Singapore’s Alpha7 raises $2.3M, looks to complete its ‘COO as a service’ offering

Singapore-based business consultancy firm Alpha7 announced today it has received private funding of S$3.1 million (US$2.3 million). Founded in 2014, the company previously raised S$500,000 (US$375,000) in seed funding in January 2015, which brings it to a total of S$3.6 million (US$2.7 million) in investments. The funding will go towards product development and recruitment, as the company looks to grow and expand its services to new markets.

Alpha7 is a business consultancy-cum-technology company, offering advice and business support to small- and medium-sized enterprises. Its headline offering so far has been the “COO as a service” concept: an integrated platform providing the services of a chief operating officer on an outsourced, retainer, or project basis to businesses that usually can’t afford to hire a full-time executive.

“Alpha7 was always a technology-focused company, specifically cloud technology,” company CEO Lynette Seah tells Tech in Asia. “With the launch of COOaaS in January, and now iMap, we have evolved from a consultancy to a tech business.”

iMap, the company’s new offering, is where the “product development” part of the plan comes in. Just launched, iMap is a system for recommending the right tools to business owners to help them with their day-to-day. “[Alpha7’s] consultancy arm utilizes iMap to recommend technology tools, solutions, and services based on available budgets,” Seah explains. These are based on five key organizational pillars: marketing, sales, operations, finance, and human resources. Business owners receive advice on which of these five areas they need to focus on. iMap targets small and medium enterprises with fewer than 1,000 employees.

“Once we have identified productivity gaps in the organization, often businesses look to us to implement the recommended solutions based on their budgets,” Seah says. “Sometimes a client might want a Ferrari when actually they may need a BMW or even a Toyota level bundle.” That’s where COOaaS comes in, under Alpha7’s Solutions arm.

The two products complement each other, according to Seah. “IMap is a business intel methodology that identifies business gaps, and COOaaS delivers the recommendations, providing tailored cloud technology solutions to enable business growth,” she explains.

Alpha7 will be ramping up recruitment in the next three to six months, looking to hire a COO, a CTO, and a CMO. Besides these senior roles, it will be looking to recruit business development directors, business analysts, and technical consultants. “These new hires will help us build our pool of business advisors and subject matter experts,” Seah reveals. “They will also be utilized to build our solution and service provider partnerships in the region.”

As part of its expansion plans, Alpha7 wants to open an office in Australia in the second half of 2015. In addition, it wants to reach out to businesses from there, as well as the US and the UK, to help them expand their operations in Southeast Asia. “True to a stereotypical entrepreneurial story, we have been operating out of my mum’s basement since 2014,” Seah relates. “To accommodate growth, we will be moving into a new office space.”