This is a contributed article by Dr. Huanbo Luan, co-founder and CEO of 6Estates, one of the most hard-core AI startups in Singapore.
You can read about Dr. Luan’s reflections here.
6Estates, Singapore’s leading AI document-processing startup, has closed a USD 6.2 million Series B+ round. The funding was led by Sinarmas Group with participation from Enterprise Singapore (SEEDS Capital) and Farquhar VC.
This latest investment propels the company to advance its Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) platform in multiple industry sectors such as banking and finance, trade, shipping, logistics and insurance.
6Estates’ previous investors in its Series B funding round were GDP Venture, a member of the Djarum Group, and Central Capital Ventura, the venture arm of Bank Central Asia, Indonesia’s largest private bank.
Founded in 2014, 6Estates is an AI FinTech company that specialises in Multilingual Natural Language Processing (NLP) & Machine Reading Comprehension (MRC) technologies to help customers process unstructured documents. Its Document AI solutions automate operational processes and increase efficiency and productivity.
6Estates has helped several leading regional financial institutions in trade finance and credit assessment through its template-free Intelligent Document Processing to conduct semantic correlation analysis, which is a step above the traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology.
6Estates is also collaborating with several conglomerate groups in Southeast Asia to re-activate customers of the existing ecosystems to form a new digital ecosystem, by providing group big data platform, risk scoring, fraud detection, customer analytics as well as cross-selling capabilities.
Sinarmas Group believes that they are ready to step into the digital frontier. A statement from group, “We are delighted to be working with 6Estates to accelerate our digitalisation efforts and enable better customer experiences, more efficient credit approvals and increased cross-business opportunities. We believe that with 6Estates’ AI capabilities, our credit-scoring, fraud detection and cross-selling systems can become the benchmark of what financial institutions in Indonesia can achieve with the implementation of artificial intelligence.”
Tan Kaixin, General Manager of SEEDS Capital, said, “The recent surge in digital transformation, a result of COVID-19, has enabled 6Estates to secure several key clients and partnerships around the region in the last 12 months. 6Estates has differentiated itself through unique and innovative AI-enhanced technology solutions that enable companies to embark on big data and credit assessment projects and serve their customers better. As 6Estates continues to innovate and develop its product and technology, SEEDS Capital looks forward to further assist its expansion in the Southeast Asia region and beyond.”
6Estates has also recently bolstered its management ranks with the addition of Hendra Tan, a veteran in the financial and risk industry. Hendra was formerly a Partner at Accenture and also the CEO of PingAn OneConnect Indonesia and Vietnam. He led the group’s digital transformation with conglomerates from China, Indonesia and Vietnam. He is optimistic about the growth of AI in the region.
“Southeast Asia is the future growth engine of the world. I strongly believe that the growth of AI in the region will be remarkable and 6Estates will be a pioneer in the field. 6Estates is well equipped with cutting edge AI technology from top universities, strong talents along with the support of Sinarmas and Djarum groups and the Singapore government. We are well poised to bring improvements in AI technology and empower financial industries in the region.” Hendra said.
Dr. Luan Huanbo, Founder of 6Estates, said, “We are delighted that our innovation in the AI FinTech space is recognised by the Sinarmas Group. They have brought significant value to the company. We are excited by this funding, and we are optimistic that someone of Hendra’s calibre is leading 6Estates to greater heights in Singapore and beyond.”
