Soon, buy direct equity in unicorns

iSTOX, the digital securities platform, has accredited investors from 24 countries, including India:

- mehul

Darius Liu indicates that blockchain and smart contracts cut down settlement from 2 days to an instant.

ISTOX is a private capital exchange backed by the Singapore Exchange (SGX), Temasek subsidiary Heliconia Capital, Japan Investment Corporation (JIC) and the Development Bank of Japan (DBJ). Using blockchain and smart contract technology, the exchange overcomes manual processes in the traditional private capital space. The company’s Chief Operating Officer Darius Liu discusses business and technology perspectives.

Mehul Dani: What has been the digital strategy of your company for investors in India and other countries?

Darius Liu: iSTOX is a digital securities platform on a mission to democratise the private capital markets. We do that by fractionalizing investments in the private markets such as hedge funds, wholesale bonds and private equity, so that individual accredited investors can participate in amounts in the order of $10,000-$20,000 instead of $1 million. Investing in these private market products helps individuals diversify their portfolio because private market investments can have a relatively low correlation to the public markets. This added diversification can bring higher returns over the long term.

As a global platform regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), we can onboard investors from any country in the world except the US. To date, we have accredited investors using iSTOX from 24 countries spanning Asia, Europe, the Americas, Australia and New Zealand. We do have quite a number of investors from India. Backed by the Singapore Exchange and Temasek-subsidiary Heliconia Capital, we received our full licence from the MAS in February 2020 – graduating from the MAS fintech regulatory sandbox in that month.