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Singapore develops contact tracing app to limit COVID-19 spread

Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH) has joined forces with the Government Technology Agency (GovTech) to develop an app called ‘Trace Together’, which enables government officials to improve contact tracing by detecting people exposed to COVID-19-infected individuals.

According to Mothership, Jason Bay, Senior Director of Government Digital Services at GovTech, said that “the app is the world’s first nationwide contact tracing effort via Bluetooth, even though other countries might have their own model”.

It is simple to use and can be downloaded from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. One can use the app after downloading it and turning on the Bluetooth feature on his or her mobile device. This feature allows the app to estimate the distance and duration of the encounters and identify those in close contact with a COVID-19 positive case.

Also Read: Meet the Govt: How Thailand plans to turn startups into economic warriors through university, corporate collaboration

All records will be locally stored on the phone for 21 days. The app won’t be available for download after the virus outbreak stops.

Singapore is not the first country to come up with tech to curb the virus spread. Recently, Indonesia launched a chatbot on WhatsApp to prevent misinformation on COVID-19. Singapore also has a similar chatbot feature.

While there are some concerns over the data privacy, Janil Puthucheary, a senior minister of Singapore, told The Star that the engineering of the app has preserved the privacy of the users from each other. The data stored on users’ phones will be encrypted and the app will not be able to access information such as user location.

Image Credit: Catherine Lai

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5 more startups who are early adopters of e27 Pro — meet them here

e27 Pro

At e27, our mission is simple: to empower entrepreneurs by proving them with the right tools and insights to build and grow their companies. As such, we decided to build a platform that can help bolster our efforts, nurtured by the same principles and goals that have kept the e27 brand relevant across the startup tech ecosystem.

But a platform is nothing without those who choose to maximise it. When we quietly launched e27 Pro, our community has been most supportive; offering encouragement and feedback that helped us design e27 Pro into what it is today: a membership programme that is designed to give you actionable insights, exclusive business-building programmes, and tools that enable your company’s success.

So, without further ado, we would like to introduce six startups who have signed up for e27 Pro effectively solidifying their commitment to innovation and community-building.

KaryaKarsa

KaryaKarsa is a patronage model site that primarily employs mobile wallets to enable payments from fans and audiences to their favorite creators. Creators sign up, and after a curation process, can build their pages, pricing tiers, and offerings, and promote their page to their audiences.

They help digital creators receive patronage support or purchase of works from their audience’s mobile wallets, making it easier for them to live with their creative works.

ShipsFocus

ShipsFocus has become a digital solution factory, turning their customers’ creative ideas into practical solutions, delivering values in chemical shipping data, analytics, software solution, port-services aggregation, and consultancy services in maritime commerce.

Their unique factory model and developed R&D frameworks overcome the maritime innovation & adoption conundrum that plagues maritime innovators, and effectively brings tech applications to the majority yet under-served maritime SMEs.

CHESIMI

CHESIMI is a Korean company that directly manufactures clothing for overseas customers to fit their taste by using an image recognition technology which finds the information and design of clothing worn by Korean entertainers who’ve appeared in Korean Wave Cultural Contents such as Korean TV dramas and fashion magazines, among others.

Currently, thanks to the influence of the “Korean Wave”, the awareness and reliability of Korean fashion is rising. The interest in Korean fashion is especially high in Southeast Asia and China where the number of female customers is increasing.

Guri Wellness

Guri Wellness is Bangkok’s first comprehensive Health & Wellness community dedicated to fostering positive and sustainable lifestyle changes. Their mission is to help you uncover the stories behind Bangkok’s emerging health & wellness scene; and to benefit from the expertise of Thailand’s leading health and wellness gurus.

They believe that optimal physical and mental wellness are paramount to happiness, and throughout their website, you will learn more about how to improve yours.

Epic Journey Consultancy Pre Ltd

Epic Journey Consultancy is a Singapore-based startup that pioneered EPIC X, an event app that is designed to enhance your engagement with the physical event. At your fingertips, you can register, buy tickets, track a friend’s location, and even find your activities photos.

You can also seek out merchants’ deals and sponsors’ promotions. Plus, you get rewarded for your activities, too.

Also read: Meet 6 startups who are early adopters of e27 Pro

Stay tuned as we unveil more e27 Pro early adopters in the coming days. Watch out for them.

Be a member. Sign up for e27 Pro today >>>

Are you a startup and keen to connect with these 4 funds and 160 others this April? Let us know today >>>

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Morning News Roundup: Surge’s third programme to go online, Temasek invests in India’s CureFit

Global startup programme Surge confirms an all-online instalment for its third batch

Surge, a global startup programme for startups from Asia and the US, has announced that the third instalment of the programme will go completely online.

“We want to ensure that we remain available and accessible to our founders at all times while ensuring the health and well-being of the Surge community with all speaker sessions, office hours, and deep dives with founders, speakers, and mentors will be conducted remotely,” said a Surge spokesperson in a statement.

Instead of week-long in-country sessions once a month, Surge will resort to a day-long session held every week for 15 weeks, starting April 13. They include the regular coffee meetups it has, which will become ‘Coffee with Surge’, a virtual coffee chats session for founders in Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, India, and other parts of Southeast Asia.

There will be no change in the content and speakers for Surge.

“The sessions are being designed to ensure we continue to foster a sense of community and encourage inter-geo collaboration amongst founders. All our speakers and mentors will continue to engage with founders as before and we are grateful for how invested they are in helping our Surge founders at this time,” reads the statement.

Surge 03 founders will be invited to join the in-country sessions during the next post-Covid-19 Surge. Right now, Surge 04 applications are open for aspiring startups.

Indian healthtech CureFit raises US$109M funding led by Singapore’s Temasek

CureFit, a platform offering health, wellness, food, and merchandising through multiple brands based in India, has announced that it has received US$109 million in a funding round led by Temasek, the Singapore government-backed investment company.

Also Read: Myntra co-founder Mukesh Bansal’s health and fitness platform cure.fit raises US$25M funding

According to ETTech, two new investors — GabelHorn Investments and Ascent Capital — joined the round, along with existing investors, such as Accel PartnersChiratae Ventures, and Unilever’s global investment arm.

CureFit was founded in 2016 by Mukesh Bansal, Founder of Myntra, and Ankit Nagori, former CBO at Flipkart.

WHO Health Alert brings COVID-19 facts to billions via WhatsApp

The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a messaging service, in partnership with WhatsApp and Facebook, to keep people safe from coronavirus.

The initiative hopes to potentially reach 2 billion people and enable WHO to get information directly into the hands of the people that need it.

From government leaders to health workers and family and friends, this messaging service will provide the latest news, situation reports, and real-time numbers, and information on coronavirus, including details on symptoms and how people can protect themselves and others and help government decision-makers protect the health of their populations.

The service can be accessed through a link that opens a conversation on WhatsApp. Users can simply type “hi” to activate the conversation, prompting a menu of options that can help answer their questions about COVID-19.

The WHO Health Alert was developed in collaboration with Praekelt.Org, using Turn Machine Learning technology.

US-based Ripple chooses Thai startup DeeMoney as remittance partner

Global payment company Ripple has formed a new partnership with Thai fintech startup DeeMoney

According to a report by Daily Hodl, DeeMoney is actively using Ripple’s payment messaging system, designed to be a faster version of Swift to process inbound payments to Thailand from South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Israel as well as the Middle East and Gulf regions.

Also Read: What to consider when building startups targeting expats

“DeeMoney provides same-day settlement into all Thai bank accounts. With RippleNet, the transfer process is more efficient for those sending money from the growing number of financial institutions, and at the best possible rates,” said the report.

Marcus Treacher, Ripple’s Senior Vice President of Customer Success said that the partnership is a first for Ripple in the region. 

“By being the first non-bank institution in Thailand to use RippleNet, it helps redraw the boundaries and rules of engagement by providing efficient international transfers at low fees and competitive rates,” he said.

Currently, DeeMoney is planning a wider roll-out of Ripple’s payment messaging system. Phase two of the implementation will utilise Ripple’s technology to power outbound transfers to destination countries.

Photo by Simon Abrams on Unsplash

 

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‘Access to institutional VC funding is a major concern in Philippines’: Herston Powers of 1982 Ventures

1982.vc Co-founders and Managing Partners Herston Elton Powers (L) and Scott Krivokopich

Fintech is just getting started in Southeast Asia with half a billion customers waiting for financial services. The sector’s promise is underpinned by Southeast Asia’s growth story of continued strong economic growth, large and growing middle-class population and rapid tech adoption.

“Fintech will be the backbone of Southeast Asia’s new economy, and the region’s digital economy needs fintech to keep growing. Plus, financial services need to catch up to provide access to the underserved,” Herston Elton Powers, Managing Partner at 1982 Ventures, tells e27.

Headquartered in Singapore and started in December last year, 1982 Ventures is a seed-stage fintech fund exclusively focused on Southeast Asia. The firm is looking for deals in various fintech verticals, such as insurtech, digital banking, lending, payments and remittances. It will also invest in fintech that leverages blockchain technologies. 

In this interview, Powers talks about the region’s fintech landscape, how the Philippines is growing and how Covid-19 is affecting the startup sector.

Edited excerpts: 

1982 Ventures is an unusual name for a VC fund. Why this name and what does the number stand for?

Both Managing Partners were born in 1982 and this is how we came up with the name 1982 Ventures. The market feedback on the name and brand has been extremely positive and we are happy people are interested in finding out more about 1982 Ventures and we stand for.

Can you share details about the fund? What is the corpus? What is the investment thesis? Does the fund also cover crypto, blockchain, etc.? 

1982 Ventures is the first seed fund exclusively focused on fintech in Southeast Asia. We have coverage across the region and fintech verticals. Our focus makes us the first port of call for fintech founders and the first money in.

Our core mandate and thesis are straight-forward: seed-stage fintech in Southeast Asia. 

Have you made investments from the fund yet? Have you identified any companies for potential deals? 

Our ticket size ranges from US$100,000 to US$500,000. On average we expect our initial investment into a great startup to be US$250,000, which will allow our LPs the opportunity to co-invest alongside us in the appropriate deals.

Meet the Govt: How Thailand plans to turn startups into ‘economic warriors’ through university, corporate collaboration

We are working on a few investment deals now. We expect to invest in about 40 companies across the region.

You have a special focus on the Philippines’s fintech market. What opportunities does the market offer? How is the overall fintech ecosystem growing?

The fintech ecosystem in the Philippines has continued to grow and we expect the growth to accelerate once the dust settles from the Coronavirus and lockdown. 

We see similar opportunities around fintech business models that have been successful in other markets. 

We’re not the only ones seeing this; the Philippines has attracted more and more foreign founders who see the market as the most opportune place to launch their startup.

The broader ecosystem is beginning to realise that startups can create more value when they are supported and have the chance to grow. With that said, this hasn’t always been the case and we still see instances where founders end up with term-sheets that strangle the company.

We see less of the cliched ‘Series B gap’ now. Access to institutional venture capital in the Philippines, especially in the seed-stage, is a major concern for founders and investors.

In short, we expect the Philippines fintech opportunity to need a bit more time to hit scale for foreign late-stage investors but the time to plant seeds is now. We are looking past the current global macro situation and looking for opportunities when this storm passes.

What do the government and private sector do to boost fintech in the Philippines?

The government and private sector are both currently moving in the right direction and fintech in the Philippines will continue to grow. There are millions of consumers and SMEs waiting for financial services and this will drive the positive development of the fintech sector.

The regulators in the Philippines have been integral to fintech development in the country. A great example is a recent approval from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) for Southeast Asia’ first pure-play digital bank Tonik. 

Our viewpoint is that the regulatory environment should remain stable and may be more progressive to help foster a post coronavirus recovery.

Both the government and the private sector will need to increase their efforts to not only support fintech development but to ensure workers, startups, SMEs and larger companies will be able to prosper once things return to normal. 

Ever since fintech came to the fore, there has been strong resistance from banks against adopting it. Many argue that big banks are designed to resist change, and instead of undergoing a digital transformation, these establishments are setting out to compete against fintech to kill change. How do you look at this argument?

We do not subscribe to such a broad statement and see banks or other incumbents’ approach fintech in different ways. We have seen strong partnerships between banks and fintech firms with regards to channelling and lead generation to provide financial services to client segments that are difficult to service or acquire.

Innovation and adopting technology will not happen at the same pace for every bank. What we learn from other markets is that the banks that embrace technology and healthy relationships with fintechs emerge as winners.

We have seen banks across the region successfully establish corporate venture capital arms to invest in and support fintech VC funds and fintech startups. 

In the Philippines, Union Bank has made bold and progressive moves by launching its fintech and innovation arm, UBX Philippines.

The main argument big banks have against collaborating with fintech is that it creates risk. Do you agree?

Often the perceived risk is with an individual at the bank, who is scared to make a decision out of the box. Of the many banks that fail each year, we don’t see cases where that failure was a result of having partnered with a fintech.

Digital banking licence is currently the most exciting trend in Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia and Singapore. Is it a good trend? Will it bring in a positive change? How far will it go to bring in financial inclusivity into these markets?

Digital banking as an investment opportunity is a core focus for 1982 Ventures. The first bank account for the majority of Southeast Asians will be a digital bank. 

Singapore digital banking applications have skewed towards established and larger players in the market. As a seed-stage investor, we are focused on the early-stage fintech startups across Southeast Asia that will either launch and operate these neo banks or provide technology to enable a broader and more robust open banking environment.

How is Southeast Asia picking pace with the global fintech trends?

In our view, fintech is just getting started in Southeast Asia. We have seen how strong fintech has become in the West, China, India and even Latin America. This includes the number of fintech unicorns, exits and number of successfully launched fintech business models in those markets. 

Southeast Asia has the right combination of economic and demographic conditions, including high technology adoption, coupled with the massive opportunity to bring in millions of people and businesses into the financial system. We expect the impact of fintech to be as significant or even stronger in Southeast Asia compared to the rest of the world.

Do you foresee a decline in startup investments given the rapid spreading of Covid-19?

Historically, there have been declines in startup investments after a crisis. The duration of the Covid-19 situation and impact on the business environment will be the major factor on if we see a decrease in startup investments in the region. 

Also Read: Covid-19 is a serious wake up call for sustainable innovation

While the environment will be challenging, as an investor we see a great opportunity to back founders now along with valuations in certain sectors coming down a bit. We are focused on how to best to position ourselves and our stakeholders once the situation stabilizes and markets begin to return to normal.

What is your advice for your portfolio companies to tide over the Covid crisis?

The Covid-19 situation will undoubtedly hurt many of the startups across the region and we expect startups that were on the brink of low on cash to have a tough time surviving this crisis. 

Founders may need to switch their mindset to from a “peacetime” to “wartime” CEO, which will mean making tough decisions on headcount, cutting costs and delay expansion plans. 

While the environment will be challenging, we see that great companies have been seeded in the past crisis and there will be opportunities for nimble and lean teams to create significant value over the next few years.

When we speak to founders we are also concerned about their well-being (including their families) and how this crisis may be affecting their mental health and well-being. 

These times will test our spirits and we want to ensure that we listen to founders if they need to vent, ask for support or begin to think about strategic plans and opportunities for when this storm passes. We have seen founders focusing on uplifting their communities during these challenging times which inspires us. 

Image Credit: 1982.vc

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Afternoon News Roundup: Expara Ventures calls for startups for COVID-19 accelerator

Expara Ventures calls for startups for COVID-19 accelerator

Expara Ventures, a Southeast Asia-focused VC firm, is calling for startups with technologies and innovations that could help test, treat and monitor the COVID-19 outbreak, according to DealStreetAsia.

Selected teams will be receiving a capital of US$50,000, along with extensive mentorship.

Also Read: Meet the Govt: How Thailand plans to turn startups into economic warriors through university, corporate collaboration

“Governments and corporates are struggling against the virus, and Expara wants to invite entrepreneurs and startups to join the battle,” said Douglas Abrams, CEO of Expara Ventures.

College planning startup Univariety raises US$1.1M from Info Edge

India’s online college planning platform Univariety has raised US$1.1 million seed funding from InfoEdge, according to TechInAsia.

With the funds, the company plans to grow its operations further, focus on product, scale its alumni platform, and build its brand.

The startup is owned and run by International Educational Gateway, which has students in Singapore, India, and the UK. It claims to have served over 100,000 students and has partnerships with more than 350 schools across 60 cities in India.

The Financial Inclusion Lab accelerator is building fintech solutions for low to middle-income segments

The Financial Inclusion Lab, an Indian accelerator programme supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will identify and support startups to support lower-income communities with mentoring, market research, access to networks and capital for fintech startups.

For its third cohort, the lab has selected nine innovative startups namely — Adhikosh, Aggois Business Solutions, Awaaz De Infosystems, Credochain Technologies, Entitled Solutions, Frontier Markets Consulting, Lakshy Inclusion Services, Whrrl Fintech Solutions and XaasTag Regtech. 

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Surge’s third programme to go online, Temasek invests in India& CureFit

These startups will be working on credit, savings, insurance and related technology-driven financial solutions that benefit underserved segments such as low-income workers, micro-businesses, auto drivers, farmers and agribusinesses.

The programme is also supported by JP Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation and the Omidyar Network, and run in collaboration with MSC Consulting.

Image Credit: Unsplash

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