In December 2018, the UNICEF Innovation Fund onboarded its largest round of portfolio investments of thirteen startup companies using frontier technology solutions to address complex challenges and create fairer opportunities for children and young people. Atix Labs joins the Blockchain portfolio- these investments are part of UNICEF's larger blockchain explorations of using smart-contracts for organisational efficiencies, creating distributed decision-making processes, and working to build knowledge and understanding of distributed ledger technology both in the United Nations and in the countries where UNICEF works.

The team at Atix labs is on a mission to democratize social impact financing. Our team utilizes blockchain technology to match impact enterprises in Southeast Asia to funders across the world. We facilitate the investment process by utilizing smart contracts to develop impact milestones agreed upon by funders and the impact enterprises.

Technology has allowed for quicker and more reliable remittance transfers and crowdsourcing efforts. Our team realized that although impact enterprises had different avenues to access capital, there was a lack of transparency between the enterprises who receive funding and the investors who contribute to their financing - our platform aims to foster accountability mechanisms and ensure consensus for these stakeholders.

The team at Circles of Angels have been using blockchain technology for remittances since 2017 through partners like Coinpip. Since then we’ve realized that the possibilities to leverage the different applications of blockchain technology are remarkable. Not only can we reduce the cost of sending money thereby unlocking greater flows of impact funding, but we can also think up new ways to build smart contracts. These smart contracts have the potential to change our approach to traditional financing such as grant funding and debt financing which require necessary intermediary actors.

Frontier Technology and Open Source

Emerging technologies such as blockchain mean that there is always more to learn, constantly changing technical aspects and a need to be malleable when these changes occur. We believe that open source allows the wider community to benefit from each other’s learning milestones. In addition, the access to a community of developers to update and improve code ensures we deliver a well-built product.

Team and Diversity
 

Our team consists of three entities spanning two continents. Atix Labs a blockchain development powerhouse and the team at Angels of Impact focusing on investing in impact enterprises that invests in women-led businesses to sustainably tackle poverty eradication. Along with RSK who focuses on smart contract infrastructure. The three companies came together to form the consortium under the umbrella of Circles of Angels. Each team member offers different skill sets and expertise to bring our vision to life. Our team includes people from sectors such as banking, technology, education, product design, and social entrepreneurship.
Half of our team members are women - which in a male-dominated environment of technology and finance is not common. We’re proud to foster a culture of gender equality. We also hail from different countries, namely Singapore, Malaysia, and Argentina - bringing together a wealth of expertise-specifically in technical areas such as RSK in blockchain smart contracts and RIF in Open Blockchain Infrastructure Services.

Way Forward

The Fund investment will kick-start the implementation of our platform and evaluation of our performance of communities that are already using our platform. We are excited to collaborate with the blockchain cohort facilitated by the Fund so as to grow some of our best practices as well as share our experiences with our fellow blockchain implementers.

Photo Credits: Top and in article © Atix Labs