A Singapore exchange for diamonds has finished a capital-raising round to finance further development.

Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange, a bourse for physically settled diamonds, has raised $10 million in financing to fund expansion of its electronic marketplace for such gems.

The round of Series B+ financing closed last week, and was led by existing investors Vertex Ventures and SDiX Chairman Alain Vandenborre. New investors in this round include Simon Murray, chairman and founder of SMC and GEMS and former group Managing director of Hutchison Whampoa; and Richard Ji, co-founder and chief investment officer of All-Stars Investment and former Asia-Pacific head of internet/media investment research at Morgan Stanley.

SDiX intends to be a central global marketplace for electronic trading of physically settled diamonds, developing new products. It is developing ideas around trading efficient, diamong financing and mobile technology.
 
The platform was launched last May. Over that time, the exchange has clocked up more than $110 million in trading volume, equating to more than 50,000 investment-grade diamonds.

The development of such a marketplace is part of continued interest among wealthy investors and others in such "hard assets" against a background of concerns about the global economic outlook.