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Upfront Backs Jiko For Banking Alternative

Los Angeles-based venture capital investment firm Upfront Ventures has made an investment in Jiko, a startup developing an alternative to traditional banks. Jiko said this week that it raised $7.7M in its Series A, which came from Upfront Ventures, Radical Impact, and Social Capital. Jiko was founded by Stephane Lintner (formerly of Goldman Sachs) and Rocky Motwani (formerly of JP Morgan). Litner is also a Ph.D. in Applied and Computational Mathematics from Caltech. Jiko offers up a mobile app, a cash back debit card, and offering up investment options like U.S. Treasuries and other high yield investments. Jiko appears to be following a similar, but different, model to the banking industry as Pasadena's Green Dot, which pioneered the use of debit cards as an alternative to traditional banking services.