Managing finance, simply

Rouvin and Mohan: The aim is to simplifying finance so businesses can focus on growing. Photos: Swipey

ALTHOUGH often overlooked, the finance function is the pulse and the growth engine of every business. It’s vital to the running of any enterprise and can propel or hamper business growth.

Yet, for many small and medium enterprises (SMEs) today, managing the various financial aspects of a business is a tedious, complex and inefficient process.

Swipey, a digital financial operations platform, aims to address these challenges with its all-in-one platform. Simplifying payment and expense management for businesses, its services include a user-friendly expense management dashboard, virtual and physical corporate Visa cards, and automated invoice and bill payments.

“Our finance operating platform goes beyond just payments, extending to everything that happens from the moment you receive an invoice, to approvals and payment confirmations, to entry into the accounting system,” says Kalyana Mohan Teagarajan, Swipey’s co-founder and CEO.

“About 90% of what goes on in business finance happens before and after payment. That’s where we wanted to step in and innovate.”

Swipey was founded by Mohan and chief financial officer (CFO) Rouvin Thiruchelvam, after observing significant pain points in the financial management of modern businesses.

Mohan, an engineer by training, worked for over 10 years at General Electric (GE) in the UK, first within the finance function and then in an operational role leading digital transformation at GE Oil & Gas.

After returning to Malaysia, he began using his experience and skills to help friends and family further their businesses.

“The businesses varied from traditional to new, but the problem statement was always the same. They all asked, ‘Can you help me grow?’,” he recalls.

Meanwhile, Rouvin, who also had his career start in the finance side at GE, spent seven years working in private equity and investments at CIMB.

“During this time I was looking at SMEs that had reached a stage where they were seeking to supercharge their growth before going for listing,” he says.

“Out of 100, around 98 wouldn’t be investable, because they didn’t have the systems, tools and processes to transition from a mom-and-pop shop to an institutional business.”

When he later went into starting up his own business ventures, he found himself encountering the same difficulties.

Their experiences served as the impetus to create a solution that would alleviate business owners of the burdens associated with financial management.

“There’s so much fear surrounding money being lost or misspent, accounting errors, and auditing, that it holds you back because you can’t take your eyes off of this side of the business,” Mohan says.

“We thought that if we could take away the headache of finance, it would free them up so much more so they can focus on growing,” he adds.

With the idea of reimagining finance operations as a unified platform that was accessible and easy-to-use for smaller businesses, Swipey was born.

“For us, it was a blue ocean. No one else was serving this area,” Mohan notes.

Part of developing the solution involved interviewing 130 businesses in Malaysia on their payment processes and financial operations.

“We found that 93% of SMEs did not qualify or had given up on applying for a corporate card from banks,” he says.

As a result, businesses resort to using personal credit cards, which then poses problems like the added task of separating personal and business spending, lack of clarity on true profit and loss, and risks of fraud.

With Swipey, businesses can hold multiple cards for different spending purposes and departments, thereby segregating their risks.

“You can close your books multiple times faster as each card goes to a specific ledger. If one of the cards does get compromised, you can freeze it and issue a new one within seconds,” Mohan adds.

Through automated expense tracking and reporting, budget control settings, and dedicated payment mechanisms, the tech-powered platform can help reduce errors and delays, increasing productivity and turnaround.

“Fixing all these operational issues ultimately means a more successful SME,” he says. “Not only are they growing their revenue, they have a greater chance of accessing funding because their books are cleaner.”

Operating with a team of only 15, Swipey currently serves over 2,000 businesses in the country.

“Our mindset has very much been focused on product-led growth,” Rouvin reflects.

“The approach is to build the product, communicate its value, let people experience it, and then walk them through the journey of digitising and automating the office of a CFO.”

The company is now eager to tackle further gaps in businesses’ finance operations. This includes expanding beyond expense-related matters and creating solutions for receivables, customer invoicing, and payment collection.

Swipey is also looking to address the local market’s sizeable funding gap by facilitating lending for businesses.

“Our advantage is that we are so ingrained into the day-to-day finances of businesses, from online payments to salary payments, so we have high quality, real-time data,” says Mohan.

“This allows us to work with partners to underwrite and support them with additional working capital using our system and data.”

As the company strives to innovate and modernise financial management, the founders believe there is also significant potential for transforming the role of finance teams.

With increasing digitisation of manual processes, finance staff can be empowered to take on more meaningful work and play an active part in business decisions.

“Because they are not bogged down by manual work, they will have the opportunity to upskill to a strategic finance function, becoming business partners,” Rouvin says.

“That is going to be a game changer, and Swipey will serve to help them in that journey.”