Ayannah Raises Additional Financing to Expand Services for the Unbanked in the Philippines and Beyond
Manila, Philippines, 2 October 2014
Veritas Mobile Holdings, Ltd., which operates as Ayannah (“Ayannah”), a leading provider of digital commerce and payments services for migrants and the unbanked, raised additional equity financing from leading Japanese early stage internet and technology investor, GREE Ventures, Inc. (“GREE Ventures”). GREE Venture joins other institutional investors such as Wavemaker Labs Pte. Ltd., Golden Gate Ventures Incubator Annex Pte. Ltd., IMJ Investment Partners Pte. Ltd. and Beenos Asia Pte. Ltd. in Ayannah's upsized follow-on round.
"We are very happy to have GREE Ventures join our roster of investors. Their network of partners and portfolio companies in other South East Asian countries will allow us to solidify our leadership position in digital commerce and payments for migrants and the unbanked in the Philippines and hasten our expansion to other emerging markets." said Mikko Perez, CEO of Ayannah.
Ayannah has launched two services catering to migrants and the unbanked. Sendah is its flagship B2C service initially targeting the 12 million overseas Filipino diaspora. Sendah aims to provide overseas Filipinos with a better way to support their families in the Philippines. Sendah allows overseas Filipinos to provide much needed products and services to meet their families' daily needs and improve their quality of life. Sendah has a growing and loyal base of over 50,000 customers with high lifetime value. Soon, Sendah will address other migrant communities from South Asia, Latin America and other markets.
Ayannah also operates Sendah Direct, an award-winning B2B platform addressing the large portion of Filipinos who remain unbanked. Sendah Direct has a growing network of over 7,000 distributors and agents and has served over 9 million unique customers since launch in October 2010. Sendah Direct started out as a new way to distribute prepaid mobile airtime credits to prepaid mobile subscribers of the three major mobile network operators in the Philippines. Later, Sendah Direct became a new way to distribute prepaid online game credits and microinsurance products. More recently, Sendah Direct became a new channel for enabling payments, especially for domestic remittance.
"We are thrilled to join Ayannah on its journey to provide much needed digital commerce and payment services to migrants and the unbanked in the Philippines and soon, in other emerging markets. Ayannah has made great strides and we hope that our investment will allow Ayannah to continue and accelerate its progress to become the leading digital commerce and payment service for the vast majority of Filipinos who remain unbanked and who rely on remittances for support. We also would like to help Ayannah expand to other emerging markets in South East Asia." says Kuan Hs, Principal at GREE Ventures.
About Veritas Mobile Holdings, Ltd.
Veritas Mobile Holdings, Ltd. (Ayannah) aims to be the leading provider of digital commerce and payment services to the world's unbanked. For unbanked residents in emerging markets, we provide accessible digital commerce and payment services to spur financial inclusion and literacy and give access to products and services that improve quality of life. For unbanked migrants, we aim to give a better way to stay connected and to support their beneficiaries in their home country by giving them greater control over how their hard-earned remittances are used to improve the lives of their beneficiaries.
We build and operate innovative digital commerce and payment services on the social and mobile web. We have enabled millions of online and mobile transactions. We have a great team of seasoned veterans and young innovators in web and mobile application development. More importantly, we have a growing and loyal customer base providing us with recurring and quality revenue streams.
About GREE Venture, Inc.
GREE Ventures, Inc. makes investments in early stage (pre-Series A and Series A) start-up companies that have the potential to play an active regional role in East Asia and Southeast Asia. Staffed by experienced professionals with offices in Singapore and Tokyo, GREE Ventures, Inc. provides strategic partnership and mentoring to young start-up companies. GREE Ventures, Inc. is the venture capital arm of GREE, Inc. (TSE:3632), a global technology company.