London, UK-headquartered cross-border startup investment platform Nr2, which offers investors AI-enabled insights into South Korea and China’s most promising startups, has raised $30m.
The funds came from new investors, including Lord Rothschild, member of the Rothschild banking family, and British investment banker Sir Simon Robey.
With offices in Seoul, South Korea and Beijing, China, the platform will use the funding to accelerate its growth, expand its team of AI engineers and boost its AI-powered search engine.
Nr2 was founded in 2019 by investor Maxim Parr and entrepreneur Jordan Monnet. The two founders created the platform to provide market intelligence to Western corporates and investors in high-growth markets in Asian markets.
Its search engine provides insights into the booming South Korean and Chinese startup ecosystems and removes cultural language barriers.
The two countries are home to a combined 200,000 startups. While South Korea doubled its unicorns (businesses worth over $1bn ) in the last three years alone, including gaming company NCSoft, China has witnessed over 230 unicorns including SenseTime.
Maxim Parr, executive chairman of Nr2, said: “South Korea and China have witnessed a huge cultural, digital and economic transformation over the last decade, giving rise to the creation of disruptive businesses that the Western world needs to embrace now, or potentially miss out on.”
Jordan Monnet, CEO of Nr2, said: “Most of the data in China and South Korea is in their local language and this was a deterrent for the European world. We have gone from a rudimentary Chinese language algorithm to a fully fleshed out trilingual search engine able not only to find and index information, but also to enable investors to find companies that meet their personal investment criteria.”
Nr2’s free data platform is used in over 100 countries and organisations including L’Oréal, Pernod Ricard and the World Economic Forum to help them stay ahead of emerging tech trends and find technology startups in the region.
The post Nr2 raises $30m for Asian tech market investment platform appeared first on UKTN | UK Tech News |.
