Robo-advisor app StashAway, which is open to accredited investors and ordinary punters like you and me in Malaysia and Singapore, has attracted $16 million in series C funding, it announced today.
Some of the cash will go to “support new market entry,” said the firm in a statement today, but without identifying any country.
StashAway co-founder and CEO Michele Ferrario is the former CEO of online fashion marketplace Zalora:
StashAway facts & stats:
- Launched July 2017
- 85 employees
- Based in Singapore
- Claims its users get annualized returns “ranging from 11.1% for its highest risk portfolio and 4.3% for its lowest risk portfolio”
- Series C led by Square Peg, an Australian VC outfit that has made a number of Singaporean investments, including in Chope, Doctor Anywhere, and PropertyGuru
- It comes almost exactly a year after its $12 million series B investment
While stock markets have wobbled during the pandemic and many people have suffered job losses, StashAway investor Tushar Roy today told an Australian newspaper that users are sticking with the robo-advisor app right now. “Some people pulled money out but actually the net deposits continued to grow even through coronavirus, which is extremely unusual,” he said. "It just demonstrated that people fundamentally just trusted StashAway with with their money even at a time like this.
New rivals
It’s still early days for digital wealth management startups in Southeast Asia, but there are already a handful of rivals in the niche, such as Indonesia’s Akulaku and Ajaib.
The space is about to get more heated as Southeast Asia’s Grab and Gojek expand their digital wallets to include wealth management options. Gojek has already added gold investing in Indonesia, while Grab is prepping the launch of GrabInvest in Singapore.