Kuala Lumpur, 21 October 2020 – Shaparency, a specialised digital platform aimed at digitising company board and shareholder operations, announced an equity crowdfunding campaign to raise up to RM10,000,000 for market expansion and acceleration. The fundraising exercise is facilitated by Ata Plus, an equity crowdfunding (ECF) platform, registered with the Securities Commission Malaysia.
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted board management and corporate governance two-fold. Faced with increased operating challenges brought on by the pandemic, the demands on management have become exponentially greater, while the global-wide move to remote working has simultaneously made it harder for leaders to execute their increasingly crucial roles. With fewer than 15% of companies globally using any type of board technology, these challenges have highlighted the largely paper-based board and shareholder management as outdated, inefficient, exhausting and costly. More than ever before, there is an increasing amount of accountability and responsibility placed on companies to ensure good company governance and an increasing realisation that companies can often spend too much time on the administrative tasks of governance.
Responding to these problems, and recognising regulatory and shareholder engagement technology as the new frontier for Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to disrupt, Ben Nowlan, a UK-based entrepreneur with over 15 years’ experience with his own ventures and as a senior executive in global firms, founded Shaparency. Shaparency provides a platform for comprehensive governance management, including the capability to digitise meetings, minutes, voting, resolutions, document signature and document management,integrated through the use of blockchain to provide immutable data security.
“We are tackling a long-standing universal issue in company governance which has direct correlation with poorer company performance, lower company valuations and lower ROI for shareholders. Our platform saves time and money for company secretaries, CEOs and boards, whilst delivering improved shareholder experience,” said Ben Nowlan,CEO of Shaparency.
With the launch of its platform in July 2020, the company has adopted a global growth strategy, executing a phased geographic rollout approach. In addition to the UK and Australia, both large and established markets with existing customer relationships, Shaparency is focusing on the key markets of
Asia for its initial rollout, with Malaysia serving as its regional hub. In the few months since its launch, Shaparency has acquired customers in 7 different markets comprising a mix of SMEs and Mid-Cap companies, corporate secretaries, trust administrators and charities. The company has secured an exclusive partnership with US-based tech firm Boardsi that matches high level executives with organizations in need of advisors or board members, to distribute the platform to over 5.3 million directors in the US. Shaparency is currently in discussions with a number of regional and global professional services firms.
“As a platform with global ambitions, Asia represents a key growth driver for Shaparency due to the region’s rapidly growing startup ecosystem supported by governments, and a disposition to embrace new technologies,” said Ben Nowlan. “We see Shaparency being valued at over USD100 million in 4 years and have ambitions that we can achieve much more than that,” added Ben.
Shaparency has launched its ECF campaign with the objective to speed up market expansion so that more people and corporates can benefit from its service offerings. The seed round will see the company through its first year targets of over 1,500 customers and USD500k revenue, positioning the company for further scale-up and supporting investment by late 2021/2022.
“We see a lot of potential in Shaparency and the solution they are bringing to tackle a universal issue in board management,” said Kyri Andreou, co-founder and director of Ata Plus. “Our equity crowdfunding platform is especially designed to help such innovative businesses thrive, letting anyone invest in the hyper growth of innovative tech startups and growing companies such as Shaparency,” Kyri added.
For more information on the company and the investment details, please visit h ttps://ata-plus.com/deals/shaparency.
