Singapore’s Farquhar VC joins StockViva’s US$5M Series A investment round
The content is available in English.
Hong Kong-based StockViva, an online platform to connect retail investors with the key opinion leaders in the industry, has received US$3 million in additional funding to close the ongoing Series A round at US$5 million.
The new tranche came from Farquhar VC (Singapore), Kharis Capital (Luxembourg), Hong Huan Group, Angelhub, and individual investors from Hong Kong.
StockViva previously raised US$2 million from Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, K3 Ventures, and individual investors across Asia.
Launched in 2018, StockViva has developed a mobile app to provide real-time online education services to individual investors by financial KOLs. In addition, it connects retail investors with different financial institutions in Asia, covering a wide range of financial products such as US, Hong Kong and Taiwan stocks, along with FX and derivatives.
It has built a community of retail investors and financial KOLs. While retail investors gain knowledge from the financial KOLs, the latter build their fan base and reputation in Asia.
StockViva further leverages its own technology to build its real-time data streaming platform that captures and aggregates investment insights from stock markets and sentiment data in its social community.
StockViva has adopted a scientific and data-driven approach to run its operations to grow its business quickly. The firm startup has operations in China, Taiwan, Singapore and New Zealand.
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, StockViva claims to have achieved over 122 per cent revenue growth and 932 per cent growth in trading volume in 2021.
“If you read a financial newspaper in the morning, it doesn’t help you make any investment decisions in the afternoon, as the market has already changed and the information is outdated,” says Samuel Wan, Co-Founder and Chairman of StockViva. “Financial education and analysis have to be in real-time. This is the reason why we built a technology platform where retail investors will be able to find an appropriate financial KOL online for real-time education and analysis during trading hours.”
According to the annual reports published by various stock exchanges in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, the total number of retail investors is growing. Between 2014 and 2020, the total number of retail investors is growing at an average rate of 21 per cent annually, reaching over 27 million in 2020. The total number of retail investors is expected to further grow to 42 million in 2030. If we further consider other parts of Asia, retail investors will be over 100 million.