Hidden giant? Lending startup hits $150m revenue without fanfare

Jofie Yordan contributed to this report. 

Yanan Wu is a physicist who did research in Los Alamos Laboratory, the same facility where J. Robert Oppenheimer and a team of scientists and engineers developed the atomic bomb in 1945.

Across interviews, Wu consistently shares the story of how standing on a bridge that runs between a fancy district and a slum area in Indonesia inspired the birth of his Singapore-based startup, Surfin Meta Digital Technologies.

“I was thinking, can we bring down the barrier between these two worlds?” he said.

Photo credit: Timmy Loen

Founded in 2017, Surfin is an alternative credit scoring and lending startup that seeks to help the underbanked and unbanked access financial services. It claims to have surpassed US$150 million in revenue and turned a profit just five years after its inception.

Since 2021, the startup’s revenue has been growing by about 50% per year, according to Wu. And yet, it remains relatively unknown.

Surfin stepped into the spotlight after raising US$12.5 million from Singapore-based Insignia Ventures Partners in October 2024. In April, the startup secured US$26.5 million from Woori Venture Partners, Washington University, and Phillip Private Equity.

Apart from microlending apps and a credit card, Surfin’s suite of financial products includes a platform that allows users to purchase, sell, and switch mutual funds online.

The company also has a proprietary AI model that uses a borrower’s personal and social network data to calculate credit scores. Surfin currently operates in 10 countries across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

The startup’s unaudited financials, which are filed under its parent firm Kuai Kuai Belt and Road Holdings, indicated that its net profits grew by nearly 9x to US$9 million in 2023. The numbers were made public on Mintos, a Latvian investment marketplace that allows investors on its platform to invest in Surfin’s loans.

Dr Yanan Wu / Photo credit: LinkedIn

However, Wu tells Tech in Asia that Surfin’s financials are still tentative as the startup is undergoing an audit and is changing its holding firm from Kuai Kuai to Surfin Meta Digital.

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