Dhruv Arora's mother gave him the advice that millions of Indian parents give: keep your money in the bank. He did. Then he realised, in his own words to Fortune, that the savings did absolutely nothing.
That quiet discovery sits at the centre of Syfe. Arora grew up in India and later became part of the early team at Grofers, the grocery delivery startup now known as Blinkit, where he worked on product and growth.
Arora has said the pandemic acted as a catalyst for a shift in investor behaviour.
In 2008, soon after the global financial crisis, he joined UBS as an investment banker in Hong Kong. There he noticed something that bothered him. Doctors, lawyers and consultants, people who were very good at their own work, were building wealth without knowing how to manage it. Money sat idle. His mother's rule, scaled up to a professional class.
He started Syfe in Singapore, incorporated in 2017 and launched to the public in July 2019. The plan was a robo-adviser with a human touch: portfolios built from low-cost funds, with advisers who used to work at big banks on hand for a conversation. Only a few months later Covid hit and markets lurched. Arora has said the pandemic acted as a catalyst for a shift in investor behaviour.
What nobody expected was that fear would send savers toward investing rather than away from it. Valar Ventures, Peter Thiel's firm, led an US$18.6 million round in September 2020 and kept backing Syfe through later rounds. A US$27 million Series C1 followed in August 2024, and a second tranche in 2025 brought the Series C to a reported US$80 million.
The company has kept widening its reach. It operates in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia, and in April 2025 it bought the Australian broker Selfwealth for A$65 million. Syfe reports about US$10 billion in client assets as of 2025 and told Fortune it reached profitability in the fourth quarter of 2025.
The price of this kind of business is patience. Fees are small, and a customer must trust a stranger with savings. Competing with bank-owned platforms means being clearer, not louder.
Arora's idea began as a family rule he stopped following. Some of the best products begin as a quiet disagreement with advice you were given by someone who loved you.