Tinvo raises $12 million in a Series A round
Tinvo, based in Singapore, raises $12 million in a Series A round to develop financial services for supply chain merchants
Tinvio was founded to provide a streamlined method for supply chain merchants to communicate with buyers. The company is now preparing to launch financial services, including financing and credit card issuing. The Singapore-based startup announced today the close of a $12 million Series A round to further develop its business-to-business transactions platform. The round was led by AppWorks Ventures, with strategic investor MUFG Innovation Partners (MUIP) participating as well. MUIP is a venture capital firm focused on startup collaborations with Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
Tinvio's existing investors—Sequoia Capital India's Surge, Global Founders Capital, and Partech Ventures—returned as well for the Series A, bringing the company's total funding to $18.5 million.
Tinvio's most recent funding round was a $5.5 million seed round announced in April 2020. The company was founded in July 2019 by Ajay Gopal, who previously worked as a fintech investment banker for Credit Suisse in London, where he led initial public offerings and mergers and acquisitions transactions.
Tinvio reports that since receiving seed funding, its client base has grown fourfold to over 5,000 businesses in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, and other Asian markets. According to Gopal, as the company's user base grows, it is acquiring new customers via word-of-mouth and referrals. For instance, Southeast Asian food and beverage supplier QQ Group onboarded all of its merchants on Tinvio and now uses the platform for all trade orders.
Tinvio focuses on F&B businesses in part because they deal with a high volume of perishable goods and are constantly managing orders and inventory. Gopal noted that the company also has clients in the healthcare and automotive sectors, but intends to continue focusing on growth in the food and beverage sector.
Tinvio Initial Plan
Tinvio was initially developed to consolidate orders from multiple sources, including email, SMS, and WhatsApp, and to enable suppliers to maintain real-time digital ledgers.
It recently expanded into financial services by adding features for collecting and reconciling digital payments. Gopal notes that many suppliers continue to accept payment via bank transfers, cash, or paper checks upon delivery, making it difficult for them to manage their cash cycles. Thus, late last year in Indonesia, Tinvio launched a "super dirty pilot" for on-platform payments and, after validating it, added B2B payments to its core product. Tinvio accepts credit card payments, direct debits, and automated bank transfers, and is integrated with regional payment gateways. 95 percent of suppliers on the platform have continued to use Tinvio to collect payments from their merchants over the last two months.
“It's only been live for a couple of months, but we've already received a flood of feedback from users, and we're sprinting to add new features like real-time payments and credit,” Gopal explained.
The company has developed a 12-month roadmap for its other financial services, which include transaction financing, credit card issuing, and invoice factoring, with pilots scheduled for the next two quarters. “For this Series A, we've partnered with MUFG,” Gopal explained. “This puts us in an excellent position to accelerate our time to market with our financial technology stack that we've been developing.”
Tinvio's focus on modernizing B2B trade with a seamless user experience has enabled it to onboard and digitalize thousands of merchant and supplier teams without disrupting their daily routines or procurement workflows, according to AppWorks Ventures managing partner Jessica Liu. Despite COVID-19, we continue to see strong growth momentum, driven by growing network effects, which positions Tinvio well to dominate this category.”
