Q1 Wrapped
2023 started with some surprises. In February, treasury yields hit the highest level since before the Great Financial Crisis. This was followed by the second and third-largest bank failures in US history in Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), highlighting challenges in the banking sector that continue to unfold. Undoubtedly, these failures will have lasting impacts on the global start-up and crypto ecosystem.
Further, the circumstances with SVB underscored the speed at which situations evolve in our new digital age. The efficiency of digital banking, sprinkled with panic spreading on social media, enabled $42 billion to be withdrawn by SVB customers in just 24 hours. We thank the ecosystem players who reached out to check on us and our portfolio companies during this tumultuous time. And, despite the first quarter’s volatility, we remained active in deploying capital — welcoming Sikoia and Scrut to the portfolio and continuing our support of three existing portfolio companies through follow-on investments.
Read on for highlights and news from the first quarter.
Welcome to the MMV portfolio
In Q1 2023, MMV Europe & APAC welcomed four new companies to our portfolio (a few still to be announced 🤫).
Founded in 2021 by Alexis, Stephen and Alastair, Sikoia is the Unified Data Platform for financial services, helping Fintechs streamline their client onboarding and screening by centralising the financial and identity data of businesses and individuals. Besides their data orchestration layer and workflows, Sikoia provides access to an extensive marketplace of international data sources (credit bureaus, public registries, AML, fraud, KYC/KYB, open banking, accounting and payroll). Their platform is set to transform financial institutions’ client management throughout the lifecycle — streamlining risk and compliance processes, and improving financial performance. We were thrilled to lead their $6M seed round, alongside Earlybird Venture Capital, Seedcamp, and Coalition Capital. Find out more about why we invested here.
Started in India, Scrut Automation is a risk observability and compliance automation platform built to simplify information security monitoring for cloud-native companies. Founded by Aayush Ghosh Choudhury, Kush Kaushik, and Jayesh Gadewar, Scrut helps early and growth-stage companies across the globe establish enterprise-grade information security processes through an easy-to-use GRC platform. We led their $7.5M fundraise alongside Lightspeed and Endiya Partners.
Portfolio news
Flashback: it’s 2018 and MMV has just launched in Singapore, while simultaneously, Andrea and Giovanni start Aspire. Our paths cross that same year, and MMV’s Ryan and Anvesh see the obvious potential in these two incredible founders and the game-changing product they’re building. Perhaps they took more of a chance on us than we did them, but either way, we were so thrilled to lead their Series A those handful of years ago. Now, just four years later and after a 2021 Series B, we continue our unwavering support of the team by participating in their $100M Series C alongside Sequoia Southeast Asia and Lightspeed.
See-Mode Technologies, led by Milad and Sadaf, received regulatory approvals in Australia and New Zealand for its AI-powered software that automatically analyses and reports breast & thyroid ultrasound scans. These approvals represent a significant milestone for the company as they continue to expand their regional footprint.
After years of research and development, Daye launched their new diagnostic tampon in the UK. The PCR-based vaginal microbiome screening kit was developed to help people decipher the intricacies of their gynae health all from the comfort and ease of their own home. The Daye Health platform will also enable users to obtain prescription treatments and connect with vetted, empathetic physicians for further care.
Clinikk provides affordable healthcare and insurance to the underserved middle segment of India. The company moved to their new headquarters in Bangalore, where it contains a state-of-the-art product studio for an immersive, collaborative building experience.
IoT cybersecurity startup, Microsec, won the ABB Electrification Startup Challenge for the services category in Berlin, hosted by ABB and SynerLeap and partnered with Microsoft in Berlin. If you are interested in learning more about IoT cybersecurity, reach out to one of the MMV team for an intro.
Community
The London team hosted a CNY-themed VC lunch.
The Singapore team attended the first SaaStr APAC conference and hosted a dinner for SaaS founders.
The Singapore team also hosted a HealthTech brunch for healthcare-focused investors, founders/operators and industry folks.
Yara stopped in at Bioseed 2023, and she braved snowy Helsinki to attend the Tech Tour European Healthtech Investment Forum.
Catch the MMV team
Are you heading to Paris Fintech Forum? Connect with Alix who will be attending. She’ll also be at Innovation Zero and in Amsterdam for Money2020.
Sam is currently at TechChill in Riga, and Ryan and Yara will head to Bits and Pretzels Healthtech in June. Ryan will be speaking at DTx Europe: London in June.
You will also find us at South Summit, SaaStr Europa, The Next Web and London Tech Week.
Make sure to say hi!
Market Research
Our colleagues at Barings put out a great piece on Generative AI, exploring important topics like…
❓Whether Generative AI tools will sustain the competitive advantage of the large internet and cloud businesses of Google, Microsoft and their peers, or spell the end of these companies’ dominance as new AI-based businesses disrupt them.
🚧 Considering roadblocks to mass adoption — including the problems with deepfakes and bias, and the inevitable trade-offs between errors and cost.
🚀 “We strongly believe that the productivity gains to the whole economy from widespread adoption of general-purpose AI tools to automate any digital process, of which ChatGPT is just one of many, will form the basis of a new generational investment cycle.”
Read the full report here.
Until next time✌️
