Jenfi raises more funding for its "growth capital as a service" platform
Summary
Participation came from returning investor Monks Hill Ventures, which led Jenfis Series A two years ago, ICU Ventures, Granite Oak, Korea Investment Partners & Golden Equator Capital and Atlas Ventures.Since Jenfis inception four years ago, it has deployed more than $25 million in non-dilutive capital to about 600 companies. The new funding will be used to grow its customer base in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, and expand into new markets in Southeast Asia, like Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Liu told TechCrunch that aggregate sales generated by companies in Jenfis portfolio is now more than $150 million.Decisions about what businesses to lend to are made with Jenfis proprietary risk assessment engine, which integrates into data sources like accounting software, payment gateways, e-commerce platforms, online marketplaces and digital advertising. This lets Jenfi continuously monitor its borrowers business activity, including revenue growth and marketing return on investment.As Jenfi grows, it is adding more local market data sources, including selling management platform Haravan and POS management software KiotViet in Vietnam, and almost all banks in Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia.Jenfis proprietary risk engine is one of the main ways it differentiates from other companies offering revenue-based financing to digital-native businesses, said Liu, because it means more comprehensive assessments of creditworthiness and tailored financing solutions.Since its Series A was announced, Jenfi has deployed its first machine learning-assisted underwriting system, which Liu said enables it to make faster underwriting decisions, with better accuracy and less human involvement.In the future, Jenfi will work with synthetic data to get a better understanding of client behavior and possible future outcomes. It will also launch an on-demand financing product to cover recurring growth capital needs like variable monthly ad spend.In a statement, Headline Asia partner Aki Okamoto and principal Jonathan M. Hayashi, said We have been continuously conducting research on revenue-based financing, and have talked to almost every single player in this field in Asia.