The Indonesia-based fitness app raises an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Gobi Agung

Fitness studio and classes booking startup DOOgether announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount in a seed funding round led by Gobi Agung, as told by DealStreetAsia. Joining in the round are Everhaus, Prasetia Dwidharma, and Cana Asia.

DOOgether said that it plans to use the fresh capital to expand DOOgether’s merchant partnership, work further on its mobile app, and add more professional talents into its growing team.

“We plan to extend our merchant partner to at least 500 sports facilities and accommodate other healthy lifestyle choices into our platform to serve the healthy lifestyle community in Indonesia,” said DOOgether CEO Fauzan Gani.

DOOgether was founded in 2016, and it claims to have partnered with over 200 fitness centre and/or sports facilities with its ‘Exercise Without Limit’ mission across Greater Jakarta, Bandung, and Bali per March 2019. DOOgether allows its consumer to book fitness centre or any other sports facilities within 30 seconds via apps.

Back in its early operation, the company received angel investments by MAHAKA Group Chairman Erick Thohir. Last year, Digiasia Bios founder Alexander Rusli also invested in the company.

Also Read: Grab introduces 4 new services to its core app in Singapore

Its newest lead investor, Gobi Agung, is an Indonesia-focussed fund launched by Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur-based venture capital firm Gobi Partners in 2018. It brought in US$10-million fund to target early-stage startups in Indonesia.

Gobi Agung said it plans to invest up to US$1 million per deal.

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Image Credit: DOOgether

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The Vietnamese blockchain-based startup receives the funding from the MoU signed by SBI Holdings and fellow Vietnamese tech firm FPT Corporation

Blockchain-based startup Utop has received backing from Vietnamese tech firm FPT Corporation and Japanese financial services company SBI Holdings, as reported by TokenPost. Just last week, both companies signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to invest US$3 million into Utop.

Not only an investor, FPT also provided its enterprise blockchain platform akaChain to be implemented in Utop’s platform.

Utop aims to bridge the loyalty point program among merchants by making it easy for users to collect and redeem loyalty points at retailers within the same network.

Utop believes this approach will help small businesses to grow faster because they are enabled to link their reward programs with each other to reduce costs and ensure data security, as well as enhances customer experiences

“This platform has been tested in FPT’s minimum viable ecosystem as well as sectors such as retail, insurance, and finance since last December,” explained Pham Nguyen Vu, co-founder, and director of Utop.

Also Read: Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte to approve incentives for startups

FPT claims that its akaChain has been implemented in many countries and across various sectors from finance, insurance, retail, to supply chain.
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Also, Tesla made robotaxis and Google’s sexual harassment scandals grow ever more scandalous by the day

AT&T’s 5G marketing madness is confusing the hell out of customers — [The Verge]

Fresh out of the courtroom with Sprint over a false advertising lawsuit, AT&T’s current marketing strategy is proving to be a huge disaster despite attaining real 5G faster than its US competitors. And the worse part is, the company refuses to ditch its meaningless, confusing, 5G logo.

According to The Verge, although AT&T has stated plainly that 5G Evolution isn’t actually 5G, many of its customers are still misled into believing they’re accessing a next-generation network through pure obfuscation.

However, all the ‘hype’ really amounts to is an underachieving rebranded of its LTE network technology.

Tesla claims a plan to launch a fleet of robotaxis next year — [TechCrunch]

In 2020, Tesla, adopting a similar business model to Uber or Airbnb, plans to launch its first robotaxi as part of a broader vision for an autonomous ride-sharing network.

This new move is specially engineered for places where there aren’t enough people to share their cars. All new Tesla vehicles are now produced with custom self-driving computer chips that Elon Musk claims to be the “best in the world”.

Techcrunch foresees recharging the Tesla robotaxis to be one of the few challenges that the company will face as it prepares to deploy.

Riots and retrenchment: Google’s sexual harassment protesters claim that their positions were threatened — [Cnet]

Sources from Cnet revealed today that the two Google employees who were in charge of starting a worldwide walkout from the company last November now claim that the search giant company has changed their positions ‘dramatically’.

Wired reports that Meredith Whittaker, the head of Google’s Open Research, and Claire Stapleton, a marketing manager at YouTube, were told that their roles would change several months after the walkout. More than 20,000 full-time workers and contractors have been affected while participating in the walkout.

Grab introduces 4 new services to its core app in Singapore — [e27]

Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab today announced the introduction of four new services to its core app in Singapore.

The services include:

1. Hotels for bookings — where users to book hotels and other accommodation from Agoda directly on Grab’s app.
2. Videos for on-demand video streaming — users to access online video content through its app, as the result of its partnership with HOOQ.
3. Tickets for ticket purchases, starting with movie tickets — Grab’s partnership with BookmyShow will offer movie tickets search, book, and comparison tools.
4. Trip Planner for integrated public transport service — for users to plan their transit journey with real-time public transportation information and end-to-end directions.

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Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

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At Echelon, earn how to build a UX that will significantly help your company’s success

Already excited for Echelon? Buy your tickets here! Enter promo code ECHELONFUTURE for free tickets!

Shopback, the Singaporean cashback company, has found enough success over the past couple of years that it is now one of the darling startups in the city-state.

The company incentivises people to shop at certain businesses by providing them with a percentage of cashback on their purchases. For example, when people are travelling, they can usually get a few bucks in cash by using Expedia.

Samantha Soh is a Co-founder of the company and is the woman behind the startup’s UX. She has a long history working in design, having previously worked at Orient Design and Zalora as a graphic designer.

At Echelon Asia Summit 2019, Soh will participate in a fireside chat and break down why UX has been core to the company’s success and how other startups can learn from the experience.

Also Read: This Echelon Asia Summit 2019 ticket giveaway might bring you closer to your next funding round

In an article for e27, Soh provided some excellent advice for designers. Here are some of the basics:

Start in low-fidelity: This helps the team focus on usability and customer experience. Designers love, well, design, so sometimes teams can get hung up in the aesthetics of a project without realising it is confusing to use. Eliminate the design portion first, make sure the user experience is awesome, then add the glam.

Build a pattern library: This will save the team a lot of pain. It is inevitable that certain assets will be used over and over again. Put these designs in a database that can be drag/dropped when needed.

McDonald’s testing: Wildly effective, this requires a bit of bravery. Essentially, it just means heading to the local McDonald’s and getting random people to test the product. The best thing about a place like McDonald’s is that it attracts basically everyone. Companies can test their product on tech-savvy teenagers and then two minutes later give it to an auntie who only uses her phone to make calls.

Usability interview: Call you user (or, if you are lucky, have a face-to-face chat) and really get into the pros and cons of a product. This usually results in qualitative feedback that can lead to direct action from the team.

Building the actual product is like step 25: It is impossible to overstate the amount of preparation that goes into the final product. Whether it is wireframes, user journey flows and engineer specs, the building part is often the last (and easiest) step. Don’t just jump into building, it’s a guaranteed disaster.

Already excited for Echelon? Buy your tickets here! Enter promo code ECHELONFUTURE for free tickets!

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Photo by UX Store on Unsplash

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The tumultuous bike-sharing startup reportedly had lost its operating licence in Singapore

Due to failure in providing justification on why its licence shouldn’t be revoked, Chinese bike-sharing service ofo has been confirmed to lose its licence to operate in Singapore.

According to The Strait Times, the company’s licence had been terminated for review since February with failures such as failing to implement a QR code-based parking system that would allow its bicycles to be parked only within specific areas.

Since ofo responded to LTA that it was in the “advanced stages of negotiation” to partner another party to resume operations and fulfill the conditions, LTA extended the time for the company until March 28 to meet these requirements.

It received a notice of intention to cancel its licence from the Land Transport Authority (LTA) on April 3.

In the notice, ofo was given up to 14 days to make written representations regarding the decision.
But despite the deadline extension, ofo still failed to comply with regulations.

Also Read: DOOgether secures seed funding to expand fitness merchant partnership

The authority released an official statement on Monday, saying: “As ofo has not provided LTA with sufficient justifications on why its licence should not be canceled, LTA canceled ofo’s bicycle-sharing operating licence on 22 April.

“ofo will not be able to offer dockless bicycle-sharing services in public places in Singapore without this licence.”

Operators without licence can be subjected to jail term of up to six months and/or a fine of up to US$10,000 with a further fine of US$500 for each day violated after conviction.

ofo first came to Singapore in early 2017 and grew to have more than 90,000 fleet. In March 2018, Alibaba invested US$866 million (S$1.17 billion) in the company.

However, towards the end of last year, ofo reportedly experienced cashflow problems to the point that it considered disbanding.

Also Read: Vietnam blockchain startup Utop raises US$3M from two large corporates

Mobike, Anywheel, SG Bike, and industry newcomer Moov Technology are now the remaining bike-sharing operators in Singapore, with Meituan Dianping-owned Mobike soon to pull out of Singapore market to “rationalise” operations in Southeast Asia.
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