Sleek raises $14M in Series A funding led by White Star Capital and Jungle Ventures

SINGAPORE - Media OutReach - 16 November 2021 - Sleek, a leading platform providing incorporation and accounting services for SMEs and entrepreneurs, has announced a $14M in Series A funding led by White Star Capital and Jungle Ventures. This brings the total capital raised by the company to $24M. Sleek will use the fresh funds to bolster tech and product development, hiring, and expand presence in existing markets and enter new ones.

Entrepreneurs and SMEs often struggle to separately deal with several siloed functions such as company secretary, bookkeeping, banking, tax, payroll, employment services, insurance, and more.

Founded in 2017 by Julien Labruyere and Adrien Barthel in Singapore, Sleek is a back-end operating system for start-ups and SMEs, a simple, single platform to manage all back office operations in a seamless manner, and seek expert advisory from qualified professionals. The platform streamlines, automates and integrates company set-up, financial and regulatory reporting, book-keeping and banking services.

The company has also constantly been expanding its bouquet of services. It recently launched 'Sleek Business Account' that simplifies opening bank accounts for SMEs. It enables entrepreneurs and small business owners to open a deposit account in just a day through the Sleek app, and start transacting, getting rid of the onerous paperwork requirements before opening an account. Additionally, the account details can be easily viewed on the Sleek dashboard along with the other company metrics to streamline bank reconciliation for accounting and book-keeping purposes. The company is also planning to release products addressing remittances and card issuance.

Sleek manages a growing portfolio of over 5,000 companies, who collectively generate about $700M of revenue and processed over 1.4M bookkeeping transactions in 2020. Since inception, Sleek has expanded offices beyond Singapore to Hong Kong, Australia, UK, and the Philippines.

Commenting on the announcement, Julien Labruyere, co-founder of Sleek said, "We are very excited to partner with White Star Capital and Jungle Ventures as we are expanding our services and entering two new markets - Australia and the United Kingdom. This will allow us to grow faster and improve our product further in order to become the go-to digital platform for all entrepreneurs."

Adrien Barthel, co-founder of Sleek, added, "With the launch of Sleek Business Account, we have added a major brick in our product vision of building the Operating System for entrepreneurs. Gone are the days where you needed to navigate between your corporate secretary, accountant and banker - often sending documents hardcopies via courier. Now everyone can start a Singapore company and collect the first payments in a day, and from anywhere!"

Eric Martineau-Fortin, Founder and Managing Partner at White Star Capital said  "We are extremely pleased to be able to make our second South-East Asian investment out of our newly announced third fund, and believe we can be an excellent partner to Sleek and leverage our global footprint to help address a fundamental problem for all SMEs and supercharge their growth into Europe and Australia." 

David Gowdey, Managing Partner of Jungle Ventures said "Sleek addresses the deeply underserved challenge of back office management for entrepreneurs and SMEs globally. Their growth across geographies, and rapid expansion is testament to the accelerated adoption of the platform and the value it brings to the ecosystem. It's a fantastic business with a tremendous growth potential, and we are incredibly excited to partner with Adrien and Julien, and support their next stages of growth by leveraging our expertise and global network"

Sleek aims to use proceeds from the funding round to catalyse its global growth, particularly in Europe, where it has announced the acquisition of Ltd Companies, a market leader in UK incorporation management that has incorporated more than 450,000 companies since its foundation in 2005. Sleek will add its products and technology stack to the existing Fresh Startups offering to build a holistic SME operating system for UK-based entrepreneurs and businesses. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

About Sleek

Sleek was founded in Singapore in May 2017 by French entrepreneurs Julien Labruyere and Adrien Barthel, who grew frustrated at the pedestrian speed of traditional corporate secretaries and accounting firms and their paperwork. Through its paperless and digital platform led by a team of dedicated professionals, Sleek is a one-stop-shop for registering a business in Singapore or Hong Kong. This includes handling everything from incorporation, government, accounting and taxes, to visas and regulatory compliance. Today, Sleek helps more than 3,000 startups and companies from over 6 different continents and 115 countries onboard in Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, UK, and the Philippines.

Find out more at www.sleek.com, or follow us on LinkedIn

#Sleek

About White Star Capital

White Star Capital is a global multi-stage technology investment platform that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs building ambitious, international businesses. Operating out of Guernsey, New York, Paris, London, Montreal, Toronto, Singapore, and Hong Kong, our presence, perspective, and people enable us to partner closely with our founders to help them scale internationally from Series A onwards.

Find out more about how we venture beyond at www.whitestarcapital.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.

About Jungle Ventures

Jungle Ventures is a Singapore based venture capital firm focussed on early to growth-stage companies in Southeast Asia and India, with a focus on building long lasting businesses. Jungle partners with the region's most exciting founders to build high growth, capital-efficient technology businesses, and supports their growth from seed to unicorn, and IPO stage. Our portfolio includes regional and global category leaders like Kredivo, Moglix, Pomelo, Livspace, Builder.ai, Sociolla and more.

Find out more at www.jungle.vc/, or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, or Instagram.