Digital Wealth Management Company StashAway Raising $25 Million

By Amit Chowdhry • May 16, 2021
  • StashAway announced recently that it is raising a $25 million Series D round of funding. These are the details.

StashAway announced recently that it is raising a $25 million Series D round of funding led by Sequoia Capital India. And existing investors Eight Roads Ventures (the global investment firm backed by Fidelity International) and Square Peg (the largest venture capital fund in Australia) also participated in the round. The funding round will close in the next few months pending necessary regulatory approvals.

With this round of funding, it will bring StashAway’s total paid-up capital to $61.4 million and accelerate investment product and feature developments across its 5 markets. And the company will also offer to buy back up to $3 million in stock options from its employees and expand its engineering team in Singapore and abroad.

What is StashAway? StashAway is known as a digital wealth manager that offers investment portfolios and wealth management solutions for both retail and accredited investors and operates in Singapore, Malaysia, the Middle East, and North Africa, and Hong Kong. The company was co-founded by Freddy Lim (CIO), Michele Ferrario (CEO), and Nino Ulsamer (CTO).

As of January 2021, the company surpassed $1 billion in assets under management. And it achieved this milestone faster than it took the world’s largest digital wealth managers to reach the same milestone. 

StashAway’s portfolios consistently outperformed their respective same-risk benchmarks since their inception in 2017 with annualized returns ranging from 16.5% (for its highest-risk portfolio) to 4.0% (for its lowest-risk portfolio) in USD terms as of the end of March 2021.

KEY QUOTES:

“This vote of confidence by one of the most successful venture capital firms affirms that we’ve been taking the right approach by expanding early into high-opportunity markets, continuing to deepen our product offering, and building a lean and mission-driven team. These steps have translated into rapid AUM growth since our beginning.”

— Michele Ferrario, Co-Founder and CEO

“StashAway is growing rapidly as it fulfils an obvious gap in the digital wealth management space, especially in areas where its competitors may be lacking: an easy-to-use platform, robust client relationships, and a very sophisticated investing framework. StashAway has built trust with its client base by navigating them through market volatility while providing strong returns.”

— Abheek Anand, Managing Director, Sequoia India (joining StashAway’s Board of Directors as part of the funding round, pending regulatory approvals)

“Providing up to $3 million USD in liquidity to our employees helps StashAway attract the best talent; it shows that startups can succeed and be financially rewarding. We want all of our team members to participate in the financial benefits of building a successful company, and our promise to all team members has always been an attractive compensation package that includes a significant amount of stock options in the company. This promise is now starting to materialize financially.”

— Nino Ulsamer, Co-Founder and CTO (on buying back employee shares and expanding the team)