Financial comparison site CompareAsiaGroup gets $40m round

Goldman Sachs is the lead investor and it is joined by the likes of Nova Founders Capital, Jardine Pacific, ACE & Company and Route 66 Ventures. There are also several angel investors, including Zynga founder Mark Pincus and Owen Van Natta, previously COO of Facebook and CEO of MySpace.

Nova, which specializes in backing early-stage internet companies, worked with Gerald Eder to set up CompareAsiaGroup. The three partners at Nova previously managed start-up incubator Rocket Internet's global e-commerce portfolio and it was here they crossed paths with Eder, who was a co-founder of Southeast Asia-focused online retailer Zalora.

The idea for CompareAsiaGroup was rooted in an appreciation of the success in Europe of the likes of MoneySupermarket.com - which went public in 2007, raising GBP366 million ($548 million) - and, as Eder put it, a recognition that "nobody was doing it in a professional or large-scale way across Asia."

Launched in 2014, the company is rolling out services in Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam. It employs 150 financial services and technology professionals and features 1,500 products, such as insurance, credit cards and personal loans. Revenues are derived from financial institutions that see CompareAsiaGroup as an alternative marketing tool.

Nova and several angel investors previously contributed just over $5 million in seed funding and the latest round will go towards adding more product categories, making the platform more robust and user-friendly, and advertising and marketing. "We want to make sure in the next 12 months that every housewife across Asia knows about our business," Eder said, adding that CompareAsiaGroup is already seeing growth of 30-50% month-on-month, although penetration varies by product and market.

Other financial comparison sites have received PE and strategic backing, notably iMoney in Southeast Asia, but CompareAsiaGroup sees its primary competition as television and branch networks - the places where banks might otherwise commit their marketing dollars. Asia-focused marketing and customer acquisition spending by financial products providers is said to total $52 billion per year.

CompareAsiaGroup's team features senior executives with experience at MoneySupermarket, Comparis and uSwitch in Europe, and Eder identifies the principal obstacle to achieving scale in Asia as hiring talent. This includes staffing the call centers that form part of the company's network, complementing the online and mobile platforms.

Nova was set up in 2013 and has received funding from PCCW, FWD and PineBridge Investments. It looks to invest in sustainable large-scale business models, with a strong focus on financial services.

"It's not about whether the idea is good or bad, it is all about getting the execution right. There are not many people in this part of the world with experience in building large-scale internet companies," added Stefan Bruun, managing partner at Nova.

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• Topics
• Expansion
• Financials
• Technology
• Southeast Asia
• Venture
• Goldman Sachs
• Financial Services
• Technology
• Growth capital
• Venture
• Southeast Asia