Global equity and fund administration platform Carta held an opening event for their new office at 16 Raffles Quay, Hong Leong Building on Feb 11.
Founded in 2012, the company was originally known as eShares before it changed its name to Carta in November 2017. Bhavik Vashi, Carta’s managing director for APAC, Middle East and Africa, told reporters at the media briefing on the same day that the name “Carta” comes from the word “cartography.” The launch event was officiated by Vashi and EDBI CEO Paul Ng.
“We are plotting the private markets like cartographers, in case you are wondering about how we got our name,” says Vashi. The company’s main product offering is an enterprise resourcing planning system for private capital participants such as investors, startup founders and employees.
Carta serves three markets: companies, funds and limited partners. Initially, Carta’s products were more geared toward companies and included tools to help them manage their capitalisation tables, issue fair market valuations and perform equity management. “It’s where a lot of our data and research comes from. Today, we have over 50,000 companies, 8,800 funds and SPVs (special purpose vehicles), and millions of equity holders that use the platform,” Vashi says.
Between 2018 to 2019, Carta expanded its products to serve funds and investors in terms of their back, middle and front office operations. Funds can use the Carta platform to manage their financials, reporting, tax valuations and investor reporting. As for investors, they can use the platform to benchmark their performance against peers and manage their exposures.
Carta’s customers come from over 160 countries and it has over US$203 billion ($256 billion) in assets under administration. The company has raised over $1.2 billion in funding from venture capitalists such as Andreessen Horowitz and Menlo Ventures.
“We are the central database for private markets,” Vashi says. “In that sense, it’s a flywheel similar to a Facebook or LinkedIn model, where the more people use Carta, the more useful it becomes for all the other people who use Carta, spinning the value of the network faster and faster.”
Carta currently employs more than 1,900 employees worldwide across 16 offices in cities such as New York, London and Sydney. It set up its regional headquarters in Singapore in 2021. Carta’s new office in Singapore will help accommodate their growing workforce which has expanded to over 60 employees over the last few years.
Singapore has been stepping up on its efforts to position itself as a port of call for deep tech startups. According to the National Research Foundation, Singapore’s deep tech startups have raised at least US$1 billion ($1.26 billion) of venture capital funding annually in the past five years. Over 500 venture capital firms and 4,500 tech startups are headquartered here.
See also: Why are fintechs riding high?
Vashi says the company has seen “pretty consistent growth” from Singapore in terms of sales. “We have seen certain regions outpace that. For example, the Middle East has grown at a rate year over year that outpaces Singapore. That market is much smaller and much earlier in its maturity curve.”
“Singapore is a bit more mature as a market and so while the growth doesn’t quite keep up with the Middle East, but we have seen Singapore grow year on year,” Vashi says. “Our business has doubled year over year in terms of sales. That's a good signal in that we can only sell if there are new startups or new funds being formed.”
