Day: April 3, 2020

Singapore-headquartered VC firm TNB Aura announced today the launch of a new Special Situations Fund, which intends to invest US$2 million each in tech startups impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement, TNB Aura said it aims to turn around funding within one to two months, and is open to a range of funding structures such as convertible notes or direct equity.

Interested applicants can apply through its Special Situations Fund Form.

Also Read: How e27 is going to lend a helping hand for the startup ecosystem during the COVID-19 crisis

All applications will be dealt with the highest confidentiality, the Vc firm said.

By providing an extended runway of 12-18 months to weather the headwinds, the fund serves to aid companies in returning their focus to achieving their targeted milestones.

“We are investing for the long-term, and seek to provide an encouraging narrative to the ecosystem at this critical time. Ultimately, we believe in strong fundamentals, and in the ability of selected companies to both weather the current storm and come out stronger on the other side,” said Co-founder and Managing Partner Charles Wong.

According to Co-founder and Managing Partner Vicknesh R Pillay, the fund sees an opportunity to support great companies, which are facing near-term cash flows issues as a result of the COVID-19 black swan event.

“Our highly selective and hands-on approach to investing has proven resilient, reflecting as such in majority our portfolio companies. With our financial acumen, we assist our investee companies to be nimble in the manner in which they manage their cash flow, budgeting and talent optimisation through volatility,” Pillay added.

“With the market having previously witnessed a glut of over-valued deals, and today, a current value dislocation, TNB AURA is targeting value deals of high quality for this new fund,” Pillay commented.

TNB Aura is focused on Series A and B technology investments in the region. The company normally invests US$1 million to US$5 million into the next wave of technology-led high growth companies.

Recently, a group of VC firms in the region came together to build a community-led talent database, which aims to bridge laid off startup employees impacted by COVID-19 with new opportunities.

Also Read: Despite global health crisis, March remained an exciting month for early stage startups in SEA

The investors include Saison Capital, FutureLabs, Jungle Ventures, Alpha JWC, Convergence Ventures, Patamar Capital, Rainmaking, TRIVE Ventures, and Tribe Accelerator.

The official statement said that the initiative is inspired by a ​similar venture-led list in the US​.

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Image Credit: TNB Aura

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Technology, like many other industries, has long been associated with being the men’s world. But thanks to advances of gender equality in almost every corner of the world, tech has begun to welcome a wave of disruptive women in leadership positions.

According to a statistic shared by Leftronics, there has been a study that proves that businesses led by women have performed three times better than those with male executives. Technology is no different and this trend is true for startups as well.

Despite these facts, more than half of the women in tech earn less than men in the same position, sometimes even in the same company.

In this listicle, we are looking at those who have made their marks in the deep tech field. Because honestly, it’s time.

Yamini Bhat, Co-founder and CEO of Vymo

Vymo is an AI-enabled personal assistant for salespeople, co-founded by Yamini Bhat.

Bhat said in an interview with Bangkok Bank Inno Hub that automation and productivity are two of the things she’s most interested in since her university days. Bhat was a computer science student and had a stint at McKinsey, driving large-scale sales transformation for large enterprises in the financial, healthcare, and telecom industries, before establishing Vymo.

“In trying to understand skill gaps in the businesses, my team found that a lot of data was missing, which prevented us from answering any questions. It was around that time in 2013 when a very close friend of mine was working with Google as a part of its mobility team, and we realised that salespeople needed a solution to help them input data into CRM systems and drive engagement,” Bhat shares about the first time she got together with other co-founders to found Vymo.

Also Read: AI-powered regtech startup Tookitaki secures US$19.2M in Series A funding, pledging to address global money laundering issue

She used her experience in corporate worlds to keep up with internal working coordination, which typically grows worse when the organisation scales up.

“Whenever there were shifts in strategy — for example when we would think, ‘Let’s change our playbook, and let’s do customer segmentation differently’— after three or four months we would realise that a gap of understanding exists between those who set the strategy and salespeople in remote locations who have to carry it out,” she explains the basis of what Vymo offers.

“Technology can completely change the game as you can broadcast messages and have two-way conversations. Moreover, you can tailor messages based on different contexts to draw attention to what matters for a particular salesperson in a particular region. By building something that employees love to use, you can bridge the understanding gap in a matter of minutes instead of months or years,” Bhat continues.

Today, Vymo has customers in seven countries across the Asia Pacific. According to TechCrunch’s article, it employs about 100 people, has amassed over 40 enterprise customers, including life insurance firms AIA Group and AXA.

It recently raised US$18 million in a Series B round led by Emergence Capital, and joined by existing investor Sequoia India to expand its footprint in the US and other markets.

In regards to her journey as the CEO of a six-year-old startup, Bhat lends her insight about gender equality in such a niche and male-dominant tech field. “I wish there are more women on the other side of the table when we go and meet customers. The few women leaders who I know have been extremely good at rallying their teams, having a combined vision, and being persistent in trying to achieve that vision while remaining very outcome-focused,” she says.

“That being said. I don’t think being a woman in the tech world is tougher. In terms of physical energy, I think the differences in gender don’t matter. I don’t particularly think it is extra tough being a woman in the tech world,” she concludes.

Jeeta Bandhopadhyay, Co-founder and COO of Tookitaki

Jeeta Bandhopadhyay had a non-technical background yet she was still fascinated by the power of technology to change lives. “I wanted to be part of an innovative idea that can make the world better,” she says, recalling her motivation to build Tookitaki in an interview with Jungle Ventures.

Tookitaki tries to solve a global problem, which is money laundering. It seeks to become a solution for banks to curb money laundering, and in doing so, help stop a number of crimes such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, and corruption.

Being a part of such grand vision, Bandhopadhyay shared that she is lucky enough to see the development of countries in Southeast Asia, especially in Singapore, that becomes more tech-minded in terms of “upgraded educational systems, policies aimed at nurturing innovative startups, and the creation of well-oiled tech ecosystems that help entrepreneurs”.

“AI and machine learning are taking over our lives, and Southeast Asia has been very quick to identify their benefits. These countries are encouraging both big businesses to use modern technologies and technology companies to fine-tune their innovation and scale up to other markets,” she says.

According to her prediction, AI and machine learning’s rise to prominence will result in data privacy regulations having a big shift.

When it comes to more female tech entrepreneurs, Bandhopadhyay says that despite many false beliefs, the tech industry is neither biased against gender nor discriminative.

“The sector looks for skills, innovative and collaborative mindset, risk-taking attitude, and perseverance. Those who are aspiring to become entrepreneurs in the tech sector should be willing to persevere past the initial stages of scepticism from colleagues. Just believe in yourself and learn diligently,” she shares her mindset in viewing equality.

For now, Bandhopadhyay believes that Singapore still has a big share of female entrepreneurs more than other countries in Southeast Asia. “I believe the country’s love for technology, status as an international hub, world-class facilities and a business-friendly atmosphere is helping the womenfolk here,” she says.

Ayesha Khanna, co-founder, and CEO of ADDO AI

ADDO AI is an artificial intelligence solution firm and incubator co-founded by Dr. Ayesha Khanna. ADDO AI previously has been featured in Forbes as one of the four leading artificial intelligence companies in Asia, with Khanna named as one of Southeast Asia’s groundbreaking female entrepreneurs by the same magazine last year.

Built on a partnership between industry and academia, the company was first inspired by Khanna’s experience advising the Singapore government on the Skills Future programme, which strengthens collaboration between industry and academia to foster innovation, as told in Tech Collective SEA.

According to The Peak Magazine, ADDO AI is an AI consultancy firm that was born out of Khanna’s innate concern that there are more restraints for girls to be considered good at tech compared to boys.

Also Read: Singaporean biotech startup TurtleTree secures pre-seed from Saudi entrepreneur Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed

Khanna shared a story about a little girl who was helping to build electronic parts for a robot in a hackathon five years ago. She was then shooed away by her own mother, and instead of putting her son in front of Khanna, neglecting how good the daughter was at doing it.

This incident also prompted her to start 21st Century (21C) Girls, a registered charity that teaches school girls coding and runs a series of AI workshops for polytechnic students.

“To have confidence, girls must have an intuitive understanding of technology, AI, and data because every single industry, from the law, to manufacturing, to genetics, will have these elements in 21st Century Girls,” she explains.

An economics scholarship receiver from Harvard with a master’s degree in operations research at Columbia University, Khanna had a stint in Wall Street where she spent more than a decade developing large-scale trading, risk management, and data analytics systems.

Khanna stresses that despite everything that she’s achieved, women remain a minority in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) field.

“We need a lot more women who are comfortable with doing technology and being engineers and data scientists. Otherwise, the systems that you develop will be grossly biased,” she says.

For her 21C Girls, it is definitely on track with a partnership with Visa and Google for its programmes, which has taught over 2,000 students and will be offering classes to boys as well, especially those from underprivileged families, and polytechnic students.

In 2012, Khanna with her husband and two kids moved to Singapore, with the belief that Singapore is where the future is.

In Singapore, Khanna was on the Ministry of Education’s 2014 Aspire Steering Committee, doing her part in reviewing high education reform and applied to learn.

In her point of view, Khanna said she sees Singapore as a country that has what it takes to be a convener of dialogue between the East and West to improve accountability, transparency, and ethics in the use of AI and advanced technology across the world.

“Not only is there a gap in global leadership on ethical design, governance, and use of AI, what’s worse is, when they do talk about it, it’s also the Western experts talking to one another. No one is asking the Chinese, Indians or Japanese how they believe AI should be governed. Yet, the impact of AI is going to be felt most by billions of people in Asia.”

Aside from leading her company, Khanna collaborated with her husband Parag Khanna, who was a foreign policy adviser in former US president Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign and senior geopolitical adviser to the United States Special Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It resulted in their 2012 book Hybrid Reality, in which they explored the co-evolution of humans, technology and geopolitics.

Fengru Lin, Co-Founder & CEO and Rabail Toor, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist of TurtleTree Labs

Fengru Lin and Rabail Toor are a dynamite duo of women in deep tech who co-founded TurtleTree Labs along with Max Rye in 2019. Green Queen’s article shared that TurtleTree Labs is a startup that claims to produce the world’s first lab-grown dairy milk that recreates the exact composition, functionality, and taste of cow’s milk at a fraction of the carbon footprint compared to conventional dairy farming.

Back in January, the startup just closed a pre-seed round led by alternative protein investors Lever VC, joined by Prince Khaled bin Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud’s VC firm KBW Ventures and Silicon Valley investors K2 Global.

Now with the investments, both Lin and Toor are on the mission to recreate milk-making glands out of stem cells and feeding them as they grow and lactate, filtering off their excrement while capturing their milky produce, as reported by AgFunder News.

With the infant and baby formula industry offering higher price points than other dairy products like milk or cream, TurtleTree’s technology is positive that they can compete by offering increasingly comprehensive nutritional and environmental benefits.

Turtle Tree tries to aim for an existing trade where donors provide milk for premature or sick babies whose mothers’ milk production may not have started as well as a large market of mothers who may struggle to produce enough milk for their child, or their milk may sometimes even lack vital nutrition.

Lin said the genes of her stem cell prototype formulation can be adapted to pack in an evermore optimised and personalised nutritional profile, with a shelf life that’s just like real milk –but with no hormones.

With their emphatic mission of providing personalised milk with a safer operation, two women heading the company seems like a perfect match.

Verleen Goh, Co-Founder at Alchemy Foodtech

Verleen Goh is the name behind Singapore-based startup Alchemy Foodtech that was founded in 2015. In an article by Green Queen, Goh is said to be on a mission to use biotechnology and medical technology in everyday foods in order to fight the global diabetes crisis alongside co-founder Alan Phua.

Alchemy Foodtech has created a gluten-free and vegan product that can be incorporated into staple foods such as white rice, bread, noodles, and flour to help lower the GI levels and increase the fibre content of these foods.

Goh is a Food Science and Technology graduate from the National University of Singapore. She co-founded the company with the belief that food is the new medicine, and that food science and technology is the vehicle to create new functional foods and ingredients to combat chronic diseases.

Dr. Sandhya Sriram, Co-Founder & CEO and Dr. Ka Yi Ling, Co-Founder & Chief Scientific Officer of Shiok Meats

Another foodtech startup hailing from Singapore is Shiok Meats, which is also helmed by two women co-founders, Dr. Sandya Sriram and Dr. Ka Yi Ling. According to Green Queen’s article, they both started Shiok Meats in 2018 to tackle the environmental footprint of traditional seafood farming over the concern of how Asia’s consumption of seafood continues to grow.

Shiok Meats uses cellular technology to harvest seafood products in their labs and already managed to cultivate a shrimp product that has been sampled in the highly popular dish shrimp dumplings. Shiok Meats just recently got accepted into the US-based accelerator Y Combinator, which has given them the needed boost to commercialise their cultured shrimp within this year.

Also Read: eFishery, Shiok Meats co-founders on MIT Technology Review’s list of emerging innovators from APAC

Sriram and Ka Yi started off as two scientists who were working at the Agency for Science, Technology, and Research—or A*STAR—in Singapore. Using stem cells and cells to make real meat, they were able to do so without harming any animals, as an article in KrAsia highlighted.

Shiok Meats started off with US$10,000 from an angel investor, and the co-founders used it to rent a lab on St. John’s Island, one of the Southern Islands in Singapore. “We’re both stem cell biologists, so we were confident that if we could take stem cells from mammals, we could do the same with marine animals. It took us only a few months to polish the protocols and we filed our patent in January this year,” Sriram says.

For Sriram herself, prior to Shiok Meats, she already co-founded two companies: biotech and healthcare news site Biotech in Asia as well as edutech and event management company SciGlo.

Currently, according to Sriram, the research done by Shiok Meats is the first of its kind in Southeast Asia. The founders have plans to commercialise Shiok’s products in 2021.

In April 2019, the startup raised US$ 4.6 million in a seed funding round led by Monde Nissin CEO Henry Soesanto, Y Combinator, AiiM Partners, Big Idea Ventures, and other investors.

Reportedly, the company is developing cell-based crustacean meats such as crab and lobster.

With women leading such a niche tech field, the future is in its brighter way. A caring and sustainable future are within sights, and these women are the fighters and the hopes that will help change the face of technology and pave the way for future women tech entrepreneurs.

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Image Credit: Andrew Neel on Unsplash

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Agri-food tradetech startup DiMuto receives investment from Latin Leap for Latin America expansion 

Agri-food tradetech solutions company DiMuto has received an undisclosed sum in investment from Singapore-based VC studio, Latin Leap, to broaden its footprint in Latin America.

DiMuto offers an IoT- and AI-powered platform to provide end-to-end supply chain visibility to global agri-food businesses. Using blockchain, it digitalises the agri-food supply chain for data visibility and trade transparency, and aims to solve challenges, such as food waste, food safety, and food sustainability.

The company said in a statement that it will use the investment to drive further international expansion in Latin America, a market where it expects a constant growth of fresh produce trade such as fruit and vegetable production that the countries export.

Latin Leap is focussed on opening up opportunities in Latin America for Southeast Asian tech startups. It plans to set its fund structures out of Singapore with the aim of becoming a partner in the internationalisation of the region’s tech sector.

B2B learning management system ProSpark lands pre-seed funding led by Agaeti Ventures

Singapore-headquartered ProSpark, a B2B learning management system, has secured an undisclosed funding led by Indonesian VC firm Agaeti Ventures. Prasetia Dwidharma and angel investor Adi Adisaputro also participated in the round.

Also Read: SG Innovate invests in agri-food tech startup DiMuto, raising awareness to food sustainability issue

ProSpark, which fosters capability building in organisations by bringing a distributed content marketplace and gamified engagement, will use the funds to expand its commercial footprint and strengthen its position in the market.

The company is also working on future plans for regional expansion.

The COVID-19 pandemic has allowed a fertile ground for edutech startups to flourish around the world. ProSpark aims to help any disrupted in-person learning and development ecosystem to be moved fully online and still potentially be rolled out as scheduled on a wider and standardised scale by focussing on human capital development.

OmniSci expands to Asia, names Joseph Lee as Global Sales Vice President

Singapore-based analytics startup OmniSci has announced its Asian expansion.

The firm has also hired Joseph Lee as Vice President of Global Sales, and Herfini Haryono as Vice President of Industry Verticals to further strengthen regional presence.

OmniSci’s new sales and field engineering team will provide complete local support for current and prospective enterprise, governmental, and academic customers.

Also Read: A sneak-peek at the 4 startups graduated from VIISA Acceleration Programme

Initially focussed on Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and India, OmniSci’s Asia initiatives will be led by Lee. He has strong experience serving APAC markets and previously worked at Snow Software and Kinetica in Singapore.

Haryono has served as a CIO, CTO and Board Member of multiple technology companies throughout Indonesia, along with a Singapore-based field support team.
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Photo by no one cares on Unsplash

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Vietnam’s eDoctor nets additional funding to enhance remote healthcare consultancy service

Vietnam-based medtech startup eDoctor has secured an undisclosed funding afresh from CyberAgent Capital, Genesia Ventures, Bon Angels and Nextrans.

According to the startup, this round brings its total funding to more than US$1 million.

“We will use the investment to enhance further our remote healthcare consultancy and the capacity in connecting offline services to the users,” said Huynh Phuoc Tho, Co-founder of eDoctor.

A SharkTank startup, eDoctor makes it easy for users to remotely connect with doctors. Users can use the app for health advice, medicine and other health services.

500 startups, Indonesian billionaire invest in Silicon Valley startup Fairbanc

Fairbanc, an online payments platform for micro and small businesses, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from 500 startups and Indonesian billionaire Michael Sampoerna.

The new capital will be utilised by the company to “make a bigger push” into the Indonesian market, which has the fourth largest unbanked population globally, with 95 million adults lacking a formal account according to World Bank.

Also read: Stressful times ahead: How this e27 webinar will help you keep calm and carry on

“500 Startups usually prides itself as a social impact investor, and with our investment in Fairbanc, we see a great opportunity to offer financial access to the unbanked and women merchants across the entire Southeast Asia region over time,” Khailee Ng, Managing Partner of 500 Startups, said in a statement.

Bengaluru fintech startup Recko raises US$6M Series A from Vertex Ventures

Recko, an enterprise fintech startup based in Bengaluru, India, has secured US$6 million in Series A funding from Vertex Ventures SEA and India. City-based Prime Venture Partners also participated in the round.

The company claims to have accepted transactions worth US$5 billion, and is currently looking to reconcile transactions worth US$10 billion by the end of 2020.

Founded in 2017 by serial entrepreneurs Saurya Prakash Sinha and Prashant Borde, Recko has partnered with various banks, NBFCs and insurance companies and is currently running pilots with them.

“Transaction reconciliation is not a new problem, but the nature and extent of this problem have changed due to rapid digitisation of transactions and massive count of B2C transactions, especially in internet companies. Over the time we have evolved to add COD, Logistics and Aggregator reconciliation to make it a complete receivables suite,” said Sinha.

Right-Hand Cybersecurity launches initiative to protect businesses from phishing during COVID-19

Singaporean cybersecurity firm Right-Hand has launched #DefendTogether campaign to support businesses from the recent spike in phishing emails due to COVID-19.

In this initiative, the startup will be offering a free cyber training module to any business in need of cyber support. The topic will cover tactics cyber attackers are currently deploying, and how it can be defended.

“Right-Hand empathises with the challenges that organisations around the world are going through right now, but unfortunately, cyber attackers do not.  We are determined to play our part in supporting organisations as they are experiencing these unplanned business pivots and transitioning their employees to work remote,” said Theo Nasser, CEO of the company. 

The company recently secured US$1M funding from SGInnovate, Atlas Ventures and Entrepreneur First.

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Image Credit: Recko, Fairbanc, Clint Patterson,

 

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Bagan Innovation Technology (BIT), a digital content provider in Myanmar, has secured “seven-figure USD” in Series B funding, led by Japan’s Kyuu Roku.

Existing investor UMJ Ikeya Investment, besides Hotto Link, a social listening company listed on Japan’s stock exchange, also participated.

BIT will use this financing to invest into their automatic speech recognition, language sentiment analysis and other technology.

“This raise means a lot to BIT at this stage of our business; last year we saw great unit economics across our business lines, which has meant we’ve been able to reach more customers. We’re constantly investing in our language recognition and this investment, and the investors, will enable us to keep BIT at the forefront,” Co-founder and CEO Thet Lynn Han told e27.

Also Read: Ex-Oway Director’s e-commerce app Ezay makes life easy for rural woman retailers in Myanmar

BIT is the company behind Wun Zinn, an e-book store and web series, which claims to have 2.5 million users. Serialised web novels is the most popular content type in the country and BIT is already working with over one hundred writers for daily serialised content.

The Yangon-headquartered company’s other popular product is Min Thein Kha, a mobile astrologer marketplace. The firm claims this product grew 7x in revenues last year and it currently has one million users.

The company also owns ‘Frozen’ and ‘Bagan’ mobile keyboards with full automatic speech recognition for the Burmese language. BI Miner, a social listening tool providing sentiment analysis to Myanmar’s corporates, is the other product it owns.

BIT has also developed Therapa.ai, a social commerce chatbot that can quickly take enquiries, check stock and complete orders.

Kyuu Roku is an investment holding company founded by Seiji Kurokoshi, who has several investments in Myanmar and whose company Digi Search specialises in helping companies go direct to consumer.

“Companies like BIT are hard to come by but when you find them you just know you’ve found something exceptional. Thet Lynn Han and his team have proven that they understand the consumer better than anyone and in today’s age that plus technological finesse can take you a long way and unlock untapped potential in Myanmar’s frontier market,” said Kurokoshi.

In the past, BIT has raised several rounds of investments. In January 2018, it secured a “six-digit USD equity investment”, led by former Goldman Sachs executive Takashi Hatanaka. Prior to this, it netted a seven-digit USD investment in Series A led by Group Lease Holdings and Alliance Technology Investments.

Also Read: TNB Aura’s special fund to invest US$2M each in COVID-19-affected startups in SEA

Earlier, in 2016, UMJ Ikeya invested seed funding in the firm.

Myanmar is a country with more than 50 million people and where mobile phone ownership is 101 per cent and where 85 per cent of all internet traffic is on smartphones. However, the country is often last on the list when investors consider Southeast Asian tech startups, with Indonesia leading and recent excitement echoing from Vietnam.

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