Sleek, a Singapore-based fintech firm, announced on Tuesday it has raised $14M in Series A funding led by White Star Capital and Jungle Ventures, bringing the total capital raised by the company to $24 million.

Sleek will use the fresh funds to bolster tech and product development, hiring, and expand presence in existing markets and enter new ones.

It also aims to use proceeds from the funding round to catalyze its global growth, particularly in Europe, where it has announced the acquisition of Ltd Companies, a market leader in UK incorporation management that has incorporated more than 450,000 companies since its foundation in 2005.

Sleek will also add its products and technology stack to the existing fresh startups offering to build a holistic small and medium enterprise (SME) operating system for UK-based entrepreneurs and businesses.

“We are very excited to partner with White Star Capital and Jungle Ventures as we are expanding our services and entering two new markets – Australia and the United Kingdom. This will allow us to grow faster and improve our product further in order to become the go-to digital platform for all entrepreneurs,” said Julien Labruyere, Co-Founder of Sleek.

Sleek Co-Founder Adrien Barthel also said that with the launch of Sleek Business Account, the firm has added a major brick in its product vision of building the operating system for entrepreneurs.

“Gone are the days where you needed to navigate between your corporate secretary, accountant, and banker–often sending documents hard copies via courier. Now everyone can start a Singapore company and collect the first payments in a day, and from anywhere,” he said.

Founded in 2017 by Julien Labruyere and Adrien Barthel in Singapore, Sleek is a back-end operating system for startups and SMEs, a simple, single platform to manage all back-office operations in a seamless manner and seek expert advice from qualified professionals. The platform streamlines, automates, and integrates company set-up, financial and regulatory reporting, book-keeping, and banking services.

The company has also constantly been expanding its bouquet of services. It recently launched ‘Sleek Business Account’ that simplifies opening bank accounts for SMEs. It enables entrepreneurs and small business owners to open a deposit account in just a day through the Sleek app and start transacting, getting rid of the onerous paperwork requirements before opening an account.

Additionally, the account details can be easily viewed on the Sleek dashboard along with the other company metrics to streamline bank reconciliation for accounting and book-keeping purposes. The company is also planning to release products addressing remittances and card issuance.

Sleek manages a growing portfolio of over 5,000 companies, who collectively generate about $700 million of revenue and processed over 1.4 million bookkeeping transactions in 2020. Since its inception, it has expanded offices beyond Singapore to Hong Kong, Australia, the UK, and the Philippines.

“We are extremely pleased to be able to make our second South-East Asian investment out of our newly announced third fund, and believe we can be an excellent partner to Sleek and leverage our global footprint to help address a fundamental problem for all SMEs and supercharge their growth into Europe and Australia,” said Eric Martineau-Fortin, Founder and Managing Partner at White Star Capital.

Jungle Ventures Managing Partner David Gowdey also said that Sleek addresses the deeply underserved challenge of back-office management for entrepreneurs and SMEs globally, and their growth across geographies and rapid expansion is testament to the accelerated adoption of the platform and the value it brings to the ecosystem.

Featured image credit: Sleek

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