Sequoia leads Series B for Singapore's Smartkarma

Existing backers Wavemaker Partners, Jungle Ventures and Spring Seeds also participated. Wavemaker and Jungle contributed to a $4.7 million round last year. Wavemaker also made a $2.8 million investment in 2015.

Founded in 2014, Smartkarma offers data and research services to clients in the asset management industry with a view to disrupting conventional analytical models used by investment banks. The company says its cloud-based platform brings together more than 400 independent analysts covering some 2,400 companies across 15 Asian markets.

“The traditional equity research model has been broken for a while. Smartkarma is empowering independent researchers and creating a new paradigm of transparent pricing in this industry.” Shailendra Singh, a managing director at Sequoia, said in a statement. “The early success of the company is a strong testament to their innovative business model, and the team at Sequoia is excited to be part of this journey.”

Smartkarma plans to use the fresh capital to consolidate its position in Asia Pacific by strengthening its network of analysts, improving functionality on its platform and adding services beyond the published content currently available. It will also support an ongoing international expansion, which included the opening of a UK office in September.

Sequoia is currently investing its fifth India fund, which closed in 2016 at $920 million, with a mandate that includes a minority allocation for Southeast Asia. The firm recently topped up its fourth India fund, growing the corpus to $695 million. 

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Financials
• Technology
• Early-stage
• Singapore
• Sequoia Capital
• Jungle Ventures