Recognized by Malaysia’s prime minister, this fintech firm is looking to go beyond SMEs

Managing expenses can be stressful for any company, especially when approving ad hoc spending or filing tax receipts. Filling that gap is Kuala Lumpur-based fintech firm Swipey.

Founded by former consultants Kalyana Mohan Teagarajan and Rouvin Thiruchelvam, Swipey is Malaysia’s answer to Singapore’s Aspire: a digital and accounting management platform for corporations to manage and organize their day-to-day receipts.

Kalyana Mohan Teagarajan (front, white T-shirt) and Rouvin Thiruchelvam (left, white T-shirt) with the rest of the Swipey team / Photo credit: Swipey

Swipey was incorporated in 2021 but officially launched its platform in March 2022. Today, it serves more than 1,000 companies nationwide, from a wide range of sectors. Many of these companies, Kalyana tells Tech in Asia, are in the digital economy space.

Despite being very young, Swipey has already been gaining traction. The startup was highlighted in Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s mid-term economic review speech last year as an example of an innovative company.

Swipey is looking to breakeven by November, but the firm’s chasing an August deadline, Kalyana tells Tech in Asia.

Current transactions processed on annualized basis stands at US$19 million and is expected to hit US$100 million in the next 12 months. Annualized recurring revenue has been growing year-on-year, Kalyana says. “US$1 million is breakeven and we are 2.5x away.”

The fintech is also moving beyond just serving small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to larger businesses, Kalyana adds. Swipey has in its roster a Malaysian telco, a hospital chain, and an education services provider.

Getting here, however, was an iterative process the founders undertook, built on their decades-long corporate experience.

Built on surveys and collaborations

The decision to get Swipey off the ground stemmed from Kalyana and Rouvin’s experience in consulting as well as managing money for institutional investors and family offices.

Kalyana, a robotics engineer, spent the first decade of his career working at General Electric (GE) in the UK, initially with corporate audit and subsequently with its oil and gas division. He left the organization in 2018 as commercial director of subsea equipment.

During his time at GE, Kalyana focused on improving business operations, including working on pricing and costing platforms to boost margins and revenue. When he returned to Malaysia, he worked as a consultant, and that was when he realized many of his clients had problems getting their finances in order.

He reached out to Rouvin who, as an investment banker and a former GE colleague, was facing the same back-end finance problems with his own set of clients. This led the duo to build Swipey.

But it wasn’t an immediate launch. Kalyana and Rouvin decided to test their hypothesis – that a finance platform was sorely needed – by surveying 125 companies that have worked with them before.

Lean and cautious