Employee perks startup grabs funding from KK Fund

Venteny founder and CEO Junichiro Waide (center) with his team. Photo credit: Venteny.

Singapore-based employee benefits platform Venteny announced today it has closed a seed round led by early-stage Southeast Asian venture capital firm KK Fund. Japanese investment company Ocean Capital also put in some money.

With Venteny, businesses can provide their staff perks like discounts at restaurants, gyms, and hotels. The startup, launched in the Philippines two years ago, also offers short-term loans for employees in partnership with banks and other financial institutions.

“I see many companies in Southeast Asia have been facing issues with low engagement and high turnover rate of employees due to many reasons like lack of credit. So here we are to fill the gap,” said founder and CEO Junichiro Waide in a statement.

“There is still a huge pent-up demand for consumer loans as not all major banks actively provide them […] but it is not easy to ascertain a borrower’s creditworthiness due to lack of data. By working with corporates, Venteny has unique visibility to borrowers’ ability to repay loans,” added Koichi Saito, KK Fund general partner.

Venteny earns through a subscription fee as well as interest on its loan facility.

Jun declined to disclose how many paying clients they have at the moment, but counts 40,000 employees registered on the platform. He also didn’t say how much the investment was, but Koichi told Tech in Asia it was the biggest KK ever injected in a startup. The VC typically invests US$300,000 to US$500,000.

The company will use the funds to build its team, develop new features, and expand its operations regionally.

“KK has plenty of knowledge and local insights across Southeast Asia and we plan to cover the same countries where it has investments. We saw good chemistry here,” said Jun.

Venteny isn’t the only employee perks platform in Asia. There’s Rewardz in Singapore, Benefit One in Japan, and Malaysia’s PerkPool, which was reportedly sold to another company years ago. However, Jun claims they’re the only one with a hybrid perks-plus-loans offering.