[Funding alert] Global investment platform Stockal raises $9 mn in Series A funding

OYO-backed global investment platform, Stockal has raised  $9 million in its Series A funding round from Hashed (a global web3 focused venture fund), and PEAK6 (an investment firm in the US).

ARC Group Ventures (venture capital arm of ARC Group), Riso Capital, Trica, 7Square, AZ Ventures, Czar Capital and existing investors also participated in this round.

The firm operated by Borderless Softtech Pvt Ltd, andplans to use the funds to expand its Southeast Asia footprint.

New York-based Stockal was founded in 2015 by Sitashwa Srivastava and Vinay Bharathwaj, it is a cross-border investing platform that helps retail investors in India, the Middle East and South East Asia to "globalize" their savings and wealth by saving or investing in mature international markets like the US, UK, Germany, HK and Japan.

Through Stockal users can open, own and operate overseas investment accounts digitally and affordably.

“We are very excited about the opportunity of making investing and savings a truly borderless use-case. Investors from emerging markets have always been short-changed when it comes to finding diverse investment opportunities and we are happy to play a large role in unlocking the global potential for them”, said, Sitashwa Srivastava and Vinay Bharathwaj, Co-founders & Co-CEOs of Stockal.

“The last couple of years have highlighted that there is a tremendous appetite among retail investors to make their money borderless and they will make the leap provided the required ecosystem is available. We are working very closely with banks and regulators in all our markets to make Stockal an extremely seamless platform,” they added.

According to the firm, leading financial services companies such as HDFC, Motilal Oswal, IIFL, Geojit, Scripbox and over 50 other brokers and wealth management companies have partnered with Stockal.

Stockal expanded into the MENA region last year with an office in Dubai and partnerships in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain. In May 2021, Stockal had raised $3 million in funding round from Aroa Ventures, Cadenza Capital Management, and others.

About Stockal :

They believe that investing shouldn’t be restricted to local market opportunites only. So they created an ecosystem for investors to make investments across borders, seamlessly.

At Stockal, they think of ourselves as a digital infrastructure company – building pipes from source markets (where investors reside) to destination markets (where the investing products are from) and vice versa. This includes local compliance facilitation, cross-border money transfer logistics, investing front-end infrastructure, reporting, distribution, and investing education. Headquartered in New York, with its India office in Bangalore, Stockal is backed by investors with pioneering backgrounds in financial services and technology in the United States, UK, India and Singapore.

Today, Stockal’s global investing platform powers some of the largest brokerage firms, wealth management companies, robo-advisors, and fintech platforms in India and the Middle East. These serve thousands of investors on a daily basis, helping them globalize their investments and savings.

Before starting Stockal, Sitashwa and Vinay built cross-border companies for many years. And having spent time working on these businesses in the US and in Asia, they realized that there were many missing pieces whenever people looked towards global diversification of their financial assets. With global retail wealth growing and people’s global expenses increasing every year, they realized that there was an active need of a platform that helped people save and invest money internationally.

After starting Stockal, initially, in the US, as an investment management platform for retail investors with the intention of democratizing intelligence, they decided to build cross-border bridges for investors. They brought Stockal to Indian audiences looking for international investing options, late 2019, and subsequently expanded to the Middle East in 2020.

Stockal helps retail investors in India, Middle East and South East Asia “globalize” their savings and wealth by saving and/or investing money in mature international markets such as US. Using Stockal, people can, digitally, open, own and operate overseas investing accounts – digitally and affordably.

Additionally, investing on Stockal is backed by big data-based automated research and analysis that helps investors make smarter investing decisions. Stockal helps to manage portfolio better, keep track of its health, make better investing decisions and discover interesting stocks and investing themes every day. Stockal is funded by investors with deep backgrounds, and rich experience, in the global financial services industry.