Singapore-based anti-money-laundering startup Tookitaki announced on Monday that it has raised an additional SGD 15.9 million (USD 11.7 million) in funding from global investors, bringing the total size of Series A investment to SGD 26.2 million (USD 19.2 million).
Founded by Abhishek Chatterjee, its current CEO, in 2014, the global technology company’s mission statement states that it helps financial institutions stay ‘regulator ready’ through AI-powered technology and distributed data-parallel architecture.
“Our vision has always been to revolutionise regulatory compliance and ensure sustainable compliance programmes for every financial institution in the world. Backed by our strategic global investors, we are better placed to deliver on this vision by growing our presence significantly across the US and the Asia-Pacific region,” Chatterjee stated.
This round was co-led by Viola Fintech, a USD 120 million cross-stage VC fund, and SIG Asia Investment, followed by Nomura Holdings through its venture capital arm Nomura Incubation Investment Limited Partnership, joined by the company’s existing investors including Illuminate Financial, Jungle Ventures and SEEDs Capital Pte Ltd, an investment arm of the Singapore government.
Under the terms of the funding agreement, Tomer Michaeli, General Partner at Viola Fintech will join Tookitaki’s Board of Directors.
“We found Tookitaki’s approach to be very unique. Its pragmatic way of creating an overlay on top of legacy AML systems helps increase accuracy and significantly lower operating costs for financial institutions,” Michaeli said.
The company has appointed Subhas Samanta, former Director at LinkedIn, as Vice President of Research and Development aggressively expand its R&D team in Singapore and Bangalore, India.
The extended Series A round will allow Tookitaki to enhance its product offerings and drive technological innovation as well as spur business recruitment across its global offices in Singapore, India, and the US, a company statement said.
Tookitaki was formed from a need to provide sustainable compliance programs in the banking and financial services industry (BFS), using technology that is powered by machine learning and distributed data-parallel architecture.
The company has recently filed a patent on explainable AI and machine learning framework and models to bring greater transparency into the validation process.
