Doxa Holdings, a Singapore-based fintech startup providing a digital procurement platform for the supply chain space, has secured undisclosed funding from Cento Ventures.
The company plans to utilise the funds to expand into Malaysia.
Founded in 2019 by Edmund Ng, Leon Yeo, and Henry Kwan, Doxa helps connect and digitalise the workflow of buyers, suppliers, and financiers through its enterprise platform Doxa Connex. It also creates a single source of truth within a secure system architecture, enabling data authenticity and data analytics and helping buyers to trade seamlessly and financiers to assess and qualify financing.
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Primarily targeting the construction industry, Doxa Connex provides a clear trail of the transactions that occurred. Such data can provide financial institutions the credibility they need in assessing the creditworthiness of SMEs seeking financing. Only verified invoices can be triggered for financing requests.
“We set out years ago to solve real, present challenges a building contractor faced in Singapore and realised similar challenges exist in other industries such as logistics and healthcare. Hence, we are working on expanding our coverage for new kinds of customers and new geographies,” said CEO Edmund Ng.
Doxa is working with some top-tier contractors in Singapore. In addition, it has also set foot in the Indonesian market, starting with a customer in the healthcare industry.
Through various partnerships formed with Visa and top banks in Singapore, the company is now working on expanding to Malaysia through a collaboration with a key financial institution.
Supply chain financing for SMEs in Southeast Asia typically carries a higher risk due to limited credit data and tools for credit decisioning. This often results in lengthy risk assessment and underwriting processes for most SME financing applications. Considering the construction industry’s supply chain, characterised by a relatively long credit cycle, there is a clear and evident demand for credit financing,” according to Cento Ventures.
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One of the ways to mitigate this challenge is through anchor financing, where SME suppliers and subcontractors monetise their invoices with large buyers and leverage the buyers’ credibility to obtain credit or financing. By digitising the procurement process where every transaction record is verified and recorded, financial institutions could then leverage these transaction data to provide invoice financing to SMEs.
“We invested in Doxa to help address these two challenges faced by SMEs when it comes to digitising their procurement process as well as enhancing their accessibility for credit and financing from financial institutions,” Cento said in a statement. “A digital procurement platform like Doxa is essential for expediting and automating transaction cycles that often occur manually. It is also crucial in tracking and analysing transaction data that are usually inaccessible to lenders — this could greatly improve credit accessibility for the supply chain industry.”
In 2022, Doxa raised US$2.2 million in a pre-Series A round.
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