Month: November 2019

Livspace Co-founders Anuj Srivastava and Ramakant Sharma

Livspace, digital home interiors, and renovations platform announced that it has launched its operations in Singapore.

Livspace was founded in 2015 by Ramakant Sharma and Anuj Srivastava, seeking to provide a three-sided marketplace and a design automation platform that connects designers, vendors, and consumers. It is a full-stack service that offers consumers a home decoration and renovation experience from design to installation.

Livspace also has Canvas, its proprietary design-to-installation cloud platform, launched in 2016, that unifies the fragmented ecosystem of home renovations – including homeowners, designers, micro-studios, and vendors.

Livspace uses data science-enabled algorithms to match homeowners with designers based on style preferences, budget, the scope of work and timelines. Homeowners – through the Canvas platform – can see quick mock-ups that give the look-and-feel of their home.

The company then assures the delivery of the project, using technology to make the experience as seamless as possible.

Also Read: Livspace raises US$15M to help you personalise the interior of your home

“Over the next 30 months, we are aiming to build Livspace into a US$500 million business operating across APAC and solving the renovation problem for tens of thousands of homeowners. Singapore marks the first step in our APAC growth and will serve as the headquarters for our global expansion,” said Livspace’s CEO and Co-Founder, Anuj Srivastava.

Ravindran Shanmugam, Country Head of Singapore for Livspace. “We are looking to strengthen our presence in Singapore by injecting US$30 million for our business expansion and to grow our team.”

The company plans to base central teams and over 250 employees in Singapore.

Over the next two years, Livspace said it will onboard thousands of freelance designers, contract manufacturers, OEMs, and brands to build the e-commerce supply chain for the home improvement industry.

Livspace also plans to create an omnichannel experience using AR, VR, and platform-integrated physical design experience centres.

Also Read: Livspace secures US$70M from TPG Growth, Goldman Sachs, Jungle Ventures, others

Livspace has raised over US$103 million in the capital by investors including TPG Growth, Goldman Sachs, Bessemer Venture Partners, Jungle Ventures, Helion Ventures, and UC-RNT.

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Japan’s Paidy gets US$143M in funding – Press Release

Paidy Inc, a Japan-based payment provider offering instantly-issued credit, today announced additional funding worth US$143 million.

The funding consisted of a US$83 million Series C extension from the likes of PayPal Ventures, Soros Capital Management LLC (a Robert Soros Enterprise), JS Capital Management LLC (the family office of Jonathan Soros), Tybourne Capital Management Ltd. and one more undisclosed company. It also included the participation of existing investors such as Eight Roads Ventures.

The remaining of the funding is a US$60 million in debt financing.

In a press statement, Paidy said that it will focus on increasing its customer base to 11,000,000 accounts by the end of 2020. It plans to achieve this by acquiring large-scale merchants and offering additional financial services.

Indonesia to open startup ecosystem hub in Papua – DailySocial

Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo announced the upcoming launch of a startup ecosystem hub in Papua, DailySocial reported.

In a press statement, the president said that the setup of the facility –which will include an incubator and accelerator programme and a dormitory– is aimed to foster tech entrepreneurship in the region.

Set to be built in the city of Kotaraja, the facility will be run by locally owned company PT Papua Muda Inspiratif.

Also Read: Paying online without a credit card? Japanese startup Paidy just raises US$15M to push the effort

Govt officials around the world targeted for hacking through Whatsapp – Reuters

In an exclusive report, Reuters wrote that senior government officials in multiple US-allied countries were targeted earlier this year with hacking software that used WhatsApp to take over users’ phones.

Citing people familiar with the investigation process, the report stated that a “significant” portion of known victims are high-profile government and military officials spread across at least 20 countries on five continents.

It suggested that the hacking could have broad political and diplomatic consequences.

Keyless raised US$2.2M in pre-seed funding – Dealstreet Asia

London- and Singapore-based cybersecurity startup Keyless has raised US$2.2 million in pre-seed funding led by blockchain venture firm gumi Cryptos Capital, Dealstreet Asia wrote.

The funding round also included the participation of Ripple Labs, Blockchain Valley Ventures and LuneX Ventures.

Describing itself as the world’s first distributed biometric authentication and identity management platform, Keyless is in the midst of developing a deep tech solution that aims to tackle cybercrime and make passwords obsolete.

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Image Credit: Timo Volz on Unsplash

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Singapore-based e-commerce company Qoo10 has acquired ShopClues, an online marketplace in India, for US$70-100 million, The Economic Times reports.

This an all-stock deal is the culmination of a prolonged hunt for a buyer by ShopClues, which at its peak was valued at US$1.1 billion in late 2015, says the report citing three unnamed sources.

ShopClues has confirmed the development to ET.

The deal is not completed yet. As part of the buyout, Qoo10 will also acquire Momoe, the payments arm of Clues Network, parent of ShopClues.

Qoo10 operates localised online marketplaces across Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, China and Hong Kong.

ShopClues was founded in 2011 by Sandeep Aggarwal. Unlike other marketplaces, which tend to focus on mobile, electronics, computers and branded fashion, ShopClues mainly focusses on unstructured categories. The firm is backed by GIC, Tiger Global, and Nexus Venture Partners.

The e-commerce company had a tumultuous past as its co-founders fought with each other over several issues, including an illicit relationship. In September 2017, Sandeep filed first information report or FIR (the equivalent of Writ of Petition) against his co-founder-wife Radhika Aggarwal and CEO Sanjay Sethi, accusing them of criminal conspiracy to kick him out of the company.

Also Read: These early-stage funding rounds have made October the busiest time of the year

This came almost six months after Aggarwal accused Radhika of stripping his voting rights at the company and having an illicit relationship with Sethi. In a series of Facebook posts, he had also accused her of “intentionally and deliberately kicking out other founding team members by collaborating with once illicit love affair partner” and “changing web history, tempering with Wikipedia and lying in the press.”

The problem between the couple started when Sandeep, a former equity analyst at US-based financial services firm Collins Stewart, was arrested in 2013 by the FBI over insider trading charges. According to the investigation agency, Sandeep tipped off Richard Lee, a portfolio manager at hedge fund SAC Capital about a pending deal between Microsoft and Yahoo. Sandeep was consequently banned by the US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) from trading after he pleaded guilty. He was later released on a US$500,000 bond until trial.

After a few months, he came back to India. Upon his return, he found something wrong in the company and that his wife deliberately avoided him. He grew suspicious about her behaviour, as she appeared more close to Sethi.

Sandeep claims that he founded ShopClues in 2010 using his personal savings. Radhika and Sethi were hired later as Vice Presidents. Sethi was later inducted as Co-founder. When Sandeep was arrested in the US, he nominated Sethi as the new CEO to the Board and Radhika to be a Board member.

When he came back to India in August 2014, Sandeep claims, he found that ShopClues changed Sandeep’s right to nominate a board member way back in April 2014 and he was kept in dark by the two.

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Helpling, the online marketplace for household services, announces that it has secured US$22 million investment from ProSiebenSat.1, a European media group. Lakestar and Mangrove Capital also come back to invest in this round.

Collectively, Helpling claimed that it has raised a total of US$97 million in funding since launching in early 2014. It entered Singapore in 2015 via the acquisition of a local business called Spickify.

The company said it will use the new investment to drive growth and expansion across additional verticals.

Philip Huffmann, Co-Founder of Helpling said: “The investment is an important step towards Helpling becoming the hub for all home services. We will now move to the next phase of enabling as many people as possible to find and provide help at home.”

Also Read: Sendhelper wants US$300K to take on Helpling in Singapore

Helpling is a platform that connects households with adjacent service providers such as air conditioning servicing, laundry, and furniture assembling. On the website or via the app, customers can book a vetted and insured cleaner and gain back free time within a couple of clicks.

In the Asia Pacific, the company has established firm market strongholds in Singapore and Australia- with plans to expand into new markets.

James Lim, Managing Director of Helpling Asia Pacific: “The Singapore business has grown 15 folds since its launch and is still one of the fastest-growing markets within the Helpling Group.”

For service providers, the platform makes it easier to access new clients and to manage when and where they want to work.

Helpling was founded in early 2014 by Benedikt Franke and Philip Huffmann. Among its investors are Mangrove Capital, Lakestar, APACIG, Rocket Internet and Unilever Ventures.

Also Read: Household services marketplace Helpling raises funding from Swiss media group

Helpling said that its main markets are Germany and Singapore at the forefront of its innovation. Currently, Helpling offers its services in 10 countries: Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Ireland, UK, UAE, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Singapore.
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SoftBank wires US$1.5B to WeWork before cash runs out [Bloomberg]

WeWork said it received an early payment of US$1.5 billion from SoftBank Group, as the co-working company was weeks away from running out of money.

As a result, a slate of governance changes went into effect Wednesday, including the replacement of co-founder Adam Neumann as chairman and the assignment of five board seats to SoftBank, which will take a majority stake. WeWork also said it appointed a new independent director to the board, Jeff Sine, co-founder of financial firm Raine Group.

“This financing package enables the company to accelerate the path to profitability,” Marcelo Claure, WeWork’s new executive chairman, said in a statement.

Child Health Imprints raises US$2.3M in pre-Series A funding [press release]

Child Health Imprints (CHIL), a Singapore-based company focusing on neonatal-clinical care improvement, today announced that it has raised US$2.4 million in pre-Series A funding, led by HealthXCapital, with participation from Enterprise SG and other HNIs.

CHIL is engaged in the development and application of cutting-edge informational and computational technologies including IoT, Artificial Intelligence and predictive analytics to the practice of medicine in neonatal intensive care units across the world with the objective of making an early diagnosis of critical diseases and improving the overall quality of healthcare which is being provided to neonates.

The CHIL cloud platform (iNICU) also integrates laboratory results, and bedside clinical observations. It then analyses the data in medically comprehensive formats leveraging Machine Learning and Deep Learning technologies, which
enhances the overall quality of healthcare provided to neonates in NICUs. Post-discharge of baby from NICU, discharge data is pushed into iCHR (integrated Child Health Record). It automates growth monitoring, prescription and lab investigations, vaccination record & scheduler for the child.

MX Player raises US$110M from Tencent, Times Internet [press release]

MX Player, a video player and video OTT platform in India, has received US$110 million in fresh funding from Tencent and Times Internet. The deal marks Tencent’s second investment into a Times Internet asset, after it invested in Gaana, the music streaming platform, in 2018.

Since its formal OTT launch in February 2019, MX Player claims to have bagged over 175 million monthly active users in India and over 275 million monthly active users worldwide. Its OTT service is now live in 5 countries.

In 2018, Times Internet acquired a majority stake in MX Player, which was then a video playback app, from Chinese mobile games firm Zenjoy, which continues to be a shareholder.

Singapore’s ST Telemedia leads US$40M funding in Big Data firm Datameer [DealStreetAsia]

Temasek-backed investor ST Telemedia had led a US$40-million funding round in Datameer, a San Francisco-based big data analytics and visualisation company that seeks to build out its global sales and engineering capabilities.

In a statement, Datameer said its existing investor ST Telemedia was joined by shareholders Redpoint Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, Nextworld Capital, Citi Ventures, and Top Tier Capital Partners in the funding round.

The company said it will use the fresh funding to expand its capabilities in the enterprise data preparation and exploration market and to finance the market introduction of its Neebo solution. Neebo is a cloud-native self-service solution that allows teams of analytics and data scientists to create, discover, use and share trusted assets in hybrid landscapes, Datameer said.

Mitsui to manufacture electric vehicle motors in India [press release]

Mitsui & Co. plans to build a US$14 million plant to manufacture electric vehicle (EV) motors in India, in partnership with leading Taiwanese motor manufacturer TECO Electric & Machinery.

The plant, in Bengaluru, Karnataka state, is expected to commence full production by the end of next year, generating 110,000 high-efficiency motors per year.

The investment is being made by a joint venture, TEMICO, set up in April 2018 by Mitsui (40 per cent) and TECO (60 per cent) to pursue the development, manufacturing, and sales of EV motors and EV powertrains globally.

Shinichiro Omachi, Managing Director of Mitsui & Co. India said: “The plant creates 200 jobs and will contribute to the growth of India’s EV industry, local manufacturing and reducing air pollution. Sustainability and mobility are key growth areas for Mitsui and we are investing more in EV businesses as the world moves towards a low-carbon society.”

The joint venture will establish a local company, TEMICO India, to build the plant, which will produce EV traction motor for electric vehicles.

The plant is Mitsui’s second major EV venture in India following its investment in SmartE, India’s first and largest three-wheeler electric mobility service, in July.

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From hyper-personalisation, predictive analytics, content creation to fraud detection, we are seeing AI creep into our daily lives as both advertisers and consumers. According to Gartner’s survey of CIOs, “14 per cent of organisations employ AI and 50 per cent intend to do so in 2020”. 

At its core, AI pertains to the use of machines and their ability to continuously learn and solve problems. Algorithmic advances in AI like deep learning came at the right time for mobile advertising, these advanced techniques are immensely powerful and are capable of capturing complex non-intuitive patterns.

The key driver for AI is the huge amount of training data* and in mobile advertising, there are numerous touchpoints gain through views and engagements with users.

Hyper-personalisation

When one draws the progression of mobile advertising, it started with broadcasting common messages to all users, it then changed to targeting specific segments based on demographics like age, gender and location, with the help of AI mobile advertisement has now moved to hyper-personalization where decisions are made at the individual user level.

Also Read: A glimpse into the future of mobile crypto microtransactions

Hyper-personalisation means targeting the right user at the right time on the right channel with the right message. Hyper-personalisation creates a win-win situation for user and advertiser. 

Right channel: Mobile advertisement covers channels like search, display, video, social, push notifications, in-app notifications, text messages, emails etc. Each channel is unique in terms of visual appearance, cost, engagement potential and reach**. Different users have a different affinity towards each of these channels. AI helps to predict user affinity at the channel level and target accordingly. 

Right message: Message in Mobile advertisement context means content which includes text, images etc and creative which includes colour, design, look and feel etc. Traditionally advertisers have used intuition to come up with messages, it then moved to A/B test where again the evaluation is done at a set of users.

AI is able to proactively predict right messages for a user based on its demographics and previous interactions. AI goes one step further and is able to recommend user-specific cross-sell and upsell messages. Advanced AI techniques work on the principle of exploring and exploit this enables AI to correct mistakes and adapt to the changing optimal based on data. 

Ad fraud 

Ad Fraud is an increasing problem for the ad industry, eating into the ad budgets.  Some of these frauds come innocently in typically free applications, sometimes secretly displaying ads that are hidden to the user clicks on the ads, installs applications and even makes fake engagements.

All of these add to the costs that advertisers will have to pay to these non-human engagements. Ad fraud is like virus scanning, fraudsters are always coming up with ingenious ways of getting past fraud tools and systems. AI algorithms can learn the organic behaviour basis time of day, age, gender, location and other behavioural patterns and in real-time flag any anomalies.

We believe AI today has just scratched the surface in mobile advertising and the future has much more in store. 

Breaking siloed systems 

Advertisers have understood the value of Mobile Advertising and are spending huge budgets non-different channels with multiple teams. There are separate teams for social, user acquisitions, re-marketing and CRM marketing.

Today each of this channel is running individually in their own capacity, though each channel adds individual value they at some point are cannibalizing each other, plus there are many intuitive and non-intuitive synergies between these channels that exist and are not leveraged.

Also Read:  A call to end gatekeeping in Asias crypto community

Trivial synergies like use free channel before paid channel are easy to appreciate but there are many non-trivial synergies which go beyond intuition. We believe these siloed efforts have to come together. 

A common AI system which uses transfer learning where learnings from a single AI model can be used to train a second model. This shortens the time for the machine to learn, increase the pace of the learning, shortening the cost and ultimately improving user experiences.

Mobile advertisement for offline commerce 

On average people spend more than 3 hours a day on mobile and yet 90% of the commerce happens offline. Advertisers from offline commerce are already using mobile advertising focused on deriving footfall to offline stores and bringing offline users online. AI using hyper-personalization can solve both the use cases effectively.

AI is changing our world today, it already is with computers becoming beating grand-masters in chess, the game of go, becoming better than humans at detecting images, and detecting speech. 

All of this is powered with Moores law, whereby 2023, it is arguably said that it will approach the computational power of a human brain and by 2045 the computational power of all human brains combined.  While it is arguable that algorithms will be as efficient at the brain, there will be no doubt huge improvements in the capability of machines.

Hyper-personalisation is here to stay and will become more intelligent in the future, in predicting our needs and to become more relevant and serendipitous to us all.

* Training data is the one on which we train and fit our model basically to fit the parameters 

** Reach means how many unique users can be targeted using this channel 

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While the fintech sector continued to become a prima donna in the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem –considering the number of fintech companies that announced their funding rounds each month– the month of October also brought forth plenty of exciting new sectors to consider.

Within one week, we even saw two funding announcements from New Protein companies. These announcements indicated a greater appetite to invest in companies that are working in solutions to save the environment –for example, by developing the alternative to conventional meat.

Another unique, unheard of sector is maritime tech, which we saw one funding announcement of.

The following is a list of the early-stage funding round that we manage to cover in October:

Milleu Insight
Funding round: US$2.4 million pre-Series A
Investor(s): MassMutual Ventures

With the new funds, the Singapore-based analytics startup aims to expand into four new markets in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

Also Read: As September ends, wake up to these notable early stage funding rounds of the month

Paper.id
Funding stage: Undisclosed Series A
Investor(s): Golden Gate Ventures, Modalku

The Indonesian SaaS platform plans to use the funding to improve its digital invoicing and bookkeeping system.

Crewdible
Funding stage: US$1.5 million in pre-Series A
Investor(s): Global Founders Capital

The Indonesian micro-warehousing platform will use the funding to build a stronger presence in big cities across the country, marketing efforts, and most importantly to improve the platform to support massive traffic and other needs.

Edukasyon.ph
Funding round: Undisclosed Series A
Investor(s): EduLab Capital Partners, Obunsha Ventures, Alternate Ventures, Foxmont Capital Partners, Lorinet Foundation, French Partners, First Asia Venture Capital, and KSR Ventures

Since its launch in 2015, Edukasyon.ph has enabled access to education for about 10 million visitors annually.

Yummy Corp
Funding round: US$7.75 million in Series A
Investor(s): SMDV (Sinarmas Digital Ventures), Intudo Ventures, East Ventures, Agaeti Ventures, Sovereign’s Capital, and Selera Kapital by Sour Sally Group

With this investment, Yummy Corp said it is targeting 200 locations for the year 2020 across Jakarta and other major cities in Indonesia.

Also Read: 5 valuable things I learned about the angel investment and early stage funding scene in Southeast Asia

GDP
Funding round: US$1 million in Seed
Investor(s): Angel investors

Singapore-headquartered fintech startup GDP Inc. has already established offices in five locations (Singapore, The Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, Estonia) and soon to be in Hong Kong and China.

Ento
Funding round: Undisclosed Seed
Investor(s): Rapzo Capital (lead)

Malaysian new protein startup Ento said that the funding will be used for production and regional market expansion.

RoomMe
Funding round: Undisclosed Series A
Investor(s): BAce Capital

Indonesia-based co-living startup RoomMe is BAce’s first known investment in Indonesia.

Fuse
Funding round: Undisclosed Series A
Investor(s): EV Growth

The Indonesian insurtech startup said that it raises “a couple of million” US dollars, aimed at helping it expands to eight major cities in the country.

StickEarn
Funding round: US$5.5 million in Series A
Investor(s): East Ventures, SMDV, Grab, OVO, Agaeti Ventures

The Indonesian O2O adtech startup said that the funding will enable it to “explore new opportunities from different verticals and enhance its data and analytics capabilities.”

MyCash
Funding round: Undisclosed Seed
Investor(s): 500 Startups, Ng Sek San

The Singapore- and Malaysia-based fintech startup will use the investment to acquire remittance licenses in the two countries.

Also Read: Early stage fundraising: What it takes to win over investors that best fit your team

Cricket One
Funding round: Undisclosed Seed
Investor(s): 500 Startups, Masik Enterprises

Vietnam-based new protein startup Cricket One plans to use the funding for further R&D and study of the cricket protein structure.

Yours
Funding: US$3.5 million in Seed
Investor(s): Surge, Global Founders Capital, Kindred Ventures, and an undisclosed celebrity fund

The Singapore-based personalised skincare startup plans to use the funding to focus on improving computer vision and Machine Learning to achieve personalisation at scale.

Sampingan
Funding: US$1.5 million in pre-Series A
Investor(s): Golden Gate Ventures (lead), Antler

Indonesia-based on-demand workforce platform Sampingan plans to use the money to expand operations by providing businesses with more extensive options to scale.

Claritecs
Funding: US$600,000 in pre-Series A
Investor(S): INNOPORT, Bernhard Schulte, angel investor

The Singapore-based maritime tech startup will use the funding to support product development and market roll-out.

FazWaz
Funding: “seven figure” pre-Series A
Investor(s): Undisclosed

The Thailand-based proptech company will use the funding to expand its market share in Thailand and to continue its overseas expansion into the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

NuSpace
Funding: Undisclosed Seed
Investor(s): BEENEXT

NuSpace, a Singapore-based nano-satellite company that provides IoT connectivity and data platform services, stated that the funding will help “accelerate momentum” for their product launch.

Autify
Funding: US$2.5 million in Seed
Investor(s): Global Brain Corporation, Salesforce Ventures, Archetype Ventures Inc., individual investors

Autify, the AI-powered software testing automation platform, plans to use the seed funding to reinforce product development and sales systems, as well as to explore the international market.

Also Read: A look into one of the most active early stage VC firms this year

Zipmex
Funding: US$3 million in pre-Series A
Investor(s): Infinity Blockchain Holdings

Zipmex, a Singapore-based currency exchange focussed on providing retail and institutional investors the ability to invest securely in cryptocurrencies, plans to accelerate its Asia Pacific expansion plans.

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