Singapore knowledge-sharing platform Arches secures $450k

Arches, a Singapore-based company running an expert-matching platform, announced that it has raised US$450,000 in a seed funding round from several investors including Vietnamese accounting firm I-Glocal and eight angel investors.

Members of Arches’ Vietnam office / Photo credit: Arches

The company will use the new funds to expand its network of experts in Asia, invest further in its team, and accelerate the development of its own expert data platform. It will also enhance its business development and sales functions to drive both regional and global growth and exposure, as well as optimize its client-expert matching system.

The startup provides research consulting services, delivering insights into regions and industries through various formats, depending on the client’s need. Other services include expert interviews by telephone or face-to-face, online surveys, short-term expert staffing, as well as market reports and local tours.

“The sharing economy has become a widely accepted concept with the sharing of tangible assets such as cars and houses becoming mainstream in the last decade. Arches is building a platform that shares people’s intangible assets, namely ‘knowledge,’ across countries,” said Hiroki Kato, CEO of Arches.

The company seeks to address the lack of industry information, which businesses that are looking to expand into other markets need. According to Arches, these types of information belonged only to “a small group of insiders” and that public data are “extremely limited.”

The firm currently has clients in Japan, Asia, Europe, and the US. It opened an office in Vietnam last year, and is now looking to scale its operations in Singapore, Tokyo, Ho Chi Minh, Shanghai, and Tashkent.