IMAGE: Riverchain
In an industry where physical structures soar but financial infrastructure remains structurally weak, Riverchain is positioning itself as a catalyst for transformation. Founded at the convergence of fintech, supply chain expertise and the built environment, the Hong Kong-based company is addressing a long ignored but critical problem: the working capital crisis choking subcontractors across Asia’s construction ecosystem.
Construction contributes up to 13 per cent of global GDP and is booming across Southeast Asia, from megaprojects in Indonesia’s Nusantara capital city to Malaysia’s industrial reshoring and Singapore’s infrastructure expansion. Yet, behind the cranes and concrete lies an acute liquidity paradox: while developers and major contractors enjoy financing access and favourable credit terms, the subcontractors, the ones that actually build, struggle to survive.
Ben Wong, founder and CEO of Riverchain, understands that paradox intimately. Speaking to Deeptech Times at the Singapore FinTech Festival 2025, Wong described how his decade in supply chain management and years in property development revealed systemic inefficiencies that continued to compound across projects, countries and cycles.
“We saw that there was a huge working capital gap in construction,” Wong shared. “In Hong Kong alone, we estimated about US$7 billion stuck in the supply chain annually, but no one was really tackling that opportunity. Developers and general contractors are well funded but subcontractors that are mostly SMEs, are largely underserved. That’s where the pressure really is.”
Liquidity bottleneck that holds projects hostage
A typical commercial or infrastructure project spans three to five years and involves hundreds of subcontractors, ranging from mechanical and electrical specialists to façade engineers, steelworkers, safety system installers and finishing contractors. These companies are usually lean, asset-light SMEs operating on thin margins. Once they win a contract, their manpower requirements can balloon dramatically from five employees to 100 almost overnight.
Cash flow becomes existential. When subcontractors deliver work, they may wait 30 days, 90 days, or sometimes up to six months, for payment. Banks rarely extend credit without heavy collateral. Founders are routinely forced to take personal loans at high interest rates simply to pay salaries or procure materials.
And when subcontractors fail, projects stall. Delays cascade. Costs escalate.
Riverchain’s solution is to break that liquidity deadlock by underwriting subcontractor performance and offering rapid, data-driven financing products such as invoice and receivable financing.
To do this, the company has built a powerful data engine that ingests structured and unstructured data across three core categories: project-level data (developers, main contractors, contract structures, historical dynamics), performance data (subcontractor reliability, timelines, work quality, legacy track record) and payment behaviour data (real-time supply chain payment history versus contractual commitments).
“We sit on a ton of construction data,” Wong noted. “We feed it into our underwriting engine, and from there we can recommend the right financing product and rate. That’s how we deliver fast turnaround, and we can deploy capital in as fast as 24 hours.”
To date, Riverchain has deployed more than US$100 million across 115 projects in Hong Kong, supporting hundreds of subcontractors. The company already has its first deals validated in Singapore and has now set its sights on scaling across Southeast Asia, beginning with Malaysia and Thailand.
Opportunities and fragmentation and APAC
APAC’s construction growth is accelerating, but markets vary widely in maturity and data transparency.
“What works in Hong Kong won’t necessarily work in Singapore,” Wong stressed. “Every market has its own dynamics: language, licensing, access to projects, banking infrastructure. But the need is consistent across the region: subcontractors remain severely underserved.”
While Singapore offers a favourable regulatory and banking framework, markets like Indonesia present both immense opportunity and complexity. Fragmented data, dispersed stakeholders, and inconsistent documentation make underwriting harder, but partnerships can unlock the required visibility.
Riverchain is actively building local advisory networks to accelerate market knowledge and access, while expanding headcount conservatively across origination teams in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
Tokenising real-world construction assets
While the company originally explored blockchain as a data-verification layer, the cost-benefit trade-off shifted the strategy. Instead, Riverchain now sees blockchain and tokenisation playing a transformative role in asset distribution.
“We’re looking at the opportunity to tokenise receivable assets and distribute them to investors who want the return profile,” Wong explained. “Construction receivables are a unique alternative asset class. There’s real appeal to Web3 investors.”
Two tokenisation pathways are now in focus: tokenising receivables to turn construction invoices into digital securities, and tokenising investment funds which enables new classes of limited partners, including digital asset participants.
This mirrors the explosive rise of real-world asset (RWA) tokenisation globally, where projected market volumes are expected to cross US$10 trillion by 2030. In a sector known for risk aversion, that represents a seismic shift.
AI-powered underwriting and decision intelligence
While blockchain supports future distribution models, AI is already accelerating Riverchain’s present operations.
“AI is going to play a really big part in our credit underwriting. It helps us take a lot of unstructured information, from non-digital construction documents, payment logs to performance histories, and make it structured so we can increase accuracy and productivity,” Wong said.
With AI-assisted document automation and portfolio analysis, Riverchain can unlock underwriting speed previously impossible in the sector. The combination of machine judgment and construction performance data lowers risk for financiers while increasing access for builders: precisely the kind of efficiency construction has long lacked.
Building bridges between TradFi and Web3 capital
For tokenisation-ready construction financing to work at scale, Riverchain must bridge liquidity from both traditional and Web3 sides.
“When you work with financial institutions, whether Web3 or TradFi, it’s all about size and track record. You need critical mass. We’re fortunate to be at that stage now,” he said.
Riverchain is already working with institutions such as Chong Hing Bank, Abound Capital, ARTA TechFin and Olea (Standard Chartered-backed trade finance platform). These partnerships provide credibility and market scale, which help open doors for expansion and institutional-grade capital pools.
Fuel for growth
Riverchain recently raised US$5 million in Series A funding, led by Betatron Venture Group. The capital will accelerate advancement in three priority areas, spanning technology development, market expansion, and credit and risk enhancement.
Despite its conservative reputation, the construction industry, according to Wong, is undergoing a generational transformation driven by labour shortages, productivity pressure, and a new wave of tech-native leadership.
“There’s a generational shift. Government requirements and developer pressure are forcing adoption. Robotics, AI and digital transparency tools are being adopted fast. Construction is moving quicker than people think,” he quipped.
Riverchain sits at the intersection of that shift, not as a technology vendor, but as a financial backbone. Looking ahead, it plans to scale traction locally and across the region. With AI-enhanced underwriting, RWA tokenisation and institutional capital partnerships, the company is constructing something more ambitious than financing tools: a new financial operating system for the built world.
If successful, Riverchain won’t just fund buildings. It will rewrite the economic foundations of how infrastructure gets built across APAC. And in the world’s fastest-urbanising region, that impact could be monumental.
