A startup with roots in Texas and California's Bay Area is ready to expand, and it has its eyes on the Land of Enchantment.
Wink is a financial technology, or "fintech," startup based in Plano, Texas, that's developing a biometric identity and payment platform. The platform hopes to address some challenges the startup's founder and CEO, Deepak Jain, has seen in areas of identity and fraud protection, along with payment security, he told Albuquerque Business First.
Launched in 2021, Wink has around 30 employees between Plano and the Bay Area. But a recent $3 million seed investment announced in February, on top of an earlier $2.85 million pre-seed raise, means the startup has more expansion planned to become, as Jain said, the "de-facto biometric payments provider in the industry."
CerraCap Ventures, a Costa Mesa, California-based venture capital firm that recently set up an office in New Mexico, led Wink's seed round — an early equity funding stage for startup companies. Part of CerraCap's purpose in its own New Mexico expansion is bringing companies that it's invested in to the Land of Enchantment.
It's that connection between CerraCap and Wink that put the state on the startup's radar.
Jain said access to a high-skilled workforce through New Mexico's national labs, enthusiasm from state leaders and the low cost of living for young engineers and developers have locked his company on to the state. He added Wink could hire close to 20 employees for its development and customer teams in New Mexico, and he would want to start operations here before the end of the year.
"All of these combinations are leading to us considering New Mexico as a great place for Wink to expand its development and certain parts of our business," he told Business First.
It'd be the first time the startup has branched outside of Texas and California, Jain said, adding he and his team have had "several very good meetings" with public and private investors in New Mexico.
Wink's future high-tech office in the state would most likely be in Albuquerque, Jain said. Close to $3 million could go toward getting that office and workforce up and running, in the form of state incentives and tax credits in combination with new and existing public and private investment.
Discussions are ongoing between leaders at the startup and state officials, so specific investment amounts and other details aren't yet clear, Jain said, but he added that incentives are "looking very, very positive."
If everything goes to plan, Jain said he wants Wink to become a "unicorn" — a privately-held startup company with a valuation at or above $1 billion. It's a lofty goal set by a lot of startup founders, but Ritesh Agarwal, a partner at CerraCap Ventures who's helped lead the firm's expansion into New Mexico, thinks Wink has the potential.
"Our promise to New Mexico is … that we want to build the first fintech unicorn out of [the state]," he told Business First. "For us, the starting point is looking into our portfolio and seeing which are the companies that have the potential to become the unicorn in this region.
"There are all the ingredients for [Wink] to be the next unicorn in fintech."
To help with its New Mexico expansion and other operations, Jain said Wink could open a seed extension investment round later this year targeting between $3 million to $5 million. The startup has a partnership with Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and other undisclosed partnerships with large payment networks and tech companies headquartered in California, he said, and it recently won best-of-show recognition at FinovateSpring 2023, a fintech showcase event held in San Francisco.
