Citigroup co-leads $6m round of Singaporean bond trading fintech startup

BondEvalue, a Singapore-based fintech firm, has raised US$6 million in its series A round of financing led by MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia and Citigroup.

The BondEvalue team / Photo credt: BondEvalue

Existing investors including Lee Han Shih, founder of Potato Productions, and Singapore-based family office Octava also participated in the round, bringing the total funds raised by BondEvalue to US$10 million.

The fintech firm also announced a joint venture in Mexico to form a peso bond exchange, which will be headed by Jaime Zenizo, former head trader at HSBC Mexico. However, it didn’t specify which company it had partnered with for the undertaking.

BondEvalue will use the fresh funds to expand overseas and increase the number of international users on its platform.

Established in 2016, the company provides electronic bond trading and makes bond investments accessible to a wider group of individual investors. Its BondbloX blockchain system enables investors to buy and sell bonds in denominations of US$1,000 instead of the usual US$200,000. This takes place through a public exchange, where prices are transparent.

“Investing in corporate bonds has typically been out of reach for most retail investors in Asia. BondEvalue is changing that by bringing greater transparency and democratizing access to the fixed income asset class,” said Anvesh Ramineni, managing director at MassMutual Ventures.

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In October 2020, BondEvalue received the recognized market operator approval from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to operate BondbloX Bond Exchange, a fractional bond exchange.