Coworking solutions provider, UPGen is one of only a few home-grown workspace operators to be pursuing regional expansion

Vietnam’s largest flexible and custom workspace solutions provider UPGen, announced its expansion into Southeast Asia with new locations in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. The new centres will open in the fourth quarter of this year and span nearly 10,000 sq. mts. The continued expansion follows a significant equity investment by Northstar Group in 2018 and a Series B fundraising that is currently underway.

In addition to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, UPGen is also strengthening its market-leading position in Vietnam by rolling out another 50,000 sg. mts. of space in the country. Nam Do, Co-Founder of the Hanoi-based UPGen, said: “We offer a solution to the real pain points which hinder growth in the Vietnamese cities that we operate in and see great potential for our approach and services in other, comparable, Southeast Asian cities. For us, it is about being a platform for growth for our clients and helping them achieve the success they aspire to.”

Also read: Coworking space or coffee shops: where to work on the go

UPGen offers two main solutions to clients; UPBase– shared workspaces with the flexibility and room to grow or downsize as needed one month to the next and UPScale– custom spaces for companies unique to their corporate style, look and feel. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make up more than 98% of total enterprises in Thailand and Malaysia and influence about 40% of the GDP (collectively). UPGen’s flexible workspaces provide a low-cost solution for businesses with fast-growth in headcount or looking for better space in prime locations.

Started in 2016, UPGen is one of only a few home-grown workspace operators to be pursuing regional expansion. Its partners include Tiki, Vietnam’s largest e-commerce retailer, ride-hailing firm Be Group, dynamic media company Yeah1 and Standard Chartered, among others. UPGen also counts Vietnam’s VPBank as a strategic partner.

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Served in a restaurant called Hawkee, the robochef was built with the goal to help the F&B industry through automation, robotics, and training

At a glance, the Hokkien mee dish in the picture above looks like any other food commonly found in hawker food centres across Singapore.

But there is one special thing about the one I had today: It was made by a robot-chef (robochef).

On Tuesday, September 24, e27 attended an event hosted by Singapore-based robotics startup EPIC Food & Beverage at Frasers Tower, to see their new robochef in action.

Operating in a restaurant called Hawkee, the robochef was built with the goal to help the F&B industry through automation, robotics, and training.

Also Read: [In Photos] Singapore to welcome 300 LionsBot auto cleaning robots

“We want to use the art of robotic cooking and artificial intelligence to preserve the art of hawker culture and uphold the recipe, consistency, and ultimately the art form of hawker cooking,” said CEO and Co-Founder Jaromel Gee.

With the help of a robot named DIANA, the restaurant offers 18 menu items typically found in hawker centres, from Hokkien mee to mala xiang guo.

The cooking process goes like this:

First, a human chef adds selected ingredients to inside DIANA. This is the only part of the cooking process that requires most human intervention.

The Hokkien mee ingredients are being placed inside a type of plastic bowl

Once he is done inputting the ingredients into the robot, the human chef can adjust the setting with the customer’s preference, such as spiciness level.

The human chef puts the ingredients into the robot

Also Read: This robotic startup can make custom furniture on demand within few hours of getting your order

After that, DIANA will start doing the work.

In developing its menu, Hawkee also has a partnership with the likes of Lee Do Restaurant and Woh Hup Food Industries to develop exclusive dishes.

The restaurant has 10 robots built and installed with a venue that is able to seat 90 patrons. Prices on the menu start from S$6 (US$4.3).

So, how does a dish made by robots taste like? Just as good as one made by a human chef.

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The new end-to-end SaaS is for raising capital, accessing investors, engaging in question and answers, managing and tracking investor interest

Wholesale Investors, Australasia-based investment platform, announces the launch of its new SaaS capital raising admin platform CRIISP in the Southeast Asia region. CRIISP stands for Capital Raising Intelligent Investment Secondary Platform.

In preparation for CRIISP’s reveal in Southeast Asia, Wholesale Investors and e27 have signed an MoU in June 2019, committed to creating more opportunities for cross border investment and company expansion between Southeast Asia and Australia.

Available on both desktop and mobile, CRIISP will be able to facilitate capital raising, investors accessing, questions and answers engagement, investor interest tracking and management, as well as an investment deal room operations and transaction completion.

The launch of CRIISP, Wholesale Investors noted, is the result that comes after more than 18 months of working with investors and founders, to collaborate and create a software platform to remove friction from the capital raising process for investors, founders, and advisors.

CRIISP is going to utilise Wholesale Investor’s existing infrastructure with the option to access a network of 24,200+ high-net-worth investors and professional investment groups (Venture Capital, Private Equity, Funds, Family Offices, and international investors).

Also Read: e27 partners with Wholesale Investor to help startups raise funds

Managing Director and Co-Founder of Wholesale Investor and CRIISP, Steve Torso said:​ “We believe that if we can help Founders, Investors, and Industry participants save time, money, and improve efficiency, the ecosystem wins. More than that, we noticed that as the ecosystem had grown, it had become more and more fragmented, and this was the case for emerging companies going global. With this in mind, it has become substantially more difficult for Investors and companies alike.”

Torso further added that over the last 18 months, Wholesale Investors has increased its presence in Southeast Asia, which led to the launching of CRIISP in the region.

CRIISP digitises the process of getting in front of the investors, allowing companies to manage the relationships between its founder and potential prospective investor, with the founder in the position of control, even from across borders.

The key features of CRIISP include:

• A simplified documentation structure and storage
• Access to an HNW investor marketplace,l
• The ability to promote deal rooms to interest investors
• Investor activity tracking
• Question and answer features and direct messaging
• The ability to issue share certificates
• Multi-party digital signature completion

“For our team, empowering the founder and removing success fees means we can play a role in growing the technologies of the future quicker, and to a greater scale. CRIISP kills the problem of founders paying the equivalent to a salary of a decent techie in success fees, stunting their scalability,” said Torso.
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Photo by Taylor Simpson on Unsplash

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Serial entrepreneur turning angel investor turned VC, Carman Chan is one of the top women in tech in Asia

Click Ventures Founder and Managing Partner Carman Chan

The venture capital market has more than doubled in size over the past five years says a research by Prequin. And Asia is not too far from all the VC action. Hong Kong’s Click Ventures is named by Preqin as the ‘Most Consistently Top performing VC fund globally’.  And empowering women in tech and finance, founder of Click Ventures Carman Chan is the only female fund founder from the five funds selected globally.

Top-performing VC fund managers by Preqin

A veteran in the technology industry, Carman Chan started out as a tech columnist and is now a globally recognized venture capitalist. She founded Click Ventures, a global early-stage venture capital firm in 2015, after a successful series of entrepreneurial ventures and three exits. Click Ventures provides seed or series A funding to startups in the internet or mobile sectors. Her investments include Spotify (ipo), Docusign(ipo), Palantir, Memebox, MeetUp, and Youappi.

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India-based Avataar Capital’s launch of a new US$300M fund is the other major development of the day

Strategic Ventures Fund II launches US$50M growth accelerator fund [press release]

Delhi-based Strategic Ventures Fund (SVF) II has launched a US$50 million growth accelerator early-stage fund to engage with entrepreneurs and startups in the Indo-ASEAN area.

SVFII is the brainchild of four seasoned investors who have been entrepreneurs themselves and have a long history of mutual association.

Atim Kabra, Director of Strategic Ventures Fund II said, “The fund targets a portfolio of hundred companies over the next 48 months. The focus would be a risk-assessed, disciplined, early-stage investing in curated high traction startups. Investment targets would be technology-driven, technology-enabled, technology-differentiated companies across industries which can scale up significantly with the assistance of accelerants SVF II intends to provide.”

Avataar Capital launches US$300M fund in India  [press release]

India-based Avataar Capital Management has announced the launch of a new fund Avataar Venture Partners I.

The fund will focus on making US$10-30 million in growth-stage B2B and SaaS companies that have at least US$15 million of annual recurring revenues and are looking to scale globally.

Avataar will work with companies and their leadership teams to deliver on critical initiatives that will help scale their businesses. Avataar will be led by Mohan Kumar, former Partner at Norwest Venture Partners India, and Nishant Rao, former COO of Freshworks.

Also Read: Women in tech: Carman Chan’s Click Ventures is one of the most consistent VC funds globally

At the closing of the fund, Avataar has acquired stakes in six B2B SaaS companies Appnomic, Capillary, CRMNext, ElasticRun, Manthan and Zenoti from Norwest Venture Partners.

Fintech startup Flowcast raises US$3M in Series A funding [press release]

Flowcast, a fintech startup that specialises in smart credit decisioning, has closed US$3 million of Series A funding, co-led by ING Ventures and Bitrock Capital, with additional funding from existing investors including Katalyst Ventures and Alpana Ventures.

The proceeds of this round will be used to fund the acceleration of Flowcast’s go-to-market strategy, global market expansion, and the continuing product development and improvement.

Flowcast is an AI platform to power smarter credit decisions for financial institutions and corporates. Flowcast’s API-based Machine Learning platform harnesses alternative data to unlock credit at scale. This empowers lenders and corporations to extend and monitor credit that is historically unavailable with conventional lending and credit scoring methods.

Axinan expands into the Philippines, to launch mobile phone insurance solutions [press release]

Singapore-based insurtech firm Axinan announced today its entry into the Philippines, starting with its strategic partnership with leading non-life insurer Mercantile Insurance.

Underwritten by Mercantile, the insurance solutions introduced will be in the area of mobile phone protection through Axinan’s consumer brand igloo. Axinan will offer its proprietary tech capabilities while Mercantile’s niche in non-life insurance gives both parties a competitive edge through this collaboration.

According to the International Data Corporation’s report in 2018, there has been a shift in the Philippines smartphone market, where Filipinos are moving towards mobile phones with higher specifications and better features. In the same study, it was revealed that this trend is coupled with higher average selling prices of mobile phones, with a 13 per cent year-on-year increase in 2017.

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