SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA: Rewardle Holdings Limited (ASX:RXH) entered into a binding Term Sheet with Cache Investments Ltd to acquire the distribution rights for the Upstreet Fund.
The Fund was established for Upstreet, an Australian fintech founded in 2019 out of the Antler venture capital accelerator program.
Upstreet is the promoter/distributor of the Fund and Cache is the manager/administrator of the Fund.
Upstreet’s initial concept was to reward shoppers with fractional shares in the Australian and US stocks when buying everyday items; in a manner similar to cash back apps. More recently, Upstreet pivoted its strategy to offer its fractional equity based platform to companies as a software solution to facilitate a modern, mobile first version of equity based staff rewards and recognition programs.
Having raised ~$5m to launch and operate over the past 4 years, Upstreet recently announced that it was winding down its business and provided wind up instructions to Cache who secured the exclusive rights to appoint a new distributer/promoter to the Fund and entered into a binding Term Sheet with the Company.
The Company anticipates that the costs associated with the transaction will be funded from its operating cash flow in keeping with the Company’s strategy to operate and grow without the need for additional funding.
The Company will provide updates with respect to the progress of its due diligence and completion of the transaction as appropriate.
Rewardle’s Founder and Executive Chairman, Ruwan Weerasooriya, said; “While Upstreet ultimately failed to fire, the expenditure of $5m buys a lot of learning and insight that we can leverage using our platform, operational capabilities, expertise and substantial member base that we’ve amassed.”
“As a founder its always difficult to see a startup fail; however, as per our experience of successfully acquiring and relaunching Your Grocer, the failure of a startup can be a great opportunity for a new team with fresh perspective and energy.”
“Extending the Rewardle Platform’s capability to include micro-investing aligns with our strategy of developing new membership features that can generate high margin, digital revenue streams from our large, existing app membership.”
“It’s also worth noting that Ark Invest, lead by Cathie Wood, has featured the inclusion of financial services into digital wallet apps in its annual Big Ideas presentations for many years. Having followed Ark’s commentary for some time, this is a great chance for Rewardle to take a small first step in exploring these exciting concepts and opportunities.”
Rewardle Holdings acquires YourGrocer to boost local community powered grocery service