To strive, the Singapore-based neobank aiming to become the financial operating system for SMEs, has raised an oversubscribed $100 million Series C round. Investors included Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital SEA, along with Paypal, Tencent, LGT Capital Partners and returning investors.
businessroundups.org last did Aspire when it raised its Series B in 2021. Founded in 2018 to provide working capital loans to small to medium businesses, Aspire began offering more services, including bank accounts for cross-border businesses, business cards, pay and incoming management and automated invoice processing coupled with financial management software.
Co-founder and CEO Andrea Baronchelli says Aspire has tripled its total annualized payment volume over the past 12 months to $12 billion, serving more than 15,000 businesses in Southeast Asia.
Baronchelli told businessroundups.org that the startup is “primarily targeting new age companies whose purchasing decisions are increasingly driven by UX and usability, from companies with one CEO to 500+ employees.” This covers a wide range of industries, including IT companies, business services, goods companies and start-ups.
Most of Aspire’s customers use it for checking accounts, multi-currency management, payment and accounts receivable management.
Prior to moving to Aspire, Baronchelli said customers “would use a combination of established financial institutions, Excel, or multiple card fintech providers, issuing management credit. But these systems don’t talk to each other, so simple but important things like financial approvals happen across multiple platforms without a visible source of truth. We’ve bundled all of a company’s needs into one corporate financial operations stack. Aspire integrated with Xero, Quickbook, Netsuite, Accurate, Jurnal and other major accounting software.
Aspire will use the final funding for product development, regional expansion and team expansion.
In a statement on the funding, Lightspeed partner Bejul Somaia said, “Aspire has emerged as a leader in the B2B fintech space in Southeast Asia, with a complete end-to-end business finance management product, a strong track record of growth, and solid fundamentals.
