Month: April 2020

SoFi, an American personal finance company, announced today that it has acquired 8 Securities, a fintech platform based in Hong Kong. 8 Securities will be rebranded as SoFi Hong Kong as a result of the acquisition.

This marks SoFi’s first international foothold outside of the US.

Anthony Noto, CEO of SoFi shared a statement: “We underwent an extensive process in considering our initial expansion into an international market, and it quickly became clear that Hong Kong, the financial capital of Asia, is ripe for innovation.”

“Based on the platform we’ve built, SoFi, together with 8 Securities, can meet the needs of both experienced and novice investors alike, as part of our overall efforts to make headway on our mission outside of the US to help people get their money right,” he continued.

With SoFi, the company will be the only brokerage service that delivers free stock trading of over 15,000 US and Hong Kong stocks, as well as ETFs, with zero commissions, zero platform fees and zero custodian fees.

Also Read: DIVA officially acquires 30 per cent of shares in Pawoon

Members will be able to follow the investment portfolios of top-performing members of the community and learn what they are buying, selling, and holding. They will also see how their individual performances rank against their peers.

Before the acquisition, 8 Securities was a mobile investing and robo-advisory service in Hong Kong. The company was Asia’s first mobile-only investing service, robo-advisor, social trading platform with zero commission brokerage.

It was one of Hong Kong’s first licensed consumer fintech companies and has previously raised US$70 million in capital. The company was founded by Mathias Helleu and Mikaal Abdulla, who, prior to starting it in 2012, led E*TRADE‘s international business across 14 countries.

SoFi has recently finished a US$1.2 billion acquisition of financial API and payments platform Galileo. The platform will also be a means to distribute white label investing, savings, and lending products to B2B customers.

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Image Credit: Austin Distel on Unsplash

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The fashion industry has been growing fast in Southeast Asia. With the advancement of technology, more fashion companies are adopting a more sustainable, efficient, and innovative approach to provide the best experience to their customers.

Singapore-based Bridge Fashion Incubator is focussed on supporting companies in the region to develop innovative solutions in the fashion industry and has selected nine startups for its latest cohort.

Operating under the Textile and Fashion Federation (TaFF) and supported by the Singapore government, the 16-week programme will groom early-stage fashion-tech startups to improve and validate their products and services to make it market-ready.

The programme will help companies address key areas such as creating a strong brand strategy, developing product-market fit, building effective business infrastructure for longevity and scaling, as well as equipping founders with the necessary tools and providing them with access to a network of investors for potential fund-raising.

The mentors of the programme include Galen Crout, Integrated Marketing Lead at Shopify; British Council Advisor Joseph Lo; Co-founder and Social Impact Designer Laura Francois; and Founder of Hillsbrooks Consulting Peter Thewlis.

“Our aim is for all incubatees to walk away with an invaluable set of entrepreneur knowledge and tools, as well as a highly plugged-in international network of industry professionals so that they can continue to grow beyond the 16-week programme,” said Jo Soh, Programme Director at TaFF.

The latest companies to be accepted into the accelerator are:

Binary Style: A local boutique brand that weaves Singapore’s history and its diverse culture on scarves to tell the nation’s story. The brand is currently expanding its product line with resort-wear.

Graceful Swimmers: Swimwear label that incorporates environmental friendly fabrics to create quality activewear for female swimmers seeking full coverage and a complete range of motion.

Igloo Wear: A digital rental service platform that provides winter clothing at affordable rates, so that consumer’s don’t have to splurge on winterwear during travels.

LOOMS: A creative textile studio that creates unique textile products, handcrafted by women artisans. The startup also provides support for women artisans through training and work opportunities.

OliveAnkara: A fashion label that offers contemporary apparel and accessories in distinctive African printed textiles using the concept of zero waste. OliveAnkara uses striking colours and patterns of the Ankara fabrics, to allow women of all colours to express themselves.

Also Read: News Roundup: Ruangguru CEO Belva Devara resigns from Presidents special staff position

Punkabella: A personalised digital clothing line that enables consumers to express their digital identities through a virtual experience before physical garments are made.

SANS FAFF: A sustainable minimalist womenswear label that focuses on essentials through well-constructed designs that can be worn for anyone season.

Shop Bettr: An online marketplace that aggregates all sustainable fashion brands worldwide to assist consumers in finding sustainable alternatives to their fashion needs.

 Tropick Apparel: A menswear label that creates multi-functional performance dress shirts for men. The brand has created sweat-wicking and quick-drying properties that are practical for tropical weather.

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Image Credit: Victor Xok

 

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Beenext invests US$4.5M in fintech platform YAP

Singaporean venture capital firm Beenext has announced US$4.5 million investment in Indian fintech platform YAP, according to ET.

8i Ventures Fund, The DMI Group, Better Capital, and angel investors including Alok Mittal, CEO, Indifi, Ashneer Grover, CEO, BharatPe, Amrish Rau, CEO, PineLabs and Jupiter founder Jitendra Gupta also joined the round.

The company has said that the funds will be used to strengthen its team and enhance its platform with a focus on credit, corporate banking solutions, and cross-border payments.

“Our platform is connected to 15 banks in India, and by leveraging technology, we are accelerating the shift in ‘sacheting’ of financial services by new cohorts of distribution, leading to lowering costs, enhancing access, and better value proposition to end consumers,” said Prabhu Rangarajan, co-founder of YAP.

YAP works with financial institutions as product providers and offers end-to-end programme management services over APIs.

Also Read: gojek investor Northstar makes first close of its US$800M fifth fund

Facebook buys 10 per cent stake in Indian telecom operator Reliance Jio

Social media giant Facebook has announced an investment of US$5.7 billion in India’s telecom operator Reliance Jio, according to Techcrunch. The deal will bring Jio’s valuation to US$65.95 billion.

Facebook said that the stake marks its “commitment to India, where it will focus on collaborating with Jio to create ‘new ways for people and businesses to operate more effectively in the growing digital economy’.”

The agreement also marks one of India’s largest foreign direct investment in the technology space.

Mukesh Ambani, managing director of Jio, said that the synergy between the two companies will help realise Digital India Mission with its two goals: “Ease of living and ease of doing business for every single category of Indian people without exception.”

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Image Credit: Beenext

 

 

 

 

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We launched e27 Pro because we want to help empower the ecosystem and help build successful companies. Now, let us walk you through exactly what it is.

e27 Pro is a platform that gives you access to insights, tools, and opportunities that help you solve the problems that hold you back.

How exactly can it do that?

Members of e27 Pro get to enjoy different features that give them a leg up on dealing with the challenges of building a successful company.

Features such as:

e27 Ecosystem Roundup — receive exclusive emails that put together everything you need to know about tech and startups in the region. From the latest news to insights on current trends, we put together everything you need to know from over 50 news sites in one email, twice weekly.

Fundraising widgets — get access to a special widget that lets the world know that you’re fundraising. Visible on both your company profile page and the e27 homepage, it’s perfect for getting in the radar of investors who could help you grow.

e27 Connect — meet the right investors with Pro’s e27 Connect: a platform where we connect startups to prospective investors that are interested in collaborating and providing funding for future business growth.

Investor Database — know who’s who in the APAC fundraising scene with the e27 Investor Database. Sift through all the noise and get all the important data you need about the region’s most active investors.

Connect with potential partners — Initiate and sustain engagement with the community with the ability to reach out to companies on the platform and take the first steps to build a productive partnership and/or collaboration.

Support ecosystem development — When you become an e27 Pro member, you help ensure that we can continue to build tools, programmes, and partnerships that help the region’s startup ecosystem develop.

Moreover, by becoming part of the e27 Pro community, you become part of a community of decision-makers making a difference not only in their own respective startups and corporates, but the larger tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia and beyond.

Staying true to its name, an e27 Pro membership means taking your company to a more professional level, all while supporting your company and the vibrant startup community that we all operate in. You don’t only become more of a “pro” in every sense of the word, but you also further galvanise your position as a pro-community, pro-collaboration, and pro-innovation partner.

Be a part of the community and sign up for an e27 Pro membership today! You may visit here for more details.

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Easy Eat, a new Artificial Intelligence-powered foodtech startup headquartered in Singapore, has secured an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A investment round from half-a-dozen investors.

The names include Bala Chandra, Managing Partner of Vernalis Capital, and his family office, besides five other unnamed angels.

The less-than-a-year-old startup, which also has offices in Malaysia and India, will use the capital raised to build the team and launch the product.

The startup was founded last year by Mohd Wassem, Rhythm Gupta, Abdul Khalid, Akshay Chauhan, and Alok Ranjan. Wassem has previously built and exited Bobble Keyboard, for which he raised multiple rounds of funding from SAIF Partners, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (Co-founders of Flipkart), Deep Kalra (Founder of MakeMyTrip, Amit Ranjan (Co-founder of Slideshare), and Prashant Malik (co-creator of Cassandra).

Also Read: AI startup Easy Eat aims to transform restaurants into tech firms and make dining more interactive

Easy Eat’s AI-based tech solution personalises and rewards users’ dining experience. It digitises all customer-facing interaction in the restaurants — from browsing menu and ordering to tracking to payments. It even suggests customising options basis the users’ preferences and history. The more a user uses Easy Eat AI tech, the more personalised it gets.

“Imagine the app taking care of your dining preferences, allergies, calories, choosing best payment options and rewarding you for loyalty without any extra effort,” Wassem said.

On the other side, restaurants can save time and money and better manage the footfall. They will also have access to advanced user analytics (the equivalent of Google Analytics for offline businesses). It will give a fillip to their marketing intelligence, customer strategy and business efficiency.

“While this innovation may not compete with restaurants as an alternate supplier, it certainly has a vast potential to transform the way customers buy and experience dining. Restaurants don’t have to incur any additional cost to use the solution. More importantly, this will increase their bottom-line by 40 per cent,” Wassem added.

The company targets the US$100-billion food & beverages sector in Southeast Asia, where majority prefer eating out — in some countries, more than 90 per cent of the people consume at least one meal outside a day. Plus, the region has a high female working population.

Also Read: Coping with consumer behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis

Easy Eat is going to start online ordering as well as takeaways at zero per cent commission to support restaurants in these tough times. Wassem claimed that tens of restaurants have already signed up for this programme, as they are not happy with the commissions charged by the likes of foodpanda and Grab.

“I was convinced about the idea from the very beginning, and the recent COVID-19 outbreak has further strengthened my belief in it. As the world emerges from the virus, we would see large scale technology adoption in this area. Restaurant offerings, from ordering to payments to service delivery, will all go contactless,” said investor Chandra.

“I was the first investor in Wassem’s previous company and continue to back him in his second venture. The team comes with a strong entrepreneurial, business and technology background. I am upbeat about the future of Easy Eat,” Chandra added.

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Image Credit: Easy Eat

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Ampverse partners with video adtech startup Unruly to recruit more Southeast Asian esports talents

Gaming and e-sports media company Ampverse has announced a partnership with video ads marketplace Unruly, which is owned by UK-based Tremor International.

Through this deal, the two companies seek to combine data-driven insights and content creation to fuel media amplification of gaming and e-sports talent across Southeast Asia.

The partnership aims to provide an opportunity for brands to gain an understanding of how their video campaigns engage gaming audiences across the region.

Ampverse seeks to champion gaming influencers and professional e-sports teams by building an ecosystem across Southeast Asia that enables them to maximise their creative and commercial potential. The media rights and assets company works with the talent to create content using authentic voices that can drive engagement among gaming audiences.

Unruly handles video inventory within premium publishing companies across the region, as well as works with content creators to optimise the emotional impact, performance, and ROI of their creatives using its proprietary pre-testing and targeting tool UnrulyEQ, and adapt existing assets into a range of different formats through its creative studio UnrulyEQ Edit Suite.

Singapore’s online hiring demand decreases due to COVID-19 restrictions

The looming fears around COVID-19 has taken a toll on Singapore’s e-recruitment industry. As the outbreak and its impact on the economy intensified, e-hiring sentiment hit zero per cent growth over last year for the month of March.

Also Read: Who’s driving e-sports and gaming in Southeast Asia: Gamers or fans?

“The impact of the pandemic is real, severe and lasting — especially for industries such as tourism, retail, and F&B — and the priority right now is to protect jobs and the small businesses that may not have the resources to stay afloat in these troubled times,” said Krish Seshadri, CEO of Monster.com (APAC and the Middle East).

With more people staying indoors due to safety protocols, which are increasing dependency on technology to stay connected, it’s understandable that the IT, telecom/ISP, and BPO/ITES industry alongside advertising and marketing, consumer goods, healthcare industry and BFSI all witnessed a surge in e-hiring demand for the quarter. As anticipated, retail/trade and logistics and hospitality industries were the worst hit.

The Monster Employment Index is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity, based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Singapore. The index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.

Global fintech platform NIUM partners with Geoswift to enable fund remittance into China

Global fintech platform NIUM has partnered with Geoswift, a payment technology company that connects China to the rest of the world, to enable overseas customers to remit money into the country.

The partnership allows NIUM’s customers worldwide to send funds directly to a receiver’s UnionPay card account with 14 banks in China in real-time, and another 50-plus banks within 48 hours.

Traditionally consumers or businesses, who want to send cross-border remittances into China for personal or business purposes, had to rely on banking infrastructure or money remittance centres. Recipients in China would need to make trips to bank branches or remittance centers and wait in line.

Also Read: Fund Transfers license granted, NIUM officially launches digital cross-border payments platform in Indonesia

The partnership with Geoswift will help eliminate the hassle and provide convenience and cost-savings to consumers and businesses looking to remit money into China, especially when social distancing measures are being implemented all over the world.

Consumers and businesses can conduct the fund transfers through InstaReM, NIUM’s consumer and SME brand, on its website or app. Banks and financial institutions looking to integrate the service can soon do so via integration of NIUM’s enterprise API tools into their existing systems.

All funds transfer into China can be initiated in any of the 40+ source currencies currently offered through NIUM’s Send service, and recipients will receive the payout in the Chinese Yuan.

Singapore’s digital banking FOMO Pay forays into Malaysia

FOMO Pay, Singapore-based digital payment and digital banking solution provider, has partnered with OCBC Bank (Malaysia) to develop OCBC OneCollect as its first merchant cross-border QRcode collection service project.

This project also marks the opening of FOMO Pay’s new office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and opens up opportunities to provide customer support in a larger territory and signals continued rapid growth for the company in the region.

FOMO Pay collaborates with OCBC in February to develop the application for Malaysia’s first cross-border QR Code collection service, OCBC OneCollect. This service allows any account holder of Singapore’s PayNow participating banks to make Singapore Dollar payments to eligible merchants in Malaysia via direct QR code payment through OCBC OneCollect, instead of just local Ringgit currency transactions.

Key features of these digital banking solutions consist of proprietary QR payment processing system, e-KYC solution, AI credit-scoring profiling solution, multi-channel account auto-reconciliation solution, cross-border switch interoperability solution, and many more.

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Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash

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The onset and the rapid spread of COVID-19 has rampaged through the business world. Many companies are already shutting down, while many are on life support. If the situation lasts for a few more weeks, the implications will be unprecedented.

Given the situation, it is important to learn how businesses have been affected and in which areas.

US-based Startup Genome, which offers research on the startup ecosystem, has gathered data from entrepreneurs to learn about the impact on their businesses in areas such as capital, jobs, and policy.

Here, the goal is to put the results against policy action to “save startups and provide data-driven arguments for more government action around the world”.

Here’s how these three areas have been affected:

Capital

Funding is one significant aspect that has affected many startups during this period. This is because startups in normal conditions can be different during a calamity and extremely different in case of a pandemic.

Many investors, who had promised to fund startups, are putting deals on hold while others are seeming to have a change of mind.

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Panasonic, in collaboration with ACE and ICMG, launched its “Panasonic Deep Tech Innovation Challenge” on 10th April 2020. It aims to collect ideas from local companies to develop technologies and launch new businesses with Panasonic’s smell detection technologies. These are unique in being able to detect smell and visualise their relevance to human lives.

One such innovation is Panasonic’s Odor Sensing Technology, which has many commercial applications such as healthcare, food manufacturing, and industrial safety. Additionally, they have deep expertise in stress detection by human skin-gas sensing, relevant in various settings such as in the workplace, schools, and homes.

The two-part Challenge

This innovative challenge is in line with Panasonic’s vision to utilise its technologies to bring impactful solutions to existing social and customer issues. Within this challenge, two technologies are up for collaboration: Odor Sensing and Stress Detection by Human Skin-Gas Sensing.

In the first Challenge, Panasonic hopes to co-create new solutions and potentially launch businesses that can deliver its technology to make a significant difference to existing and new issues. Specifically, the technology should (1) provide human safety and comfort through precise odor sensing, and (2) implement preventive safe maintenance by detection of slight odor.

Examples of potential issues to tackle are:

• Exposure to harmful gases by healthcare professionals
• Lack of detection and regulation of harmful chemicals in agriculture practices
• Leakage of harmful substances in industrial areas endangering workers and the surrounding environment

For the second Challenge, Panasonic hopes to collaborate to transfer its technologies to local businesses that can leverage the potential of the technology to create and enhance solutions targeting critical issues. Solutions for this particular challenge should (1) provide fulfilling life through high-precision sensing of the stress marker materials and (2) enable objective standards to identify and understand different states of stress, therefore developing new and implementable solutions.

Examples of potential issues to tackle are:

• Employee wellness management and productivity maintenance due to stress in the workplace
• Reduced efficacy of education due to increasing competitiveness in schools
• Stressed and estranged family relationships due to lack of mutual understanding and support

Who should join and why?

The challenge is open to all startups and corporates who want to be part of this new technology. Registration for the challenge is open until 5th June 2020. All eligible teams and organisations are encouraged to sign up through the challenge website. Applications are completed by answering some questions about your proposed idea and submitting your team’s introduction deck.

Teams are challenged to tap on their technical expertise, business acumen, and creative skills through two different stages of the Challenge. This is a highly valuable opportunity to create new solutions and tackle new markets by using Panasonic technologies. Selected teams that will progress to the final round will have exclusive opportunity to be mentored closely by Panasonic representatives to continue developing their projects for the Demo Day.

Additionally, for Challenge 1, winning teams may have an opportunity to further develop their technologies and businesses as business partners of Panasonic, whereas for Challenge 2, winners may have the opportunity to get Tech & IP licensing from Panasonic and utilise Panasonic’s technologies to create and expand their businesses.

Keen on joining? Take note of the timeline

1. A webinar briefing event will be held on 24 April and 14 May 2020 for participants to find out more about the challenge and interact with the organisers. Register here.
2. Applications will be accepted until 5th June 2020.
3. The results for the first round of judging will be released on 12th June 2020.
4. A mentoring programme will be conducted for successful applicants, to be held from 12th June 2020 to 17th July 2020.
5. The Panasonic Deep Tech Innovation Challenge will culminate with a Demo Day on 22nd July 2020.

Who are Panasonic, ACE, and ICMG?

Panasonic has researched and developed various kinds of sensor technologies, and filed IP about these technologies. The Panasonic R&D Centre in Singapore is starting this open innovation activity to utilise their innovative assets effectively and deliver a better life, work environment and etc in this South East ASIA’s emerging market.

The Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE), a national private sector-led organisation, plays a key role in building a dynamic and sustainable startup ecosystem in Singapore. ACE’s mission is to lead the ground-up community strategic support to promote entrepreneurship, scale startups and build champion enterprises. ACE supports startups across all stages through three strategic core functions:

1. Driving co-innovation between startups and enterprises;
2. Helping startups to scale and internationalise
3. Building an access hub of connected ecosystems across countries

ICMG aims to become Asia’s Most Admired Accelerator. ICMG constantly works towards creating new corporate innovations. As the leading corporate innovation accelerator, ICMG Singapore works with different partners (Government, Businesses, Individuals & more) to co-create purposeful innovations for corporates.

For more details about the challenge, please visit their official page.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by ICMG.

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