Chinese B2B e-commerce company Zall Smart Commerce Group has announced that it has formed a consortium with Japanese trading company Marubeni and Singapore-based CrimsonLogic‘s unit Global eTrade Services to apply for a digital wholesale banking licence in the city-state.

According to a report by Bloomberg, Zall seeks to contribute to Singapore’s development as a global financial hub for trading activities.

Started in 2017, Zall runs a virtual bank called Z-Bank in China.

Zall-led consortium is the latest to join the race for a digital bank licence in Singapore. Another notable Chinese company to have joined the race is Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, which aims to obtain the licence to serve corporate clients.

Also Read: What are Digital Full Bank and Digital Wholesale Bank licences?

Earlier this month, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced that it had received 14 applications for a digital wholesale bank licence and seven for a digital full-bank licence.

Singapura Finance is also in the race which has partnered with MatchMove Pay for a full-bank digital licence.

Late last year, Enigma Group, a financial services company that specialises in analytical recruitment and executive search in the US, Middle East, and the Asia Pacific, also announced that it formed a consortium comprising Singapore-based Qrypt Technologies, 2359 Media and Blockchain Worx to apply for a digital bank licence.

The race sprinted after Grab became one of the first companies in putting a bid for the licence back in December 2019. It applied for a digital full bank licence in Singapore with Singtel, the communications technology group.

Singapore-based digital payment startup Razer Fintech (Razer) also announced that it has submitted an application for the digital full bank license.

Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash

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Backpacking through 50 countries after a long finance career led Vikram Bharati to his true calling of becoming an entrepreneur. In March 2018, Bharati founded Tribe Theory, a global chain of business hostels targeted for young startups and entrepreneurs.

What began with a single unit in Singapore has since been expanded to eight locations around the world. On Tuesday, Tribe Theory announced a US$3.5 million funding from American venture capitalist Tim Draper and rebranded it to Draper Startup House (DSH).

e27 had a chat with Bharati to know more about this deal and DSH’s future plans.

Below are the edited excerpts:

Getting funding from billionaire investor Tim Draper is every entrepreneur’s dream. How did this deal happen? 

Two Draper University alumni, Katie Russel and Daniel Wiegand, were tackling their own challenge of connecting entrepreneurs around the globe, aiming to expand the university strategically beyond the US. With the entrepreneurial stars aligned, Tribe Theory was then introduced to the US-based Draper Ecosystem.

Also Read: LINE partners HappyFresh to give Thai users grocery delivery service on its messaging app

Tim Draper’s dynamic and inspirational venture capitalist background was by far amongst the most genuine, where the dedication to progressing each entrepreneurial life was undeniable — this was the 10x differentiator Tribe was looking for.

You built Tribe Theory with your blood, sweat and tears. While partnering with Draper is definitely a great achievement, how hard was the decision to rebrand it?

The rebranding of Tribe Theory helps us propel our mission forward in a bigger way, so it was an easy decision. Tribe Theory is rebranding to reinforce the new combined vision — to enable one million entrepreneurs by 2030.

How DSH is going to be different from Tribe Theory? Will this deal help you scale and grow much faster?

This rebrand will accelerate Tribe’s mission of building what it originally set out to accomplish – hospitality as the foundation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem.

The transition begins now but within the next couple of months, each location will offer co-working spaces, custom programming focused on entrepreneurship, access to venture capital funding, and the ability to submit pitch decks to the Draper Venture Network, which has 23 global funds.

Post-deal, will you still continue to be part of Draper Startup House?

Yes, I will continue being the founder of DSH International and building the International division of DSH

What are your future goals?

We want to have a DSH location in every major country by 2030.

We will focus on our mission to enable one million entrepreneurs by 2030. Through the use of the real human connection, inspired business travel, a diverse-minded community and access to global citizens — one is able to connect to new opportunities, inspire one another to innovate and execute, and empower one another to go big, give back, and drive progress.

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gojek, US-based adtech company The Trade Desk partners to launch O2O solutions in Indonesia [Press Release]

gojek, Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing, and technology unicorn announces its latest partnership with The Trade Desk (Nasdaq: TTD), an advertising technology company from the US to launch an exclusive partnership to provide advertisers with insight into the impact of their online advertising campaigns on offline sale. This, the companies believe, can improve the efficiency of marketing decisions to boost business growth.

According to a source, the partnership marks the first Online-to-Offline (O2O) measurement solution in Southeast Asia, launching initially in Indonesia.

“Our mission is to remove life’s daily friction by connecting consumers to the best providers of goods and services in the market. This partnership will enable advertisers on The Trade Desk platform to use gojek’s insight to measure their campaigns and ultimately increase the effectiveness of their advertising,” said Pulkit Khanna, gojek’s Vice President for Merchant Research and Analytics.

gojek will work with TTD to measure the impact of online advertising using gojek’s actual in-store purchase transactions instead of cookie-based data, correlating purchases made on and offline using gojek, with advertising served via TTD platform. This will include both purchases made within the gojek app, such as the food delivery service, GoFood as well as in-store transactions with merchants who accept GoPay.

The process will allow marketers to be able to link sales with advertising campaigns, harnessing offline attribution capability to gain insight on the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.

Tencent launches WeChat short video’s trial to answer to ByteDance’s TikTok [Bloomberg]

Tencent Holdings Ltd. is reportedly planning a significant update to its WeChat messaging app as an answer to its archnemesis ByteDance Inc.’s dominance of short-form video, as reported by Bloomberg.

WeChat offers services ranging from messaging to booking meals and movies and is used by more than a billion people. Tencent plans to add a feature to let users publish video clips and photos to their followers via a feed similar to Twitter.

Also Read: Report: gojek to purchase stakes at Indonesian taxi operator Blue Bird

To do so, it means WeChat will ditch the current format that focusses on articles and to let users share video and content directly with one another. It’s still unclear how the final product will look like.

Since Monday, WeChat reportedly has begun rolling out the feature tests with select individuals and organisations that run public accounts.

Bitcoin signals selling after taking a tumble at US$7,000 [Bloomberg]

Since its peak period in June 2019, Bitcoin reportedly has been showing signs of technical indicator warning. Although crypto trades near the highest level since November last year, the largest cryptocurrency’s Global Strength Indicator, a measure of upward and downward movements of successive closing prices, is posting a sell signal for the first time since peak period.

In recent weeks, Bloomberg reported that Bitcoin has failed to overtake the US$9,000 mark for a sustainable period, with a dip at the beginning of January pushing the price below $7,000. However, the downward trend reversed last week, with Bitcoin briefly breaching $9,000 on January 17, the highest since November.

The price swings come in the wake of the volatile year of 2019 that was largely influenced by investor optimism over the announcement of Facebook Inc.’s Libra crypto project followed by skepticism and upped regulatory scrutiny.

“On a technical basis, it’s getting overbought and more importantly for political reasons I think there are just too many political headwinds for a cryptocurrency to get the kind of traction the bulls think it will,” said Matt Maley, an equity strategist in New York at Miller Tabak & Co.

Recruitment platform GrabJobs, POS system Moka partner to empower Indonesian businesses [Press Release]

GrabJobs, the recruitment automation platform in Southeast Asia, announces that it has established a partnership with Moka, a point-of-sale (POS) system provider, to empower businesses to grow.

GrabJobs CEO & Co-Founder, Emmanuel Crouy stated that the two companies “share a similar vision with helping companies grow, focussing on similar target clients and provide services that complement each other.”

“A majority of GrabJobs and Moka merchants are from the F&B, Retail, and Services industries. One of the major pain points faced by these industries is staffing. GrabJobs will help all of Moka’s merchants to recruit their staff more efficiently,” Crouy explained.

Also Read: Freelancing video platform Eristica partners with Binance to promote charity

GrabJobs provides recruitment automation that features an interview chatbot that helps companies automate their applicant interviewing, profile screening and scoring, interview scheduling, and interview reminders. With these features, job seekers can apply for jobs easily without a CV, interview over chat on the spot, and get an instant response as to whether they get shortlisted for the job or not.

David Liga, Senior Product Manager at Moka, said: “Collaboration between Moka and GrabJobs gives entrepreneurs the ease of finding the required candidates.”

Blockchain ecosystem Binance invests in data-focussed blockchain protocol startup Numbers [Press Release]

Blockchain ecosystem, Binance, just announced its investment in Numbers, a blockchain protocol focussed on data traceability and monetisation.

Numbers seeks to create an open, transparent, and traceable data system with the development of a fully open-source application that assures data traceability and digital evidence. This allows individuals to own and monetise their personal data.

Bofu Chen, Numbers co-CEO said that the investment from Binance will help the company explore more use scenarios and accelerate technological and business development.

Since 2019, Numbers has been working with Shoah Foundation, Stanford University, and IBM for the Starling project to establish the data traceability and verification systems to pre-load the applications on Exodus, the blockchain-powered smartphone series launched by the global smartphone manufacturer HTC.

Gin Chao, Binance Strategy Officer, said: “Numbers app is integrated with Binance Chain through Zion, a hardware-based key management system and offers the developer community easy access to use the Binance Chain and for hardware wallet protection, digital signature and so on.”
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Image Credit: gojek

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Barramundi Asia, a fish farming group based in Singapore and Australia, has announced that it has acquired deeptech startup Allegro Aqua.

The merger will see both companies combine resources and catalysing knowledge-based, sustainable practices to create an integrated barramundi enterprise with a global footprint, said a press release.

Barramundi says the merger is expected to strengthen food fish production targets and introduce sustainable practices across diverse geographical regions, to better meet the food security needs of Singapore and the region.

Andreas von Scholten, CEO at Barramundi Asia, said: “Allegro Aqua’s expertise in life sciences research and innovation will empower Barramundi Asia to realise synergies from improved genetics. With this merger, Barramundi Asia’s quest to make Barramundi the “Salmon of the Tropics” has been further advanced.”

Also Read: ‘We want to have a Draper Startup House in every major country by 2030’: Vikram Bharati

Allegro Aqua was started in 2018 by scientists from Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL) and backed by Temasek Life Sciences Accelerator (TLA) to commercialise an elite strain of the Asian Sea Bass, known as the St John’s Sea Bass. Developed by TLL as part of a joint research collaboration with the Singapore Food Agency (SFA), the St John’s Sea Bass represents a culmination of over 15 years of advanced research efforts in genetic selection and mass cross-breeding.

Founded in 2008, Barramundi Asia farms Barramundi in the ocean and draws on sustainable fish farming practices and aquaculture technology. Today, Barramundi operates barramundi farms in Australia and Singapore. It is developing a 6,600 hectares ocean farm site, in Brunei’s Nankivell Offshore Aquaculture Site.

Barramundi also operates its own Recirculating Aquaculture System hatchery, nursery, and deep-sea cage ‘grow-out’ farms, typically in energetic tidal environments.

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Hundreds have already claimed their passes for the 10th edition of Echelon. Have you?

We know what you’re doing on May 14th and 15th of 2020. You will seeing us at the Singapore Expo for Echelon Asia Summit 2020!

Echelon brings together the movers and shakers of APAC to meet, discover, and learn. When you attend Echelon Asia Summit 2020, be prepared to meet 12,000 delegates from all over the world. From tech entrepreneurs, industry leaders, policymakers, and ecosystem enablers, you will be engaging with some of the brightest minds of the region.

Grab a Delegate Pass to get access to all 4 stages and all exhibition areas. This is the perfect chance to learn from and meet the region’s finest. Who knows? This might be where you meet your future business partner or investor or employee…you get the idea.

The Premium Pass is for those who want to make the most of Echelon to achieve specific business goals. It gives you all the access of a Delegate Pass plus exclusive features like a slot at the Mentorship Zone. A Premium Pass also gives you entry to exclusive workshops and speaker discussion groups, access to the Premier Lounge, and more. Stay tuned for further announcements on Premier Pass features.

Don’t miss out of the Echelon experience this year. Get your tickets here.

We also have some exciting things happening in the months leading up to Echelon:

TOP100 APAC

From February to April 2020, the e27 team will be traveling across the region (Southeast Asia, East Asia, Central Asia and South Asia) to discover the next generation of up and coming startups.

Qualified startups will be invited to pitch to a panel of judges during a private pitching session. Startups with the highest scores will get the chance to be part of the TOP100 Programme, where opportunities for investor meetings and business matching abound. TOP100 startups would get to showcase at Echelon, both on the exhibition zone and on the TOP100 pitching stage, where they stand the chance to win cool prizes.

We have received hundreds of applications for the region’s up-and-coming startups since we opened for submissions late last year. To accommodate requests, we extended the submission period: startups can now still apply until 31st of January.

Echelon Roadshow

Get a taste of the Echelon experience in a city nearest you! Echelon Roadshow is a series of events to bring together the local startup ecosystem over thought provoking content, networking opportunities, and great food and company.

During the Echelon Roadshow, we will be inviting your local industry experts and experienced founders to share their insights about what it takes to build a startup in Asia. Then after, show your support for your local startup as we will be announcing the semi-finalists from TOP100 who will be representing your country in Echelon Asia Summit 2020.

You can RSVP to attend the roadshow at these cities. Watch out for more cities soon.

We have many more Echelon 2020 features to announce, so stay tuned for more updates from the e27 team about what we have planned for an incredibly exciting year ahead!

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Kristal.AI, an AI-powered digital wealth management startup with offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, and India, has received a US$6 million series A funding led by Chiratae Ventures, an India-based VC firm.

The round, as reported by Tech In Asia, is also joined by names like Desai Family Office as well as well-known individuals in the financial industry. This round brought the company’s total funding to US$11 to date.

Kristal.AI said it will use the new funds to improve its back-end technology, come up with more curated “Kristals”, or strategies, and expand further into the Asia Pacific and the Middle East markets. It also seeks to launch a new offering for its market in India.

In 2016, Indian entrepreneurs Asheesh Chanda and Vineeth Narasimhan established Kristal.AI as a startup that uses a patented genetic algorithm to recommend and create personalised portfolios for its users.

Kristal’s investment products are Leveraged Bond Kristal, which invests in fixed-income instruments issued by corporate and sovereign issuers, and Singapore REITs Kristal.

Also Read: Kristal.AI is bringing artificial intelligence to the fintech world, raises US$1.85M seed round

Currently, the startup stated that it has over US$100 million in assets under management for over 10,000 users on its platform with its products are said to achieve around 14 per cent returns for its clients.

The company has operations in Singapore with a Capital Markets Services license issued by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) as well as operation licences in Hong Kong and India.

Back in 2018, the startup raised over US$1.8 million in a seed round, also led by Chiratae Ventures, who used the name IDG Ventures India then.
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Photo by Andrew Kow on Unsplash

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Singapore-based investment company ID Capital announced the return of Asia Pacific agrifood tech competition Future Food Asia 2020 in Singapore on June 2-3, 2020.

The event will select 10 finalists to showcase their innovations and compete for the US$100,000 grand prize.

In addition to hosting panel discussions on major industry challenges such as the supply-side shocks caused by African Swine Flu and other biosecurity threats, the event will also include the Plant Protein Innovation Award.

“Future Food Asia Award is an excellent platform to foster greater collaborations between multinational companies and startups in Singapore and in the Asia Pacific region. This supports EDB’s efforts to develop Singapore as a leading centre to develop and commercialise agrifood tech solutions that can sustainably feed the world,” said Lee Eng Keat, Executive Director, Agrifood, Commercial & Professional Services at Singapore Economic Development Board, commenting about the event in a press release.

Also Read: Meet the 10 startup finalists competing for Future Food Asia’s US$100K prize

The event will also co-host a Plant Protein Masterclass to provide insight to entrepreneurs in scaling plant-based food formulations and manufacturing.

The company also announced the list of partners for the event: Corteva AgriscienceTM, Dole Packaged Foods, Singapore’s public research agency A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology, and Research), Bühler Group, Givaudan, and ADB Ventures.

The previous three editions of Future Food Asia have supported 38 early stage startups from the Asia Pacific and distributed US$1 million in awards.

Applications for the award is now open.

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Photo by Raymond Ancog on Unsplash

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Uber sells food delivery service in India to Zomato – TechCrunch

Ride-hailing giant Uber announced that it has sold its food delivery business in India, Uber Eats, to local competitor Zomato, TechCrunch wrote.

Uber would own 9.99 per cent of Zomato following the deal. Its users would also become part of the company.

According to two people familiar with the matter, the deal valued Uber Eats India between US$160 million and US$200 million.

Entering India in 2017, Uber Eats had initiated the conversation to sell the business in late 2018.

The report also stated that some Uber Eats employees are being given the option to join Zomato while the rest will be let go.

Malaysia to roll out commercial 5G in Q32020 – Bangkok Post

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said that the country is gearing to launch 5G cellular network by the third quarter of this year, Bangkok Post wrote.

The country is testing out the 5G technology in 56 sites across the country for fields such as health care, agriculture, education, public safety and tourism.

“If we apply 5G properly, the development of Malaysia will take a much shorter time. Maybe not 2030, maybe by 2035, we should achieve our objective of becoming a developed country,” he told reporters on Monday after watching a demonstration of 5G wireless technology at police headquarters in Langkawi.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, Aug 23: Indian restaurant association boycotts Zomato, others

Alphabet, Microsoft disagree on EU facial recognition ban – SCMP

Following the European Union’s proposal for a temporary ban on facial recognition technology, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and Microsoft President Brad Smith shared their dissenting opinions, South China Morning Post reported.

Pichai supported the moratorium as the technology can be used for “nefarious purposes”. Meanwhile, Smith likened the ban to using a meat cleaver, instead of a scalpel, to solve potential problems.

Myanmar’s waste management startup RecyGlo is raising US$900K to expand to Indonesia, Singapore – e27

Yangon-based waste management and data analytics startup RecyGlo announced that it is in advanced stages of raising a US$900,000 investment round to expand in existing markets and foray into new ones.

The startup is currently raising a US$350,000 bridge funding and expects to make the final close of the ongoing round by the end of Q2.

The company, however, didn’t share the investors’ details.

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AppsFlyer, a mobile marketing analytics and attribution startup, with a global presence, has received a total of US$210 million in Series D funding from New York-based growth equity firm General Atlantic.

With this announcement, the company has also announced the opening of its seventh Asia Pacific office in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The proceeds from this round will be used to enhance its open platform for third-party developers.

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

Also Read: Marketing tech startup SilverPush secures US$5M Series B funding

“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 added.

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

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

“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,” said Levy of General Atlantic.

Also Read: 9 digital marketing trends you can no longer ignore in 2020

AppsFlyer’s 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.

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

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Photo by Kaleidico on Unsplash

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Prominent venture capitalist Tim Draper has invested US$3.5 million in Tribe Theory, an entrepreneur-focused hostel chain with a presence in multiple locations in the world.

With the strategic investment, the Singapore-headquartered hostel chain will rebrand to Draper Startup House and form the international division of the business, said a press note.

Katie Russel and Daniel Wiegand have jointly founded the parent company Draper Startup House in the US, which will operate the US business activities and oversee its minority stake in the international partnership.

These two operations will collaborate to expand hostel locations globally.

“Tim and his team immediately understood our vision and made an offer to invest in us and work with us to build out this concept globally under the brand Draper Startup House. This was the differentiator we were seeking,” said Tribe Theory Founder Vikram Bharati.

(In Photos) Tribe Theory’s venture hostel for entrepreneurs and startups in Singapore

“This rebrand will put us on the course of building what we had set out to — hospitality as the foundation of an entrepreneurship ecosystem. It will propel our mission much further because we are now part of a larger ecosystem,” Bharati added.

Tribe Theory is present in eight international locations, including Bali, Singapore, Yangon, Estonia, Manila, Lisbon, as well as two locations in Bangalore. They all will be rebranded to Draper Startup House.

The first US location will open in March 2020 in Austin, TX at SXSW, with additional locations following the investment.

In addition to the short- and long-term accommodations offered by Draper Startup House, entrepreneurs will get a co-working space, custom programming focused on entrepreneurship, and access to VC funding. They will also be able to submit their pitch decks to the Draper Venture Network, which has 23 global funds.

“Draper Startup House provides global live/workspaces for entrepreneurs where they can connect, be inspired, and build a community,” said Draper. “Draper Startup House community members join a powerful global network of innovators and influencers. It provides resources and activities to help them succeed in their missions.”

Draper Startup House is an expansion of Tim Draper’s global brand which includes Draper Venture Network, Draper Associates and Draper University.

Since 1985, Tim Draper has been focused on supporting and accelerating entrepreneurial work through his Draper Ecosystem. He has been an early investor in more than 30 unicorns including Hotmail, Skype, Tesla, SpaceX, Baidu and Bitcoin.

In March last year, Tribe Theory raised about US$740,000 in seed funding from Superangel, Aurum Investments, and REAPRA.

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