Aspire scores $32.5 million raise
Y Combinator-backed Aspire, which is on a mission to reinvent small and medium enterprise (SME) banking across Southeast Asia, announced a $32.5 million raise. The Series A round will be used to boost its financial product offering and strengthen its local presence.
The recent financing has been led by MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia (MMV SEA) with participation from Silicon Valley’s Arc Labs and existing investors Y Combinator, Hummingbird and Picus Capital.
Aspire is currently operating across Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam and it is building a scalable marketplace banking infrastructure that leverages third party financial service providers to create a unique digital banking experience for its SME customers.
“We are extremely excited about the problem we are solving for this fast growing generation of digital entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia” says Andrea Baronchelli, founder and CEO. “We have seen 30% month-on-month growth since we founded the company in January 2018 and expect to open more than 100,000 business accounts by next year”.
“We are very excited to be working with Andrea and his team to help solve multiple financial pain points for SMEs in the region,” says Ryan Collins, managing director at MMV SEA. “We are impressed with the quality of the product, the company’s technology infrastructure and its vast network of institutional partners.”
Founded in January 2018 by former Lazada executives, the company graduated from Y Combinator Winter 2018 batch.
