Singapore, 9 Sep 2020 (Wednesday) - Funding Societies, Southeast Asia’s largest SME digital financing platform, has today announced new additions to its Executive team. Frank Stevenaar joins as the FinTech’s first Chief Financial Officer, while Nihit Nirmal takes on the role as Chief Product Officer, and Ishan Agrawal is promoted to Chief Technology Officer. 

This comes at a juncture where the fast growing start-up gears up for larger funding rounds and a sustained growth trajectory. Funding Societies recently raised its Series C funding round with US$40m in committed funds from existing and new investors. After expanding by 194% in 2019, the FinTech platform continues to grow cautiously in 2020 with improved financial performance. These changes in senior management helps to lay the foundation for outsized recovery once the macroeconomic situation improves post-COVID-19. 

Frank Stevenaar, the new Chief Financial Officer, joins the FinTech after 20 years of experience in financial services. He is responsible for overlooking Funding Societies’ finance operations, accelerating its fundraising efforts, and strengthening its shareholder engagement. Prior to his appointment, he was one of the founders who launched financial services platform, GoBear, in 2015 in Singapore and Thailand, where he developed its Finance team and expanded the company across Southeast Asia. 

Nihit Nirmal joined Funding Societies as Chief Product Officer late last year and is responsible for Product Management, Product Design, and driving the company’s digital growth. He comes with 15 years of experience in technology with his last assignment at Fullerton-backed LendingKart, India’s largest digital lending platform, where he was Senior VP and Head of Product Management and Growth. His experience in digital lending has been critical for Funding Societies’ next phase of growth across new Southeast Asian markets.

Ishan Agrawal, who was Funding Societies’ VP of Engineering for two years, had earlier this year risen up to take the position of Chief Technology Officer. As the CTO, Ishan oversees Engineering, QA, DevOps, Information Security and the firm’s IT teams, driving the business through building secure and scalable technology. Prior to this, the Stanford University and National University of Singapore graduate served as the FinTech’s Head of Data.

Kelvin Teo, Co-founder and Group CEO, said, “As Funding Societies matures from a FinTech startup to a FinTech firm, we have steadily built out and streamlined our business as talent is central to our organisation, both by thoughtful hiring and deliberate grooming. As we steer through COVID-19 with good relative success and are recovering to near pre-COVID results, we are cautiously optimistic about 2020, excited for 2021, and planning ahead with concerted leadership from Frank, Ishan, and Nihit.”

After five years of lending across Southeast Asia, Funding Societies has disbursed over S$1.6 billion in financing across more than 2.8 million loans across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It is shortlisted for the MAS digital wholesale banking license under a consortium with AMTD, SP Group, and Xiaomi. Successful applicants will be informed in the second half of this year. 

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About Funding Societies
Funding Societies | Modalku is the largest SME digital financing platform in Southeast Asia. It is licensed in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, and backed by Sequoia India and Softbank Ventures Asia Corp amongst many others. It provides business financing to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which is funded by individual and institutional investors. In 5 years, it has helped finance over 2.8 million business loans with over S$1.6 billion in funding. It was given the MAS FinTech Award in 2016, the Global SME Excellence Award at the United Nations’ ITU Telecom World in 2017, Brands for Good in 2019, recognised by IDC as amongst the 5 fastest growing FinTechs in Singapore, and the Stevie® Award in 2020.

Visit our website: https://fundingsocieties.com/

Media Contact
Glennice Yong
Senior PR & Communications Executive
Funding Societies
glennice.yong@fundingsocieties.com
+65 9155 4662