Funding Lending

New Singapore Lending Player: Helicap Funded by Former Minister of State

Helicap, a FinTech start-up operating in the fast-growing alternative lending space in South-East Asia and Australia, announced that it has successfully closed US$1.5 million in seed money.

The round is led by Singapore’s former Minister of State and the Chairman of Nufin Data, Mr Teo Ser Luck, who will also join Helicap’s board of directors. Helicap’s investors and advisers include Mr Lim How Teck – Chairman of Heliconia Capital; Mr Samuel Rhee – former CEO and CIO of Morgan Stanley Investment Management Asia; and Mr. Sam Phoen – former GIC and ANZ Senior Management.

There are over 2.9 million SMEs in Southeast Asia and Australia- who currently face a credit gap of US$ 187.2 billion2. Currently, only a small fraction of this funding gap is being met by traditional market players. Coupled with low-interest rates and a lack of scale capital for alternative lenders, there is a large, untapped market opportunity for alternative lending platforms to secure high returns on data-driven investments in this space.

image via Helicap Website

That’s where Helicap comes in – its proprietary platform raises capital and utilizes big data to analyze regional players, thereby allowing them to make superior and consistent investment returns via alternative channels such as microfinance institutions, SMEs, and peer-to-peer (P2P) crowdfunding platforms.In doing so, Helicap’s platform provides institutional investors, family offices and high-net-worth individuals access to over 10% income returns on diversified prime private debt assets.

Mr David Z Wang, co-founder of Helicap, stated that the new partnership will help position his firm as an early mover within Asia’s fast-growing alternative lending space.

David Z Wang

“As we are a Capital-as-a-Service company, our business requires a deep focus and strong partnerships with crowdfunding platforms to enhance investor returns, as well as to provide accessible and scalable lending capital for our origination partners such as Nufin Data and customers such as Funding Societies (also known as Modalku in Indonesia).

We are therefore delighted to have Mr Teo and Nufin on board for our journey to be amongst the region’s first and largest alternative lending aggregators. Over the past 9 months, Helicap has achieved 12% returns on our investments, with no defaults.”

In tandem with its latest funding, Helicap also announced a partnership with Singaporean data company Nufin Data, which is a subsidiary of multi-million FinTech conglomerate, Jing King Tech. The cooperation will see Helicap use Nufin’s cloud-based tech solutions to better mitigate invoice fraud and credit risk.

With more in-depth insights and data aggregation through Nufin’s platform, Helicap can simultaneously lower the capital costs for borrowers, minimize financing risks for lenders and expand alternative lending activities for platforms in Singapore, Southeast Asia and the world over.

Mr Teo Ser Luck explained that Nufin’s collaboration with Helicap will help his company attain its goal to provide more enterprises with fast and secure access to competitive supply chain financing options.

Teo Ser Luck

“We decided to partner with Helicap as we are impressed with their deep expertise in financial markets, and experience in Asia’s alternative lending ecosystem.

With Nufin’s technology platform, I look forward to a fruitful collaboration with Helicap as we help expand financing options in the region to those who need them most – namely the SMEs which form the bulk of enterprises in both Singapore and Southeast Asia.”

Kelvin Teo – Co-founder and CEO of Southeast Asia’s largest Crowdfunding company, Funding Societies – noted that the scale capital that Helicap provides, is a massive welcome for his firm and the industry.

Kelvin Teo

“The Helicap team has a deep understanding and passion about Southeast Asia’s alternative lending space.

We have been working closely together for the last six months, providing quality platforms and SMEs with ready capital.”

Over the past year, Helicap has started investing and is now screening around US$200 million worth of qualified loans within its pipeline, which will be distributed in the coming months.