Untangled Finance, a real-world asset-based lending platform, has raised USD 13.5 million in a strategic funding round led by Fasanara Capital, a London-based asset management firm.

The company also entered a strategic partnership with Fasanara to gain access to over 130 verified asset providers and credit institutions, such as banks, businesses, and lenders across 60 countries. The company also opened two credit pools on the platform and will be managing off-chain operations and underwriting loans.

Untangled offers a real-world asset tokenization platform that enables enterprises to tokenize private credit assets, such as business loans and invoices, in on-chain structured credit pools. Users can provide liquidity to either an automated senior pool or an actively managed account and receive an ERC-20 token that represents the value of the loan. These can then be traded on secondary markets. The company also announced plans to launch its protocol on Celo in the coming weeks and eventually expand to Ethereum and Polygon.

Analyst QuickTake : Real-world asset tokenization has seen growing interest within the DeFi industry in the last month, with a number of recent fundraises, including Ostium Labs and GenTwo , which raised USD 3.5 million and USD 15 million , respectively. Furthermore, more mature players such as Fireblocks and Securitize have recently bolstered their presence in the space by making acquisitions (Fireblocks acquiring Blockfold for USD 10 million and Securitize acquiring Onramp for an undisclosed amount ). Notably, Untangled aims to differentiate itself by providing a forward-looking credit assessment model that monitors the borrower’s future default risks.