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Funding Societies appoints GoBear co-founder Frank Stevenaar as CFO, promotes Ishan Agrawal to CTO

(L-R) Funding Societies new CPO Nihit Nirmal, CTO Ishan Agrawal, and CFO Frank Stevenaar

Singapore-based SME digital financing platform Funding Societies (known as ‘Modalku’ in Indonesia) has announced the appointments of Frank Stevenaar as its first Chief Financial Officer and Nihit Nirmal as the new Chief Product Officer.

Along with this, the fintech firm has promoted Ishan Agrawal, Vice President (Engineering), as Chief Technology Officer.

Also Read: Funding Societies raises US$40M

These appointment come at a juncture where the startup gears up for larger funding rounds and a sustained growth trajectory.

These key changes will help the fintech firm lay the foundation for outsized recovery once the macroeconomic situation improves post-COVID-19, it said in a press statement.

“As we steer through COVID-19 with good relative success and are recovering to near pre-COVID results, we are cautiously optimistic about 2020, excited for 2021, and planning ahead with concerted leadership from Frank, Ishan, and Nihit,” Kelvin Teo, Co-founder and Group CEO, said.

Stevenaar has 20 years of experience in financial services. He is responsible for overlooking the firm’s finance operations, accelerating its fundraising efforts, and strengthening its shareholder engagement.

Also Read: GoBear grabs US$17M in funding to accelerate its financial services across Asia

Prior to this, Stevenaar co-founded financial services company GoBear in 2015 in Singapore and Thailand, where he developed its finance team and expanded the company across Southeast Asia.

Nirmal is responsible for product management, product design, and driving the company’s digital growth. He comes with 15 years of experience in technology with his last assignment at LendingKart, a digital lending platform in India, where he was Senior VP and Head of Product Management and Growth.

Agrawal oversees Engineering, QA, DevOps, information security and the firm’s IT teams, driving the business through building secure and scalable technology.

Funding Societies provides business financing to SMEs in Southeast Asia, which is crowdfunded by individual and institutional investors.

After five years of lending across Southeast Asia, Funding Societies has disbursed over S$1.6 billion (US$1.2 billion) in financing across more than 2.8 million loans across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

In April, Funding Societies raised US$40 million in Series C funding round from existing and new investors. Its investors include Sequoia India and Softbank Ventures Asia.

Also Read: What are Digital Full Bank and Digital Wholesale Bank licences?

Funding Societies was recently shortlisted for the MAS digital wholesale banking license under a consortium with AMTD, SP Group, and Xiaomi.

Image Credit: Funding Societies

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