HSBC invests in Singapore’s customer intelligence and risk assessment startup

HSBC Asset Management, the investment arm of Britain's HSBC Group, has led a seed round of $4 million in Singapore's customer intelligence and risk assessment startup Bizbaz

Bizbaz is a risk management and customer intelligence company. The startup has attracted many people with experience in behavioral science, health tech, and data.

Hayk Hakobyan, CEO and co-founder of Bizbaz, said that the problem they are trying to solve is to empower and enable whether they are a financial institution, a fintech company or a B2C company that is trying to acquire or onboard new customers.

In many Asian countries, as much as 80% of the population does not have credit bureau data and scores to help banks and companies understand their financial position. Bizbaz is trying to find a solution to this issue by looking at other ways to build credit profiles.

Firms in Asia are sifting through people's social media profiles in order to find potential clients. Privacy concerns are raised by some industry practices, Hakobyan said.

Bizbaz looks at the available data attributes such as social media profiles and the apps people have installed on their phones. Hakobyan claimed that it can assess a person's personality by speaking with them for 45 seconds if they don't have a phone.

The startup can limit the instances of false positives and flag people trying to trick the system by analyzing individuals' digital footprints.

We do as much as we can technologically to potentially eliminate or diminish the chances of false positives by training our data systems before the test and by the time.

There are different templates for countries and industries. Rather than using a single offering for all its customers, it tailors its solutions by incorporating data from its clients.

Bizbaz has teams in Israel, Singapore, Vietnam and Malaysia, while its data team is in India.

It is noteworthy that HSBC invested in Bizbaz. The deal was helped by the startup's suite of solutions.

The middle class is expected to double between now and the year 2030. If it isn't faster, financial services will expand at the same rate. This market shift in the region and other developing economies is provided by our investment in Bizbaz. It will support the development of its technology, which will overcome the major obstacle of on-boarding clients with no previous financial records.

Hakobyan said that the startup is in talks to possibly deploy its solutions in parts of HSBC in Asia and Europe.

Bizbaz plans to spend 20% to 30% of its new funding on outreach and marketing, as it has already generated sales through word of mouth and references. Hakobyan said the startup wants to upgrade its Web presence, recruit more data and software developers, and spend some resources on product development.

Bizbaz made a positive month-on-month growth in revenues according to a senior advisor.

Southeast Asian venture capital firm Vynn Capital and new angel investors participated in the all-equity round. Bizbaz raised $300,000 in an angel round before the current round.