Colombian fintech Trii announced they raised $3 million from Bancolombia.
According to the company, this new funding will allow them to expand their operations in three key countries in the region.
Trii describes its offering as an app that simplifies buying and selling shares in LatAm stock exchanges.
Trii allows users to quickly and securely access the stock exchanges of Colombia, Peru, and Chile — countries in which the app has been active since last year — to invest in the shares from more than 200 listed companies and investment funds and real estate options.
This operation is part of a financing round executed by Trii in the third quarter of 2022, which allowed Bancolombia to become an investor in the emerging startup along with other players.
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With the new funding, Trii has reached $10 million in capital raised with venture capitalists since 2020. Although Trii’s most important VC funding currently remains its $5.5 million seed round, led in 2021 by Silicon Valley fund Global Founders Capital, which has previously backed companies such as Slack, Revolut, Linkedin, Facebook, and Dafiti.
Harvard University earlier this year also placed capital in Trii, adding to the list of investors alongside Y Combinator and GFC.
Trii was founded in 2018 by Carlos Guayara and Esteban Peñaloza in Bogota. So far, the app has processed around 500,000 transactions from 150,000 users since its launch in March 2020. Try stands out for its disruptive proposal with low commissions compared to the usual high fees charged by brokerage firms.
“Linking Grupo Bancolombia as one of our investors is a fact that fills us with pride and reinforces our commitment and mission to democratize access to the stock and financial markets in Latin America. To be able to walk this path hand in hand with one of the most important financial groups in the region is a privilege,” said Esteban Peñaloza, CEO and co-founder of Trii, in a statement.
For the executive, one of the significant challenges facing the capital market in Latin America is to continue creating alternatives to channel savings and investment of individuals and for companies to find a space to leverage their growth by increasing the access of more consumers to the financial world.
Stock exchanges integration in LatAm
In this context, Trii has emerged as a key solution to develop the potential brought about by the integration of stock exchanges in Latin America, which will give rise to the second-largest stock market in the region.
“We are pleased to promote the work that Trii has been doing to bring the possibilities that exist in the stock market closer to all types of investors, as together we will contribute in a tangible way to boosting the stock market sector,” said Cipriano López, vice president of Innovation and Sustainability of Bancolombia, in a statement.
Bancolombia has its own trading platform and its own broker Valores Bancolombia, which competes with Acciones y Valores, the broker through which Trii operates. Trii’s founders believe this new equity participation will expand the Colombian bank’s portfolio.