Find out their take on country’s fragmented startup market at Echelon Asia Summit 2019

Part of helping women grow into an equal part tech workforce is highlighting the people who are paving the road. This year’s Echelon Asia Summit will feature a host of women serving badassery on multiple sectors.

Among the 19 awesome women featured this year there are four names that have been making marks with their positions in various venture capital firms in Southeast Asia. From Indonesia to Thailand, here are the names you can look forward to meeting:

1. Melisa Irene, Principal, East Ventures Indonesia

Irene started off as an intern in East Ventures while finishing her final bachelor degree thesis in Accounting. She continued to work hard through the firm and is now the youngest Partner in the history of the early stage startup-focussed VC.

Irene now works with startup founders across the region to provide coordination and support for venture growth and fundraising. Irene said that her true reason for staying in the company since her intern days was simply because she wants to be in the front seat watching the digital transformation in Indonesia.

“Always betting on young founders and their nascent startups are a learning curve on its own for me,” she said. One thing that Irene always considers important when dealing with startups and funding is how to move faster without compromising the integrity and managing the expectation.

Also Read: Asia is a red hot arena for e-sports athletes. Find out why in this Echelon Asia Summit panel

Irene will appear on Echelon’s Capital stage to talk about how best to navigate Indonesia’s fragmented market and how to include more cities other than Jakarta. Irene will share the stage with Raditya Pramana, Partner of Venturra Discovery Endeavour Indonesia.

2. Shannon Kalayanamitr, Venture Partner, Gobi Partners Thailand

Shannon Kalayanamitr left the women-focussed e-commerce she founded, Orami, in 2017. With 18 years of entrepreneurial experience in building startup companies and executive committee positions under her belt, she joined GobiPartners Thailand as a Venture Partner.

As an advocate at UN Women He for She her roe at Echelon Asia Summit this year will be talking about smart capital and how to grow beyond seed stage with the right strategic investor. Her corporate and strategic development, as well as marketing and media insight, will be under the spotlight alongside Jeffrey Paine, Partner, Golden Gate Ventures and Michael Blakey, Managing Partner, Cocoon Capital,

3. Priyadarshini Majumdar, Business Strategist, AstropreneursHUB

Priyadarshini Majumdar has a history of depression and she detailed her journey in a vulnerably beautiful post. Rediscovering her love for space, she is now a part of Astropreneurs HUB, the space technology-focussed incubator that offers technical and business mentorship as well as an opportunity to validate outer space technology.

Priya, Majumdar’s nickname, serves as photonics and optics engineer, bringing her experience on the NUS Galassia CubeSatellite on board. She will be talking in the Spacetech panel in Echelon Asia Summit 2019.

4. Gail Wong, Co-Founder, Ladies Investment Club Singapore

Leaving her cushy job as a corporate finance banker with Morgan Stanley in Asia, Europe, and US, Gail Wong started coaching business leaders to define and design success on their own terms. She also champions financial zen and mastery for all women through her coaching programs and community-building initiatives.

With Ladies Investment Club (LIC), Wong joined forces with other badass, self-funded female investors on a mission to find, support, and nurture female founders on their journey to business ownership. LIC is Driven by the desire of wanting to see more women-led start-ups and early stage companies.

Wong’s panel in Echelon will focus on diversity and level playing field for women in the wake of #MeToo.

Also Read: Taking Echelon Asia Summit 2019 to a new level with 13 more exhibitors!

More highlights on women panelists to come on the road to Echelon Asia Summit 201 on May 22-23. Have you booked your ticket yet? Use the code ECHELONFUTURE to secure yours.
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The corporate venture capital arm of UMG Group has invested in the leisure marketplace company from Indonesia

Indonesia-based leisure marketplace SelenaGO announced that it has received an undisclosed amount of seed investment from UMG Idealab. The announcement was made official on April 22, in Arkadia Communal Space, Jogjakarta.

The company stated that it will use the funding for wider market penetration, starting from Jogjakarta as one of the main tourist cities in Indonesia.

SelenaGO just changed its old website handle from GOSelena to SelenaGO. It also just wrapped up on the launching event of the sites featuring its CEO Artin Wuriyani, Viva Barista, and co-founder of Filosofi Kopi, a renowned local coffee place, Handoko Hendroyono.

The city’s tourism department and tourist village management, as well as community and workshop management, were also present during the launching event.

SelenaGO has four categories of activities; Trip, Workshop, Watching (for music, movies, and other cultural events), and Hangout (dedicated for the hangout activity itself).

Also Read: Nikkei buys majority stake in DealStreetAsia

“We hope that the platform can be the main reference for the public and tourists that look for activities to fill their leisure time. We target not only individuals or businesses but also community and youth that are looking to start a leisure business or even looking to start a positive movement,” said the representative of SelenaGO.

SelenaGO’s platform seeks to allow event organisers or service providers to ditch manual ticket management. It lets users register as sellers, fill in the activity or event details, and arrange the schedule of the activities while Selena will be the event promoter.
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Apart from Uber, we also have updates from Hijabenka, Deal Street Asia, and SelenaGO

Uber aims for IPO valuation for as much as US$90B – Bloomberg

Ride-hailing giant Uber is aiming for a valuation of about US$80 billion to US$90 billion in its upcoming IPO, according to a report by Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.

The valuation is just above the company’s last private funding round of about US$76 billion.

The sources also stated that the company is planning to start marketing shares to potential investors in a price range of about US$44 to US$50 each.

Uber could aim to raise about US$8 billion to US$10 billion in the listing, though the final details of the pricing may still change.

Nikkei buys majority stake in DealStreetAsia – e27

Nikkei Inc today announced that it has acquired a majority stake in Singapore-based media startup DealStreetAsia.

The deal is facilitated by Nikkei Group, which owns the Financial Times (FT) and publishes the Asian news in English under the title Nikkei Asian Review.

DealStreetAsia reports on private equity, venture capital activity, deal flows, fundraising, and startup news across Southeast Asia and India.

With the acquisition, Nikkei said that it also strengthens Nikkei and FT’s arm of corporate news and data service scoutAsia.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, March 22: Uber, Pinterest reportedly eyeing NYSE for listing

Indonesian modest fashion e-commerce platform Hijabenka opens offline store – Press Release

Indonesian modest fashion e-commerce platform Hijabenka opened its first offline retail store at Kota Kasablanka Mall in South Jakarta.

The company aims to implement the O2O strategy as used by its sister company Berrybenka.

Hijabenka no longer offer products made by other companies on their platform since Q4 2018, and have begun producing its own fashion line. It aims to fulfill the needs of their customers by releasing a new collection every two weeks.

Indonesian leisure marketplace SelenaGO raises seed funding – e27

Indonesia-based leisure marketplace SelenaGO today announced an undisclosed seed funding round from UMG Idealab, the corporate venture capital arm of UMG Myanmar, a producer and distributor of agricultural heavy equipment.

The company stated that it will use the funding for wider market penetration, starting from Jogjakarta as one of the main tourism cities in Indonesia.

SelenaGO’s platform aims to enable event organisers or service providers to ditch manual ticket management. It lets users register as sellers, fill in the activity or event details, and arrange the schedule of the activities while SelenaGO acts as the event promoter.

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Image Credit: Dan Gold on Unsplash

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Now is the time to forge the path to a bright future

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

When Echelon was first organised, it was designed to gather a small, but enthusiastic group of people who were interested in bringing a startup culture to Singapore.

As it grew, and began to incorporate a regional focus, Echelon became a core ecosystem builder in Southeast Asia. My how things have changed.

In 2019, startup folks often talk about a saturation of events. Whether it is private companies or the government, a lot has changed in the decade since Echelon first got off the ground.

But what makes Echelon special is that we are the startup industry. We live this life day-in day-out — which means the event brings together the correct people. All of the attendees at Echelon are startup stakeholders with something to offer.

It also means we have our fingers on the pulse of the startup space, and one thing has become particularly clear: The maturation process has begun.

The days of “rah rah” ecosystem building are fading, and it is time to start to point what we have built in the correct direction. This means serious discussions about privacy, workplace culture, shady business practices and much more.

Also Read: Think you know the Marvel universe? Test your knowledge for Echelon tickets

It means looking to our neighbors in China and our faraway cohorts in America to learn from their history. One of the advantages of working in Southeast Asia is that we can learn from the mistakes made in China and the US. But rather than assuming we can learn-and-avoid, stakeholders need to see-and-prepare.

Just because a topic is not brought to the forefront in public dialogue does not mean it will not come to pass. So, if we already know Southeast Asia will need to navigate its maturation, then now is the time to begin the discussions.

At Echelon, a some of the talks that will aim to discuss these ideas are as follows:

•  Can a regional startup hold its own against international players in a crowded e-payments space?
• How much should we allow tech to aid a child’s learning journey?
• Tech disruption in the newsroom; How the media landscape will shift in the next five years
• How one e-commerce startup is reinventing itself after a layoff and rebranding
• Building a healthier workplace using data; Are there really tangible benefits?

This year, we will bring together the Southeast Asia ecosystem to discuss these an other topics at Echelon Asia Summit 2019! Sounds pretty great huh? Register here!

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

Photo by Ian Yeo on Unsplash

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OncoStem’s product CanAssist-Breast helps early-stage cancer patients plan optimum chemotherapy treatment

A close friend of Dr. Manjiri Bakre’s — a cell biology veteran with significant experience in cancer biology and drug discovery — was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer at a young age of 30. Little did the patient know how aggressive her disease was until she succumbed to death two years later.

Devastated and disappointed at the inability to save the friend’s life, Bakre was determined to use her knowledge and expertise in cell biology, with the support of new-age technologies, to bring in a change and save millions of cancer patients, globally.

“Her death made me realise that perhaps today we don’t diagnose the disease. I thought to myself that we needed to dissect the tumour biology further to understand the progression/aggressiveness of the same, which will empower the clinician and the patients to understand the disease better and plan an informed treatment,” says Bakre.

“Such tests are available in developed countries like the US and some parts of the EU, and have saved the lives of thousands of patients. But these tests are not impactful in India or Southeast Asia as they are expensive and primarily developed and validated for stage 1 patients, who are few and far between. This has discouraged majority of patients from going for such tests and they end up receiving sub-optimal treatments,” Bakre maintains.

The very urge to make a difference drove Bakre to start OnocStem Diagnostics in 2011.

Also Read: AI startup Niramai helps detect breast cancer using a zero radiation, non-contact solution; receives seed funding

“OncoStem is an effort towards this goal. We focus on developing innovative tests in personalised medicine space. The tests, performed on the patient’s individual tumour, can help clinicians plan personalised treatment for each patient based on tumor biology,” adds Bakre, who holds a PhD in Cell Biology from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

She revels that today approximately 95 per cent of early-stage (stage 1 & 2) breast cancer patients get chemotherapy to avoid cancer recurrence. Chemotherapy is expensive and only less than 15 per cent of patients with early-stage disease get the benefits of chemotherapy.

“Worse, chemotherapy has severe side effects that can substantially reduce the ‘quality of life’ of the patient. We are trying to solve this by developing innovative tests which assess the risk of cancer recurrence for early-stage cancer patients and which will help in optimum treatment planning,” she explains.

OncoStem’s first product is CanAssist-Breast, which, as the name suggests, is targeted at patients with breast cancer. It is a Machine Learning-based test that assesses the expression of metastasis-related biomarkers to predict the probability of recurrence of invasive ductal breast carcinoma. It categorises the risk of recurrence clearly as either high or low with no grey areas in between. Clinicians use this information, along with other clinical patient specific information, to devise tailor-made therapeutic strategies for each patient.

“The risk of cancer recurrence is dependent on tumor type, stage and on the biology of each patient’s tumour. CanAssist-Breast determines the proteomic fingerprint of the tumour. This information is then used by our proprietary Machine Learning-based algorithm that stratifies patients as low- or high-risk for recurrence. Patients classified as high-risk would have a greater probability of recurrence. This will help clinicians and the patients to understand the disease better and plan a suitable treatment,” she elucidates. “Adjuvant chemotherapy treatment of the patient can be customised based on the risk of recurrence.”

Based in Bangalore, OncoStem uses proteomics-based technology called Immunohistochemistry to perform the test. The technology is based on the detection of highly specific and quantitative antigen-antibody reactions that are measured specifically in tumor cells.

“Immunohistochemistry is a gold standard and time-tested technique. It is efficient, low-cost, and easy to perform across the globe. The data from immunohistochemistry, along with clinical parameters about the tumour, is then used by our proprietary Machine Learning-based statistical algorithm to stratify patient either as low-risk or high-risk for breast cancer recurrence,” she further elaborates.

Priced at INR 60,000 (under US$1,000), CanAssist-Breast can potentially save over 60,000 breast cancer patients in India alone and about one million worldwide every year from the severe side effects and unnecessary costs of chemotherapy, claims Bakre.

Aside from individual patients, CanAssist-Breast also targets clinicians, insurance companies and central and state insurance policies, who offer subsidised healthcare to people.

Currently, OncoStem is working with 10-plus hospitals and two large diagnostic chains in India, with plans to expand to Southeast Asia and the Middle East in the recent future.

OncoStem also has several reputed hospitals in the US and Europe signed up for the validation of CanAssist-Breast tests, she adds.

The medtech startup is also working on similar tests for oral, lung, and colorectal cancer. Research is underway towards identifying and characterizing novel drug targets for breast and oral cancer.

Last September, OncoStem raised US$9 million, led by Sequoia Capital with participation from existing investor Artiman Ventures. The company is now on the lookout for fresh investment to take the company to the next level.

Bakre tells e27 that OncoStem’s seven years’ journey has not been without challenges. “Working with hospitals in India to develop anything which uses clinical material has been a challenge due to lack of clear guidelines and implementation of the same. OncoStem has managed to come this far only because of a few good hospitals with visionary leaders and excellent clinicians, who believe in themselves and us. We are indeed fortunate to have found the correct clinicians and hospitals.”

Bakre, who has previously worked at Mt Sinai School of Medicine, NY, and at Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego, feels that Indian entrepreneurs have the ability to develop path-breaking healthcare solutions, but low on self confidence and are often discouraged from starting new product driven healthcare ventures due to the scarcity of funds and the country, on the whole, lacks biotechnology start-ups who have had stellar exits apart from Biocon

“It’s really unfortunate that on the one hand we complain that all the new drugs and diagnostics developed in the West are expensive, but when there is a chance to develop something in India, we do not always lend a helping hand and support to or trust the party doing it. At times, they even dissuade someone from doing so.”

 

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