Building the Digital Infrastructure for Private Markets: Carta’s Asia Growth Journey From Singapore
Private markets drive innovation, but for years, they’ve relied on outdated systems and fragmented processes. Carta was founded on a simple but ambitious idea: ownership should be clear, accessible, and actionable for every founder, employee, and investor.
The company began by helping startups manage their cap tables before expanding into fund administration, valuations, and equity operations. Today, Carta is building the first enterprise resource planning (ERP) system for private capital: a connected platform that replaces spreadsheets, email threads, and legacy workflows with real-time visibility and structured processes.
Singapore became a natural choice for Carta’s first international expansion and regional headquarters. Its connected business environment, regulatory clarity, and deep talent pool provided a strong foundation for scaling a global ambition to modernise private market infrastructure. With the support of a mature financial ecosystem and strategic partners like EDBI, Singapore now anchors Carta’s fastest-growing region worldwide.
Why Singapore Became Carta’s Regional HQ
Before establishing its regional headquarters in Singapore, Carta was primarily U.S.-focused with limited international operations. As private capital flows became increasingly global and founder activity accelerated across the Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa (AMEA), the need for a regional base grew clear. After evaluating several markets, Singapore stood out on four fronts:
- Ease of Doing Business: predictable regulations, efficient market entry, and strong digital infrastructure
- Regulatory Stability: a well-established reputation for transparency and trust
- Connectivity: proximity to Southeast Asia, ANZ, South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa
- Quality of Life: an important draw for globally mobile talent in a competitive hiring environment
This decision aligned with regional market signals. Southeast Asia’s venture ecosystem continued to deepen, even through global volatility. Carta’s own data also highlighted structural differences: employee ownership remains significantly lower in Asian startups compared to the U.S., suggesting a need for more transparent and widely adopted equity practices.
These fundamentals, combined with Singapore’s broader “ecosystem effect”, where regulation, capital, talent, and institutional support reinforce one another, gave Carta both a launchpad and a testing ground to adapt its solutions for diverse Asian markets.
Carta’s Journey of Scaling Global Growth
Carta’s Regional Team
Carta’s early strategic decisions in Singapore set the tone for its rapid growth. Rather than starting with a small representative team, the company invested early by establishing a legal entity, setting up an office, and hiring 10–15 people from the outset. This investment in human capital paid off: the team has expanded to over 60 people and will soon move into a larger office as regional operations continue to grow.
Since 2021, Carta has:
- Grown revenue by more than 20x
- Serving over 3,000 startups and funds across the region
- Expanded into Australia & New Zealand (ANZ), the Middle East, and Africa
Note: Figures provided and validated by Carta.
Bhavik Vashi, Managing Director for Asia Pacific, Middle East, & Africa, reflects on the growth journey so far:
“Two years ago, I had the privilege of leading Carta’s regional team in Singapore with about 15 employees in a small co-working space. Now, we’re a diverse team of over 60, and soon moving into a larger office. Building this regional team has been exhilarating: the pace, ownership and collaborations we’ve cultivated reflected Singapore’s vibrant startup and VC/PE culture. More importantly, this growth isn’t about numbers, it’s about realising our mission to empower founders, employees, and investors with true ownership across Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa.”
EDBI’s Partnership Value Beyond Capital
For Carta, the partnership with EDBI has been instrumental, extending well beyond capital and accelerating its integration into Singapore’s innovation ecosystem. EDBI’s backing provided immediate credibility and trust, critical for Carta’s regional debut, and opened doors to customers, investors, and key ecosystem players. This support helped Carta establish itself quickly as a trusted partner in the region, facilitating introductions to VCs, portfolio companies, and co-investors, while also offering valuable local insight that informed product localisation and go-to-market strategy.
Carta LP/GP Summit 2025
Carta’s involvement in programmes such as the LP/GP Summit, Investor Hours, Founders’ Blueprint, and Carta Club has further strengthened ecosystem connectivity across AMEA. These initiatives create more touchpoints for founders, investors, and employees to learn, engage, and collaborate. Carta’s data-driven thought leadership—including quarterly reports, compensation benchmarks, and regulatory playbooks such as the VC Fund Performance report, State of Private Markets, and State of Startup Compensation—also provides operators and investors with insights that support better decision-making.
Reflecting on the partnership, Bhavik Vashi, Managing Director for Asia Pacific, Middle East, & Africa, shares:
“The feedback we received from EDBI on how our products fit the APAC market was incredibly valuable from the start. They helped us understand the landscape, connect with key partners and customers, and accelerate our expansion throughout the region.”
Through EDBI’s strategic support and Carta’s commitment to ecosystem engagement, the partnership continues to contribute to regional growth, innovation, and long-term impact.
The Operating System for Asia’s Private Markets
Carta’s solutions are purpose-built for Asia’s private markets, where legacy processes and fragmented regulations have long been barriers to growth. Fund CFOs, for example, are often forced to juggle messy spreadsheets, email threads, and disconnected tools — leaving them little time to act as true strategic partners to their GPs. The lack of standardised, digital infrastructure for equity and fund management leads to errors, inefficiency, and a lack of transparency. For founders, the challenge is compounded by the region’s diversity, where every market brings its own rules around compliance, employee equity, fund structures, and taxation. Meanwhile, elusive exit options mean investors and employees often struggle to unlock liquidity as startups stay private longer.
Carta’s platform supports private market ecosystems with software tailored to companies and investors, enabling efficiency in fundraising, round modelling, ESOP administration, corporate governance, and more. The Fund Dashboard, for example, gives CFOs a single login to monitor their entire portfolio, empowering them to make data-driven decisions in real time.
To address regional gaps in compliance, transparency, ownership culture, and liquidity, Carta invests in educational initiatives that include masterclasses, reports, playbooks, and community events. The company also collaborates with local firms, governments, and educational institutions to ensure its solutions are relevant and impactful. In Singapore, Carta partnered with the Global FinTech Network (GFTN) to host Investor Hours at the Singapore Fintech Festival, facilitating hundreds of one-on-one meetings between founders and investors.
Bhavik Vashi at Singapore Fintech Festival 2025
Looking Ahead: Carta’s Next Chapter and Singapore’s Ongoing Role
Carta is expanding its product suite to support a wider range of private market participants, including private equity, private credit, and emerging asset classes. Localisation remains a priority, particularly in adapting compliance features and workflows for the diverse regulatory environments across Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa.
A major step forward in Carta’s enterprise resource planning vision for private capital is the recent acquisition of Sirvatus, a leading loan administration platform for private credit funds. This addition strengthens Carta’s ability to serve the fast-growing private credit market with robust, integrated solutions. The concurrent acquisition of Accelex, now known as Carta LP Portfolio Analytics, enables Carta to better serve limited partners by directly delivering advanced portfolio analytics and data automation.
Together, these strategic milestones allow Carta to build a truly networked system of record for private capital. The platform increasingly connects every node in the ecosystem, from assets to fund managers and from fund managers to LPs, creating a seamless experience for all stakeholders.
In parallel, Carta has already established spoke offices in Abu Dhabi and Sydney, strengthening its ability to serve customers across the regions. The company is also evaluating additional markets, including Hong Kong, as it continues to expand its regional footprint. As Carta scales across the region, Singapore continues to anchor its regional strategy, serving as the base for product localisation and the hub for developing new markets.
For more insights and portfolio highlights, read our stories on SG Growth Capital.
