In a change of roles, xaltasa fintech startup from Singapore founded 18 months ago, has acquired contour network, a digital trading platform created by eight major banks including HSBC, Standard Chartered and BNP. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition price was in the millions and was made up of cash and stock.
Backed by Accel and Citi Ventures, Xalts enables financial institutions to build and manage blockchain-based applications. Contour was started in 2017 by a consortium of eight banks to digitize commerce and is currently used by 22 banks and more than 100 global companies, including Tata Group, Rio Tinto and SAIC.
Xalts was founded in 2022 by Ashutosh Goel and Supreet Kaur, who previously held senior executive positions at HSBC and Meta, respectively. Kaur tells TechCrunch that they launched Instead, they are managed by different teams both inside and outside their organizations. For example, if a commercial bank provides a loan to a corporation, different teams work on KYC, onboarding, risk, compliance, and issuance.
If a financial institution decides to create applications to make the process more efficient, it typically asks its IT teams or third-party software service providers, but that can cost a lot of money and take months. The goal of Xalts is to allow companies to create their own applications and share them not only within their organization, but also outside of it.
Xalts founders Supreet Kaur and Ashutosh Goel
The startup plans to turn Contour into a railway connecting banks, corporations and other institutions, and integrate it with the Xalts platform. Kaur says this will allow Xalts customers to not only build applications, but also connect to each other in a secure and compatible way. First, it will focus on enabling banks and logistics companies to offer their customers integrated trade and supply chain applications on a single platform.
Global trade is expected will reach 30 trillion dollars in 2030, but traders still have to deal with a lot of friction. Transactions are often time-consuming as everyone involved, including importers, exporters, banks, logistics companies and customs, exchange information in a largely manual process.
Kaur says Xalts' biggest growth area is enabling banks to be more connected to corporate customers and offering B2B financial solutions, including trade finance and loans. One example he gives is that of a global fast fashion conglomerate with suppliers in Vietnam and Bangladesh. Even if the conglomerate bank is not present in those countries, it can help suppliers access financing through a one-click solution in their internal supplier portfolio by using Xalts to create integrated applications.