Qapita Bags US$5M pre-Series A Funding

Singapore: Qapita, a Singapore-based fintech startup focused on employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) and cap table management, has raised US$5 million in a pre-Series A funding round of financing, led by MassMutual Ventures.

India-based VC firm Endiya Partners and angel investors, including Anjali Bansal (founder of Avaana Capital) and Sujeet Kumar (co-founder of Udaan), also participated.

Qapita said in a statement that the fresh funding will be used to boost its engineering team, accelerate product development and build clientele in India, Indonesia, and Singapore.

Following the investment, Willson Cuaca, co-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures, will join the Qapita board.

The company had previously raised a seed funding round co-led by Vulcan Capital and East Ventures in September last year.

Co-founded by Ravi Ravulaparthi (CEO), Lakshman Gupta (COO), and Vamsee Mohan (CTO) in September 2019, Qapita’s SaaS platform helps private companies and startups record and manage their cap tables and ESOPs. The company also aims to digitize the issuance of equity awards and shares.

“Over the last six months, more than a hundred startups have agreed to onboard with Qapita and manage their equity ownership on our software platform. New features will help us address the pain points of not only startups and investors but that of all stakeholders in the ecosystem. We are looking to partner with various service providers including law, accounting, and company secretarial firms and we will grow together by collaborating,” said Gupta.

Ravulaparthi added: “Through our cap table, ESOP, and liquidity solutions, we want to enable founders not only to offer equity to more stakeholders (including employees) but also provide faster liquidity. This will enable them to accelerate the flywheel of reinvestment into the rapidly growing startup ecosystem in India, and Southeast Asia.”

“Globally, we are witnessing trends that indicate a convergence between public and private markets. Qapita is enabling this in the region through their solution – from cap table and stakeholder management to digital share issuances and liquidity solutions,” opined Anvesh Ramineni, Managing Director at MassMutual Ventures.

“Equity management SaaS solutions will provide the much-needed digital equity stack for startups in Indonesia and the wider SEA region. It will remove the pain points faced by founders, employees and investors in tracking their ownership via cap table and ESOP management software,” Cuaca noted.