Indonesian public company Erajaya injects funding into Singapore-based wifi provider Datapro [The Jakarta Post]

PT Erajaya Swasembada, a publicly listed retail company from Indonesia, announces that it has invested in Singapore-based tech startup that provides on-the-go WiFi services for tourists Datapro.

According to Erajaya’s Director for Marketing Communications Djatmiko Wardoyo, the decision to invest comes from the data that shows there’s a large number of Indonesian tourists visiting Singapore every year. It supports Datapro to tap into the growing number of Indonesian tourists in the country.

About 18.5 million tourists visited Singapore last year, of which three million were from Indonesia.

Circles.Life announces key hires for regional tech hub, global innovation [Press Release]

Following its launch in Australia and Taiwan, Circles.Life, Singapore-base mobile virtual network, announces several key hires as the latest move to scale across markets and multiple consumer verticals. Key hires include Dhanush Hetti to lead the engineering department, Anupam Mathur to lead strategic business development, and David Boublil to lead talent acquisition.

Also Read: Malaysian foodtech startup dahmakan enters Thailand by acquiring Polpa

Hetti was previously CTO & Head of Engineering for Venmo, the mobile payments service in the United States where he led and built an engineering organisation that aligned closely with the company’s strategy and brought solutions to the market.

Meanwhile, Anupam joins the company with 14 years of experience in financial services and strategy consulting. He will be playing a key role in driving Circle.Life’s growth and its entry into multiple verticals.

Moreover, David joins the company to build the acquisition team to support headcount growth across all departments, including expanding the engineering team and scale the regional tech hub.

Proptech startup Hidup secures over US$100k from Australian angel investors [DealStreetAsia]

Digital Marketplace Asia’s proptech product Hidup.co.id raises more than AU$150,000 (US$100,725) in seed funding from angel investors in Australia, as reported by DealStreetAsia. The Indonesia-based company also has received support from the Small Business Entrepreneur Grants Program from the Department of Employment, Small Business and Training in Queensland, Australia.

Founded by Steven Ungermann, it wants to change the way foreigners and expats search for long-term accommodation while relocating to Indonesia. The startup said it seeks to offer a new way to find mid to long term accommodation rentals in major cities through its offices in Jakarta, Makassar, and remote teams in other Indonesian cities and in Brisbane, Australia.

It is also looking to replicate its business model in more Southeast Asian hubs like Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Ho Chi Minh City, and others.

Thai Tuk-tuk to become a testbed for autonomous, energy-efficient makeover [Economic Times]

Thailand’s famous vehicle tuk-tuk, the three-wheeled taxi reportedly will get a makeover to help carry the local auto industry into the future. As reported by Economic Times, starting in November, a public-private partnership will run a test for the first self-driving tuk-tuk.

The move is initiated by startup Airovr, investor Siri Ventures, and the Thai government, who together will run the months-long trial inside a gated Bangkok community.

Also Read: East Ventures invests in Indonesian rental marketplace CUMI, eyeing growth and expansion

Most autonomous-driving advancements in Asia come from Chinese and Japanese companies, such as Baidu Inc., Pony.ai and Toyota Motor Corp. Southeast Asia has yet to see a local champion, so this could be the first of its kind and a further boost of the auto industry that reportedly generates 12 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Tuk-tuk was chosen as a test vehicle because the three-wheeler is more energy-efficient than a car, requires fewer parts, is cheaper, and is more suitable for the country’s hot weather, said Amares Chumsai Na Ayudhya, founder of Bangkok-based Airovr.
–

Photo by Grahame Jenkins on Unsplash

The post Today’s top tech news: Indonesian public company invests in WiFi provider Datapro, equips tourists visiting the country appeared first on e27.

Singapore-based insurtech startup Axinan is in the midst of raising Series A-plus funding, its Founder and CEO Wei Zhu told e27.

Axinan, which in February last year secured an undisclosed sum in Series A round from NSI Ventures and Linear Venture, also plans to expand into Thailand and Vietnam.

“We are currently in the midst of raising Series A+ round of funding. We have plans to expand into Thailand and Vietnam,” added Zhu.

Zhu didn’t share more details.

Incorporated in 2016 by Zhu (formerly CTO of Grab), Axinan focuses on creating “innovative digital insurance for the Internet economy”. It leverages Big Data, real-time risk assessment, and digitised claims management to create B2B2C insurance solutions for online companies and insurance companies.

Axinan mainly offers two B2B2C products — e-commerce logistics (protection of items against the risk of total loss or damage during transit, failed delivery and returns), and electronic gadget (protection of electronic gadgets against accidental damage).

“We currently focus on areas where data and technology can be used meaningfully to create value and bring the most impact,” Zhu said. “For now, it means focusing on the e-commerce-logistics industry, capturing relevant data, analysing it and using the insight to assess risks and inform pricing strategy.”

Also Read: Ex-Grab CTO’s startup Axinan raises Series A funding to create online insurance products

Axinan’s B2B clientele currently consists of six commercial partners, who have inked seven contracts with the firm catering to Southeast Asia and Australia. The names include regional powerhouses Lazada, Shopee and Bukalapak. “We are also currently in talks with additional commercial partners in both the e-commerce and telco space,” Zhu said.

igloo, the first B2C product

igloo is Axinan’s first consumer-facing product. A mobile app, igloo makes consumer solutions available to anyone with a mobile phone and internet connection.

“With igloo, we address consumer pain-points head-on by providing instant coverage, intuitive and simple claims management. This enables everyone to afford insurance with dynamic pricing,” he explained.

“We aim to expand our range of coverage options so that everyone can protect the things that they care about — no matter what they are. And we’re starting from the thing that people most care about now: their mobile phones,” shared Zhu.

Zhu claims the igloo app has been downloaded by more than 90,000 users across Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines to date.

The company is also looking into insurance solutions for health and pets.

Currently, Axinan, which also has an office in Taiwan, provides free return shipping policy for its e-commerce partners. “A purchase experience can go bad very quickly in so many ways: losing or damaging a parcel in transit, theft, or shipping the wrong item. We do not just offer coverage for returns-shipping for e-commerce partners, but also cover three other risks, including total loss, damages during transit, and failed delivery.

We provide comprehensive coverage for the e-commerce platform, its merchants and customers to insulate themselves from the costly expense of unfavourable events,” he said.

 

The post Insurtech startup Axinan in talks for Series A+ round; to expand to Thailand, Vietnam appeared first on e27.

Angel investor Mike Flache was a survivor of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

When it happened, he was on the Indonesian island of Bintan. Like many other survivors of such a massive disaster, his survival encouraged him to give back to the society by co-founding Safe Water Gardens, a Singapore-based NGO that aims to use digitalisation to tackle global sanitation crises.

But at heart, Flache is an entrepreneur and investor.

“I have always been fascinated by the process of creating something. At the age of nine, I programmed my first computer, then I founded my first company at the age of 19 … Building businesses has always been my whole life, both as an entrepreneur and an investor,” he tells e27 in a phone interview.

Apart from being a partner at V/G Ventures Switzerland, Flache is also involved in at least 15 startups in the area of Artificial Intelligence, machine learning, SaaS, and fintech such as Fundment and Codetrails. He also advised Fortune 500 companies and spoke at various events and conferences.

Also Read: The angel investor’s cheat sheet to successful portfolio building

In this interview, Flache breaks down the four main points to consider before one begins the journey of angel investing:

1. Choose the right startup
What is the right startup? The angel investor explains that the right startup should have a “realistic” pre-money valuation. He points out how founders might get over-enthusiastic about their ideas, leading to a ballooning pre-money valuation.

“This is not a good base in an investor’s point of view because you need to develop this company first,” he says.

2. Keep an eye on the founders
An angel investor needs to keep watch of the company’s founding team, which Flache stresses as the most important factor that he considers when looking at a potential investment. It is a time-consuming process, but investors must see the founders’ mindset, ability, and track-record.

“It’s best to say I invest in people instead of tech,” he says.

Flache also elaborated that the most ideal number of people in a founding team should be between two to three people.

“If you have more than three … it can be hard to get all minds on the same page, especially if they have strong characters or vision,” he says.

Also Read: Angel Investor: The right catalyst for your startup

3. Prepare the safety net
Flache also advises for angel investors to ensure the strength and endurance of their portfolio company.

“As an investor, you might be building a portfolio of five to 10 companies. But every single startup must have the potential to recover the entire portfolio,” he explains.

He points out the importance of this idea by reminding that the tech industry is a high-risk business, with more than 70 per cent of startups failing within their first few years.

4. Find that timing
Last but not least, Flache finds that it is important for angel investors to always consider the timing.

Most innovative businesses have a time-frame of a few years. For example, building an e-commerce company is much harder today compared to 10 years ago.

“You cannot force anything, even if you’re willing to put more money into the company … The ‘magic’ that you will need to find is the ideal fit between the product, the market, and above all, the team itself,” he elaborates.

 

—

 

Image Credit: Mike Flache

The post Angel investor Mike Flache shares his tips to begin investing in startups appeared first on e27.

Enhancing Indonesian exports, e-commerce giant and local unicorn Tokopedia will be implementing its own “globalization strategy” to help its merchants to export their products abroad, following a similar strategy carried out by competitor Bukalapak.

At a DealStreet Asia event in Singapore, President of Tokopedia, Patrick Cao said that Tokopedia merchants will benefit and utilise the company’s resource, network, and connectivity to be able to sell to a broader market. But unlike Bukalapak, Tokopedia will offer this service offline. While Tokopedia has carried out some promotion of local brands to foreign markets on its platform, no cross-border transaction is facilitated on it.

Retaining its focus on serving the Indonesian market only, Cao said that helping merchants sell their products abroad will be the full extent of Tokopedia’s globalization strategy for now. Its strong focus on the Indonesian market, Cao believes, is what sets Tokopedia apart from well-funded regional competitors like Singapore-based Lazada and Shopee, despite them investing heavily to build out strong local teams in Indonesia

Also read: Creating a global market for your business and what it takes to grow one 

Cao said: “We are the beneficiaries of the fourth largest market in the world. So we don’t need to go elsewhere. They run centralized technology product leadership teams in Singapore. Everything is built in one place and translated. So if you take a Singaporean app and then translate it into Bahasa, you as an Indonesian would know very well that the customer journey is not as good. So that I think is also a key advantage”.

While Bukalapak recently achieved the breakeven milestone, Tokopedia seems in no rush. In regards to revenue management,  the company prefers to look at global peers for inspiration. Its global peers, like Amazon, generate a lot of cash flow which they reinvest into their business, so at times they show profitability. “I think we always have the option to be profitable, it’s just that we choose to invest in growth and we will continue to do that in a sustainable manner,” Cao added.

—

Image credit: Chuttersnap on Unsplash

The post Going Glocal: Indonesia’s Tokopedia announces globalisation strategy appeared first on e27.

Zipmex, a Singapore-based currency exchange focussed on providing retail and institutional investors the ability to invest securely in cryptocurrencies, announces that it has raised US$3 million in a pre-Series A round led by blockchain technology group Infinity Blockchain Holdings, as reported by The Business Times. The startup claimed that the recent funding has put its valuation in US$18 million.

Six investors, who mainly are angel investors, took part in the funding round.

As for the planning to distribute the funding, Marcus Lim, Zipmex’s co-founder, and CEO said: “With backing from such an established group within the blockchain industry, we will accelerate our Asia-Pacific expansion plans, with a license application underway for a Thailand-centric exchange.”

The funding also will see Zipmex working closely with Infinity Blockchain Holdings to explore synergies across community awareness and blockchain solutions for business-to-business and business-to-consumer clients, with the potential to explore future capital-related activities.

Infinity Blockchain Holdings, which is also a Singapore-based company, said it contributed US$500,000 into the round. The group is also known to back several blockchain startups such as Cardano and NEO.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Singapore’s digital assets exchange ecxx.com raises US$22M pre-Series A

Just recently, Zipmex entered Indonesia and Australia with the launching of country-centric digital currency exchange platforms in both countries.

Infinity Blockchain Holdings comprises Infinity Blockchain Ventures, a blockchain consulting and development firm, as well as Infinity Blockchain Labs, which specialises in blockchain technology applications.

Apart from backing from Infinity Blockchain Holdings, Zipmex has also received investment from AEC Securities Public Company in Thailand, which specialises in securities and investment banking.

Zipmex said that its mission is to support the nascent growth of the global cryptocurrency industry. Using a suite of trading features and charting tools, Zipmex’s platform provides users with access to a liquid market for a varied selection of cryptocurrencies.

–

Photo by rupixen on Unsplash

The post Digital currency exchange Zipmex snags US$3M pre-Series A round of funding led by Infinity Blockchain Holdings appeared first on e27.

Dear Startup Entrepreneur,

The startup journey is an endless roller coaster ride, full of highs and lows, and yet the journey has been a 24/7 hustling experience for you. So it’s funny that we’re looking back at your startup life, like some kind of cheesy 80s movie montage.

Granted, you do have interesting jargon and sometimes have crazy Christmas wishes, but in the end… you’ve done it, you’re running a startup. You even hired a team to boot. Congratulations.

Admittedly, there were times where you were close to giving up, but instead of disappointment punching you in the face, you decided to punch it first. So here’s a celebratory list of those particular moments.

1. When no one wanted to join you

It all starts with an idea — a crazy, yet an incredibly feasible idea. Or you thought it’s feasible, the rest of the world seemed to think otherwise. Perhaps it was your young-looking face, the inexperience, and your lack of understanding of proper tech jargon that turned people away, but it could’ve been other factors, right?

Whatever it was, people veered away from you and that was difficult. Because your idea could change people’s lives. Could possibly be the Next. Big. Thing.

So you decided to stop caring about what the naysayers said. You decided that just like love, or any relationship, there will always be people who understand you for you.

“These are my friends. These are people who have got my back.”

You’ll tell yourself those words later when the going got tough, and perhaps, some of them already feel like brothers and sisters. They’ll stay with you through the late nights, the last-minute changes, the product crashes, and the launch celebrations.

And suddenly you’ll realise, your dream became their dreams too.

2. When no one wanted to invest

So we come to the next challenge: investment.

Now it’s convincing a bunch of people with a lot of money that you’re worth it. Sure you’ve got a small team behind your back, but these people have read thousands of pages of hilarious and horrible pitch decks – so you wonder where your investor deck will fit in.

You wrote the best email your brain could craft, you pitched your hardest – but then, those haunting words were said: “You’re too early.”

And maybe they’re right. After all, you’re not the first fintech, edutech, something tech startup to grace their presence. So, you decided to make lemonade out of the lemons you were given. It hurts to be rejected, but it takes guts to accept criticism and improve from that.

So every opportunity you got, you decided to receive mentoring from these experts, showing and updating them at every opportunity with your latest product launches and startup developments…

Because someday, you tell yourself, you’d like to prove them wrong. That while you may not be like the fabled unicorn, you think that you’re a strong, resilient, pony.

Also read: Are Indian startups headed for a bubble burst? 

3. When you ran out of money

In the end, you managed to pool in some funds and ask family and friends for support, get a bank loan whenever possible, and have some angel investors chip in some cash for a reasonable amount of equity.

And while it wasn’t enough to buy you new technology, or hire more people it allowed you to continue working on the prototype and keeping your core team afloat. But then reality throws a punch at you, and you realise there’s not going to be enough money in the bank soon. Crap.

You’ve exhausted most of your options the first time, so you gather your core team and have the “talk.” You tell them how things are, how financials look — you’re not sure if you should be optimistic, realistic, or pessimistic. Whatever. You don’t know yourself. So you admit that and watch and wait for their reactions.

You all make sacrifices. Just make the product work. Fix all the bugs. Sell, sell, sell. It’s easy to read this all now, but it was painful to be in those months of torture. Patience was low, fights happened – but despite those rocky roads, you eventually weathered it out.

You either convinced an investor, decided to take up part-time jobs to keep yourself and the company alive, whatever it is: you felt that this was your first entrepreneurial war. And to tell yourself and your loved ones, that yes, I’m still surviving, still being healthy, is something that you’re thankful for. In the end, you continue to be an entrepreneur.

4. When people start to leave

It’s close to a year since your team got together. You’ve perhaps started winning several contests, hackathons, got some screen time on the big stage either as a speaker or a pitching engagement. You’ve already shown the ecosystem your MVP and are working towards progress.

Then another thing happens. People start leaving. Perhaps it’s one of your employees, or maybe your co-founder decided to do a little side project and two or three employees followed. Or maybe you had to fire them. You try not to get too attached, and yet you can’t help but wonder how they’re doing.

“I hope they’re doing well. Wherever they are,” you tell yourself.

Probably social media reminds you that you’re still virtually connected, so you like their posts, you congratulate them. But a tiny part still aches, and it’s all right.

Because if you love them, you let them go – a good founder knows that they can’t keep their employees with them forever. Good founders look forward, to the future, and accept the challenges that lie ahead of them.

And well, if you ended it on a bad note, you still manage to be professional with them whenever you run into each other. The startup world is small, and drama can take a backseat.

Also Read: Hootsuite cuts 40% of APAC staff from Singapore office

5. When you had to pivot

“Fail fast, fail forward” – that’s what the startups say. And yet, admitting that you were wrong is difficult. Sometimes self-doubt sets in. Did you really lead innocent people to the valley of death? Or was your idea, no – your dream, worth fighting for?

“But the data shows…” Yes. You get it. Enough with Big Data analytics. Statistically, you need to change your strategies. Your valuation is taking a hit. You’re getting complaints from your investors, shareholders, employees.. everyone.

So you get on with it, like you always have. You make a startup-wide announcement; if needed, issue a press release. And some of your critics laugh and say, “Pivoting again, I see.” But instead of giving them a snide remark you bite your tongue, nod politely, and carry on. Because every majestic and beautiful butterfly started off as a caterpillar.

And here you are, back to reality. Life wasn’t meant to be fair, and to many others, startups are meant to fail. And yet you didn’t. You’re still here, submitting us stories of your successes, your latest product releases and next ventures. You definitely know that the journey’s not yet over, and that’s okay. We’ll be here to cheer you on and hope for the best.

As Steve Jobs says,

“Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes… the ones who see things differently — they’re not fond of rules… You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can’t do is ignore them because they change things… they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

Congratulations for surviving the entrepreneurial roller coaster and braving the new year to ride it all over again. Cheers for being you.

Yours,

Bev Tan

–

Editor’s note: e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

Join our e27 Telegram group here, or our e27 contributor Facebook page here.

Image Credit:  Joanna Kosinska

The post An open letter to entrepreneurs: congrats, you made it appeared first on e27.

Indian digital lending startup LoanTap raises US$12M – Press Release

Indian digital lending startup LoanTap today announced a US$12 million in Series B funding round led by Avaana Capital.

The funding round also saw the participation of existing investors 3one4 Capital, India Quotient, Shunwei Capital and Kae Capital.

LoanTap is a platform that offers customised personal loans such as EMI Free Loan, Rental Deposit Loan, Holiday Loan, and other differentiated offerings to white-collared salaried professionals.

It claimed to be one of the few fintech startups that became profitable within two years of its operations.

Satyam Kumar, CEO and Co-founder of LoanTap, said, “LoanTap has created a strong technology backbone which offers a superior customer experience. We tripled our loan book last year and the current round of funding will further fuel this growth”

The company has raised a total of US$25 million to date.

SMEs management platform Khatabook raises US$25M – Press Release

Khatabook, a mobile app that enables SMEs to record and track business transactions, has raised US$25 million Series A funding round from GGV Capital, Partners of DST Global, RTP Ventures, Sequoia India, Tencent, Y Combinator and others.

The round also saw the participation of more than 20 “prominent angels” including Amrish Rau, Anand Chandrasekharan, Deep Nishar, Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, Kunal Bahl, Kunal Shah and others.

By completely automating the traditional business ledger process, the app claimed to have helped five million Indian merchants each save over 600 productive working hours in a year. Its UPI-based payment platform is more than doubling month on month.

The team plans to launch other products for MSMEs in the next few months.

Also Read: Online lending platform for salaried professionals LoanTap raises US$4M to take on Sequoia-backed MoneyTap

GrabWheels launched at ITB Campus – Press Release

Southeast Asian ride-hailing giant Grab announced the launch of its electric scooter service at the campus of Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB).

In addition to launching the service, Grab also announced a partnership with Research and Entrepreneurship Institute (LPIK ITB) that will enable the company to conduct research and development of electric-based transportation conducted.

Chinese media, coworking space operator 36Kr files for IPO – Tech In Asia

Chinese media and coworking space operator 36Kr has filed for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq Global Select Market, Tech In Asia wrote.

The company listed the size of the offering at US$100 million, which is a placeholder amount that is likely to change.

Founded in 2011, the company’s businesses include news publication and information platform provider 36Kr media, a venture capital unit, and coworking space operator Kr Space.

—

Image Credit: Ishant Mishra on Unsplash

The post Today’s top tech news: LoanTap raises US$12M, Khatabook raises US$25M appeared first on e27.

Autify, the AI-powered software testing automation platform, announces that it has received a total financing capital of US$2.5 million in a seed round from Global Brain Corporation, Salesforce Ventures, which is the Investment Division of U.S. company, Salesforce.com, Inc., Archetype Ventures Inc., and other individual investors. Autify noted that this financing adds up the total capital​ to US$3.07 million.

The company plans to use the seed funding to reinforce product development and sales systems, as well as to explore the international market.

Founded since 2016, Autify was just being established 10 months ago in February 2019, followed by the launch of its closed beta version in March. Autify prided itself as the first Japanese team backed by Alchemist Accelerator, the top B2B startup accelerator in the US.

With the positive response that it has received without marketing effort, Autify has undergone further functional improvements to be officially launched in October 2019.

Autify aims to find solutions for the labor shortage in the software development field. It seeks to help people concentrate on creative work by automating mundane tasks.

Also Read: Why the success of your startup depends on software testing

As many as 92 per cent of the software businesses worldwide are already using agile development with 71 per cent of those have product releases at least once a week. However, in this high rate of a cycle, the software testing operations (QA) are often still done manually, depends on the availability of people.

It creates a product release bottleneck because it simply takes too long to complete. Automation of software testing is more critical now with corporations promoting agile development.

Software companies are facing the following two major problems in the automation of testing:

1. A shortage of engineers capable of automating their testing scenarios. Today, when very few skilled engineers are available for product development, it is difficult to allocate some of them to the automation of testing.

2. The high maintenance cost of the automation code. All automation code becomes outdated very quickly in an agile environment, where there are rapid changes in UI and specifications, and requires continuous maintenance.

Autify allows anyone, even for non-engineers, to automate the testing of web applications without writing program codes on any browser. The use of AI to monitor the changes in the application codes allows the testing scenarios to be repaired automatically, thus greatly reducing the maintenance costs.

Also Read: Software testing and development: Why bots and AI are the future

Autify allows easy automation of complex applications that use a lot of JavaScript, whose testing was difficult to automate with the conventional automation services.

So far, Autify provides integrations to external services such as Slack (a business communication tool), Circle CI (​a continuous integration tool that automates the development)​, and TestRail (a test case management tool), and plans to integrate with more services.
–

Picture Credit: Genesia Ventures

The post AI software testing platform Autify receives US$2.5M seed round, gearing up for global launch appeared first on e27.

The programme is said to combine the digital healthcare with a human touch to complement home-based care

Singapore’s digital healthcare provider, WhiteCoat, announced that it has partnered with Homage, the on-demand home caregiving services platform, to launch a pilot telehealth programme that aimed at home-based care for elderly patients.

This programme seeks to better the management of chronic diseases and conditions on elderly patients, such as hypertension, hyperlipidemia, and diabetes. The programme presents the patients with a safe and convenient option to see a doctor at their homes.

WhiteCoat’s mobile application will offer Homage customers a range of medical services, including teleconsultations, issuance of medical referrals, as well as prescription, dispensation, and delivery of medication at an affordable cost.

According to Data.gov.sg, the prevalence of hypertension, diabetes, high total cholesterol among Singapore residents aged 18 to 69 years, is 23.5 per cent, 11.3 per cent, and 17.4 per cent respectively.

In Budget 2019, Minister for Finance Heng Swee Keat also emphasised affordable care closer to homes to provide to Singaporeans, to achieve better peace of mind over future healthcare costs, while helping the elderly stay healthy.

Also Read: AIA Singapore partners with WhiteCoat for telemedicine service

“WhiteCoat and Homage share the goal of making quality, on-demand healthcare more accessible and affordable by connecting patients with qualified and experienced doctors and healthcare providers. For many of our elderly loved ones, travelling elsewhere to seek medical attention or just a simple refill of their chronic medication can be a daunting experience.”

“We are glad that our technology can be leveraged for a good cause and provide caregivers with the peace of mind that their family members will be able to receive timely and affordable medical attention,” said Bryan Koh, CEO, and Founder of WhiteCoat.

WhiteCoat’s partnership with Homage comes on the back of WhiteCoat’s recent collaboration with Grab to ensure that medication is delivered within 90 minutes after the teleconsultation.

As part of the pilot programme, WhiteCoat and Homage will assess and evaluate if the medical conditions experienced by an Homage customer can be suitably and safely managed by WhiteCoat via telemedicine.

Homage’s care professionals will also receive training on the appropriate procedures and protocols so that they can assist customers who wish to use WhiteCoat’s app.

Also Read: Home caregiving services platform Homage adds two new senior hires

WhiteCoat is a homegrown digital healthcare provider offering on-demand telemedicine services through innovation and data-driven technology. Through its mobile application known as the WhiteCoat app, patients can consult for a wide range of ailments from anywhere.

Homage is a personalised care solution that combines curated care professionals with smart technology to manage and provide on-demand holistic home and community- based caregiving to seniors and adults.

–

The post WhiteCoat, Homage join forces to launch chronic disease telehealth programme, aimed at elderly patients appeared first on e27.

DriveApp has more than 100 taxis already on its platform and tens of tuk-tuks being trained and joining it

Cambodia-based Meal Temple Group today announced the launch of its ride-hailing service DriveUp.app in Laos’s capital city Vientiane. 

“Vientiane is the perfect city to test our service. The market is ripe for disruption here, where competition is minimal, prices are elastic depending on cars, drivers and customers, and tourism is growing,” said Angele Fargette, Product Manager, DriveUp.app.

DriveUp claims it offers a “transparent, easy and secure way” to book taxis, tuk-tuks and samlors (a kind of tricycle), and a new way for drivers to find customers. It has more than 100 taxis already on its platform and tens of tuk-tuks being trained and joining it. 

The service is available on the web as well as on mobile (iOS and Android). 

Also Read: Singapore’s B2B marketplace Eezee raises funding from Insignia for Asia expansion

The firm is now looking to add new payment methods in the upcoming weeks, including international credit cards and Alipay.

Laos has more than 5 million tourists visiting yearly. Its growth is expected to double in the next ten years and accounts for more than 15 per cent of the country’s GDP. 

Meal Temple Group is a Cambodia-based food delivery and logistics company with operations in Laos. It recently announced its entry into the Kingdom of Bhutan with an investment in DrukRide, an online bus ticket booking platform.

In June, the group announced a strategic equity investment into Freshgora.com, an on-demand food and grocery delivery startup in Myanmar.

Last October, Meal Temple raised a six-figure round from private Australian and European investors.

The post Meal Temple Group launches its ride-hailing app DriveUp in Laos capital Vientiane appeared first on e27.