Singapore peer-to-business lending marketplace raises $7.5m round led by Sequoia

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Funding Societies, a marketplace in which businesses can raise loans from the public, has raised a US$7.5 million series A round. Sequoia India led this latest round of funding. Existing investor Alpha JWC Ventures also joined.

Since starting in June 2015, the startup has provided over US$6.33 million in loans to 100 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Singapore. It has a sister site in Indonesia called Modalku, which gave US$750,000 in loans to over 30 SMEs there.

Singapore faces no shortage of peer-to-peer lending sites, with MoolahSense, CoAssets, and CapitalMatch as competitors. This funding round does separate Funding Societies from the rest of the pack, however.

“Funding Societies has always prided itself on being compliant with regulations and ensuring the safety of investor monies. Earning investor and borrower trust always takes priority over short-term growth,” says the company in the statement. It’s this factor that helped it raised money from Sequoia.

Alpha JWC Ventures is an Indonesian venture capital firm. It has invested in companies like Jualo, an Indonesian online marketplace, and UangTeman, a micro-finance company.

Co-founder Kelvin Teo is a certified accountant and Harvard MBA grad who has done stints as analyst in McKinsey, Accenture, and private equity firm KKR.

Funding Societies was the winner of the Singapore leg of last year’s Tech in Asia Tour.

Converted from Singapore dollars. US$1 = S$1.34.