Singapore fintech startup Aspire bags $32.5m to strengthen Southeast Asia presence

Aspire, a startup providing banking solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises, raised US$32.5 million in a series A round led by MassMutual Ventures.

The Aspire team / Photo credit: Aspire

Silicon Valley’s Arc Labs and Beacon VC, the corporate venture capital arm of Thailand’s Kasikornbank (Kbank), also participated in the round, alongside existing investors Y Combinator, Hummingbird Ventures, and Picus Capital.

Aspire, which graduated from Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 batch, plans to use the new funds to boost its financial product offering and bolster its presence in Southeast Asia. It has operations in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

The company said it’s building a scalable marketplace banking infrastructure that uses third-party financial service providers. Its flagship product, AspireAccount, offers digital merchants in Southeast Asia cash flow management and business-to-business payment acceptance services.

Aspire said it’s planning to offer a business credit card solution that will be linked to each business account as early as this year. Through the investment, Kbank and Aspire also look to work together to
digitize banking to small and medium-sized enterprises and online merchants in Thailand.

“We have seen 30% month-on-month growth since we founded the company in January 2018 and expect to open more than 100,000 business accounts by next year,” said founder and CEO Andrea Baronchelli, who was executive vice president of Lazada.

In July of last year, Aspire raised US$9 million in seed funding from US, European, and Asian investors, including Yinglan Tan’s Insignia Ventures Partners and Mark 2 Capital.