Day: December 20, 2019

Luxury lifestyle brand Oxwhite has raised RM5.02 million (US$1.2 million) via pitchIN to become the largest ever equity crowdfunding campaign in Malaysia.

The company raised the funds from 485 investors and also attracted the largest individual crowdfunding investment of RM1.09 million (US$260,000). Well-known digital marketer and entrepreneur Vince Tan also contributed.

With this, Oxwhite smashed the record of Commerce.Asia’s MR5 million raised via the same ECF platform in 2017.

CK Changr, CEO of Oxwhite, said: “The 485 investors who have come on board will help us push out our brand further into the market. We will be using the money raised to launch new products and I am certain that our new ECF investors will serve as our brand evangelists.”

Also Read: How top e-commerce platforms are fuelling Philippines’ online economy

As per a press release, the campaign that ran for just two weeks garnered over RM11 million in investment interest. It subsequently went live for seven days, during which it achieved its RM5 million funding target from RM3 million in ECF investments and RM2 million in private placements.

CK Changr, CEO of Oxwhite, said: “In just over a year, Oxwhite grew to nearly RM5 million in sales. We are growing very fast and capital was needed to fuel our expansion plans. Our first choice was equity crowdfunding with pitchIN because we wanted to give our loyal customers the chance to be part of our growth story.”

“Together with my fellow Co-founders ZiKang Tai and Jave Ho, we take this opportunity to thank the investors for the overwhelming support. We will build the next chapter of the Oxwhite story with them. Oxwhite will be launching new product lines that will strengthen our position in the industry,” he added.

Sam Shafie, CEO of pitchIN said that Oxwhite has set new standards in the running of successful ECF campaigns. “The Oxwhite campaign was well planned and skillfully executed. The response from interested investors was overwhelming. Oxwhite surpassed the previous most backed campaign by more than 120 investors; setting a very high bar for the next big ECF deal. Coming at the end of the year, the Oxwhite deal fittingly closes what has been a very explosive growth year for pitchIN. We have surpassed the targets we set ourselves for 2019 and credit goes to great companies such as Oxwhite.”

Also Read: This startup took only 38 minutes to achieve its US$720K crowdfunding target

The Oxwhite campaign is the 18th successful deal on pitchIN in 2019. Five deals are currently live on pitchIN, Malaysia’s leading equity crowdfunding platform.

In October last year, online marketplace for P2P financing Fundaztic raised RM3 million (approximately US$720,000) within 38 minutes of the launch of the crowdfunding campaign on pitchIN.

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Cross-border e-commerce sales poised for explosive growth: Visa Study [press release]

Online businesses see a world of opportunity for cross-border sales.

According to a Visa Global Merchant eCommerce Study (GME Study), e-commerce leaders globally view international expansion and finding new cross-border customers critical to driving growth, particularly heading into the prime holiday shopping period.

While a vast majority of leaders (87 per cent) surveyed believe expanding cross-border e-commerce is one of their company’s biggest growth opportunities, almost all Singapore business owners (96 per cent) agree that having an international presence is key to their company’s success in the years ahead.

Today, two in three businesses (66 per cent) that sell online have international customers. These sales account for nearly a third (31 per cent) of those business’ revenues. Even with the significant revenue from cross-border sales, more than half (51 per cent) of companies who are selling to international customers need help to optimise their international online sales processes.

Oikocredit leads US$5M Series A funding of Kaleidofin [press release]

Kaleidofin, a neobank for the informal sector customer in India, has closed an INR 360 million (US$5 million) in Series A round led by impact investor Oikocredit.

Existing investors Flourish, a Silicon Valley-based VC firm, and Omidyar Network India, also invested. Blume Ventures, angel investor Prof. Shlomo Ben-Haim, and Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund, also joined.

Founded in 2017 by Sucharita Mukherjee and Puneet Gupta, Kaleidofin provides curated, goal-based financial solutions to customers in the underbanked segments using proven financial planning and wealth management principles. For each customer, Kaleidofin begins with understanding the financial goals of the household, its main sources of financial vulnerability, preferences, and tolerance toward financial risk.

It creates individual ‘personas’ of households through multiple sources of information, such as the demographic profile, income sources, asset ownership, among others, to tailor specific financial solutions for its customers.

Seekify raises US$1.5M seed funding from Sequoia India [press release]

Customer experience SaaS platform Seekify has raised US$1.5 million in seed funding as part of Sequoia India’s rapid scale-up programme Surge.

Nishant Rao (Founding Partner at Avatar Venture Partners), Gaurav Agarwal (1mg) and Sameer Maheshwari (HealthKart) also participated.

Seekify is now available in Beta for enterprises – and the company has started multiple pilots with customers across the world. With the funding, Seekify will invest in building technology and hiring new talent across functions.

Seekify can be easily integrated with different software of businesses, allowing them to aggregate all the data that drives their customer experience. The platform helps teams to set clear goals and KPIs, providing data-driven insights using AI and ML.

Finally, it automates the workflows needed to improve the customer experience – hence closing the loop. Overall, the goal is to simplify the complexities of CX and deliver great customer experience through innovative technology.

Hong Kong gets its first virtual lender ZA Bank [Finews.Asia]

ZA Bank, co-owned by ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance and Sinolink Group, has launched to become the first virtual bank to kickstart services in Hong Kong.

According to its CEO Rockson Hsu, the name ZA represents a reversal of alphabetical order which is a reminder to ‘think out of the box and view things from a different perspective’.

ZA Bank said it would offer interest rates of 1.4 per cent for one-month Hong Kong dollar deposits and up to 2 per cent for three-, six- and 12-month deposits.

Dable Partners with Malaysia’s Malaysiakini to provide personalises content recommendation [press release]

Dable, a content discovery platform, has entered into a partnership with Malaysia’s independent news platform Malaysiakini.

With this partnership, Dable will provide a personalised content recommendation solution on the
Malaysiakini (Chinese) website, via a widget. The service will help increase the site’s traffic and boost article consumption by feeding readers with content they are interested in.

Dable is a startup based in South Korea that uses Big Data and personalisation technologies to analyse the media content consumed by visitors in real-time and provide quality, personalised recommendations.

 

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On an estimation, there are 582million entrepreneurs in the world. This count keeps increasing every day with the rapid growth of technology, trends, and inventions. While science is taking its steps towards 5G, Internet of Things, BlockChain, Artificial Intelligence, and Deep Learning, people are moving forward in entrepreneurship.

In the year 2016, around 25 million Americans were found to be business owners or startup entrepreneurs. Currently, 62 per cent of US billionaires are the best example of the word ‘entrepreneurship.’

The web has fascinating statistics and stories on the success of these doers. About 22.5 per cent of these failed during their startups. With such facts, newcomers earn motivation to climb the stairs of success.

Kickstart entrepreneurship

The main goal of entrepreneurship is being successful and never stopping at anything. It does not emerge from starting a venture and making it work in the very first attempt. You cannot get over every hurdle from the start. In the world of today, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg, and J.K. Rowling are the inspirational examples of entrepreneurs.

Fame comes with struggle, and starting a new business can be extremely difficult without the right plan. None of these could be iconic stars without following proper strategies.

The rise of this word comes up with the idea of starting a personal venture that one can own. While you begin to dream passionately about something, you often try to make it possible. Serious people always estimate their dreams, and entrepreneurs make sure to afford them as well.

For this reason, you often find characteristics that build up men and women entrepreneurs. Of these categories, some are essential.

Characteristics of entrepreneurs

You may come across enormous characteristics of startup men and women entrepreneurs. Being passionate and flexible is essential for anything that you do. However, an overview of these can help you know if you can grow quickly or not.

• It is crucial to be self-motivating, for no one comes up to push an entrepreneur rather than you. You can only be successful if you know how to get up after every failure.
• An important point involves the estimation of one’s own self. You need to make sure of your abilities and provisions. Unless you are assured of what you are offering, you may not be able to stand at the right point in the market.
• Being risky for an entrepreneur is logically necessary because some strategies you apply for the first time. At the start of the business, you may take little steps but later on, you sometimes make a jump for better results.
• An entrepreneur is dependent on networks and connections a lot. You cannot move across the market without increasing your circle. Individuals connected together in a startup need to communicate for better working.
• Having enough knowledge about the market carries weight. It is because one needs to know the right plans for investing money. You may only be successful after an investment if you know where to invest.

How to become a successful entrepreneur

Mixing up between characteristics and strategies is not considerable. Every startup entrepreneur does not succeed for the first time due to different reasons. The rate of new entrepreneurs in the US from 2000-2017 is varying.

This rate is increasing every day with a maximum number of failed startups. You can find every individual working hard but tactics are crucial for the growth of a business.

Making sure of separating the personal and business account is essential for professional deals. If you work on a startup for shopping deals in UK, and your shopping revenue gets deducted from your official account, cost estimations can go confusing. Moreover, you may come across a situation that can be cost-inconvenient.

Manage your money

Rather than leaving everything on your bookkeeper, try to keep a record of every purchase. Men and women entrepreneurs need to make sure if their accountants are getting proper information about the business. Once you miss the records of some transactions, it is messy to catch up with the current dealings.

Financial clearance and understanding is the most important part of a business. Entrepreneurship demands responsibility, and so does a startup venture. Learn to analyse the finances of your business for solving them if a situation occurs. Keep a daily, weekly, and monthly check for better results.

Opting for cheap is opting for expensive

Using discounts and vouchers for shopping is acceptable; however, utilising these to invest less in your own business is wrong. Opting cheap items can be costly when an entrepreneur has to proffer them to a customer who trusts. It is necessary to estimate your budget and then select the business you wish to start.

Value in the market adds to success in the industry. Entrepreneurs need to estimate their value proposition. Once you realize how your business is going to add value to the customers, only then will you be able to market your provisions. Always vend something impossible to find elsewhere.

Customer service

Every business individual must keep customers as the utmost priority. Henceforth, work on your customer service. Frequenters often return back if they are treated pleasantly during their very first visit. The team of a startup entrepreneur must fulfill every desire that a customer comes up with.

According to Statista, about 70 per cent of startup companies fail due to different cited reasons. 42 per cent of these were not needed in the market, while 17 per cent lacked a business model. It results due to the scarcity of planning and wrong decision making. Being an entrepreneur is not difficult at all. But sometimes, it comes up as easy as falling off a log.

The most successful entrepreneurs started from scratch only to come up with Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, and much more. Therefore, there is a lot entrepreneurship can give you only if you opt for the right way.

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It is common knowledge that 90 per cent of startups fail due to a range of reasons: misreading market demand, weak founding team, poor communication, wrong product, wrong time; and or running out of funding or personal money are a few of these.

What do the 10 per cent of startups that succeed have in common, though?

Success factors of startups are timing, team/execution, idea, strength of business model, and funding, respectively. One of the common characteristics of startups that succeed is joining accelerator programs.

Last week, after spending over two months at AppWorks, I experienced Demo Day as batch #19 graduated. I observed 18 startup founders pitch their ideas in front of 1000 people from around Taiwan and SEA, from corporate leaders to investors, and the media industry.

This Demo Day gave me a chance to observe the change in founders and their teams from the early days of the accelerator program.

Here are my key takeaways

• Be passionate about what you do and show that you care, as founders are the most important factor in whether a startup grows or stops growing. Business models, markets, customers change; only founder qualities are the constant. Founders that can execute tend to be: Motivated, passionate, decisive and exhibit humility.
• Be proactive. Help is always there, you just have to reach out for it. People are willing to give feedback and share their own experiences. Alumni network connection, mentorship from industry experts, coworking space, recruitment, and many more resources provided for free can take your startup to the next level.
• Get a mentor as early as possible. They don’t require any monetary benefits and they are willing to guide you through your entrepreneurship journey. One-on-one mentorship provided by partners helps you focus on things that matter, find the right connections and urge you to think bigger and motivate you to do more. I saw teams improve dramatically as a result of the right mindset.
• Build long-lasting relationships. Being a founder is a challenging path with lots of ups and downs. The environment of like-minded startup founders helps you overcome obstacles of entrepreneurship. Not only local founders but also founders from other countries felt home in Taiwan because of building meaningful connections with people in this ecosystem.
• Work and have fun in an environment where people are valued. Whether you are a successful startup founder or a first-time entrepreneur, local or a foreigner, you are treated with the utmost respect and great hospitality when you work in an accelerator. Every Friday night founders come together as one big family over dinner and fun activities. This results in building strong bonds, connecting with new people, and feeling respected. People don’t naturally do this if there is no focus on values. It’s instrumental to socialize in this way where your core values are being addressed.

Based on what I have personally witnessed, I agree that startups have higher chances of succeeding after joining accelerators.

Also read: Why dyslexia makes me a better entrepreneur

The teams I met with every day learned from other entrepreneurs, were guided by experienced mentors, and leveraged resources provided to grow their businesses. They were exposed to media, potential partners and investors on Demo Day, but they were also nurtured with access to all of these tools even before the big moment. This constant exposure and the constant ability to calibrate and focus their aims is instrumental to their success, in my opinion.

Most importantly, they learned about the entrepreneurial mindset and made long-lasting friendships with like-minded people. Just like the minerals that take stressful compression of billions of pounds of pressure and develop it into a valuable resource, these founders emerged from their accelerator period ready to shine like diamonds, too.

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Terra, blockchain payment network that offers a price-stable cryptocurrency, has marked its expansion to Singapore with the appointment of Rahul Abrol –Uber’s former APAC Head of Strategy– as Head of International and Strategy.

The new venture in Singapore will be its Southeast Asia hub; it will also hire locals to drive localisation. It plans to have a strong root in the country before branching out to countries such as Taiwan and Thailand in 2020.

Terra said that its expansion is its way to grow its on-the-ground network through strategic partnerships with local businesses. This builds on Terra’s existing e-commerce alliance, which includes 25 partners across Asia, such as with Carousell, Qoo10, and Rakuten-owned EBATES.

Terra will also launch its stablecoin-powered mobile payments app in Singapore in early 2020. Terra uses stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency which is price-stable and pegged to real-world assets such as the Singapore dollar, that can fund ongoing discounts without burning investor dollars like the usual investment models in most e-commerces.

Also Read: Blockchain startup Terra gets funding from HashKey Capital, to expand alliance in Asia

The global blockchain race

It is estimated that by 2027, 10 per cent of global GDP could be stored on blockchain technology, according to the World Economic Forum.

Responding to that, Abrol said in a press statement, “There is a global race among nations to embrace blockchain payments and Singapore has all the right elements to lead the charge. It is not only welcoming of the technology but created clear regulatory frameworks so emerging companies can thrive.”

He added, “My focus in 2020 will be to replicate our success in Korea internationally and Singapore is the perfect springboard to help us realise this. Beyond attracting key local talent, we also plan to acquire the applicable license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore under the Payments Service Act. We have already launched in Mongolia and aim to have operations launched in five or more countries within the calendar year for 2020.”

Recent moves from Terra

Terra co-founder Do Kwon explained to Bloomberg that its partnership with South Korean mobile payment app CHAI has resulted in transaction volumes of US$54 million within four months of its launch.

CHAI enables consumers to pay for items online by adding their bank account. It is available on TMON, one of the largest e-commerce platforms in the country, to all of Terra’s e-commerce partners.

Also Read: How Terra aims to get people to use its price-stable cryptocurrency

According to a separate statement by Terra, CHAI’s approach is similar to the user experience of PayPal. It already partnered up with 15 major local banks to facilitate convenient fiat on- and off-ramp.

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Image Credit: Terra

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