Jenfi Raises $6.3 Mn Series A Round Led By Monk's Hill Ventures The Series A funding will be used for product development, customer acquisition, and new market expansion in Southeast Asia
By Prabhjeet Bhatla •
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Jenfi, an alternative revenue-based financing company for digital-native businesses and startups based in Singapore, announced that it has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding led by Monk's Hill Ventures. Other investors include Korea Investment Partners & Golden Equator Capital, 8VC, ICU Ventures, and Taurus Ventures.
The Series A funding will be used for product development, customer acquisition, and expansion in Southeast Asia.
"Jenfi was born out of our own financing challenges and frustrations as startup founders. We understand firsthand the pain points of wanting to accelerate a business but not being able to be qualified for traditional sources of credit. Online merchants and digital-enabled businesses are burgeoning and these same businesses are taking advantage of the exponential growth of e-commerce and digital marketing. It's time for lenders to evolve. We built Jenfi with the vision to help these businesses grow and to partner with owners for the long-term without them giving up any equity," said Jeffrey Liu, co-founder and chief executive officer, Jenfi.
Jenfi's alternative revenue-based financing product, branded as growth capital as a service (GCaaS), provides more flexible funding options for companies looking to scale their businesses through increased marketing, inventory, and growth spend.
Compared to traditional lenders where more focus can be placed on a company's financial statements, Jenfi is integrated with a wide array of data sources to monitor and underwrite businesses, including the likes of accounting software (e.g. Xero, Quickbooks), payment gateways (e.g. Stripe, Braintree), merchant platforms (eg. Shopify, Shopee, Lazada), and digital advertising (Facebook and Google Ads), which enables Jenfi to quickly assess and continuously monitor the business activity and health of the companies, and obtain real-time data on revenue growth and marketing ROI.
In addition to providing flexible funding, Jenfi aims to partner with companies for the long term by assessing needs outside of just funding. For example, the new funding for product development will be used to build analytical solutions for clients to improve marketing and growth efficiency.
"Jenfi is leading the way for how financing should be done today for digital-first companies. Jeff and Justin's strong execution and experience as entrepreneurs give us confidence that they will be the team to support the large, fast-growing market of serviceable digitally-native businesses. We are excited to partner with them as they transform the lending industry in Southeast Asia," commented Susli Lie, venture partner, Monk's Hill Ventures.
A Y Combinator graduate, to date, Jenfi has backed over 100 businesses including B2B and SaaS businesses such as Tier One Entertainment, Pay With Split, and HomeBase. Jenfi expects to deploy $15 million in non-dilutive capital by July 2022.
"Jenfi unlocked our ability to continuously scale faster at a moment's notice. Since we started working with them, we've seen our monthly GMV growth rate increase by almost 50 per cent. Their seamless onboarding, easy to use interface and responsive team made it such an easy process," added Dylan Tan, chief executive officer, Pay With Split.
This round follows a recent $25 million debt round raised from San Francisco-based Arc Labs. Gluwa, the co-creators of CreditCoin, a proprietary public blockchain network for credit transactions, is also an investor in a previous round of debt funding. Other existing investors include Atlas Ventures, Next Billion Ventures, Stormbreaker Ventures, VentureSouq Capital, Iterative, and Y Combinator.
