Siemer Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures Lead Investment in Ayannah
Manila, Philippines (19 June 2013). Ayannah, a leading provider of mobile commerce and payments services to the unbanked in emerging markets and migrants in OECD countries received additional funding from investors led by early-stage technology and new media venture firms, Los Angeles-based Siemer Ventures and Singapore- and San Francisco-based Golden Gate Ventures. US, Russia, and Philippine-based angel investors and family offices also participated in the equity financing round.
Ayannah has launched two flagship services, Sendah, which addresses the large underserved market of migrants working in rich countries and Sendah Direct which caters to the large underserved market of the unbanked in emerging markets. Sendah is initially addressing the 10 million migrant Filipinos all over the world, and with Sendah Direct, the 70 million unbanked Filipinos residing in the Philippines. Since launch, Sendah has acquired over 50,000 loyal customers all over the world, while Sendah Direct has been deployed by over 7,000 retailers and serves close to 1 million repeat customers in the Philippines. Ayannah has had over 30 months of revenue growth since the launch of commercial services.
"We are excited to be part of Ayannah's success story. Ayannah has built a very unique set of services catering to migrant workers and the unbanked in emerging markets. It has rapidly built a great network of partner merchants, distributors and retailers as well as a large and growing repeat customer base. The Ayannah network gets stronger as it gets bigger - quite remarkable." says Eric Manlunas, Managing Partner of Siemer Ventures who has joined Ayannah's Board of Directors.
"We are privileged to attract capital from Siemer Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures and other sophisticated international and Philippine-based investors. Our investors not only bring capital but will also help us expand globally in the next few quarters." says Mikko Perez, Founder and CEO of Ayannah.
"Mikko and his team have a great vision and have built a great platform to serve a large and underserved market. We are glad to be part of the Ayannah team and would like to contribute our Web 2.0 experience to help Ayannah drive user acquisition and conversions. Based on what we have seen, Ayannah is off to a great start and has a great growth trajectory." added Vinnie Lauria, Managing Director of Golden Gate Ventures.
Perez adds, "We are very excited about the traction we have generated with Sendah and Sendah Direct. It means that we are providing relevant services to our customers. We are committed to our mission to serve the migrant and the unbanked. We are constantly enhancing Sendah and Sendah Direct and will soon be launching our mobile app, Sendah Connect - all to better serve migrants and the unbanked all over the world."