The sustainable development goal-linked investment app Etcho recently closed its pre-seed funding round, raising £279,000 from angel investors and on Crowdcube.
Linking specifically to the UN’s 17 SDGs, the app allows users to choose the goals they are most passionate about and match their investments, while at the same time, understanding the impact of their future and potential investments.
Speaking exclusively to Finextra, Charlie French, co-founder of Etcho, highlighted that the app is unlike others already on the market “where you can invest into a sustainable fund, but you don't actually get the choice of which companies you're investing in and how much money you're putting into each of those companies.”
French continued: “Even buying into ESG funds can still mean you're investing in oil or tobacco stocks. We want to give everyone the power and transparency to make their own decisions, and create a platform for people to educate themselves, and ultimately take action."
French noted that Etcho has seen an increase in the number of retail investors coming to the stock market, and that many of those entrants are younger, stating that “the younger generation are also particularly interested with sustainable finance and making responsible decisions for their money. We want to ensure anyone who wants to understand the impact of their investments can and has the power to make conscious decisions through access to information.”
Liall Medina, co-founder of Etcho, added that their app is to build “from the bottom-up through stock. There’s nothing to say that we won’t look at funds, and it is on the roadmap. We’re taking it from a bottom-up approach by seeing what people are interested in, what they are picking.”
Medina further noted: “At the moment there is a fiduciary duty to look after investors that invest in funds, and that usually means still putting profit before people or planet. We want to flip that on its head and offer the transparency to assess all three and allow people to match their morals to their money and see which companies can have a genuine impact.”
With pre-seed funding, Etcho has now moved into its development stage, and a minimal viable product is being produced to be launched in Q2.