Excl: Deal origination platform for financial institutions BankerBay raises under $1M in angel funding

Bangalore- and Singapore-based BankerBay Technologies Pte Ltd, which helps private equity firms, venture capital firms, hedge funds, banks and investment banks locate deal flow and capital, has secured just under $1 million in an angel round of funding from a group of investors in Asia and Europe, BankerBay's co-founder and CEO Ash Narain told Techcircle.in.

The round also saw participations from senior executives from Nomura Holdings Inc, Ernst & Young and a startup investment arm of the Singapore government.

BankerBay, which raised the funds at a $5 million pre-money valuation on a convertible note basis, will use the capital to ramp up its engineering team and also to rope in more investment bankers.

According to Narain, the startup is currently in talks with a few additional greenshoe investors, who have expressed interests in participating in the round.

BankerBay was founded in 2012 by Narain and Romesh Jayawickrama. Narain holds an LLB degree from Symbiosis Law School (Pune), while Jayawickrama is an investment banker with over 18 years of experience. Jayawickrama had previously built Amura, an independent corporate finance and consulting firm, specialising in PE, M&A and corporate finance advisory.

"We are like an angel list for much bigger deals. We essentially help PE firms, VC firms, investment banks, banks and corporate finance boutiques to originate transactions. We take the investment criteria of investors and the deal parameters of the sell side on a no-name and no-disclosure basis. We then tally them and introduce the two sides through a combination of technology and analysts, and these firms then communicate with each other through our platform," explained Narain.

For instance, if a PE firm wants to invest in an infrastructure company in India, it defines its investment criteria on BankerBay. Now, if a company or an investment banker approaches BankerBay with its deal parameters, its software generates a match between the sell side and buy side. "We have a team of analysts (transaction managers) who vet these transactions and help them move further. This brings a lot of efficiency to an otherwise fragmented and disorganised market," says Narain.

BankerBay is mainly targeting financial markets in North America, Western Europe, Singapore, Hong Kong and India with its product. The startup counts among its key clients executives from leading companies such as Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Anand Rathi in India, besides Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, The Partners Group, Summit Partners, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Credit Agricole, FedEx, Virgin Investment Management and Emirates Investment Authority, along with a number of smaller lower and middle market buy and sell side firms.

The startup banks on a SaaS revenue model and claims to be handling in excess of 500 live transactions at present.

BankerBay has recently roped in Amlan Mandal from Asklaila.com's founding team as its CTO.

"We are building tools that will help firms with valuation, due diligence and analytics support. Additionally, we aggregate and introduce live transactions in the privately-held companies marketplace," said Mandal.

Narain said that the company will also look to raise more funding after the closing of the current round. "We will look to raise under $3 million in an intermediary round, which will be used to expand operations to more markets and roll out more enterprise-level products," Narain concluded.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)