Qupital has secured $2 million in a seed round of funding led by Mindwork Ventures and Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. What’s more impressive, apart from the investment size, is that both the firms have invested for the first time in a Hong Kong-based FinTech startup. The round witnessed participation of few other investors including DRL Capital and Aria Group.
Founded by Andy Chan and Winston Wong, Qupital was incorporated with an aim to address the lack of efficient SME financing solutions in the market. Andy Chan, co-founder and CEO, Qupital, says,
We began our journey together in Hong Kong when we noticed that there were many businesses here that had cash locked up in unpaid invoices while being underserved by traditional lenders with slow and cumbersome processes.
The dearth of solutions can certainly be reaffirmed by the fact that over 300,000 SMEs in Hong Kong reported that the lack of access to working capital is a major barrier to their growth and internationalization.
Here’s where, Qupital enters the scenario, it wants to confront Asia’s reported USD 200 billion SME financing gap by allowing clients to turn their accounts receivables into cash. The accounts receivables market in China is more than USD 3 trillion annually. As David Chang, managing partner at MindWorks Ventures, rightly puts this,
Qupital is a textbook example of how internet and technology helps to optimise a traditional industry. There is a large financing gap in Asia for underserved SMEs, and we look forward to Qupital becoming the dominant player for this market.
With the fresh inflow of funds, Qupital will focus on expanding its small and medium enterprise (SME) financing platform and accelerate its rapid regional expansion. Winston mentioned,
Qupital’s vision is to help inject liquidity into the market, reducing SMEs cost of financing and enabling professional investors access to an entirely new asset class of accounts receivables. At the same time, we are excited about the opportunity to work with Alibaba to reach a brand-new audience of businesses, both in Hong Kong and regionally.
Qupital operates a safe, secure and easy to use invoice trading platform. It allows companies to raise finance against their receivables by connecting them with professional investors in equitable win-win opportunities. Currently, it is serving a wide range of SMEs in the export, manufacturing, and distribution sectors.
