Miami-based VC firm Borderless Capital invests in IBF Net Group
Dublin based Islamic fintech company IBF Net Limited has received a pre-seed round equity investment from Miami based Borderless Capital. The investment comes on the back of a successful completion of the Silicon Valley based Draper Blockchain Accelerator program where IBF Net has been one of the thirteen blockchain startups selected from across the globe. This is a major milestone for the company in its mission to create an Islamic-focused Economy on the blockchain.
The investment will help further develop, fuel, and expand IBF Net’s for-profit platforms like Affluence and Essence. According to Chainalysis, by the end of 2021 alone, $41 billion has been spent on NFTs. This would make the market for digital artwork and collectibles almost as valuable as the global art market. Affluence will be an emerging market place for NFTs in the Islamic space. In addition to Islamic art, its coverage will include real assets that may be digitized, such as livestock and land parcels with profound implications for financial inclusion for small-holder farmers and supply chains of livestock improving food security. The platform will additionally have certain unique features such as deferred payment sale and collateralization in line with the Shariah-nominate modes of bai-bithaman-ajil and rahn.
The second platform to benefit from the equity-injection is Essence which will be an e-commerce platform for the halal economy. As per the Dinar Standard, the amount of spending by the approximately 1.9 billion Muslims on the planet spread across six real economy sectors is forecasted to reach $2.4 trillion by 2024. Essence opens doors for such users to buy and sell halal goods and services — focusing on food, apparel, cosmetics and other lifestyle products and services like sports, leisure and tourism.
IBF Net has successfully rolled out earlier this year two non-profit philanthropy focused platforms including Benevolence and Confluence. Benevolence mainstreams and institutionalizes charitable and benevolent action through objective measurement and conversion into impact tokens / social cryptos. Confluence enables measurement of ‘impact’ in the light of both the (17) UN SDGs and the objectives of Shariah and facilitates its transfer among parties by converting this “impact” into social cryptos.
Building on the delivery and success of these platforms in 2021, IBF Net has received four major grants from the Algorand Foundation to develop platforms catering to different segments of the Islamic economy and has an exciting product roadmap laid out for 2022 as well.
“We’re excited to be supporting IBF Net’s vision of creating an Islamic focused economy leveraging Algorand blockchain. Their deep understanding of Shariah compliance and halal economy allows them to uniquely cater to the needs of people following Islamic faith. Through a combination of for-profit and non-profit platforms, they’ve created a cohesive set of offerings for the Muslim population” Amit Mehra, General Partner at Borderless Capital added.
Borderless Capital is a modern financial institution investing capital and co-building financial products that accelerate access, bootstrap adoption, and create value globally through the Algorand Borderless Economy.
IBF Net Group is a group of companies in Ireland, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia with a flagship project to develop and host multiple blockchain platforms and use cases and build a miniature Islamic economy comprising smart contracts for the philanthropy, not-for-profit, and for-profit segments using Algorand protocol.
