Thailand-headquartered digital fashion brand Pomelo announced the completion of an acquisition of fashion e-commerce platform Looksi, according to a press statement. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

Looksi started off in 2012 as ZALORA Thailand, before it was acquired in 2016 by Central Group and rebranded a year later.

As part of the deal with Pomelo, Looksi will no longer be using its brand name. The platform will transition its current app completely into the Pomelo’s ecosystem, enabling Looksi customers to continue to shop on the platform. Additionally, its social media channels will also transition to Pomelo.

With the addition of the new e-commerce brand into its platform, Pomelo will add a variety of key international brands –which are available on the Looksi platform– to its app and website. Some of these top brands included Adidas, Aldo, Havaianas, Topshop, Guess, Levi Jeans, and Nike.

Also Read: Thai fashion platform Pomelo appoints former H&M executive as Chief Retail Officer

“We’re happy to welcome Looksi customers and partners to the Pomelo platform. Looksi has been serving Thai fashion e-commerce shoppers since its founding as Zalora in 2012. This deal will accelerate Pomelo’s evolution to become a multi-brand fashion platform for fashion lovers all across Southeast Asia,” expressed David Jou, co-founder of Pomelo.

Pomelo has been showing signs of rapid growth as it raised US$52 million Series C round in September 2019 and recently appointed a former H&M executive into their team as Chief Retail Officer (CRO).

The fashion company has since hired 200 new employees and has opened 10 new stores locally in 2019.

“We are happy to further strengthen our partnership and support Pomelo via this deal. Central Group will remain committed to driving fashion and lifestyle omnichannel retail sales,” a spokesperson of Central Group Online said.

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Image Credit:  Hannah Morgan

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Roambee, a US-based IoT startup announces that it has received a Series B1 investment from TMI, the venture capital arm of Indonesian network provider Telkomsel, joined by fellow CVC MDI Ventures.

The investment, as reported by DealStreetAsia, was made out of the US$40-million joint fund the two firms share with Singtel Innov8.

Telkom Indonesia is the parent company of MDI and Singtel Innov8, and Telkom Indonesia and Singtel are the stakeholders in Telkomsel.

The fund was launched in May 2019, and followed by the announcement of investment made by TMI in Indonesian digital credit card company Kredivo two months later.

Roambee is a portfolio company of MDI Ventures. The VC firm invested US$2 million into the company in June 2018 to facilitate its expansion into Indonesia and other Southeast Asia markets.

Also Read: Meet the VC: How Indonesia’s MDI Ventures managed 3 overseas exits within a month

Roambee was founded in 2013 with a focus on enabling IoT-based smart logistics and asset monitoring solutions to help its customers to implement advanced digital supply chain in their companies to increase business performance.

Roambee accounts companies including T-Mobile, Huawei, Oracle, and Accenture among its portfolios.

Roambee is headquartered in Santa Clara, California, US and has representative offices in Mexico, Brazil, Germany, South Africa, United Arab Emirates, India, and Malaysia.

“Collaboration with Telkomsel allows Roambee to capitalise on Telkomsel’s reach, their future proof telecom infrastructure, and their enterprise sales network to offer an on-demand monitoring solution to Indonesian and Asian enterprises,” said Roambee CEO Sanjay Sharma.

Telkomsel has been developing and expanding the Narrow Band – Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technology which synergise with Roambee’s core of business.

Also Read: Indonesia’s MDI Ventures on their investment strategies for foreign startups

Telkomsel’s IoT seeks to support Telkomsel’s enterprise customers as well as the realisation of Industry 4.0.
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Picture Credit: MDI Ventures

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Joosk Studio, an animation startup based in Myanmar, has secured a “six-figure” US dollar in equity investment led by Nest Tech VN.

EME Myanmar, which invested into Joosk last year, also joined this round.

“At Joosk, we use humour and illustration to reach audiences and share messages. We’ve been running our Facebook comic series alongside our agency work for a while now, and this latest investment lets us develop that side of the company to bring our audience something bigger than they’ve ever seen before,” said Thet Paing Kha, CEO of Joosk Studio.

“We see that Nest Tech have a lot of digital skills that could help Joosk with digital merchandising and discovering new ways to entertain our audience outside of traditional approaches,” he added.

Also Read: Myanmar’s new early-stage fund EME launches with investments in Joosk Studio, CarsDB

Joosk Studio is a creative digital animation agency founded and run by artists Thet Paing Kha and Zeyar Htet. The company has worked with companies, including Facebook, CB Bank and Telenor, as well as NGOs, UN agencies and the World Bank Group.

In September 2019, Joosk’s proprietary animation series Sassy Bound won the ‘Myanmar Influencer of the Year Award for Art and Design’. Joosk is doubling down on its popular comic series and producing Sassy Bound The Movie while continuing to grow its core agency business.

Joosk’s debut into cinema will bring Myanmar’s first feature-length animation to viewers across the country. Sassy Bound The Movie will hit theatres nationwide sometime in 2021.

Nest Tech VN’s Managing Partner Soe Moe Kyaw Oo has invested in several Myanmar startups, with this investment into Joosk marking the fifth company in the Nest Tech VN Myanmar portfolio.

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Image Credit: Joosk Studio

 

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A staple in the annual Echelon Asia Summit, the Echelon Roadshow is back this coming 2020 to spice things up before the big day

As some of the readers may already know, e27 annually hosts the Echelon Asia Summit — a grand tech event that gathers as much as 12,000 people from all over the world to celebrate innovation and ideas. The event boasts a plethora of features including talks, networking opportunities, matchmaking rounds, pitching competitions, exhibitions, and many more.

As far as tradition goes, the Echelon Asia Summit is a culmination of a series of roadshow stops for Echelon. Dubbed as the Echelon Roadshow, these series of stops are the perfect stepping stones for any startup founder to kick-start their own respective Echelon journeys.

As such, Echelon Roadshow is back this coming 2020 to provide emerging and established startups to get to know their own local startup ecosystems and prepare them for the larger Echelon Asia Summit happening in Singapore.

 For many startups, this is the perfect opportunity to get a taste of the Echelon experience, test their networking skills, brush up on how to pitch their ideas to a large audience of important stakeholders, and ultimately dazzle the crowd.

More importantly, each roadshow stop will come with its own series of talks unique to the ecosystem of the country it is situated in, providing unique insights and updated trends that tackle the very community of startups that you belong to. Through this, you can learn from our speakers made up of local tech founders and stakeholders during panel discussions.

The TOP100 country qualifiers will also be determined at each Echelon Roadshow stops. Startups who join the programme will go on private pitching sessions on the day of the roadshow itself, where they get the chance to win over our judges and slither through to the semi-finals.

Other participants who will not be pitching for the country qualifiers will also be the first to know which local startups will be pitching at the coveted TOP100 stage happening at the Echelon Asia Summit in Singapore.

First six cities for Echelon Roadshow 2020

We kick things off in 2020 with six major stops for Echelon Roadshow, trailing six different Southeast Asian countries that begin in Vietnam, onward to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Singapore.

The first six Echelon Roadshow 2020 stops are as follows:

1.) Kuala Lumpur – 18 February 2020, 5PM – 8PM

2.) Ho Chi Minh – 20 February 2020, 5PM – 8PM

3.) Bangkok – 27 February 2020, 5PM – 8PM

4.) Manila – 10 March 2020, 5PM – 8PM

5.) Jakarta – 12 March 2020, 5PM – 8PM

6.) Singapore – 7 April 2020, 5PM – 8PM

All venues are yet to be finalised so check back as we announce the venue for each of our Echelon Roadshow stops. You may also check back soon as more stops will be added to the list in the coming months.

Be a part of Echelon Roadshow 2020

As an important feature of the annual Echelon Asia Summit, Echelon Roadshow 2020 is a key experience for those who are keen on being part of the summit. As such, we are inviting you to be a part of our roadshow stops this coming 2020. Interested participants may learn more about the event and RSVP for their desired cities here.

In addition, the TOP100 APAC is a programme organised by e27 that empowers insights, connections, talent, and funding opportunities for early-stage tech startups in Asia. The programme is currently accepting applications and will run until Echelon Asia Summit 2020. If you’re interested in joining the 2020 edition of TOP100 APAC, you may apply here.

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AppsFlyer, a digital marketing attribution startup with global presence, announces today that it has received a total of US$210 million in Series D funding from New York-based growth equity firm General Atlantic. AppsFlyer also announces the opening of its seventh Asia Pacific office in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Alex Crisses, Managing Director at General Atlantic, and Anton Levy, Co-President and Global Head of Technology, have joined AppsFlyer’s Board of Directors.

This investment freshly comes three years after AppsFlyer’s Series C funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to US$294 million.

The company said that it will use the funding to enhance its open platform for third-party developers, as well as benefiting data-driven marketers in mobile-first.

Also Read: What makes Singapore the marketing hub of Southeast Asia

“This year, we predict that Asia Pacific (APAC) will hold the world’s largest quantity of app-install ad spend at US$30 billion. With massive volume and scale in this mobile-first region, marketers will be looking even harder into how they can better optimise their marketing budgets. There is also the imminent danger of fraud exposure for brands and users alike, where sadly, APAC leads in the world’s fastest fraud rate-growth at 60 per cent higher than the global average,” said AppsFlyer’s APAC President and Managing Director, Ronen Mense.

“This funding will go into strengthening our open platform for partners and third-party developers, allowing them the flexibility to add their custom solutions on top of ours, so they grow and protect their businesses in a highly competitive marketplace like APAC,” he continued.

Alex Crisses, Managing Director, General Atlantic, said: “Attribution is becoming the core of the marketing tech stack. AppsFlyer’s commitment to being independent, unbiased, and representing the marketer’s interests has significant potential to capture additional opportunity in the market.”

AppsFlyer offers a suite of comprehensive measurement and analytics solutions that are around privacy by design. It seeks to “empowers marketers to grow their business and innovate”.

General Atlantic’s APAC portfolios include Indonesia’s edtech Ruangguru to India’s healthtech Rubicon Research.

Also Read: 10 digital marketing strategies for startups

Anton Levy, Co-President and Global Head of Technology, General Atlantic, added: “AppsFlyer’s scale enables it to provide accurate attribution data and ad-fraud protection, saving millions for advertisers. At the same time, the company has the end-user in mind every step of the way and a mindset of privacy by design and security first right when data privacy becomes one of the primary concerns facing brands.”

AppsFlyer’ global customers include brands such as Gojek, Agoda, Tokopedia, SEA Group (Shopee & Garena), HBO, Tencent, and Nike. Their existing investors are Qumra Capital, Goldman Sachs Growth, Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP), Pitango Venture Capital, and Magma Venture Partners who also participated in this round.
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Picture Credit: Unsplash.com/@kaleidico

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