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Azmi Global led the round for the Singapore-based startup
Ethis Crowd founding team at Kampung Islami housing project
Islamic real estate crowdfunding startup EthisCrowd today announced that they have received a US$362,000 in seed funding round led by Azmi Global (a subsidiary of Azmi & Associates, a leading law firm in Malaysia with strength in Islamic finance) and Singapore-based VC firm Quest Ventures. The round also involved several undisclosed angel investors from Singapore and the Middle East.
The startup plans to use the fund to support their Asia Pacific expansion, corporate governance and project selection improvement, as well as technology enhancement.
“Our expansion strategy is to setup in regions where there’s strong growth and interest from our crowd,” said Ethis Crowd Founder Umar Munshi in an official statement.
Ethis Crowd was founded by Munshi and Co-Founder Erly Witoyo in early 2014. The startup claims to have secured 10,000 members with the majority of investments (60 per cent) coming from Singapore as facilitated by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS)’s “regulatory sandbox” approach.
It claims to begin seeing growing number of investments coming from the Middle East.
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The crowdfunding site focusses on funding affordable housing projects with sharia-based project management system, in countries such as Indonesia which the startup claims to face a growing shortage of 18 million houses.
Earlier this year, the startup had invested S$1,000,000 in subsidising housing development projects in the country.
e27 noticed that there has been a surge of funding focussed on Islamic fintech in Southeast Asia recently, with the launch of IFT Alliance (which was initiaed by Mushni himself) and an MOU between Malaysia and Islamic Development Bank (IDB) to found the world’s first Islamic VC firm.
As Ahmad Lutfi, Managing Partner and Head of Islamic Banking at Azmi & Associates, put it, “Islamic crowdfunding is an asset to Islamic finance as it can potentially serve gaps in the industry.”
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