Dubai's NewBridge FinTech Solutions raises funds
Financial technology (FinTech) has a wide array of applications – from wealth management to financial risk solutions, the possibilities are endless. With FinTech becoming one of the most popular industries in the Middle East and North Africa by the number of investments in startups, the space has become increasingly crowded. Hence, it becomes more difficult to find a gap in the market that is currently being underserved by other business and startups.
Siddharth Bhandari, co-founder and CEO of Dubai-based NewBridge FinTech Solutions, felt that he had found that gap in the market: wholesale funding. Bhandari has spent over 25 years of his career in the banking industry, including banks like Société Generale and Emirates NBD. He has seen how crowded the FinTech market is by speaking to numerous high-ranking executives at financial institutions, and learnt about their pain points.
We wanted to do something which was quite different, so we focussed on the liabilities side of bank balance sheets - how they raise funding, do they still rely on old branch networks, what are the costs of raising those funds?Siddharth Bhandari, Co-founder and CEO of NewBridge FinTech Solutions
NewBridge’s new product, Deposit Book, is an online marketplace that looks to match banks’ short-term funding needs with global demand from investors for higher returns. The seemingly easy solution, is also a risky one, as investors are fully responsibility for their investment, without any advisory or credit rating support from NewBridge. Although, the FinTech firm does plan to parter up with a crediting agency.
Read more about NewBridge and its fundraise here.
