Qapita, a Singapore-based equity management platform, has raised twenty-six point five million dollars in a Series B funding round. The investment was led by Charles Schwab. As part of this new deal, Charles Schwab has introduced a new platform named Schwab Private Issuer Equity Services, which is powered by Qapita. This platform will allow United States startups to manage their capitalization tables, administer stock plans, and prepare for public listings.
Qapita was founded in 2019 by former banker Ravi Ravulaparthi, who serves as chief executive officer, along with Lakshman Gupta as chief operating officer and Vamsee Mohan as chief technology officer. The company helps private companies track ownership, manage employee equity, and facilitate secondary share sales. The startup serves private companies across Southeast Asia and the United States, and also provides its platform for listed firms in India to manage their equity after going public.
The idea for Qapita began as a platform to manage capitalization tables after Ravulaparthi observed during his banking career that many companies still relied on spreadsheets for this task. When the startup launched in January 2021, it expanded its platform based on early customer feedback to include an equity management tool for employee stock plans, which was initially released in beta. A competitor, Carta, later entered the Indian market but exited in 2023, which gave Qapita an opportunity to strengthen its own position.
The startup currently has about two thousand seven hundred companies using its platform. Roughly seventy percent of these companies are based in India and twenty percent are in Southeast Asia, including Singapore and Indonesia. Qapita counts around half of India’s unicorn startups among its customers. While Qapita offers free access to its platform for early-stage companies, about half of its users, or roughly one thousand four hundred firms, pay for at least one of its services.
In addition to its strong presence in India and Southeast Asia, the startup has a few users in the United States as part of its early market testing. However, this new partnership with Charles Schwab is expected to significantly expand its presence in the United States market. Ravulaparthi noted that the United States is a very large market and that there are relatively few options in the private market space for a market of that size.
Charles Schwab already handles stock plans for major public companies. This deal provides the firm with a foothold in the private company sector, allowing it to compete for startup business with other platforms like Carta, Pulley, or Morgan Stanley’s Shareworks. The new platform will provide equity management tools to automate capitalization table processes, produce reports and dashboards, and link with other financial systems. It will also integrate with Schwab’s wealth management network, enabling companies and their employees to manage stock plans and prepare for initial public offerings.
Qapita’s Series B funding round also included participation from its existing investors, Citi and MassMutual Ventures. This new capital will also help the startup enhance its platform by launching a fund administration product across multiple markets. To date, Qapita has raised more than eighty million dollars in total funding and employs three hundred people.