Citi has announced that startups graduating the Citi Accelerator in Tel Aviv have raised more than $320 million over the past four years. Since the establishment of the Accelerator, 68 startups have graduated the accelerator program in seven classes. Registration for the eighth class is open until February 4. The program will start in April 2018, and is expected to include 10 companies in the fields of Fintech, Enterprise, Customer Experience, Data, AI, etc.
Among the graduates are: Credifi which has developed a big data platform, serving the real estate finance market, providing loan, property and financial product data, benchmarks, post-deal asset monitoring and trading, has raised $23 million; PayKey, which has developed an application that enables users to access financial services from any application on their smartphone and even make immediate transfers, has raised $16 million; MyCheck, which has built a payment platform for mobile phones, has raised $22 million; Splitit which has developed a platform that enables merchants to offer interest free monthly installment payments to their customers at the point of purchase without requiring additional registration or credit, regardless of the location of the business or the credit card issuer, has raised $10 million; and Minerva Labs, which has developed an anti-malware endpoint platform that blocks evasive malware designed to bypass your existing defenses without prior knowledge about malicious programs' patterns or behavior, has raised $7.5 million.
Sling, a graduate of the third class, and which sold its business activity to the Brazilian company Avante is one of three graduates of the Accelerator, which has been acquired. Sling empowers the underserved micro-merchant sector, enabling them to unlock mobile finance to grow their business.
Citi Accelerator TLV head Tsafrir Atar said, "Fintech has become one of the most prominent areas of Venture Capital funds among Israeli and international investors. Our companies receive assistance in business development from Citi globally and is given access to Citi’s vast network through which - we have created hundreds of business opportunities for our startups. We will continue to lead and support the local Fintech industry that is emerging as a global leader."
The Citi Accelerator program is four months long, and consists of a workspace in Citi’s Tel Aviv Innovation Lab, where the participating companies are mentored by key decision makers from the bank globally. The goal of the mentorship is to understand how to best tailor the product to the needs of a large financial institution, define a client base and access relevant customers, potentially resulting in establishing pilots or POC’s with Citi or companies introduced through Citi.
The program includes both financial and technological mentorship by Citi, industry leaders and professionals in Entrepreneurship, Business, Fund raising, Human Resources, Legal, Accounting and more. In addition the program will include access to Citi’s’ own venture investment entities.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on January 16, 2018
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