Kashmi Singapore back on growth path: promoters

With reference to the news item carried by Mirror Business on May 10, 2018, titled ‘Carson group private equity arm writes off Rs.52.4mn as two investments go bust’, Kashmi Singapore has sent the following response.

The Mirror Business article was based on the review in the Guardian Capital Partners PLC’S Annual Report of their investment in Kashmi Singapore for the year ending March 2018.

Guardian Capital Partners review, which was quoted in your papers, was based on Kashmi’s internal communications with shareholders up to March 2018, with respect to the challenges faced by the company in continuing operations, particularly due to the issues faced by the Mobile Wallet application, since making payments via a mobile wallet was becoming a crowded space and the technology was fast becoming redundant.

We are pleased to inform you that subsequent new developments have taken place to bring the company back on a growth path and changing the status quo on which the Guardian Capital Partners review of the company was based.

Following the said communications with shareholders, the promoters invested their own funds to revive and sustain the operations and focused investing in the digital banking product portfolio that the company had been developing. Users wanted much more from an application than simply a platform that made it easy to make payments to friends and merchants. They demanded greater access, transparency and self-management of their wealth.

To support this requirement Kashmi Singapore invested heavily to design, develop and launched the world’s first Financial Wellness Platform - the Kashmi Digital Banking Platform.

This led to renewed interest from investors, corporate shareholders, target market and partner banks in the Kashmi Digital Banking Platform. These efforts of the promoters have resulted in the company successfully engaging with undisclosed financial service providers in Australia, Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka to launch Kashmi’s Digital Banking Platform.

Australia in particular has been of particular interest as Kashmi is establishing itself in the market at a time when the country is preparing itself for Open API Banking by the beginning of 2019. The Kashmi platform will be ready to embrace this initiative following the official launch of Open API banking next year.

Through support from one of Kashmi’s larger investors from Thailand, the company is eagerly awaiting the launch of its platform in the South East Asian region. Kashmi is supported and funded by a wide group of investors including a large Thai conglomerate, VAMM Ventures Dubai, Guardian Capital Partners PLC as well as DP World (Dubai). Guardian Capital Partners though a valued investor holds a minority stake in Kashmi SG and is not involved in the day-to-day activities of the company.

Kashmi SG looks forward to revolutionize banking not only through advanced digital payments and spending but through promoting savings, budgeting, investing and financial wellness, through our Digital Wellness Platform both in Sri Lanka, regionally and internationally.