Malaysian-based fintech company IIMMPACT announced Wednesday a seed funding of $2 million by Sequoia India’s Surge, a rapid scale-up program for startups in Southeast Asia and India.
IIMMPACT is Surge’s first startup founded and based in Malaysia.
IIMMPACT said in a statement that the funding will be used to accelerate product development and expand hiring.
“Despite the leaps we’ve seen towards the digital economy over the past few years, many developing markets in Southeast Asia are being held back – whether it is due to the lack of infrastructure, regulation or ease of access. The good news is that businesses in Southeast Asia are amazingly receptive to new technologies – which is why IIMMPACT was created,” said Alex Tan, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of IIMMPACT.
According to the statement, the lack of technological sophistication in legacy institutions in Southeast Asia has resulted in companies, especially those providing e-wallet, banking and e-commerce services, spending huge amounts of time and effort integrating digital payment products and data one by one. This is resource-intensive and distracts them from their core business.
IIMMPACT provides a turnkey solution for businesses who want to offer payment services to their customers with just a few lines of code. Through its elegant application programming interface (API) solution, businesses can rapidly launch a digital marketplace to make payments to over 170 billers. The solution also allows bill management for recurring payments and financial consolidation. Companies of any size can, with minimal effort, launch digital payment products for their customers, such as phone top-ups, utilities payment, gaming, transportation, corporate gifting, food and beverage vouchers and more. With IIMMPACT, any business can turn their app services into super-apps.
Companies that leverage IIMMPACT’s API are able to grow exponentially, improve their customer retention, save significant time and resources, allowing them to focus on their core business. Traditionally, to launch new digital payment products, it will take an average of three to six months. Now by tapping on IIMMPACT’s APIs, companies can add new products within days. In
2021 alone, IIMMPACT processed over $90 million in transaction value.
“Though our simple yet robust solution, companies have come to us, supercharged their digital journeys and found new opportunities for expansion. We’re excited to accelerate our product development with the new funds, grow our team and venture into new products and services for our customers. ” said Kelvin Lee, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of IIMMPACT.
IIMMPACT was founded in December 2017. Tan is one of the leading experts in data analytics – his forte is to transform raw data into valuable insights using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). He worked in global powerhouses such as RMIT University, Macleay College, Adidas, and Coles. Lee served as Head of Engineering at Circles.MD and was previously the Chief Technology Officer at Moovby. He has held leadership roles at multiple startups covering BNPL, car sharing, healthtech and fintech.
In 2020, IIMMPACT was also announced as a Top 10 Company from ScaleUp Malaysia’s first cohort, which saw the company pivoting their business from a loyalty app to a one-stop payments and data aggregation API.
“IIMMPACT’s pedigree traces to the type of technology companies that build great products upon key technical insights. In this case, IIMMPACT’s API based payment system innovates by aggregating and connecting legacy systems to the growing new digital landscape that is poised for rapid growth in Asia,” said Andre Sequerah, Managing Partner of ScaleUp Malaysia.
ScaleUp Malaysia is an accelerator which focuses exclusively on growth stage companies in Malaysia – helping them position their business for exponential growth. ScaleUp Malaysia is set
up and run by a team of experienced entrepreneurs, professionals and seasoned investors.
Participants in ScaleUp Malaysia go through an intensive training program that covers subjects like finance, human resources, marketing & sales, technology, product and strategy. 10 companies from each cohort will receive an investment and the ScaleUp team will actively support these businesses through strategic advisory, investor matching and partner introductions after the program for up to 24 months. To date, ScaleUp Malaysia has announced investments in 21 emerging startups from Malaysia.
IIMMPACT is part of Surge’s sixth cohort of 20 companies that build fresher, smarter solutions to help consumers and businesses adapt to a changing world.
Surge is Sequoia Capital India’s rapid scale-up program for startups in India and Southeast Asia. Surge combines $1 million to $2 million of seed capital with company-building workshops, a global curriculum and support from a community of exceptional mentors and founders. The program’s goal is to supercharge early-stage startups and give founders an unfair advantage, right out of the gate.