Validus Co-Founder and Group CEO Nikhilesh Goel
01Fintech, a growth-stage private equity firm founded by a former Ant-Group executive, has invested US$20 million in Validus, a small-and-medium-enterprises (SME) supply-chain financing platform with operations in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The investment will enable Validus to accelerate its expansion plans in fast-growing markets like Indonesia and enhance its technology innovation.
Also Read: Validus, TTC Group, Do Ventures form JV to boost SME lending in Vietnam
Founded in 2015, Validus drives financial inclusion and prosperity for small businesses by leveraging data and AI to drive growth financing to the under-served SME sector. Its offerings include loans, business accounts, corporate cards, payments and expense management.
To date, Validus claims to have disbursed more than US$3 billion in loans to small businesses across Southeast Asia.
Validus is headquartered in Singapore and has a presence in Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Validus’s other backers are Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, Vertex Growth, FMO, and several major East Asian financial institutions, including NorinChukin Bank and NongHyup Financial Group.
Southeast Asia represents a tremendous US$490 billion SME financing gap opportunity for specialised digital lenders with strong credit assessment capabilities. The Asian Development Bank estimates that SMEs make up 97 per cent (71 million) of all regional enterprises (71 million), employ 69 per cent of the labour force and contribute significantly to 42 per cent of the GDP.
Also Read: Validus teams up with Nafoods to provide business financing to farmers, distributors in Vietnam
Still, most SMEs do not have access to sufficient credit and liquidity required for their daily working capital needs. Over 60 per cent of these private enterprises cannot get loans when needed; operators and their employees are forced to live cash-in-hand, creating a bottleneck for growth.
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