Web3 startup Polytrade, raised $3.8 million (Rs 31.1 crore) in a seed funding round led by Alpha Wave, Matrix Partners, Polygon Ventures and CoinSwitch Ventures. The round also saw participation from Singularity Ventures, GTM Ventures and undisclosed angel investors.
The startup aims to utilize the funding received to develop its product suite, marketing, and expand to newer geographies such as Latin America and Europe. The company aims to bring a fully integrated trade platform in the next 2 quarters.
Founded in 2021 by Piyush Gupta, Polytrade is a Web3 startup targeted towards small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and manufacturers to streamline the supply chain by providing real-time data, thus reducing errors, delays, and disputes, while also improving visibility and transparency.
The startup was earlier backed by Polygon cofounder Sandeep Nailwal, QuickSwap cofounder Sameep Singhania, and other Web3 ecosystem investors.
“We understand where the problems lie as well as the real-world impact Web3 can bring. I also firmly believe that with Polytrade, we will make trade finance one of the most preferred asset classes for investors given its relative safety coupled with robust yields,” Gupta said in a statement.
The company said it was currently working on various aspects of the trade finance process across areas such as underwriting, tokenisation, collections, and secondary trading of assets.
“Polytrade is soon launching a ZK-ID on-chain identification system, which will improve the creditworthiness of suppliers and buyers. This method will allow for quick and secure identity verification, lowering the risk of fraudulent transactions,” it added.
The company also said that it had raised more than $11 million in DeFi liquidity and traditional credit facilities, “making it by far the largest corpus of any trade finance platform in the DeFi world.”
CoinSwitch cofounder and CEO Ashish Singhal said: “We believe that Polytrade’s Web3 protocol will strengthen the real-world asset tokenisation narrative. Their innovative approach to addressing the pain points of MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) with global footprint and focus on bringing more liquidity to trade finance markets has the potential to revolutionise the global trade ecosystem.”
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