SINGAPORE (Sept 11): Validus Capital, a Singapore-based SME financing platform, has raised more than $120 million in funding for Singapore-based SMEs and businesses through its platform.
To date, it has financed more than 1,600 loans, with each loan request approved under 24 hours. The average amount funded per request is S$70,000, with a high degree of diversification across various industry classes.
Established in 2015, Validus offers access to financing from accredited individual and institutional lenders. Much of its growth is in tandem with Singapore SMEs' increased need for growth capital, with a financing gap of around $20 billion.
Backed by Temasek Holdings' Vertex Ventures and licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Validus combines extensive experience in SME financing with a smart, data-driven approach, acting as a peer-to-business lending marketplace that helps reduce financial intermediation costs.
The platform reduces the approval times for borrowers and allows for faster access to capital to expand business, while providing less stringent requirements to small businesses, which have typically faced financing difficulties due to lack of collateral or cash flow records.
Furthermore, Validus has worked with partners such as Visa, EQ Insurance and National University of Singapore (NUS) to create a better marketplace lending ecosystem for its investors and borrowers.
Ajit Raikar, CEO and co-founder of Validus, says, “We are immensely proud to have helped accelerate the growth of so many of Singapore's SMEs, and yet we still have much work to do to empower many more such businesses. We have innovations in the pipeline that will give SMEs even more capital flexibility and choice to suit their business strategies, accelerating Validus towards our billion-dollar financing milestone by mid-2020."