Canadian venture capital firm Portag3 Ventures has closed a second fund focused on investing in fintech startup, with final commitments from institutional and strategic LPs totally $427 million CAD (around $320 million USD). The fund will before costing on early stage investments, and it’ll look to invest in companies globally, but with a particularly focus on Canada, the U.S., Europe and some markets in the Asia-Pacific region.
“We’re on a mission to build global champions from a Canadian base,” Portag3 CEO Adam Felesky told TechCrunch regarding the firm’s base of operations and investment targets. “Canada has the talent, the expertise and one of the biggest markets in the world directly to our south. All the ingredients are there, we just need more success stories – and we are on our way to getting them. Success will breed more success. In order to understand what it takes to succeed globally, you need to invest and work with the best of the best from around the world. Many of the early fintech unicorns are based in Europe on the back of substantive, helpful policy changes. Canada needs to learn from these examples so we get the right ingredients for building a leading, vibrant ecosystem – and we slowly but surely are.”
Contributors to this new fund include Alterna Savings and Credit Union, Aviva France, BDC Capital, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, CNP Assurances, The Co-operators, Eldridge Industries, Green Shield Canada and more. The list includes a lot of strategic investors, including LPs from Portag3’s first $198 million CAD ($149 million USD) close for this fund, which was announced in October 2018.
Portag3’s Fund II has already been making investments prior to this final closing, and has already put money into KOHO, Clark, Integrate.ai and startup-builder Diagram Ventures, along with 13 other startups. Its first fund invested in a number of fintech-related companies including Clearbanc, Drop, League, and Wealthsimple, as well as some companies that have already exited including Wave, Quovo and Zensurance.
Alongside the close of this funding, Portag3 has also recently set up a new group of senior advisors to work with the companies it’s investing in, and those advisors include financial industry heavyweights like Rockefeller Capital Management CEO and president Gregory J. Fleming, as well as former AIG president and CEO Peter Hancock.
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