Hong Kong Startup News Roundup - 13 September 2020

Diginex successfully completes US$20m capital raise, ahead of Nasdaq Listing

Diginex Limited, a digital asset financial services company, announced today that it had successfully closed a privately placed Convertible note, raising more than USD 20 million in advance of its planned listing on Nasdaq in September 2020. The investment round was led by several institutions and family offices across Europe and Asia. The capital raised highlights the level of institutional investor interest for both digital assets and the full digital ecosystem offered by Diginex.

In applicable agreements, 8i Enterprises Acquisition Corp, the Nasdaq-listed company (Nasdaq: JFK), agreed to ensure that a minimum USD 15 million will not be redeemed from 8i’s trust account.

Upon expected completion of the business combination at the end of September 2020, the combined company will offer investors the opportunity to participate in the growth of this emerging asset class via the public markets.

Hong Kong virtual bank Mox onboards first customers

Standard Chartered-supported Hong Kong virtual bank Mox has officially launched to the general public and started inviting pre-registrants who had earlier signed up on the waitlist to open an account.

The first 3000 prospective customers on the waitlist will be onboarded and rewarded with the delivery of a metal Mox card.

The remaining 17,000 waitlisted registrants will go through a phased signed up procedure.

"There are no strings attached, no deposit or spending requirements," states the bank. "All we ask for is for your patience while we produce the additional metal Mox Cards. The cards are produced overseas and deliveries have been affected by disruption to the global logistics chain."

Mox is one of eight virtual banks licensed by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority last year to encourage fintech innovation and boost competition in the territory's banking sector.

Arrow Electronics Empowers Hong Kong Startups to Accelerate Commercialization of Smart Sports Gadgets

Global technology solutions provider Arrow Electronics today announced its IoT and engineering services collaboration with Hong Kong-based technology startup Platysens to accelerate the commercialization of smart and connected sports devices.  Powered by sensing and IoT technologies, smart sports gadgets can bridge the physical and digital world by collecting a wealth of information about performance metrics and providing real-time actionable insights for sports enthusiasts, athletes, and trainers to strive for continuous improvement. 

Benefited from the free engineering consultative services available at Arrow's Open Lab located in Hong Kong Science Park, Platysens is able to rapidly combine algorithm, IoT, and sensing technology to accelerate its new smart product development schedule. 

ZILHive startup accelerator announces 2020-2021 cohort

Zilliqa, a blockchain platform, has announced its 2020-2021 cohort of selected companies participating in the ZILHive, a 6-month blockchain startup accelerator.

The programme is designed to support early- and late-stage startups that are using or looking to use the Zilliqa protocol to build blockchain solutions.

From digital asset exchanges to stablecoins, this year’s batch of 8 companies have been selected to promote blockchain development within Open Finance (OpFi).

The programme will run from August 31 2020 to February 2021.

The cohort includes a Hong Kong startup: 

Lumiere: A Singapore and Hong Kong-based film tokenisation platform that strives to boost liquidity, accessibility, and mitigate risk in the film investment space.

Grab In Talks To Raise Up To $500M

Grab Holdings Inc., the $14 billion global ride-hailing company based in Singapore, is negotiating with potential investors as it seeks to raise as much as $500 million to boost its financial services division.

Reuters reports Hong Kong-based AIA Group Limited, the publicly-traded life insurance group, Prudential PLC, the British global life insurance and financial services company and others are expected to reach agreements as early as October, according to sources.

Grab has added food delivery and insurance to its services since the start of the pandemic.

The insurance companies are likely to provide half of the investment over several fundraising rounds, one of the sources told the news service.