Aura Ventures has led a $5 million pre-Series A capital raising round in blockchain technology start-up Lygon.
Lygon was set up in 2019 as a joint venture between commercial property management business Scentre Group, IBM and the ANZ, Westpac and Commonwealth banks.
Aura Ventures is part of Singapore and Sydney financial services business Aura Group, co-founded by former Sydney commercial lawyers Calvin Ng and Eric Chan.
The capital raising follows ANZ Bank and Scentre Group earlier this year using Lygon’s platform to create the world’s first digital bank guarantee.
Bank guarantees of solvency are widely used in commercial property deals. Until now, they have remained paper documents which have to be securely stored. Whenever they need to be altered, the originals need to be located and couriered between parties.
Creating new bank guarantees can currently take up to a month. Lygon plans to make the process a same day service utilising IBM’s Blockchain platform.
Lygon chief executive Justin Amos said company staff had been given the opportunity to invest in this first external capital raising round while the ANZ and Commonwealth banks had exercised their rights to increase their stakes.
Other technology businesses in which Aura Ventures has invested include cloud-based investment administration business Integrated, esports media network GAMURS Group, online sales fulfilment service Shippit, online produce marketplace Foodbomb, construction-focused IoT company Ynomia, and, most recently, meat alternatives products ingredients developer Harvest B (APE&VCJ, Aug 2021).