Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange raises US$10 mil in latest round of financing
02 Jun 2017, 05:22 pm
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SINGAPORE (June 2): Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDiX) has raised US$10 million (S$13.9 million) in Series B+ financing.

The latest round of financing was led by existing investors Vertex Ventures and SDiX Chairman Alain Vandenborre and closed on June 1.

Launched in May 2016 as the world’s first commodity exchange for physically settled diamonds, SDiX has attracted new investors in the likes of Simon Murray, chairman and founder of SMC and GEMS and former group managing director of Hutchison Whampoa; and Richard Ji, co-founder and chief investment officer of All-Stars Investment and former Asia-Pacific head of Internet/media investment research at Morgan Stanley.

Alain Vandenborre, Executive Chairman and Founder of Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange, said: “Since launching the SDiX platform just a year ago, we have seen significant appetite from investors around the globe who recognise the unique opportunity our platform presents to invest in diamonds as an asset class. This new funding round will enable us to continue scaling up to meet that demand, while rolling out more innovative products and services. We are pleased that our existing strategic investors have endorsed our growth strategy by joining this round, and we are delighted to welcome important new partners to our team.”

SDiX plans to further enhance the attractiveness of diamonds with research and development of cutting-edge technologies as a viable asset for global investors. Other initiatives are also under development, which include trading efficiency, diamond financing solutions and mobile technology.

In the past year, the exchange saw trading volume of higher than US$110 million, representing more than 50,000 investment-grade diamonds traded and recorded an average of 500 baskets and 4,000 investment grade diamonds being traded monthly.

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