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In role change, zaltsSingapore fintech startup founded 18 months ago has been acquired contour networkA digital trading platform founded by eight major banks including HSBC, Standard Chartered and BNP. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition price was in the high single millions and included cash and stock.
Backed by Accel and Citi Ventures, Zalts enables financial institutions to build and manage blockchain-based apps. Contour was launched in 2017 by a consortium of eight banks to digitalize business and is currently used by 22 banks and over 100 global businesses including Tata Group, Rio Tinto and SAIC.
Xalts was founded in 2022 by Ashutosh Goyal and Supreet Kaur, who previously held senior executive positions at HSBC and Meta respectively. Kaur told TechCrunch that she launched Exalts because large financial institutions and businesses often don’t have a single process for issuing all their financial products, such as corporate loans, letters of credit or bank guarantees. Instead, they are controlled by separate teams inside and outside their organizations. For example, if a commercial bank issues a loan to a corporation, separate teams work on KYC, onboarding, risk, compliance and issuance.
If a financial institution decides to create applications to make the process more efficient, they usually ask their own IT teams or external software service providers, but this can cost a lot of money and take several months. Zalts’ goal is to let businesses create their own apps and share them not only within their organization, but also outside.
Xalts Founders Supreet Kaur and Ashutosh Goyal
The startup plans to turn Contour into a rail connecting banks, corporations and other institutions and integrate it with Xalts’ platform. Kaur says this will allow Zalts customers to not only create apps, but also connect with each other in a secure and compliant manner. It will first focus on enabling banks and logistics companies to offer embedded trade and supply chain apps to their customers on a single platform.
global trade hopes Reach $30 trillion by 2030, but traders still have to struggle a lot. Transactions often take a lot of time because everyone involved, including importers, exporters, banks, logistics companies and customs, exchange information in a mostly manual process.
Kaur says Zalts’ biggest growth area is enabling banks to engage more with corporate customers and offer B2B finance solutions, including trade finance and lending. One example she gives is a global fast fashion group with sellers in Vietnam and Bangladesh. Even if the group’s bank is not present in those countries, it can help sellers access financing through a one-click solution on their internal seller portfolio by using Xalts to build integrated apps.
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