Southeast Asia fintech player Funding Societies, known as Modalku in Indonesia, has raised $25 million in equity investment from Cool Japan Fund (CJF), Japan’s sovereign wealth fund, according to an announcement.
The deal marks CJF’s first investment in a fintech company in Southeast Asia.
This development follows a strategic equity investment from Maybank and a third annual credit facility from HSBC’s ASEAN Growth Fund, which is part of a commitment of over $100 million credit facility with the bank.
Funding Societies will use the fresh proceeds to deepen its core business in SME financing across its five markets (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam) while further expanding its payments business.
Through this investment, Funding Societies will also partner with CJF to provide financial services to support Japanese companies.
In January this year, DealStreetAsia reported that Funding Societies was planning to raise $40 million in its latest funding round.
Last November, the startup bagged $7.5 million in debt financing from Norfund, the Norwegian Investment Fund for developing countries. The deal marked Norfund’s first debt transaction with a fintech lender focused on small and medium enterprises in Southeast Asia.
Two months earlier, Funding Societies said it was raising $27 million in debt funding from institutional investors led by Asia-focused private credit financier AlteriQ Global.
Founded in 2015 by Kelvin Teo and Reynold Wijaya, Funding Societies is licensed in Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand, registered in Malaysia, and operates in Vietnam.
To date, Funding Societies has achieved over $4 billion in business financing serving about 100,000 SMEs and processed an annualised payments gross transactions value (GTV) of over $1.4 billion – since expanding into its payments business in 2022.
Funding Societies is backed by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Maybank, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, CGC Digital (the digital arm of the Credit Guarantee Corporation Malaysia Berhad), SBVA (previously SoftBank Ventures Asia), Peak XV Partners, Alpha JWC Ventures, SMBC Bank, BRI Ventures, VNG Corporation, Rapyd Ventures, Endeavor, EBDI, SGInnovative, Qualgro, and Golden Gate Ventures among others.
