The Withanage family office, chaired by Rahula Withanage, is leading a $40 million investment into new FinTech platforms that tokenize real-world assets critical to global sustainable development. The first platforms will focus on unitising the intrinsic value of cultural and environmental assets making them a powerful store of value while proving a means for long term conservation. The announcement comes in advance of a $500 Million investment vehicle, led by the Withanage family office, into new platforms in AI, gamification, and tokenisation, which are due to be announced in 2025.
The Withanage family office has a wealth of experience in financial markets, as the founders behind the BMB Group and Scepter Partners, both highly successful investment platforms which unified sovereign investors across the Middle East and Asia. The BMB Group, established in 2006, became one of the leading asset management vehicles to unify some of the largest family offices from the Middle East & Asia, across diversified holdings. Scepter Partners is a principal investment firm and capital syndicate of sovereign investors.
Led by Rahula Withanage, an accomplished financier with over 20 years of experience leading a multi-family office, the Withanage family office hope to harness this experience to develop start-ups that utilise the advantages of digital tokenisation for the protection and preservation of real-world cultural and environmental assets. Tokenisation is rapidly taking off in the financial services sector, with BlackRock announcing plans to tokenise $10 trillion of its assets in partnership with Securitize. In the City, LSEG has announced plans to form a digital markets business and London-based investment management firm Legal & General has confirmed plans to develop a tokenised version of its fund.
Rahula’s son, Rayo Withanage, is a prominent entrepreneur from New Zealand. He recently started his sabbatical from finance, and is currently working solely in the non-profit sector as Program Coordinator for the Withanage Foundation. Rayo Withanage was the co-founder of the BMB Group and Scepter Partners, and in 2017, purchased the famed Château de Vie estate, Pablo Picasso’s final home in the South of France. Château de Vie is one of the most important art production estates in the world, where Picasso produced artworks worth over $4 billion. The house has an iconic history in the arts and culture, hosting notable 20th century greats such as Winston Churchill, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali, Charlie Chaplin, Édith Piaf and the Rolling Stones. The estate has since been transferred to a new investment consortium.
Rahul Withanage, head of the Withanage Family Office, with Rayo Withanage
Rayo Withanage Program Coordinator of the Withanage Foundation
