Ayannah banks on the unbanked

Inbound remittances from the estimated 12 million Filipinos working overseas are worth $25 billion a year and Ayannah, the digital payments business founded by Perez, plays a role in the market. But this role has changed. Perez sees Ayannah's Sendah service as more of an e-commerce provider, allowing the diaspora to buy insurance products back home. Sendah will likely enter new markets through partnerships and licensing arrangements.

Perez also has his eye on a much bigger market - the estimated $60 billion in domestic remittances. Ayannah entered this territory in 2010 with the launch of Sendah Direct, which initially focused on mobile phone charge cards. "We started with that because we wanted to build up as many points of sale as possible," he says. "Mobile airtime is the most liquid and available form of stored value."

It was a means to an end. Perez describes his vision as two concentric circles: the outer circle is a network of airtime resellers and distributors of micro-insurance products; the inner circle is a network of agents doing remote payments. The firm already has over 7,000 distributors and agents serving 9 million customers, mainly on the airtime side.

While airtime will deliver revenue, the profit margin is just 2-4%. This compares to 30% for insurance and at least 20% for remote payments. Ayannah is also getting into mobile gaming credits.

Up to last week, the company has raised a total of $5 million since inception, including two institutional rounds of $1 million apiece. Siemer Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures provided the first round and were joined by IMJ Investment Partners for the second. There has since been a follow-in investment of $1.8 million provided by investors including Gree Ventures, Beenos Asia and Wavemaker Labs, as well as Golden Gate and IMJ. The new capital will mainly be used for marketing purposes.

"Our investment thesis for Southeast Asia is to focus on companies that are working with consumers or in the payments space. With Ayanna targeting alternative digital payments as well as remittance that really hit our sweet spot," says Justin Hall, an associate at Golden Gate.

Sendah Direct has established relationships with several domestic retailers and it also working with the dominant players in non-digital remittances.

"It is like we have partnered with HSBC and Standard Chartered and we are increasing their reach so you don't have to go through their branches to make transactions," Perez says. "I am talking about non-bank financial services providers, the ones that are available for the base of the pyramid."

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• Topics
• Venture
• Early-stage
• Southeast Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• TMT
• Financial Services
• Southeast Asia
• Philippines
• Venture
• Gree Ventures
• Golden Gate Ventures