Copyright thenassauguardian
Thirty four-year-old Bahamian Marvin Coleby is helping to revolutionize the way global financial services firms do their business. Coleby, who spoke to Guardian Business yesterday, said he built an equity management and fundraising platform for African startups that he called Raise, after recognizing a gap in the market on the continent. The platform become so successful, it caught the attention of another, larger private capital resource platform builder, Carta. Carta sought out Coleby, took over the Raise platform, and put Coleby in the driver’s seat to build systems for more than just Africa. “We are expanding into Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East,” said Coleby. “We have licenses in all those regions. We build software for all those regions. We localize for those regions. “Carta really needed someone to build out the whole product infrastructure, which I had done in my previous company. “They were my investors, and we just made a decision that I should join and build out the product team and the structure.” Carta calls Raise the “Carta of Africa” and announced Coleby’s move to the firm in September. Carta’s Managing Director for the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East and Africa Bhavik Vashi said bringing Coleby into the organization was a “milestone for our vision of seamless, global ownership infrastructure”. “Africa’s entrepreneurial energy and talent are undeniable,” said Vashi. “By adding Marvin to our team, we’re deepening our commitment to serve founders and investors everywhere.” According to Coleby, Carta has raised some $1.3 billion and is a multimillion-dollar revenue earning company trusted by countries across the world. Coleby said he has yet to see software at the level Carta builds operating in The Bahamas. However, he contends The Bahamas has the perfect financial services framework to support the growth and efficiencies that Carta’s products create within firms. “We build a lot of products in the fund administration, corporations and limited partner space,” said Coleby. “So, anybody that does investing, managing money, putting money into trusts, managing corporations, does anything related to equity and assets, we automate that into software, and we’ve done it across many, many different jurisdictions. “My focus has been on building a profitable business in this industry for the last seven years, and I suppose some of the most traction I’ve had was over the last eight months.” As a Bahamian who has travelled the world and looked intimately at financial and legal systems and frameworks in many different countries, Coleby said The Bahamas has the potential to grow its financial services sector far past just the services offered currently.
