Fintech startup Call Levels pivots to enterprise product as co-founder departs

Photo credit: Call Levels.

Fintech startup Call Levels is going through some changes. Not only is the company switching its focus to a business-facing product, it has also lost one of its co-founders. Cynthia Siantar, who started the company with Daniel Chia, announced she resigned from the company this week in a Facebook post.

In the post, Siantar mentioned she had no access to her professional email address from April 5 onwards. Tech in Asia has also learned that more members of the startup’s management team left the company.

Call Levels launched in 2014 with an app that helps traders keep track of prices for financial assets like forex, futures, and equities. The startup has raised an undisclosed amount of funding so far from angel investors including Koh Boon Hwee and Indonesia-based Lippo Group.

In a press release today, the company confirmed Siantar’s departure, although it stated she remains a shareholder. We reached out to Siantar, who declined to comment.

On a call with Tech in Asia, co-founder Daniel Chia reiterates that Siantar was crucial in developing the market opportunity for Call Levels’ technology but left due to the “shift in strategic direction.”

“As we move toward an enterprise product, our growth is changing and because of that it made more sense for Cynthia to remain a shareholder,” he says, adding that the company is bringing in “a fresh business structure.” This means new hires in operations and business strategy roles.

“Fact is that strategic change is always a challenge – the disagreements went further than just Cynthia,” adds Chia, when asked about the additional departures. “This was certainly an issue for other staff and, sadly, we parted ways.”

Chia clarifies April was “about when all this started.”

Call Levels is shifting its focus to building applications for corporate clients.

The company is shifting its focus to building applications for corporate clients. A new product called CLAIRE will add chatbot and AI capabilities to Call Levels’ price monitoring and live notification service. The idea is to connect the product with customer service systems in banks, brokerages, and other business clients.

“We were building a lot of cloud-based technology and we were servicing around 200,000 investors,” he says. “Then we realized banks have difficulty getting on the cloud to service their customers. So we decided to work with them.”

Chia says it was the users, mostly investors themselves, who wanted the app to be able to integrate to their bank or their brokerage service. He adds that the startup can integrate its cloud tech on the secure private servers used by its clients to help them engage their customers more efficiently.

Singaporean bank DBS is one of the first clients to use Call Levels’ new product, rolling it out in the next few months.