude Trendyol's $1.5Bn Decacorn deal this year, Turkey-based FinTech startups would have raised almost 72% the amount of funding raised by E-commerce startups over 2021 YTD.
Through a mix of AI integration, Big Data collection, and dynamic financial solutions, Colendi set forth to create ‘the modern credit’, aiming to provide the world’s most accessible consumer micro-credit infrastructure to low-risk customers outside the financial system, using a modern scoring algorithm. Ian Hannam, who has more than 30 years of experience in many leading financial institutions such as JPMorgan and Salomon Brothers and was the head of the Global Debt and Capital Markets units for a period, was appointed as chairperson of the board of Colendi following the investment round.
Colendi has a modern scoring algorithm that can evaluate data such as social, mobile, demographic, bill payment data, and shopping historical data in real-time through an ingenious Tech stack. The Turkey-based startup has aggregated over 1.6M transactions, and 350,000 financial active users in eight months with its 10 financial partners and four platform partners consisting of Moneypay, Paycell, Oldubil, and Paratech. Hannam said the funding would help the company become stronger in the global market by enhancing its existing finance and platform partner portfolio by expanding abroad.
The Turkey-based FinTech plans to use the investment to make its products ready for competition in the global arena, maximize the service quality it offers, and accelerate its growth by expanding into new markets, according to the statement by the company. Financed by this latest investment, Colendia also had the chance to move its headquarters to the U.K. to register as an international company. Mehmet Ali Ergin, vice chairman of Re-Pie Asset Management concluded “We have invested in a company that we trust with everything from its entrepreneurs to its business plan, from its competent team to its growth potential. There has not been a unicorn in the field of fintech in Turkey so far, we believe that Colendi will be the first.”
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