Thai fintech startup nets $6.5m pre-series A from Beacon VC

Beacon Venture Capital, a Thailand-based corporate VC firm under local major bank Kasikornbank, led a US$6.5 million pre-series A funding round for homegrown financial intelligence platform Jitta.

The investment marks the biggest pre-series A funding for a Thai startup to date, Beacon said in a statement.

Founded in January 2014, the Bangkok-based startup gives investors access to investment insights. It analyzes business financials and automates portfolio management based on Warren Buffett’s value investing
approach: buy a wonderful company at a fair price.

The platform covers stock markets in 16 countries – including Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, the UK, the US, and Hong Kong – and supports over 200,000 users in 128 countries.

Jitta CEO and co-founder Trawut Luangsomboon / Photo credit: Jitta

Jitta will use the fresh funding to broaden its footprint in Thailand and globally, as well as increase its market presence in Singapore and India this year. To support its expansion plans, the startup will hire more developers to incorporate artificial intelligence into its technology.

Jitta also plans to launch a new service called Jitta Wealth, an automated stock investment platform that uses a stock-ranking algorithm to deliver higher returns at lower fees and risks. The service is in the process of obtaining a private fund license from the Securities and Exchange Commission and will tentatively begin operating in Q2 2019.

It will offer a management fee of 0.5 percent per year and a performance fee of 10 percent of the profits, said Trawut Luangsomboon, CEO and co-founder of Jitta.