UK-India Bilateral Fund Invests In A Gold Trading Platform

The UK India cross-border fund of Unicorn India called Unicorn Ascension fund has made its seventh investment in UK-based gold trading platform, Goldex. 

Goldex enables retail and institutional clients to buy and sell physical gold through algorithms for price discovery and aligning prices across dealers. Earlier, the company had raised a seed round of £1.2 Mn led by Acies Ventures. 

Announcing the investment, Unicorn Ascension fund said in a tweet, “Welcoming the 7th investment into UAF, @goldexapp.”

Gold has been a popular mode of investments in India, leading major fintech players such as PhonePe, Paytm and Google Pay to enter the gold investments space.

In April 2017, online payment unicorn Paytm had announced its partnership with MMTC-PAMP and launched its Digital Gold service. This enabled its users to buy gold online and store it in MMTC-PAMP’s vault for free. The services also allow the Paytm users to get their accumulated gold delivered at their doorstep in the form of minted coins.

Following this, in December 2017, Flipkart-owned Phone also forged a partnership with SafeGold and launched its digital gold product. The service allows users to buy and sell certified 24-karat gold via the PhonePe app. 

Later in March, Google Pay had also reportedly entered the Gold-backed investment plans for its users. The service named Google Pay Gold is allows users to buy, sell and invest in gold using the application.

Unicorn Ascension Fund 

Unicorn Ascension Fund is a UK-India fund started by Unicorn India and Ascension Ventures with an aim to support UK-based startups looking to enter the Indian market. Existing portfolio of the fund include Recruitment Smart, Supply Compass, Libryo, Welendus, iDefigo, and Moteefe. 

Launched in June 2018, the fund is focused on Pre-Series A stage startups, building products and services relevant to the Indian market. The fund had earlier proposed to invest with a ticket size of £500K – £750K ($631.2K-$946.7K), as a co-investor in rounds that are between £1 Mn ($1.2 Mn) and £3 Mn ($3.78 Mn).

The focus sectors for the fund include Internet of Things, Hardware, Security and surveillance applications, AI-driven software assistants in logistics, travel and hospitality, Fintech, Edtech , Healthtech, Agri-tech, ecommerce and Software as a Service.

Further, the fund is structured as an open-ended enterprise investment scheme fund and aims to raise up to £5 Mn, or about $6.28 Mn (INR 45.2 Cr), per year.

Unicorn India was started in 2015 by Anil Joshi and Bhaskar Majumdar. From its first fund of $15 Mn, Unicorn India has invested in 18 Indian companies including on-demand beauty service provider VLCC VanityCube, cybersecurity startup Sequretek, pharma supply chain enabler Pharmarack. Alongwith, furniture rentals company GrabonRent, a robotic machine to eliminate manual scavenging Genrobotic, fintech startup Open, and AI-based smart locking solutions Openapp and others. 

Earlier in July, Unicorn India had also announced its second equity fund worth INR 400 Cr, with a focus on investments in Pre Series A and Series A rounds.