Doshi, a gamified financial education platform, today announced it has successfully secured additional funding for its Pre-Seed round, bringing the total funding amount to £1 million.
The funding was led by the Austrian Pre-Seed Fund Calm/Storm Ventures and joined by renowned Business Angels Hansi Hansman (Hansmengroup), Alfred Lugar (Ex-Runtastic), Alex Brix (Canva), and Christian Strobl (N26). Notable other investors are Launchub Ventures, APX, Danish Chaudhry and Bernhard Niesner (Founder of Busuu/Edtech) as well as Niki Stadler.
Finfluencers, neo-brokers and cryptocurrencies have radically transformed interest in investing and personal finance, while financial literacy remains low, resulting in devastating consequences, such as investment scams and unproportionally high risk-taking. Doshi’s app is designed to address this issue by providing a hands-on approach to financial education for its users. “Doshi meets young adults where they already are, helps and supports them to take the right (financial) decisions. We are confident that the founders, Daniel and Jaco, may be able to catch the new generation where even Neobanks fail.” said Lucanus Polagnoli, Partner at Calm/Storm.
The new funds will be used to extend Doshi’s unique gamified learning experiences into financial services. Aiming to empower financial institutions, Doshi intends to provide fun and engaging bite-sized learning experiences to help their members become more financially savvy. Moreover, the company is developing AI-based features to personalize the learning experience, including celebrity chatskins, open-ended questions, and custom missions. “Our goal is to leverage AI to make learning about money as fun as playing a game which happens to increase knowledge and develop financial skills.” said Jaco Koenig, CTO of Doshi.
The platform, aiming for multiple pilot launches and scaling across the UK, plans to first partner with community-focused banks. “We discovered that many local banks have a vested interest in building financial literacy in their communities,” said Daniel Rose, CEO of Doshi. “Partnering with us gives them an avenue to innovate, build insights around their customer pain points, and reach younger audiences.” Doshi’s unique approach has already seen success in the education sector, with the firm forming over 30 school partnerships and helping thousands of students become more financially independent early on.
