Myanmar-based micro-credit Daung Capital raises funding from Singaporean VC Majuven

Daung Capital, Myanmar-based micro-credit loan provider, announced that it has closed its Series A round a valuation of S$16.5 million (US$12 million).

Daung Capital managed to grab investment from Singapore-based venture capital firm Majuven. This is Majuven’s first investment into Myanmar.

According to the data shared in Daung Capital’s official statement, Myanmar’s rural nature, coupled with conservative family-owned banks, results in only 26 per cent of the population having a bank account while less than 1 per cent owning a credit card.

This lack of access to credit means that most Burmese are not able to get proper transport to reach better jobs, causing them to borrow from loan sharks at 10 per cent a day to buy food or medication just to get by.

Daung Capital believes that by providing micro-credit loans, it may bring the financially excluded access to credit. This approach, according to the company, would be the most effective way to fight income inequality in Myanmar. It also helps to create a sustainable business to help others out of poverty.

Also Read: Tech-enabled veggie hawker startup Kedai Sayur secures US$1.3M funding

Prior to this funding, Daung Capital was backed by Bod Tech Ventures, founded by Burmese entrepreneur Mike Than Tun Win.

“We will seek to find further partnerships to expand our footprint, extend our line of loan products with a strong emphasis on a double bottom line and disrupt the pain points of traditional lending through our technological capabilities,” the company stated.
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The true value of Artificial Intelligence based technologies are quite often understated and also overstating the same is at most times — difficult

Getting our hands in-deep with how AI is actually bringing changes in Medical Coding Automation, it is required the proper understanding of what the basics of what Medical Billing and Coding actually are.

Medical Billing, in the United States, is used primarily for reimbursement purposes since the codes allow for efficient and accurate billing. We all know what an insurance claim is, ad Medical Billing is the process of submission and follow up on these insurance claims by insurance companies for the services provided by the healthcare provider.

The Medical Coding future consists of software solutions that are able to take advantage of Artificial Intelligence, these AI powered Medical Billing Software Solutions would emerge as a new chapter for healthcare innovations. For example, AI can automate a web-based system that’s used to analyse a physician’s documentation for the treatment and recognise the relevant medical codes from its pre-defined medical coding list. The benefits of medical coding using AI is that it can automate the detection of predefined medical billings codes used by insurance companies.

The use of AI for Medical Billing Solutions, in context to Medical Coding Solutions is on similar lines. Just like software for medical coding, there are medical billing software helping the medical biller translate medical codes and turn them into a financial report all while making sure the amount of errors is minimised as much as possible.

Medical billing or coding didn’t really require automation until recent times due to the drastic increase in the growth and complexity of modern technologies, if you compare Medical Billing in 2018 and medical billing in 2019, you would notice a difference in the types of softwares used then and now.

Also Read: LINE, iPrice Group join forces to launch LINE SHOPPING in Indonesia

The medical billing projects taken up by Medical Billing companies in 2019 leans more towards the use of Computer-Assisted Coding to identify and extract data from documents and apply the appropriate codes.

The two most important job titles here are the Medical Coder and the Medical Biller. Medical coding, if we talk about it at a very basic level – is something that a coder takes, a written piece if you may, and translates it as accurately as possible into a coded format such as numeric or alphanumeric code. The piece that’s taken for translation can be something such as a prescription for medication or a doctor’s diagnosis or something else medical related. A code for each and every event is created, these events can be of injuries, diagnosis or medical procedures.

On the other hand, a medical biller more so acts as a middleman between patients, healthcare providers, and the insurance companies. Their job is on similar lines in context to the Medical Coder. The Medical Biller translates the codes given by the Medical Coder into a financial report, they make sure that the Healthcare Provider has been reimbursed appropriately for the services they’ve provided.

The above image demonstrates the creation and usage of AI in the form of softwares and NLP (Natural Language Processing), here, used in the process to generate a medical report. This is one of the solutions for medical billing known as Healthcare Billing Software Solutions. The complete process of medical billing is known better as ‘Healthcare Revenue Cycle’.

There were various challenges faced while building a medical billing system. The challenges found out to be the most problematic are:

• Complex procedures for integration

• Huge requirement of workforce

• Unprecedented workload

• Rectification of systems

• Implications of high cost

• Inaccurate billing due to inaccurate coding

Also Read: Tech-enabled veggie hawker startup Kedai Sayur secures US$1.3M funding

The proposed solutions for a medical billing system through the integration of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence can be stated as:

• Creating a customised billing module

• An advanced reporting system

• Billing CRM management system

• A payment processing system

• A system to review claims
• An automated system for clinical documentation

AI-powered healthcare revenue cycle is, overall, a future of all medical billing as it moves towards the digitalised practice. The automation and efficiency it offers are a winning combination that many more healttech providers should be able to access.

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Also Kedia Sayur, Vntrip and Duang Captial raise money

ByteDance has eyes for a mobile phone — [Financial Times]

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is said to working towards building its own smartphone, according to the Financial Times.

The phones will be pre-loaded with ByteDance properties, which also includes Toutiao.

ByteDance has one major attribute working for it — a large user base outside of China — and one factor working against it — a long history of software/consumer companies trying and failing to launch a mobile phone. Google has been relatively successful with its phone, but Amazon, Facebook and even ESPN all attempted, and failed, to tie a phone to their core product.

Currently ByteDance is valued at US$75 billion.

Kedai Sayur raises money to help connect farmers and vegetable consumers — [e27]

Indonesia-based ​Kedai Sayur, a startup that empowers vegetable hawkers utilising technology, announced that it has secured US$1.3 million seed funding led by East Ventures.

Kedai Sayur said that the investment will be used to accelerate its mission, which is to onboard more vegetable hawkers as their partner.

Kedai Sayur translates to “Vegetable Kiosk” in Indonesian and just established in late 2018, founded by former Deputy Director for Business Process and IT of Triputra Group, Adrian Hernanto, along with Ahmad Supriyadi and Rizki Novian.

It aims to provide vegetable hawkers the quality and price of fresh commodities for their selling products such as vegetables, fruit, meat, and fish, that are the daily main staples of Indonesian households.

Duang Capital raises Series A with valuation at US$12 million — [e27]

Daung Capital, Myanmar-based micro-credit loan provider, announced that it has closed its Series A round a valuation of S$16.5 million (US$12 million).

Daung Capital managed to grab investment from Singapore-based venture capital firm Majuven. This is Majuven’s first investment into Myanmar.

According to the data shared in Daung Capital’s official statement, Myanmar’s rural nature, coupled with conservative family-owned banks, results in only 26 per cent of the population having a bank account while less than 1 per cent owning a credit card.

Jubilee Capital Management injects funds into Vntrip — [DealStreetAsia]

China and Singapore VC firm Jubilee Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in VnTrip as part of the startup’s ongoing Series C round, according to DealStreetAsia.

Vntrip is an online travel startup and plays in an established sector in Southeast Asia. But, Vietnam’s online travel industry is further behind its regional neighbors.

The company is hoping to close the round in 2019.

LINE and iPrice Group launch shopping platform based in Indonesia — [e27]

LINE messaging platform today announced a partnership with iPrice Group to launch LINE SHOPPING, an online shopping experience launched for its users in Indonesia.

The feature enables users to find deals on electronics, fashion as well as health and beauty products on the LINE SHOPPING tab in the platform.

iPrice Group will be working closely with LINE to provide updates and content for the feature.

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Photo by Filip Mishevski on Unsplash

The post Today’s top tech news, May 27: Bytedance wants to launch a mobile phone appeared first on e27.

TaniGroup is the company behind agritech e-commerce platform TaniHub and P2P lending platform TaniFund

Indonesian agritech startup TaniGroup, which operates agriculture products e-commerce platform TaniHun and peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platform TaniFund, today announced a US$10 million Series A funding round led by Openspace Ventures.

Intudo Ventures, Golden Gate Ventures, and The DFS Lab, a fintech accelerator funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, also participated in the funding round.

The funding round is one of the biggest ever raised by an agritech startup in Indonesia, particularly at Series A stage.

Earlier today, Kedai Sayur announced a US$1.3 million seed funding round by East Ventures.

TaniGroup plans to use the new funding to support its nation-wide expansion and product development.

Also Read: How TaniGroup faces challenges, opportunities in Indonesian agritech industry

“In the near future, we want to invite other agriculture startups to collaborate because Indonesia’s agriculture space is still large and very traditional. There are big problems to address, a lot of farmers still in need of help, and the chance to build a stronger supply chain to deliver great produce to Indonesians at best cost,” said TaniGroup CEO and Co-Founder Ivan Arie Sustiawan in a press statement.

Established in 2016, TaniHub aims to cut the need for a middleman by helping farmers sell fresh produces directly to businesses such as restaurants through their online platform. In addition to the B2B line of their business, it also embraces the B2C segment by launching a mobile e-commerce app.

TaniHub claimed to have connected farmers with more than 400 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as over 10,000 individual customers. It has partnered with more than 25,000 local farmers across Indonesia and operates five regional offices and distribution hubs in Jakarta, Bogor (West Java), Bandung (West Java), Yogyakarta, and Surabaya (East Java).

As for TaniFund, it provides lending for cultivation projects by farmers who may otherwise lack access to formal financial institutions. By linking with TaniHub, more clarity is provided to both borrower and lender on credit standing and terms.

TaniFund is registered with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) and a member of Indonesian Fintech Lenders Association (AFPI).

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Image Credit: TaniGroup

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Brazn offers facilities solution Buildos, smart retail solution Retailr, and agriculture solution Agrios

Brazn, a Singapore-headquartered IoT startup with offices and businesses in Thailand and Malaysia, announced today it has inked an agreement with B2B investment firm Tin Men Capital to raise US$3.65 million over two seed rounds.

Tin Men is Brazn’s first and only venture investor.

The funding will primarily be used to scale its secure facilities solution Buildos and smart retail solution Retailr. A portion of the money will go into launching its agriculture solution Agrios.

Brazn was started in July 2016 by Adrian Lee (CEO), Ong Su Hui and Ariff Razak. The firm has developed an open platform, called IOT Operating System, which is able to ingest various data protocols sent from any sensor device, digest and process these real-time data into actionable alerts and visualisations, and be integrated with existing business systems like POS and ERP.

In other words, Brazn solves the problem of integration fragmentation from sensors to third-party platforms aggregating solutions into one data bus and exchanging data from the home domain, to the city domain, to the agricultural domain and car domain.

Also Read: Hard for VCs to influence the success of B2C startups beyond capital, advice: Murli Ravi of Tin Men Capital

Brazn CEO Lee said: “The retail IoT space is filled with either point solutions that work in isolation, or large implementations that are not practical in today’s fast-moving world that needs on-demand SaaS solutions. Brazn brings deep domain knowledge, Big Data and business visualisations in one platform, that holistically addresses the real-world operational needs of retailers of every size.”

“Similarly, in the facilities space, we are not just another security platform provider or a video management provider. What we focus on is a layer of data intelligence that will change the game in terms of how facilities and properties are being managed that affects not only security but also energy savings, customer convenience and full automation,” he added.

Based in Singapore, Tin Men invests in industrial technologies and automation opportunities that are coming to the fore in Southeast Asia spanning segments such as smart cities, security, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation & supply chain, retail enablement, travel & tourism, and enterprise productivity.

 

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