Investing app Infina closes $6m in seed funding

By Leandra Monteiro

Vietnam-focused retail investing app Infina announced they have closed $6 million in seed funding from investors such as Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Y Combinator, Saison Capital, Starling Ventures, Alpha JWC, and AppWorks. Additional investors who have backed Robinhood, Coinbase, and similar models in other markets also participated in the funding.

Infina joins the retail investing app revolution with companies like Ajaib in Indonesia, Groww in India, and Tiger in China that have enabled a new wave of avid retail investors around the world to access financial markets like never before. The Infina app is designed to make investing more accessible, easy, and safe for the young, tech-savvy Vietnamese who are looking to start their investing journey.

Vietnam has a young population of 97 million that is made up mostly of Millenials and Gen Z, many of whom are seeing increased incomes and have an appetite for investing. Vietnam’s benchmark stock market index hit record highs last year, rising 28.1% year-to-date in December 2021 and outperforming many of its Southeast Asian equity markets. Vietnam also registered more than 1.3 million new stock trading accounts in 2021, which was more than three times the number for 2020.

Through Infina, users can choose from a wide range of asset classes, from fixed-income products to mutual funds, and more recently stock trading. Expensive investment products are fractionalised, so users can now invest in a diverse portfolio of assets with low minimum amounts. Infina is also making investing widely available to everyone by growing its presence across third party ‘super’ apps. For example, users can now access Infina’s investing products via the popular e-commerce app Tiki.

“Infina’s mission is to empower the rise of retail investors to participate in existing and emerging asset classes so that everyone has a real stake in the economy and prosperity of the country. We’ll be using the funding to continue to build out a world-class team that can develop great technology, deliver the best experience to our users, and drive even faster growth so that we can serve a large portion of the new investors joining the market in the next three years,” said James Vuong, founder and CEO of Infina.

“We are excited to be a part of Infina’s journey because at YC, we love to back founders who are building something people want. The need for a new generation of retail investing apps like Infina is clear, not just for Vietnam but globally,” said Gustof Alstromer, Group Partner at Y Combinator.