Singapore-based revenue-based financing company Jenfi said Tuesday it has raised $6.3 million in Series A funding led by Monk’s Hill Ventures.

Other investors include Golden Equator Ventures and Korea Investment Partners (via the GEC-KIP Fund), 8VC, ICU Ventures, and Taurus Ventures.

The Series A funding will be used for product development, customer acquisition, and expansion in Southeast Asia, Jenfi said in a statement.

“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 CEO of Jenfi.

“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,” said Susli Lie, Venture Partner of 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.

This round also 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.

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 which focus more on a company’s financial statements, Jenfi said it 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 return on investment.

Founded in 2014 by entrepreneurs Peng T. Ong and Kuo-Yi Lim, Monk’s Hill Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology startups, primarily Series A, in Southeast Asia. The VC firm is backed by institutional investors and family offices worldwide.

Featured image credits: Jenfi