Venteny, an employee benefits platform, today announced the closure of a seed round led by venture capital firm KK Fund. Japanese investment company Ocean Capital joined the Singapore-based firm in the round.
The startup plans to utilize the funds to accelerate its development at a faster pace. This will witness it extending its team, work on more new features for both, the companies and employees and expand the services in Southeast Asia.
Venteny launched in Philippines two years ago and offers its clients exclusive employees loyalty programs providing them discounts at hotels, gyms, and restaurant. Also, it offers short term loan services to lessen the financial burden in association with banks and other financial institutions.
It claims to have a registered user base of 40,000 employees which are growing at a double rate every year. Founder and CEO Junichiro Waide in a statement, comments,
I see many companies in Southeast Asia have been facing issues with low engagement and high turnover rate of employees due to the reasons that employees sometimes experience short of cash, lack of credit, lack of reason to stay in the same company.
He added the startup was incorporated specifically to bridge the gap between companies and employees, focusing on the rising demand from both corporations and partner merchants including financial solution providers.
Koichi Saito, KK Fund’s general partner observes there is still a huge demand for consumer loans, but it is not easy to ascertain creditor’s creditworthiness due to lack of data in the region. Saito further adds,
By working with corporates, Venteny has unique visibility to borrowers’ ability to repay loans.
KK Fund generally invests between US$300,000 and US$500,000 in seed stage internet and mobile startups across Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The transaction amount is undisclosed but Koichi was quoted saying this was the biggest KK has fueled into a startup.
