Of the 123 startups to make Plug and Play’s Fall accelerator, 24 are FinTech companies, offering solutions from diganti-fraud to automated bookkeeping to personalised loans, and much more. So who has made that list?
Following Y Combinator’s announcement of the 197 companies to make its latest accelerator, Plug and Play have revealed those to join its latest three-month programme. Companies spanning the FinTech, cybersecurity, brand and retail, energy and sustainability, food and beverage, new materials and packaging, and supply chain and logistics industries have been chosen for the cohort.
During the process, startups will gain access to business development opportunities to participate in dealflow sessions, exclusive networking events, focus weeks, mentor sessions, and pitch polishing. Last year, Plug and Play hosted more than 1,500 deal flow sessions.
The first company on the list is Poland-based Nethone, a data science company focusing on AI-driven business intelligence and fraud prevention. Its ‘know your user’ solution helps institutions to better protect themselves from losses. Its solutions include fraud detection, real-time segmentation and customer retention tools, and behavioural analysis of banking systems to prevent account takeover.
Earlier in the year, the company closed a $1m investment which marked its first instance of external funding.
Nethone CCO Rodrigo Camacho said, “The goal of our participation in the 12-week accelerator program is to connect to the world’s largest financial institutions and launch pilot programs, POCs, and robust business development opportunities with the program partners.
“Institutions operating in the finance sector are always interested in boosting the speed with which they innovate, especially in the fraud prevention area. Nethone is ready to deliver the best possible online filter for incoming users to make sure the trust pinned in banks or other financial institutions is not breached.”
A lot of the FinTech companies to make the new cohort are data and analytics platforms. Agolo leverages summarization technology for the finance industry. Its technology collects public text and internal documents, organises it by identifying relationships among sources, and then uncovers the most relevant information.
Automated user engagement solution Ushur is another member of the new cohort. The Californian company can integrate AI and machine learning technology within a client’s system to simplify backend processes and conversational interfaces. The platform works in conjunction with existing systems of records and across a range of data types including emails, documents, knowledge bases, and structured and unstructured databases.
Similar to Nethone, Ushur has already raised capital from other investors. Last year, the FinTech closed a $12m Series A from 8VC.
Fellow data science company Apteo is also in the accelerator. The company helps financial firms’ source, centralize and analyse their alternative data. Its AI and analytics technology help companies to aggregate their data and use the information to make more informed decisions.
AI-powered synthetic data engine Mostly AI also joined the group. The startup enables businesses to unlock their data assets which are normally locked for privacy. Its AI platform simulates realistic and representative synthetic data at scale by automatically learning pattern, structure and variation from existing data.
Data Republic helps businesses get better controls over data by fostering a secure way of transferring information between organisations. The company, which closed a $22m Series B last year, empowers businesses to share data externally and internally, build new data partnerships, access cloud analytics, and ensure data privacy.
Back Office automates bookkeeping and accounting for small businesses. To help clients with their back office, the company supplies a dedicated team of US-based team of bookkeepers to handle the books, as well as software to keep track of financials.
Allganize is another FinTech to make the new cohort. The company gives businesses tools to automate their workflows through the use of natural language understanding technology. Its technology can understand texts at scale and answer questions from customers, employees, and business partners on a user’s behalf.
Another data and analytics solution in the group is TigerGraph which offers a graph database for enterprise applications, supporting real-time analytics. Its services are used to transform real-time customer overviews, products and service marketing, AML, fraud detection and risk assessment processes.
San Francisco-based MatchEye is a very early-stage company to join the group. It offers an AI-powered autonomous intelligence service with click-less analytics.
Quid is aiming to revolutionize the way in which companies analyse their written content, unlocking insights which were previously hidden. Clients can leverage Quid to see connections, trends and insights which help give clearer context around customers, competitors, markets and brands.
Clichy offers data collaboration to enterprises and helps businesses connect their data without the need of other integrations. The startup aims to improve internal collaborations in real-time, giving teams the capability to make changes directly without creating alternate files and making sure only those that should have access to documents do.
New York-headquartered Concertio also leverages AI technology; however, it uses it to create optimisation tools for the hardware and software markets. By adding Concertio to an application, a company can optimise the system and ensure if achieves the highest performance it can.
It was not just data and analytics companies to get attention from Plug and Play.
Digital Onboarding is joining the program to support the development of its customer and member engagement software. Banks and credit unions can use Digital Onboarding to transform account holders into engaged and profitable relationships by making it easier for customers and members to adopt account-related services like direct deposit, online bill pay, and debit cards.
Institutions can create email and SMS reminders for personalised, digital journeys which educate and encourage customers to take actions.
Credit decision software platform Fincura is also joining Plug and Play. The company offers cloud-based software which quickly intakes unstructured financials and assesses deal potential. The automated engine, digitises documents, offers instant rations and deal analysis, conducts reporting and analytics, and offers control and customisation of the services.
A personal finance platform also made the cohort. Jassby is a mobile payment system which is designed for kids and teens. Personal finance for children has been a rising area of the market, with companies like Current and Pigzbe.
Through Jassby, kids and teens can access a mobile money management app which can help them request money, send funds, access automated allowances, shop, save money and set budgets. Additionally, parents can set up tasks with a monetary reward which if completed, will earn the user the money.
The program also welcomes Productify which is a platform designed to help clients build their own financial applications with a unified API, operations dashboard and UI library. Through Productify, clients can access a comprehensive know your customer solution and build elastic banking services.
A company with a similar goal is PeerNova. The startup is helping financial institutions around the world to lower internal and external friction by creating an end-to-end digitalisation framework. By making use of PeerNova, a firm can gain end-to-end workflow visibility in real-time, automate exception processing, unify lifecycle events and data in real-time, share data in adherence to privacy regulations, and access pluggable APIs.
Keeping on the theme of digitalisation, Snaproute is a cloud-native network operating system which delivers operational capabilities and value for edge environments.
Another cloud-native architecture company in the Fall cohort is vFunction which accelerates the transformation of Java applications into cloud services. Clients can leverage the service to modernise their applications, increasingly important for traditional financial institutions and insurance firms which are still largely dependant on legacy systems.
A lending business which made the final cut was Wizely Finance. The platform is a debt consolidation and lending service designed to give banks the ability to offer customers the best loan products. Its platform offers a holistic dashboard where consumers can monitor loan terms, consolidate debt and build credit with their bank.
Pairity is using advanced technology to solve the consumer debt crisis for lenders, collectors and individuals, it claims. AI is used to streamline data collection of all contacts and then connects the dots across the organisation.
Trusty.care is a data-driven personal healthcare and benefits management tool for US residents with public insurance. Its management service learns from each user’s particular health situation, their health goals, and offers suggestions such as where to pick up medication or what Medicare plan to buy.
Finally, Vymo is a mobile-first personal sales assistant which can predict what a rep should do next and coach contextuality to improve outcomes. The platform offers visibility and control to managers and helps leaders leverage data-driven insights to improve efficiency and operations.
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