Clik, a fintech startup operating in Phnom Penh, announced that it has completed a US$3.7 million seed funding round led by Openway and Poems Pte Ltd, the investment holding company of Phillip Capital, a Singaporean financial house with over US$35 billion under management.

The funding round also included several global angel investors, a third of which are Cambodia-based.

The fintech startup said it plans to use the funding to scale its product engineering and customer service teams as it progresses towards its official launch by the end of 2020.

Clik was founded in 2016 as a payment aggregator enabling consumer payments from cards, wallets, and bank accounts while enabling merchants to accept such payments. It claims to be Cambodia’s first independent mPOS and SoftPOS merchant acquirer.

Clik provides all these payments in contactless mode.

The company also has a single, easy-to-use platform that focusses on building consumer loyalty to boost merchant profits. Having developed their own eKYC solution, Clik can onboard consumers and merchants in minutes while adhering to the highest data privacy, security and banking regulatory standards.

Also Read: Cambodia joins the club with a newly established fintech association

Merchants have access to analytics that are driven by fully anonymised data, while consumers benefit from cash-back incentives that reward them for repeat purchases.

They currently have close to 2,500 merchants and five financial institutions in their beta programmes and access to over 56,000 more merchants via their partners.

Partnerships

The funding is claimed to be Southeast Asia’s largest-ever seed round in mobile payments, loyalty programs, data visualisation, business intelligence, and cloud data services.

Clik is also taking part in the National Bank of Cambodia’s Central Bank Digital Currencies initiative, in which the startup will integrate its platform soon.

Besides that, the fintech startup is also working closely with MYPINPAD, which is said to be the only company in the world to achieve Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council (SSC) certification for its software-only Contactless Payments on Commercial (CPoC) off-the-shelf solutions.

“After two years of scaling up and defining the fundamentals of our regional market strategy, we’re ready to accelerate our growth with the closure of our seed round. Our goal here is to offer merchants and consumers a much-needed and attractive digital alternative to cash,” said Matthew Tippetts, CEO and Co-Founder of Clik.

New senior hires

With the funding announcement, Clik also named Patrice Vignes as COO, who will also be joining the company’s board.  Vignes’ most recent stints were as CFO of Amret and other multinational corporations prior to that.

Also Read: How student entrepreneurs can tap into the fintech ecosystem in Cambodia

Clik also named Olivier Mermet as Chief Design and Strategy Officer. Mermet is a brand strategy and customer experience specialist who was previously a Brand Design Director at Procter & Gamble and a VP of Design, Retail and Customer Experience at Estée Lauder.

Denver Gibson, previously Clik’s deputy CTO, has also been promoted to CTO. Co-founder and Ex-CTO Darren Jensen remain with Clik as a Blockchain technology advisor to aid Clik’s development in that sector.

Matthew Maddocks has joined Clik’s board as Independent Director, chairing the Risk and Compliance Committee.

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Image Credit: Clik

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As populations all over the world buckle down into a new era of social distancing and community quarantine ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic, a huge boost has been given to the development of digital landscapes and solutions as countries learn to adapt to the new normal.

While there are widespread uncertainty and anxiety over what the future will look like in a post-pandemic world, one thing is for sure – technology is as important as ever.

The need for widespread adoption of technologies is all the more pertinent in emerging regions such as Southeast Asia and Latin America, where significant population segments still struggle to gain access to basic digital resources.

However, this pandemic-fuelled push towards digital evolution has encouraged innovators and businesses across these regions to step up, paving the way for the development of more effective solutions and deeper cooperation across nations to combat the spread of COVID-19.

Southeast Asia: Staying ahead of the game

In a region that is embracing its digital transformation, Southeast Asia has made huge progress in terms of digitalising its societies even before the onset of the pandemic. The region saw a rapid growth in its internet penetration rate, from 25 per cent in 2014 to 63 per cent in 2019.

Part of this growth involved countries such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore leading the way in terms of e-commerce, mobile banking, and ride-hailing.

Also Read: “Latin American startup ecosystem is 10-12 years behind India”

When news of the widespread contagion of a novel coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China, first broke out in Southeast Asia, the region was relatively quick to implement strict measures to curb the spread. Governments and businesses had to quickly find ways to cope with the new restrictions, and this often meant turning to technology.

Businesses, decision-makers, and innovators across the region positioned themselves at the forefront of developing tech solutions to help their societies cope with the shifting demands brought about by the pandemic.

From telemedicine to e-commerce, Southeast Asia has been strengthening its existing tech infrastructure while rapidly developing new solutions to stay ahead. In Singapore, telemedicine platforms have continually evolved to meet the spike in demand, having seen at least five times more sign-ups during the pandemic.

In Vietnam, the health ministry worked closely with tech companies to develop an online reporting system and database for suspected and confirmed cases of COVID-19 as well as people who were in close contact with such cases.

Banks and financial institutions across Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines have also been rapidly moving towards going fully digital.

Latin America: Embracing solutions

When the pandemic first hit the shores of Latin America, governments across the region were swift to implement some of the most stringent measures to minimise the spread.

However, with its high internet penetration rates and large mobile-minded middle class, the region is prime for embracing and adopting tech solutions to adapt to the new way of life.

Also Read: BlaBlaCar raises US$200M to expand in Asia, Latin America

With an internet penetration rate of close to 70 per cent, Latin America is positioned way ahead of the world’s total percentage that stands at 58.8 per cent. The region also forms some of the world’s largest markets for social media, and countries such as Mexico and Brazil have been dominating sectors such as e-commerce and ride-hailing.

While the statistics seem promising, Latin America continues to struggle with low levels of entrepreneurship that is largely necessity-based. The growing demand for digital solutions in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the lack of resources and innovation to meet it, creates a huge potential for solutions from without the region to play a part in enhancing the well-being of Latin American society.

Paving the way for a partnership

While Southeast Asia might be moving full steam ahead with its evolving digital landscape, it is not enough for its developments to be confined to the region alone. COVID-19 does not discriminate, and the only way to successfully combat the virus is for the world to do it together.

Knowledge-sharing is now more important than ever, and Latin America, in particular, has much to gain from the technological know-how of Southeast Asia.

While Latin America and Southeast Asia appear to be vastly different at first glance, being separated by geography, language, and culture, the two emerging economies have more similarities in common than meets the eye. The similar population sizes, economic realities, and rapid increase in internet penetration rates underscore the adaptability of digital solutions across both regions.

In addition, both economies have much to gain from deeper cooperation. Southeast Asia possesses the technological capabilities and know-how that Latin America is ready to embrace, while Latin America serves as a largely untapped market that can provide raw materials and human capital to fuel the growth of Southeast Asian businesses.

Also Read: BlaBlaCar raises US$200M to expand in Asia, Latin America

While the pandemic intensifies the already existing logistical and operational challenges to enhanced cooperation between the two regions, governments and businesses need to take a step back and assess the bigger picture. Without mutual cooperation and knowledge-sharing of critical information and digital solutions, it would be impossible to fight a virus that pays no respect to borders.

As the pandemic continues to push for a convergence of interests between the two regions, it is prime time for Southeast Asian tech companies to turn their heads towards Latin America and explore viable strategies to navigate the political, economic, and social elements of expanding to the market. One such viable strategy is a concept known as soft-landing.

Soft-landing as a strategy for business expansion

Expansion to distant and untapped markets is often accompanied by a host of risk factors and obstacles. Soft-landing is a concept that aims to minimise these risks by supporting a controlled launch with limited resources and connecting the company to a network of local stakeholders.

The soft-landing process is best led by soft-landing facilitators, whose role is to help companies scale in far-flung and foreign markets.

The main characteristic of soft-landing facilitators is that they understand how to scale in new markets given the information asymmetry. Soft-landing facilitators offer a broad knowledge of the socio-political, regulatory, and financial contexts of a market.

They provide key tools such as talent acquisition and network and business alliances to support processes such as customer acquisition and the tropicalisation of strategies.

Some significant benefits of business deployment through soft-landing include:

Cost reduction: Normally, costs of entry to other markets can be significant and exceed business budgets. Having reliable information and the support of locals can avoid cost overrun.

Time to market: The time it takes for each company to position itself within a new market will depend on the level of preparation it has and the knowledge of the entry barriers into the new market.

The soft-landing facilitator has local resources that accelerate the operational, commercial, and legal establishment, providing access to strategic information, decision-maker contact networks, and talent.

Also Read: Regulating online hate speech is a big, muddy, complicated mess

Cultural adaptation: The cultural and business practices in each market determine the way of doing business. Language, communication peculiarities, and specific local knowledge within each country are keys for a successful landing into a new ecosystem.

Deployment and reputation: Having a well-reputed local facilitator vouching for the new entrant is crucial when it comes to accessing institutions, local businesses, and potential customers. This is why having local professional teams becomes critical for business development and facilitates integration from the beginning.

Prime time for soft-landing

As Latin America trails behind Southeast Asia both in terms of the arrival of the virus and reacting to it, there is a huge opportunity to learn from experience and embrace suitable solutions for its own societies.

It is also prime time for Southeast Asian tech companies to capitalise on the opportunities for expansion and knowledge sharing amidst this pandemic and contribute to the uplifting of communities and the global fight against COVID-19.

Several Asian startups have already taken the leap and are actively seeking to expand and share their solutions with the Latin American market. DiMuto, a Singapore-based agri-food trade tech solutions platform, has been making headway in the region’s strong agricultural sector by driving the digitalisation of supply chains.

Talkpush, a Hong Kong-based recruitment platform, has also been on the path of expansion in Latin America as the demand for digital recruitment solutions amidst COVID-19 continues to increase.

The concept of soft-landing provides a viable strategy that can help first-time business ventures navigate the complexities and intricacies of the Latin American market. Soft-landing facilitators are well-positioned at the forefront to promote deeper cooperation between these two emerging economies and take their growth to greater heights.

Internationalise your business and expand your network

Latin Leap is looking to partner with promising tech scale-ups that are ready to embrace the vibrant Latin American market, as well as fellow investors and venture capital studios that want to play a part in growing the economies of Southeast Asia and Latin America.

Whether you are a tech company seeking to internationalise in the Latin American region, or a venture capital firm looking to expand your network and portfolio of companies, we would love to hear from you. For more information on Latin Leap, visit our website at https://latinleap.vc/.

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One of the characteristics that every good investor looks for in an aspiring entrepreneur is resilience, or the ability to learn from and bounce back after a failure. You don’t have to have previous startup problems to show resilience – everyone should have a story of tackling a tough challenge with minimal success but using the failure to move on and achieve an objective.

With startups, almost every entrepreneur I know has failed at least once, often several times, but never gave up, and ultimately achieved their goal. Evan Williams, for example, before co-founding Twitter, started a podcasting platform named Odeo. The platform couldn’t compete with Apple’s podcast section of iTunes, so he recast his efforts into microblogging, and the rest is history.

The challenge is how you can enhance your own ability to bounce back, and highlight that attribute to your team and outside constituents, including investors and business partners. If done well, such failures can actually give you an advantage, rather than a disadvantage. In my experience, here are some key preparation strategies that work:

1. Practice and highlight your conviction to never give up. Many experts tell me that more startups fail simply because their founder gives up, than for any other reason. Real entrepreneurs have told me that they become energized when told that they are facing an insurmountable barrier. Their satisfaction comes from proving naysayers wrong. Howard Schultz, who built Starbucks into a billion-dollar success, started with a strong conviction that people would pay for “an experience” of fresh-brewed cappuccino by the cup, rather than buying equipment. He never gave up, despite multiple setbacks.

2. Actively seek and learn from the counsel of smart people. Some entrepreneurs, unfortunately, become more and more isolated in hard times, or surround themselves only with friends and supporters. Make sure you actively interact with and show appreciation for people smarter than you, even if they don’t always agree with you.Both Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, although extremely successful in their own domains, share a great relationship as mentors for each other in learning how to deal with today’s challenging business and social problems. People who listen are always more resilient.

Also Read: Lesson from the failure of several startups in the sharing economy

3. Demonstrate decisiveness rather than paralysis by fear. Making any decision is almost always better in business than no decision. You have to look at making decisions as a positive learning opportunity, rather than a chance to fail. Every investor wants to see entrepreneurs who are willing to take responsibility for action and get it done. When it’s time for a decision, your gut instinct should never be your only input. All of us have access via the Internet to multiple expert sources, insights, and data to support our own experience, to make more relevant and timely decisions.

4. Maintain an optimistic outlook, rather than pessimistic. Optimism is a mindset fueled by confidence in yourself and an ability to gather and filter knowledge. Confidence is built by finding your purpose, playing to your strengths, and taking tough challenges in small steps to show progress. It also helps to emulate the success of others with similar goals.
Don’t be lulled into thinking that optimism is a personality trait you either have or don’t. Optimism can be learned, by really looking for your successes, rewarding yourself for your progress, and using a mentor to steer you in the right direction.

5. Use metrics in lieu of feelings to measure progress. Don’t let your feelings get you down, with no quantification of what failed, or what you need to do to come back. People who set quantified goals and objectives for themselves and their teams, and measure results, always know where they stand and are not surprised by feedback from others.

The ability to bounce back also requires continuing attention to your physical needs and feelings. Don’t forget to maintain a healthy balance between business and personal demands, including family, sleep, and time off for enjoyable activities. Make sure that you take the time to internalise the strength that comes from struggling, and the insights that come from failure.

Then you too can become one of the rare entrepreneurs, sought by every investor, who continually bounce back stronger from every failure until they achieve success beyond everyone’s wildest dreams.

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The article was first published on nfinitiv.

Image Credit: Sean Pollock on Unsplash

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The Ohmyhome team

Ohmyhome to set up ops in Philippines

The story: Singapore’s Ohmyhome will set up operations in the Philippines to enable Filipino homeowners and searchers to buy, sell, and rent properties in a simple, fast, and efficient manner.

What is Ohmyhome?

Ohmyhome is a do-it-yourself platform that connects buyers and sellers directly at no cost. While the other portals are focused on selling real estate, Ohmyhome is designed to serve customers in the entire buying and selling process by providing a unique hybrid model of a DIY platform and full-fledged agency services.

The portal is able to this by leveraging on its advanced technology capabilities and on its team of professional agents.

The firm claims it sees an estimate of 2,000 housing transactions per month, has garnered 300,000 app downloads, over 175,000 active users, and 15,000 unique listings of properties to date.

The company is backed by Golden Equator Capital and K3 Ventures

Singapore, Australia sign digital economy agreement

The story: Australia and Singapore have signed a Digital Economy Agreement (SADEA) to harness digital transformation and technology to expand trade and economic ties in the region, says an Open Gov report.

The benefits: The SADEA will enable trusted cross-border data flows without unnecessary and costly requirements such as data localisation, while protecting consumers’ privacy and businesses’ proprietary information.

Australia and Singapore have agreed to set new rules to prevent unnecessary restrictions on the transfer and location of data, improved protection for software source code, and ensure compatibility between e-invoicing and e-payment frameworks.

The post In brief: Ohmyhome to set up ops in Philippines; S’pore, Australia sign digital economy agreement appeared first on e27.

Gobi Partners originally started in 2002 in China. Today they have about 250 investments across Asia with 40 per cent of them based in Southeast Asia (SEA). In a fireside chat with Kay Mok Ku, the Managing Partner at Gobi Partners SEA, we learned more about their investment philosophy and what to look forward to in a post-COVID-19 world.

Getting to know Gobi

• “VC is meant to bridge a gap, be it for a sector, an underserved market, or even gender”. This is what essentially drives Gobi’s investing philosophy.
• In SEA, they have three seed funds focussed on Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. For Vietnam, they are tied with Grab Ventures.
• Their main fund is a growth fund. The growth fund is typically in sectors that have reached maturity; in the last decade it has been mostly mobile internet-based in SEA.
• For seed funding, they are keen on upcoming sectors such as supply chain fragmentation (COVID-19 has clearly ruled it out as an important issue), 5G enabled services, IoT, robotics, etc.
• They are lead investors in the majority of their deals and typically ask for a board seat.
• Their average ticket size is US$1-2 million for seed stage and growth is US$3-5 million. They also usually do follow up investment in their portfolio.
• They made 30 investments in the last two years and target for 10 this year. So far they have completed less than half of that target.
• Timing, market, and team — they focus on these traits in a startup.
• In 2021, they are thinking of going back to series A and focus on deep tech.

Also Read: Travelio secures US$18 M Series B funding round led by Pavilion Capital, Gobi Partners, to serve temporary housing demand

Coping with COVID-19

• Pre-pandemic was growth mode — now it’s all about survival mode. Its all back to basics. E-commerce, logistics, gaming are doing well. The pandemic in a way disrupted the landscape.
• The market is doing the job of cutting the competitions. All the startup has to do is focus on surviving.
• This is not a good time for exits but opportune time for collaboration.
• Fundraising will be challenging to figure how to survive, even it means considering hibernating.
• The gaming industry will never go away but its hit-driven, like movies. Localising games is a bigger opportunity in SEA.
• Down rounds are usually more prevalent during market downturns, so Kay Mok advises investors that the fact the company is able to raise at a lower valuation and survive, is better than the competitor who held onto its valuation and failed as it could not raise.
• What is more important– a new concept or a big market? Kay Mok says you need both and more. A new concept for a small market will not attract VC funding; a big market with an existing concept has no defensive moat so VCs will be concerned. You need more than both because execution is key!
• Maybe VCs will become more like influencers, and founders will select the best influencers they would like on their boards. In a de-globalised world, we may see more Chinese investment coming into Southeast Asia, as well as other emerging markets, given the barriers, they will increasingly face in developed Western markets.
• US tech market is dependent on foreign talents, whereas Chinese tech hubs such as Beijing and Shenzhen utilize the best talents from all over China. If the US does not shut itself from global talent, it still has a good chance to maintain its lead over China. However, if the US shuts itself to talented immigrants, all bets are off.

Good to know

• They have a focussed fund in Pakistan but not in any other countries in Indian subcontinent.
• But they are open to Indian entrepreneurs who are serving SEA audience.
• They have a TAQWA tech fund that looks for innovation in the Muslim market which will expand to the Middle East, Africa.
• Indonesia is as good as three markets combined in SEA.
• Gobi invests in startups outside of Asia who want to enter Asia markets. For supply-side, deep tech deals they look for expansion possibility into Southeast Asia. For demand-side focused and those that require an understanding of local market conditions, it might be harder to justify.

Pro tip

• Reading martial arts novels (that Kay Mok Ku really enjoys) is a great way to learn how to do business in China.
• The best VCs are the ones that behave like The Godfather. They spend most of their time listening rather than talking and they are very decisive once they make their decisions.
• An effective coach/board member generally has to have a broad interdisciplinary experience, be a good listener, and provide well-reasoned opinions for founders, especially if they have no other co-founders. Using a Chinese military concept, a VC is more like a commander to a commander than a commander to a soldier.

Resources

• Find out Kay Mok Ku’s views on the prop tech sector: Can SEA’s proptech come back to its pre-COVID-19 glory? Experts speak
• You can view the full recording of the webinar and know his thoughts on e-payments, the tourism industry, deeptech, and Indonesia here:

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The post Why Kay Mok Ku of Gobi Partners thinks VCs will become like influencers in a post-pandemic world appeared first on e27.