LeadIQ, a SaaS platform that aims to simplify lead management and sales prospecting processes, has raised up to US$10 million in Series A funding round, led by Eight Roads Ventures.

Tim Draper of Draper Associates and angel investor Jason Calacanis’s LAUNCH Fund also participated.

The fresh capital will be used by the company to invest in R&D, and for market expansion and hiring talent.

Founded in 2015 by Mei Siauw and Angelo Huang, LeadIQ is a workflow-centric lead data and sales prospecting SaaS platform focused on enterprise and mid-market clients.

With offices in both Singapore and the US, the firm aims to help users research and capture potential leads easily, enrich leads with further details, and integrates into various sales acceleration and customer management platforms, such as Salesloft, Outreach, Hubspot and Salesforce.

“We are building LeadIQ to simplify the workflow of sales teams, so they can focus on meaningful and relevant activities. Every second that a rep is wasting on repetitive tasks, chasing the wrong prospect, is not only hurting their company but our economy as well,” said Mei Siauw, CEO of LeadIQ.

Also Read: Compassionate layoff; Airbnb shows the way

“Organisations need a solid sales tech stack that is integrated, where data flows seamlessly across. This is where LeadIQ makes a difference. The platform allows reps to do more and quicker, cutting down unwanted manual processes,” commented Dave Ng, Head of Southeast Asia at Eight Roads Ventures.

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This article was co-written by Anisa Menur

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GoodWork, Philippines-based home services provider startup, has received US$1.6 million in seed funding round led by Chaac Ventures, with participation from Elysium Ventures, Kairos K50, and Facebook’s and Snapchat’s angel investors.

The company said it plans to use the funding to expand its business in Southeast Asia, as reported by TechCrunch.

Andrew Koger, co-founder, and CEO of GoodWork said that GoodWork plans to expand into Vietnam and Thailand by the end of this year or early 2021.

The company that was founded in 2018 has its operation based in the Metro Manila region. It offers services such as home cleaning, laundry pickup, air conditioner cleaning, and home repairs, as well as spa services such as manicures.

Using GoodWork, services providers are free to determine their pricing with around 70 per cent daily bookings from repeat customers.

GoodWork was founded in 2018 by Koger, who is a bachelor of arts graduate of Princeton University. Previously, he was a part of Lazada team, leading Fulfillment, the logistics branch of the company.

Also Read: Chinese home service robot startup ROOBO raises US$100M to grow speech tech

COVID-19 impact

The COVID-19 pandemic has left no stone unturned, and GoodWork is no exception. Due to the government policy of community quarantine and suspension of operations, the company deals with this situation by adding health services into its app that include online medical consultations.

Besides that, the services that are most needed during the community quarantine are laundry pickup and delivery services, since many people don’t have washing machines at home and rely on laundromats.

With the lockdown situation dials down, GoodWork has been prepared to add the relevant services such as disinfection cleaning services and implement new safety measures for services providers, such as the standard body temperature monitoring feature in its app, and safety training and protective equipment for cleaners.

Koger is optimistic that home service will see a good increase in demand in the months ahead.

“We’ll continue the work from home policies, which will increase air-conditioning usage, that in the past has led to an increased demand for servicing, and like a domino effect, it means an increased need for home cleaning for many people,” Koger said.

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Image Credit: CDC on Unsplash

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Gobi Partners, MDEC launch SuperSeed II Championship, to invest up to US$3.5M each in winners

Gobi Partners has partnered with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to launch a pitching competition, called SuperSeed II Championship, for startups affected by COVID-19.

The winning companies will get the opportunity to secure equity investment from from Malaysia SuperSeed Fund II, a fund jointly announced last year by Gobi, MAVCAP, and Sunway, as well as be a potential MDEC grant recipient.

Additional prizes include the chance to attend an entrepreneurship programme organised by Alibaba Business School and the iLabs Accelerator Program by Sunway Group.

Also Read: MDEC partners 9 Digital Transformation Lab for tech enabling support

The SuperSeed II Championship’s participants must be companies incorporated in Malaysia or have Malaysian founders or shareholders. They can be companies that have substantial operations in the country or have concrete plans to expand their business into the market.

The key verticals that will be considered are retail and enterprise (AI, B2B, B2C, Big Data, e-commerce, and logistics), fintech (crowdfunding, insurtech, mobile payments, P2P lending, and robo-advisors), smart cities and circular economy (construction solutions, e-hailing, environment solutions, IoT, mobility solutions, and public transport solutions), and Taqwatech (companies providing products and services to Muslim consumers and communities).

The deadline for entries is 12 am, June 16, 2020.

The preliminary round is scheduled to take place at the end of June, while the qualifying rounds and final round is set to be held in July and August.

Interested startups can register here.

Openspace Ventures, MDI Ventures, AC Ventures to #SupportStartups during SEA ground-up movement

Openspace Ventures, MDI Ventures, and AC Ventures have launched a national initiative harnessing consumer and business spending in an effort to uplift the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This initiative followed the initial success of Singapore’s #SupportStartups initiative that was launched by Openspace Ventures, 500 Startups, and Cocoon Capital.

The offers will be featured on a combined website (id.supportstartups.com), leveraging the strength of the ecosystem to drive traffic to startups.

The 30 businesses currently listed on the website include B2C and B2B outfits across multiple sectors including fashion, F&B, logistics, e-commerce, enterprise SaaS, co-working space, and digital wealth management.

To each eligible startup registered in the programme, Amazon Web Services is offering US$5,000 in promotional credits.

In Indonesia, the initiative is led by MDI Ventures with the launch of a number of initiatives such as weekly webinars and IndonesiaBergerak.com, with the purpose of spreading information on the outbreak and insight on how businesses can operate in current times.

Interested startups with businesses in Indonesia are encouraged to submit their promotions via the website here.

Malaysian data labelling startup Supahands launches The Supahands Opus Infrastructure

Supahands, a Machine Learning- and Artificial Intelligence-based data labelling startup, has announced the launch of its Opus Infrastructure (OI).

Also Read: Human-powered training data provider Supahands raises Series A funding

The OI offers a fully-managed customer experience for a wide variety of data labelling needs, such as image annotation, sentiment tagging, and data transcription.

Featuring Supahands’s proprietary technology, the OI enables organisations to boost operational agility and engage in end-to-end managed service that produces quality training data for Machine ML and AI at scale, with customisable technology and project-specific workflows.

CEO and Co-founder Mark Koh said that with the demand for AI solutions steadily on the rise, Supahands’s OI supports the technological automation landscape by providing an agile and flexible solution for data labelling workflows.

Singapore fintech Aleta Planet welcomes new hires, focussing on business growth

Singapore-based fintech Aleta Planet has made two senior hires to support business growth as clients ramp up digitalisation efforts.

Jesline Teo will join on June 1, 2020, as Managing Director, Group Finance, while Laurens Lim will come on board as Director, Group Finance, on May 18, 2020.

Teo spent more than 20 years with PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services before joining Aleta Planet. She has led more than 200 merger and acquisition projects with a total value of over US$20 billion, including in- and out-bound as well as cross-border deals.

Lim was Vice President and Team Head of Retail Reconciliation and Investigation at United Overseas Bank prior to joining Aleta Planet. He has been with UOB for the last 17 years, leading investigations and liaising with authorities on matters related to retail and card payments.

Aleta Planet operates from its offices in Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Australia and Dubai, and plans to expand to five new markets within the next two years.
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Photo by Mohd Jon Ramlan on Unsplash

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Singapore’s Temasek joins Facebook’s global payments system Libra

Singaporean investment firm Temasek Holdings has joined Facebook-backed Libra Association as its third new member, according to KrAsia.

The association’s two other members are cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm and private equity group Slow Ventures.

“The addition of three new members to the Libra Association shows our commitment to building a diverse group of organisations that will contribute to the governance, technological roadmap, and launch readiness for the Libra payment system,” said Libra Association’s Vice Chairman Dante Disparte.

Facebook with other tech players had proposed starting a new currency named Libra early in 2019.

Also Read: Compassionate layoffs; Airbnb shows the way

However, in April this year, some partners like Visa, Mastercard, eBay, Stripe, and Paypal decided to pull out of the project.

MRT Jakarta plans to launch accelerator for startups in all industries

Government-owned company MRT Jakarta has revealed that it plans to launch an accelerator for startups with no particular focus on any one industry, according to TechInAsia.

The accelerator will welcome all startups to take their products and services to the mainstream market.

The mentors of the six-month programme, which begins on June 8, includ Bukalapak, BeliMobilGue, BRI Ventures, MDI Ventures, East Ventures, and Vertex Ventures.

Startup Genome, T-Hub partner to promote innovation and improve startup support in India

T-Hub, India’s innovation ecosystem, and Startup Genome, a  research and policy advisory organisation in the US, announced today that they would together foster Hyderabad’s innovation ecosystem and showcase success stories of the city’s entrepreneurs.

“Hyderabad’s tech ecosystem has enormous potential to reshape the economy locally and nationally,” said JF Gauthier, Founder and CEO of Startup Genome, in a statement.

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More than 140 leading names in the regional startup ecosystem –from venture capital firms, accelerators or incubators, to other organisations– announced the launch of Mentor For Hope, a programme aiming to raise the equivalent of 50,000 meals for those in need while supporting startups in the time of crisis at the same time.

Vertex Ventures, Sequoia India, Big Idea Ventures, Saison Capital, Qualgro, e27, Golden Gate Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners, Openspace Ventures, Antler, BLOCK71 by NUS Enterprise, SGInnovate, StartupX, SheVC (a SoGal Foundation initiative), SoGal Ventures, NTUitive, STRIVE, Hustle Fund, Asia Institute for Mentoring, Wantedly and VentureCap Insights are among those supporting the initiative so far.

The programme includes a month-long fundraising campaign where mentors pledge nearly 1,400 hours to provide mentorship to founders affected by the COVID-19 crisis and raise funds for charity at the same time.

All donations raised during the campaign, from May 18 to 16 June, will be dedicated to two beneficiaries: Beyond Social Services and Willing Hearts Soup Kitchen.

Aspiring entrepreneurs, founders, and members of the public are encouraged to donate. Public donations will enable founders who face financial challenges to benefit from investors’ mentoring sessions or experts’ coaching classes during the campaign.

Also Read: Using design sprints to solve COVID-19 business problems

The programme was launched with the background of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had impacted the startup ecosystem. According to VentureBeat, 41 per cent of startups globally are struggling with a cash runway of three months or less.

In Singapore alone, there are at least 20,000 jobs attributed to 3,800 startups, according to the Singapore Department of Statistics’ data as of December 2018.

“What we have created in a short time is a mini accelerator programme for founders across all stages to receive one-on-one mentoring with industry leaders, group mentoring with senior investors and masterclasses organised by experts, with a purpose to give back as well,” says Elise Tan Yee Ling, who organises the programme.

Mentor for Hope evolved from the “Gratitude-COVID mentoring initiative” started by Tan in Singapore when her role at a venture firm was made redundant a month ago. Feeling inspired to keep on helping the startup ecosystem, she was later joined by Sharon Yeo Mei Ching and Gwen Sim, both final-year students at National University of Singapore (NUS).

In addition to them, the main organisers of the programme also include Janet Neo, Aparna Saxena, Jeng Yang Chia, Minh Vu Hong, Clinton Swan and Dr Dalal AlGhawas, all of whom met through the Gratitude-COVID mentoring initiative.

Over 120 introductions have been made between founders and mentors since April 1.

Also Read: Why SEA startups should not go back to office post-COVID-19

Application details

To participate in the programme, interested founders and aspiring entrepreneurs can sign up via the FutureLab e-mentorship platform and make a request for the mentors they wish to meet. They will then receive instructions on how to make or raise at least SG$50 (US$35) donation on give.asia.

Every participant will receive a Mentor For Hope care package, worth S$500 (US$350) in total, that comprises of:

– One hour mentoring session by a suitable mentor
– Free virtual coaching group classes led by professional experts
– Free two-month access to VentureCap Insights, an online venture investment database

Founders facing financial difficulties may also apply to reduce or waive the donation recommendation.

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Image Credit: Mentor For Hope

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