Arta Finance, led by 8 ex-Google execs, launches ‘digital family office for the world’

To say Arta Finance isn’t your typical startup would be an understatement. The network and experience of its founding team alone – made up of eight former Google executives – is paralleled by few other startups in the world.

The firm, which emerged from stealth mode today, aims to become a “digital family office for the world” by democratizing how people manage their wealth. Its launch comes amid growing interest from investors for alternative assets such as private equity, private debt, venture capital, and real estate.

Photo credit: Arta Finance

Launched in the US, Arta lets accredited investors invest in alternative assets from top fund managers with a minimum of US$10,000 – instead of the typical millions needed. Access to these investment classes have traditionally been open only to the ultra rich.

Since its founding in July 2021, Arta Finance – previously called Arbo Works – has raised US$90 million from investors like Sequoia Capital India, Ribbit Capital, and Coatue, as well as from more than 140 angel investors (you read that right) including former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Its founding team members have all held “fairly senior roles” across marketing, growth, product, and partnership functions at the tech juggernaut. Some have led the teams that built Google Pay, Google Finance, Gmail, and Chromebook.

“Basically, we’re one email away or one contact away from any senior executive in the world. So that gives us a level of access that helps us offer these products,” Arta Finance CEO Caesar Sengupta tells Tech in Asia at the company’s Singapore office ahead of the launch. The firm is headquartered in both Singapore and the US.

Arta can reach “any private equity or VC firm” or any of the “hot startups” fairly easily because of that, Sengupta says. Among the co-founders are Chirag Yagnik, an ex-quant trader who has held investment office roles at Merrill Lynch and BNP Paribas, as well as Charles Dong, a former venture investor who has also had stints at investment firms like Blackstone.

Sengupta, who was formerly vice president and general manager of the Next Billion Users initiative at Google, explains Arta’s tech in a way that makes it sound almost rudimentary.

For a firm looking to increase access to investing, there’s – surprise – no blockchain involved. Firms like Singapore-based ADDX, which offers a similar solution allowing accredited investors to invest in bite-sized tickets of US$20,000 or less, tokenizes digital assets and private market securities using blockchain and smart contract technology.

Arta, however, uses “regular scale technology” and achieves cost savings by being tech “through and through,” both on its front and back end, Sengupta says. Instead of hiring finance professionals and math PhD holders, for instance, Arta uses AI and machine learning that can replicate similar financial techniques.

The company is targeting people who have a net worth of between “hundreds of thousands of dollars to a few million dollars,” the CEO says. That’s a level of wealth that isn’t typically enough for one to engage a private banker or family office but is possibly too much for one person to be managing on their own.

Roughly 680 million people fall into this category, Sengupta estimates.

A “digital family office for the world”

Even with sizable wealth and savings, an individual faces limited options on the market.

A “very long runway”