PvX pushes revenue-based lending for consumer apps

AI-driven competition is expected to increase demand for marketing capital.

PvX Capital Pte. Ltd. is promoting revenue-based lending as an alternative to equity financing for consumer app companies, saying the model could help developers fund customer acquisition without giving up ownership.

“The big bottleneck is educating the market, teaching people about this instrument, and spreading the word,” Joe Wadakethalakal, co-founder and CEO at PvX Capital, told Asian Banking & Finance. “That’s the main focus.”

He said many founders continue to rely on equity because they are unfamiliar with other ways to finance marketing.

One borrower, Cyprus-based mobile game publisher Malpa Games, secured a $20m credit facility that allowed it to finance as much as 80% of user acquisition spending over 12 months.

Unlike conventional loans, the facility does not require equity, intellectual property, or other assets as collateral. Instead, repayments are tied to the revenue generated by users acquired through the financed marketing campaigns.

PvX said Malpa used the facility over five months to fund most of its marketing spending, preserving more than $3m in cash whilst increasing marketing expenditure by 81% since January 2025. The company also used the freed-up capital to publish three more game titles.

Wadakethalakal said artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to accelerate the creation of consumer apps, making customer acquisition increasingly competitive.

“With artificial intelligence (AI), the number of new consumer app companies that are going to be created is going to increase massively... because now anyone can create a consumer app,” he said via Zoom.

Digital Applied LLC estimated global mobile advertising spending will exceed $430b in 2026, whilst the average global cost per app installation reached $3.60 in the first quarter.

PvX had financed just over 50 companies as of end-June, most of them in Europe, the Middle East, Hong Kong, Australia, and the US. Although headquartered in Singapore, it has yet to lend to a Southeast Asian company.

Wadakethalakal said few regional consumer app companies meet the firm's minimum requirements of about $200,000 to $300,000 in monthly marketing spending and at least six months of operating data.

Grand View Research forecasts the global mobile app market will grow to $885.3b by 2033 from $322.6b in 2026, with the Asia-Pacific region remaining the biggest market.

Despite its growth ambitions, Wadakethalakal said maintaining underwriting discipline remains more important than expanding lending volumes.

“If that means we grow slower, so be it," he said. "The most important thing for us is maintaining that underwriting discipline and making sure we maintain the track record.”