HOMI allows customers to customise their homes with devices that will include light switches, smart locks, and cameras through an app

HOMI SmartHome, a smart home managed services startup headquarters in Singapore, has raised a US$1.3M seed round, led by Singapore-based investors SeedPlus, AngelCentral, and Xoogler Angels.

The company, which also has an office in Hong Kong, will use the funds to scale up the smart home services side of the business with new installers and architects in Asia.

HOMI was created in 2016 by CEO Amar Dhillon, who felt that current smart home companies didn’t really address pain points for smart home customers that revolved around set up and support.

After receiving initial funding, Dhillon and team set out to create a set of devices that could be installed by a certified electrician in an Asian home in three hours or less. This would mean consumers would be able to dim their lights, turn on their air-conditioning before they get home, and have keyless access without lifting a finger on affordable payment plans, making a smart home more possible for any interested homeowners or renters.

Penetration rates for smart homes in Asia have always been low in comparison to North America and the company believes that it is due to the lack of smart home services and an unbuilt ecosystem of smart home devices for the region. HOMI plans to change this by offering customers an entire set of smart home products for the region with consultation, installation, and support for US$2 a day.

“A lot of the devices in North America don’t translate into products in Southeast Asia, that’s why we built a suite of devices for the Asian home,” said Dhillon. “The culture of Do-It-Yourself doesn’t really exist. Therefore, we decided to focus on providing smart home services to help bridge the gap for consumers interested in getting a smart home. We believe that smart home services are key to the entire experience.”

HOMI is planning to launch smart home products through affordable payment plans in the next quarter. This will allow customers to customise their homes with devices that will include light switches, smart locks, cameras, modules to control various appliances, and will all be controlled through a single integrated app.

Xoogler Angels is a business angel network gathering current Google and former Google executives based in Southeast Asia. SeedPlus is an early-stage Singaporean fund with a hands-on approach to working with portfolio companies.

 

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Aspire provides SMEs with a 60-day, interest free credit line of up to S$100,000 to solve their working capital needs

Singapore-headquartered Aspire, a neobank for small and medium businesses (SMEs) in Southeast Asia, announced today it has secured US$32.5 million in Series A round of financing.

The round was led by Singapore-based Mass-Mutual Ventures (MMV) Southeast Asia, with participation from Silicon Valley’s Arc Labs and existing investors Y Combinator, Hummingbird Ventures, and Picus Capital.

The fintech startup will use the capital to boost its financial product offering and strengthen local presence.

This round comes exactly a year after Aspire raised a seed round of US$9 million from investors, including Insignia Ventures Partners, Mark 2 Capital, and Hummingbird.

Founded in January 2018 Andrea Baronchelli (former EVP and CMO at Lazada), Aspire aims to “reinvent SME banking in Southeast Asia”. The startup is serving a new generation of internet businesses with a mobile-first digital account across Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam.

The startup’s flagship product AspireAccount, targeted at digital merchants across the region, can be opened online in just few clicks. It is free and comes with an instant credit limit for daily business expenses, a virtual B2B payment acceptance and other tools to help SMEs manage their cash flow.

Aspire claims it provides SMEs with a 60-day, interest free credit line of up to S$100,000 to solve their working capital needs. Its goal is to provide business owners with fast and simple access to the funding they need to grow.

A business credit card is next in line and it will be available and linked to each business account as early as this year.

Aspire graduated from Y Combinator Winter 2018 batch.

“We are extremely excited about the problem we are solving for this fast growing generation of digital entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia,” said Andrea Baronchelli, Founder and CEO. “We have seen 30 per cnet month on month growth since we founded the company in January 2018 and expect to open more than 100,000 business accounts by next year.”

MMV invests in seed to growth stage companies in North America, Europe, Israel and Southeast Asia. Its key areas of investment focus include fintech, insurtech, cybersecurity, data analytics, digital health and enterprise software.  Today, MMV manages US$250 million across two funds based in Boston and Singapore.

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QueQ, currently operational in Thailand and Malaysia, will soon expand the footprint to cover Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong

He was fed up with the experiences of waiting in serpentine queues at local banks in his home country Thailand. A Computer Engineer with experience building a software startup, Rungsun Joh Pomprasith thought to himself that there must be a better way for people to manage queue than to stand or wait in a line for long time.

“As I was contemplating the idea, I was tasked by a restaurant in Bangkok to develop a queuing solution. You probably know that Bangkok is a crowded city and sometimes can be more hectic than Kuala Lumpur. This is how QueQ happened,” he told e27.

Launched in September 2015, QueQ is a mobile app (available on iOS and Android) that enables customers to queue for their spot in a dining or retail outlet with the touch of a button, from the comfort of their own home. Each outlet has the option to customise its distance access to their queuing tickets, from as near as 100 metres up to tens of kilometres ahead. The queue length will be updated via the app in real time and once coming close to the user’s queue, an alert is automatically sent, informing the user to return to the outlet on time.

“QueQ helps you to line up virtually at your favourite restaurant or beverage outlet. It is also a lifestyle platform that addresses the pain points of wasted time when people have to stand around aimlessly waiting for their order, even after joining a long queue to order and pay,” Pomprasith (CEO) explained.

Also Read: This online marketplace aims to quash the stigma that art is an underpaid job

“With QueQ, you can pre-order through your smartphone, make payment, and then spend your time doing other things that matter till your boba tea is ready to be collected from your favourite outlet. QueQ is the perfect solution for bubble/boba tea fans,” he added.

At the moment, QueQ targets F&B, hospitals and clinics, banks, insurance service centres, utilities and public service points, and events.

The startup recently secured US$2.8 million in Series A round of  funding from local startup investor True Incube and South Korea’s Bon Angels Venture Partner. Along with this, QueQ also announced its exposition to Malaysia, where it has just launched its key partner programme, with restaurants such as K Fry Urban Korean chain, Bar-B-Q Plaza, Kurin, Ho Kow Hainam Kopitiam, Yut Kee Restaurant, Dotty’s Pastries and Coffee.

“Malaysia was chosen as it shares many similarities with Thailand — both Thais and Malaysians love food and in-trend beverages, retail shopping and simply spending time in malls partly because they want to seek refuge from the extremely hot, humid weather and unpredictable rain. The pain point of queuing for banking services and hospitals as well as clinics are pretty much a dreaded way of life for Malaysians,” he said.

In Thailand alone, there are over 600 restaurant partners, CIMB bank, 22 hospitals and large carnivals and sales events, where crowd is in excess of 10,000.

Also Read: What is Impact Investing?

“We see massive opportunity in driving Thailand’s and Malaysia’s urban community forward, and bridging the time-gap (by being able to do other more useful things rather than standing/waiting in a line) between wanting a product/ service and getting it. We started out helping our urban communities in their trips to restaurants, and have now included trips to the hospital, bank and more. We are helping to change lifestyles,” he added.

The company now plans to expand footprints to cover three more markets in APAC — Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong.

Commenting on the business model, Prompasith said the app is free for customers to download but merchant partners pay a small monthly fee. “In turn, merchants are able to cut operational costs by partly automating their operations. We also provide a higher level of customer experience and point of differentiation for their brand.”

QueQ is back in the market with plans to raise fresh funding round to fuel growth. “Managing costs and adequate financing are key. We are geared towards a strong growth trajectory over the next three years,” he concluded.

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Raising a seed stage funding round is an exciting milestone for every startup

July has come to an end. At e27, we have witnessed several exciting seed funding rounds invested into companies with mindblowing ideas, solid team, and a promise of great success this month.

Raising a seed stage funding round is an exciting milestone for every startup. Beyond helping startups realise an idea into a business, it enables them to further develop their products and bring in more manpower into their team. It also signifies the trust that investors have given to their product or service.

The following are some of the most notable seed stage funding rounds that we have covered in the month of July:

UrbanAgents
Amount: US$1.5 million
Investors: FarSight Capital, APAC Realty and angel investors.

Singapore-based property agent referral platform UrbanAgents said that the investment will be directed to maximise the use of AI to set commission guide for home sellers connecting to top agents in Singapore, making it fair for the home sellers to have a choice for performance-based commissions.

Memori
Amount: Undisclosed
Investors: An undisclosed Asian royal family member

A legacy planning service, Memori said that the investment will be used to grow the business in Brunei, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Also Read: No, Singapore seed stage is not dead

Lapasar
Amount: US$500,000
Investors: SeedPlus, NEXEA

B2B procurement platform Lapasar will use the capital to support product development to further automate ordering and request for quotation (RFQ) processes as well as to support business development activities.

Luxiee
Amount: “six-figure”
Investors: Kewee Kho (Vice Chairman of Roadbull Logistics and independent Director of Courts Asia)

Online marketplace for diamonds Luxiee said that the funds will be channelled towards marketing, branding, public relations and media placement, as well as to build the business’s talent pool.

Syfe
Amount: US$3.8 million
Investors: Unbound, David Rogers (MD, State Street Global Advisors), Paul Redbourn (MD and Head of Equities, UBS Japan), and Philip Freise (Partner at KKR)

With the funding round, wealth management platform Syfe also received the approval of Capital Markets Services Licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Leben Care Technologies
Amount: Undisclosed
Investors: IP Ventures

AI-powered retinal diagnostics and screening solutions provider Leben Care Technologies plans to use the funds to strengthen its product, sales and marketing teams.

Also Read: Techstars raises US$42M to expand its seed-stage accelerator in Southeast Asia

Halosis
Amount: US$1.2 million
Investors: Undisclosed

NLP-based chatbot service provider Halosis expects to raise its Series A round in late 2019 or early 2020.

Edusuite
Amount: US$235K+
Investors: Manila Angel Investors Network (MAIN), Batangas Eastern Colleges (BEC), and Sumulong College of Arts and Sciences

An AI-powered school management platform, Edusuite wants to use the funding for marketing, product development, and also to increase capacity.

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Image Credit: Max Goncharov on Unsplash

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The risk and rewards of investing in the next trending coin

Bitcoin has been underperforming in the market over the past few weeks.

On watching the cryptocurrency markets closely, a new paradigm is spotted to be emerging. Bitcoin is losing steam.

At the same time, other crypto tokens are bottoming out.

One coin that has grabbed everyone’s attention is Cardano.

Also Read: 6 private crypto alternatives to bitcoin

Cardano is one of the most fundamentally sound cryptocurrencies.

However, it doesn’t make sense that the cryptocurrency (ADA/BTC) dropped to as low as 0.00000524 on July 16.

At that point, the crypto token lost over 94 per cent from the all-time high of 0.00008788.

Yet, the cryptocurrency dubbed by some as the “Ethereum Killer” appears to be carving a bottom.

It is actually trading at a level where it can create a new base and massively pump.

A quick look at the weekly chart shows that Cardano is trading close to historic lows of 0.0000057.

Even though bears were able to take out this level on July 16, bulls quickly responded and pushed the price above the support on July 17.

The brief breach of the support can now be interpreted as a bear trap.

In addition to that, the volume on June 24 was significantly elevated. This can be seen as the capitulation volume.

In other words, many dumped their Cardano positions in favour of bitcoin because they’ve lost hope in the market.

If you look at the chart of the psychology of a market cycle, you will see how Cardano has entered a period of depression.

Also Read: What does cryptocurrency mean for your small business?

Sure, it can still go lower but if this is the bottom, then those who buy now will be able to maximize their profits.

Keeping that in mind, this would be the best time to invest in Cardona.

Investors who agree with our analysis might want to buy as close to 0.0000057 as possible.

If bulls hold the support, the immediate target is 0.00001255. Cardano may still look bearish so consider placing a tight stop below fresh lows of 0.00000524.

This way, you stand to gain over 120 per cent and risk about 8 per cent which is a very good risk-to-reward ratio.

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Image Credit: Austin Distel

 

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