Volopay raises US$2.1m in seed funding, expands into Australia
Singapore based fintech start-up Volopay has raised US$2.1 million in seed funding to provide businesses and startups in the Asia Pacific region with a powerful control centre for all their financial needs.
The investment round was led by Tinder founder Justin Mateen. Other investors joining the round were Soma Capital, CP Ventures, Y Combinator, VentureSouq, the founders of Razorpay (Shashank and Harshil), and other prominent angel investors. The new funds will be used for hiring, product development, international expansion and strategic partnerships.
Volopay’s origin story
The company was founded in 2019 by CEO Rajith Shaji and CTO Rajesh Raikwar. The founders met while working at a leading financial services comparison platform based in Singapore. Whilst there, Rajith and Rajesh experienced how challenging it was to track different company spending like subscriptions, vendor payments and employee reimbursements.
“The whole process is broken. I would spend hours noting down each individual spend and then have to reconcile it with receipts. Once submitted through the company’s expense platform, I would wait a whole month before being reimbursed the funds,” said Volopay CEO Rajith Shaji.
Rajith continued, “I soon realised employee expenses and shared bank cards was a huge problem for businesses of all sizes, especially startups; they were losing countless hours each month going through bank statements and reconciliation. The lack of visibility meant they were losing money due to unaccounted expenses. Volopay sets out to re-imagine business banking for startups and tech companies while providing significant cash-back and saving.”
Customer growth since launch
Volopay currently operates in Singapore but plans to expand across the Asia-Pacific region over the next three years. Volopay has been on a strong growth trajectory in Singapore and will be launching operations in Australia late January 2021. Ahead of its launch in Australia, the company has already built a sizable waitlist of customers.
Since the launch of the product in June 2019, more than 100 companies have started using the product in Singapore and which include some of the most innovative companies in the region such as InVideo, Dathena, Medline, Sensorflow and Beam. The COVID-19 environment has accelerated the need for SMEs to digitise their operations so they are better able to scale and serve their customers in interactions which are now often done remotely or digitally.
Volopay’s product suite
Volopay offers everything businesses need to operate digitally and accelerate their growth; business accounts, corporate cards, money transfers, expense tracking, subscription management and accounting all in one single platform. Their ‘corporate card for startups’ offering has been the most popular product amongst technology companies. These cards come with up to 2% cashback on all software subscriptions, hosting and international travel- the three main categories of expense in every single tech company.
The COVID-19 environment has also placed significant stress on the liquidity of many small businesses and startups. Volopay is committed to supporting startups and SMEs during these difficult times and has launched an innovative credit facility for corporate cards so businesses can meet their day-to-day expenses. The small, fixed monthly fee of the product is especially beneficial to businesses as it provides certainty around their credit expense. This allows businesses to better manage cash flow and plan for upcoming expenses which is difficult to do with traditional credit cards.
