Singapore fintech Osome raises US$3m to expand to UK, Hong Kong

DIGITAL business services startup Osome on Tuesday said it has raised US$3 million from venture capital firms led by existing investor Berlin-based Target Global, with participation from Phystech Venture and AdFirst.

The latest round follows a US$2 million investment secured in December last year.

The Singapore-based fintech offers a cloud-based virtual assistant that helps entrepreneurs manage their corporate paperwork and reporting. Its artificial intelligence-powered platform, backed by human experts, assists in accounting, taxation, company formation and report filing.

Founded in early 2018, Osome said it now has "thousands" of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) clients in Singapore. It has also worked with OCBC Bank to co-design a service for Singapore businesses to register and open a business account within a day.

With the fresh capital, the startup will launch in Hong Kong and the UK, said Osome founder and chief executive Victor Lysenko. It has already started testing these two new markets.

Osome is also enrolled in the SG:D Spark Programme by the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA), which simplifies access to grants and allows Osome to pitch to reference customers.

Edwin Low, IMDA director of enterprise growth acceleration, said that Osome's solution will "significantly increase" the efficiency of SMEs' management of laborious corporate and accounting matters.