Canadian data start-up Cinchy lands $10m Series A

27 May 2020 by Ruby Hinchliffe

Cinchy, a Canadian start-up helping banks avoid the security risk of replicating data, has landed $10 million in a Series A round.

Led by Toronto-based venture capital (VC) firm Information Venture Partners, the round also saw participation from BDC – a Canadian VC with $1 billion under management, Toronto-based VC ScaleUp Ventures, the US-based seed accelerator Techstars, and Manulife Investment Management, the asset management arm of Manulife Financial Corporation – a Canadian multinational insurance and financial services company.

https://www.fintechfutures.com/files/2020/05/cinchy-2.jpg — Cinchy’s ‘Data Fabric’ product is one overarching system which stores all data

The data-led start-up says it will use the fresh capital to expand its partner ecosystem, to help more financial institutions free up their individual applications from the headache that is managing and connecting data.

One of its partners includes Capco, the Belgium-based global business and technology management consultancy firm.

FinTech Futures spoke to Cinchy’s co-founder and CEO Dan DeMers in January. DeMers, who spent eleven years at Citi working on trading technology before becoming a technology director at Canda’s biggest bank RBC, said a new project at a bank meant the creation of a new system, and the replication of data.

DeMers calls this “the whacky concept of integration”. It introduces a security risk, as each time data is replicated it has to be separately protected. He believes that with one overarching system storing all data – what Cinchy calls its ‘Data Fabric’ – which can be accessed through any of the banks’ platforms, banks can save time creating new systems which are essentially putting existing data into a different form.

https://www.fintechfutures.com/files/2020/05/cinchy.jpg — DeMers says clients are “doubling the productivity of their existing IT workforce” with Data Fabric

“Think of it as the end of fragmentation, the end of silos,” says DeMers, “even application programme interfaces (APIs) create a spaghetti infrastructure”.

And now, with the coronavirus pandemic accelerating banks’ move towards end to end digital systems, Cinchy’s offering will become more relevant as financial institutions balance this innovation with compliance.

“The dramatic IT acceleration, data autonomy, and cost savings experienced by our customers and partners are proving that industry analysts were right,” Cinchy’s co-founder and chief technology officer Karanjot Jaswal says in a statement.

“Data Fabric technology is more than just the hottest trend – it is the beginning of a revolution. We share a radical vision with our customers; that integration should be, can be, and will be zero-effort.”

DeMers says clients are “doubling the productivity of their existing IT workforce” with the start-up’s Data Fabric product. Canada’s Concentra Bank, one of Cinchy’s customers which services credit unions, says it went “from concept to live production in just one week”.