EDBI invests in e-signature firm DocuSign

Singapore

THE investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, EDBI, has joined two other parties in investing in the series E round of funding of DocuSign, a company that provides electronic-signature technology and digital transaction management (DTM) services.

Even before the trio's investments, the US-based DocuSign had raised US$115 million from Series E - taking the total raised from all its series to around US$230 million.

Apart from EDBI, the other two parties are Samsung Ventures and BBVA Ventures, the corporate venture arm of BBVA Group. BBVA Group is a financial-services company with a strong presence in Spain, Mexico and other Spanish-speaking countries.

The three have now joined the DocuSign Global Trust Network as strategic investors, along with Visa, Telstra Ventures, the salesforce.com Salesforce1 Fund, Mitsui & Co (USA), NTT Finance and Recruit Holding.

As a strategic investor, EDBI will leverage its broad network of resources and experience to enable DocuSign's organic growth in Singapore and across Asia. It is expected that DocuSign's technology will help in Singapore's push into cloud services and online financial services.

A DocuSign spokesman said the company's technology enables consumers and businesses go fully digital "with the easiest, fastest, most secure global network for sending, signing, tracking and retaining documents to complete transactions". He added that, with more financial affairs being handled online nowadays, consumers and businesses trust DocuSign because its DTM platform is the "safest and most reliable in the industry with bank-grade security and enterprise-class reliability built in".

DocuSign also offers a secure cloud platform with the option of on-premise encryption key management via the DocuSign Security Appliance to meet compliance requirements of businesses.

EDBI president and chief executive Chu Swee Yeok said her organisation looks for path-breaking companies seeking to change the world of business.

"We believe that DocuSign has the ability to catalyse Singapore's digitisation revolution. Through our broad network of resources, we look forward to helping it realise the tremendous potential of DTM and secure cloud platform in Singapore and Asia."

Keith Krach, the chairman and CEO of DocuSign, noted that as the leading strategic investment firm in Singapore, EDBI had a great track record of investing in successful growth companies and helping them to expand their international reach.

"As a country, Singapore has set the standard for global economic development and is admired as one of the world's top three economies for foreign trade and investment."