OnAndCo Joins R3’s Venture Development Program!

OnAndCo, a seedstage Fintech start-up that innovates and digitises the alternative investment sector, headquartered in London, joins enterprise technology and services firm, R3’s venture development program. Yet another milestone and validation point for both customers and  investors, after being endorsed by the Hatchery, which is a startup incubator at one of the most  prestigious universities in the world- University College London. 

OnAndCo was born as a result of an era of financial digitalisation, following the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. Even if laws were imposed in order to avoid another financial catastrophe, mistrust in financial institutions was still common. Starting with 2009 the popularity of the Bitcoin and blockchain started a shift in the FinTech space that promoted transparency. 

In 2015, Ethereum was launched, followed by smart contracts. These tools were put into place in order to help transactions be conducted without intervention from any intermediaries. Concomitantly investors were increasingly interested in transparency and this resulted in the emergence of robotisation and automated financial planning. 

The OnAndCo team started working on the platform during COVID and the rise of demand for such fintech platforms and remote working. They wanted to create a convenient, user friendly, and efficient digital alternative investment world, the go-to platform that fulfills all alternative investment professional’s needs in one place. 

Powered by Corda, R3’s enterprise blockchain platform, OnAndCo leverages blockchain  technology to provide an end-to-end marketplace where investors and private companies can seamlessly collaborate anytime and

anywhere removing intermediaries, streamlining the investment life cycle, and reducing costs, which allows OnAndCo to solve major pains points in the private sector, unlock broader access to alternative investments and drive growth. 

While the secondary market evolves, investors will gain access to enter a multi-trillion dollar market. They will have the chance to maximise returns, diversificate their portfolio, and achieve lower taxes. However, until now, alternative investments have only been accessible to a very limited number of investors, as fees are significantly higher than those in the public market and traditionally alternative investments require extensive due diligence and an abundance of documentation, as they are unregulated by the majority of regulatory bodies. Moreover, illiquidity is a major problem for alternatives. That is because when investors invest in alternative investments, it usually requires their investment to be locked for several years, and for most of the alternatives, there is no active secondary market. OnAndCo is building an effective peer-to-peer marketplace that offers the necessary infrastructure and investor networks where you can find a path to the liquidity of these assets. 

With a platform like OnAndCo, alternative investments are growing more popular as a means of diversification and sound portfolio management, with the alternative sector expected to expand to $17 trillion by 2025. OnAndCo democratises alternative investment. 

As the adoption of FinTech platforms like OnAndCo continues to grow, and more and more of our everyday services leverage blockchain technology, we will see improved speed, transparency, and potential cost reduction prevailing in the financial markets. OnAndCo is the future of how we’ll invest in alternatives. 

OnAndCo founders, Leila Hurstel and Gabriela Olaru, are two students at University College London. They are passionate, driven and want to achieve great things from building a modern sustainable Fintech platform, that allows better financial inclusion, to playing a role in inspiring young women to be confident and resilient to pursue their dream careers in the technology sector. 

R3’s Venture Development program has helped many successful businesses that are building applications on Corda, known as CorDapps, go to market. The program supports early stage companies building on Corda with business development content, technical support, design workshops and community events. More than 150 high-quality mentors, venture capital firms and service providers contribute to the program globally. 

Over the next several months, OnAndCo will be working on building and testing the platform and the team will be participating in multiple webinars and events over the next few months and will continue their hard work on building trust in their brand. 

The OnAndCo Team stated :

“The support we received from R3’s Venture Development Program and its mentors has been invaluable to the growth of our platform. We are eager to start working with all of the alternative investment professionals who expressed their interest in testing the platform and R3’s support has proven to be a great go-to-market accelerator given their experience, network, and support.” 

David Vatchev , Global Head of Venture Development at R3, commented: 

“R3’s ecosystem is one of the largest in the world with more than 350 institutions and over 400 startups actively engaged in building on our technology platforms. It’s rapidly growing and our venture development program ensures startups derive the greatest value from this network to shorten their time-to-market and accelerate go-to-market strategy.” 

“We are pleased to be working with OnAndCo and look forward to seeing them solve major issues for the private markets by leveraging Corda.”