Day: September 29, 2020

Early to late-stage venture capital firm Gobi Partners has appointed former Digital Ventures MD Paul Ark as advisor, according to his recent public statement on Facebook.

Explaining his reason behind the move, Ark said that a large part of his decision comes down to his “longstanding friendship with Shannon Kalayanamitr”, who recruited him into the fund.

“Shannon and I have always had a shared interest in merging social and ecological progress with business and innovation,” he said.

“While I am taking on a rather simple and unassuming title of advisor, it belies just how truly grand, ambitious, and visionary the scope of the work that Gobi and Shannon have in mind, and the role I now have the privilege to play in trying to turn those visions into a tangible and impactful reality. Getting to collaborate with Shannon is nothing new, but sharing a platform in which we get to act on our wild-eyed optimism while leveraging amazing talent and resources is terribly exciting,” he added.

Also Read: Why Kay Mok Ku of Gobi Partners thinks VCs will become like influencers in a post-pandemic world

He also noted that he is not at full liberty to go into the specifics about his scope of work.

Ark left Digital Ventures at the end of January 2020, after being in the company for four years. He cited his idea of taking a “sabbatical” before moving on to the next phase of his life.

During his time in Digital Ventures, the company made direct investments in several VC firms and companies such as Ripple, Golden Gate Ventures Fund II, SBI AI & Blockchain Fund, DemystData, Pagaya, AsiaCollect and many more.

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Image Credit: Paul Ark

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Singapore’s leading online cashback platform ShopBack and budget hotels aggregator RedDoors today said in separate statements that confidential consumer data was not compromised, even as the reports of data breach emerged early this week.

Singapore’s privacy watchdog, the Personal Data Protection Commission, have already launched an investigation into the incidents.

In an emailed statement, a RedDoorz spokesperson said: “Earlier this week, we became aware that one of our IT databases suffered a breach. For now, no sensitive data pertaining to financial information such as customer credit cards or passwords was compromised to the best of our knowledge.”

Also Read: The third world war may already be happening online. Here’s why you need better cybersecurity

“We are taking all the necessary steps to investigate this further and at the same time we are conducting a thorough review of all our IT systems and protection. Data privacy is something we take very seriously at RedDoorz and we have implemented the necessary security measures to ensure all our customers’ personal data remains secured,” the spokesperson added.

Separately, ShopBack admitted that it is currently confirming what data has been compromised. However, it has no reason to believe that any of its consumers’ personal data has been misused, even though the possibility still exists.

The company has already removed the unauthorised access and engaged cyber security specialists to assess the extent of the incident. Besides, it has tightened the monitoring of internal logs to ensure heightened detection of unauthorised access, if any were to occur.

“Apart from your email addresses (or alternative login IDs) and limited transactional information, ShopBack does not require you to provide information to us that is not related to our specific services or campaigns,” the company added.

Also Read: Cybersecurity threats on the rise as companies shift to the WFH model

The types of data that consumers may have provided include their name, contact information, gender, date of birth, and bank account numbers for those who cash out to their bank accounts.

ShopBack cautioned consumers who have provided their bank account numbers to be wary of potential phishing attacks.

Cyber incidents – including data breaches – rank as the most serious business risk globally, according to the Allianz Risk Barometer 2020. They are becoming more damaging, increasingly targeting large companies with sophisticated attacks and hefty extortion demands.

Southeast Asia has seen a rise in data breach incidents in the recent past.

In May, Indonesian unicorn Tokopedia reported that more than 15 million of its user accounts were compromised.

In June, e27 was hacked by a hacking group identifying themselves as “Korean Hackers” and “Team Johnwick” that asked for a “donation” to provide information on the vulnerabilities they have exploited in the attack.

In December last year, personal data pertaining to 2,400 Ministry of Defence (Mindef) and Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) personnel was put at risk and could have been leaked.

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Image Credit: ShopBack

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iMedia, a Malaysia-based integrated digital media group currently owned by Rev Media, has acquired a controlling stake in Goody Technologies, which runs the internet properties Goody25 and GoodyMY.

As part of the deal, all technology assets from the company will be fully merged into iMedia’s ecosystem.

Upon approval by regulators and shareholders, the Goody25 acquisition will be part of iMedia’s move to Bursa Malaysia.

Also Read: Malaysian media group REV Asia Group acquires Viralcham and Rojaklah

Early this month, iMedia was acquired by Rev Asia for US$9.6 million and is currently listed on Bursa Malaysia.

At present, iMedia is the exclusive sales representation partner for all brands under Goody.

Launched in 2015, Goody25 is a Chinese language social news media and content portal that primarily focuses on the latest news and trendiest stories on lifestyle, fashion, art, entertainment, travel, and food.

According to Google Analytics, Goody25 recorded an average of 10.8 million page views and 2.65 million users per month in 2020 (based on its January- August data).

GoodyMY, an English language social news portal, was launched in 2019 and is expected to record a visitor count of over 500,000 by the end of 2020.

Aaron Lim, Managing Director of Goody Technologies, said: “A lot of hard work have been put on building the Goody25 brand. We have grown fast independently in the past five years and are now looking forward to expand the company further with iMedia.

Also Read: Media Prima Digital set to buy Catcha Group’s REV Asia for US$24M

Voon Tze Khay, CEO and Co-founder of iMedia, said: “Over the last few months since representing Goody25 and GoodyMY as part of our sales network, we have shown our strength and expertise in providing integrated digital solutions and influencer marketing campaigns in generating greater revenue for the group. We will continue to expand on our revenue streams by working closer and merging the key opinion leaders (KOLs) under the Goody brands to be part of our larger influencer network.

iMedia owns and provides digital advertising and marketing, customised content production and solutions for popular local language sites and social influencer platforms.

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Goody Technologies

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Singapore-based startup Accredify has partnered with SG Innovate to launch a digital health passport that will help to accelerate the re-opening of travel borders. The app will be officially launched in October 2020.

The passport will allow individuals to store their medical information –including COVID-19 testing and vaccination reports digitally signed by accredited bodies– in the app. By using blockchain technology, medical records in the app can be traced back to the source.

“The health passport will be valid for Singaporeans and people from other countries as well. We will be making the application interoperable with different standards and bring on board all the accredited labs around the region,” said a spokesperson from the company.

Accredify will also be waiving set-up fees for the Digital Health Passport until the end of the year for healthcare institutions that sign up by December 31.

For users, they will need to log in via their SingPass or email and create an account on the Accredify app.

Users will receive their unique badges when they obtain the necessary COVID-19 documents required by the country where they want to travel to. Authorities can scan the document’s QR code in the app, to verify the authenticity.

Also Read: Traveloka confirms US$250M fundraise, admits historic drop in biz activity due to COVID-19

 

 

Digital health passports will play a big role as international travel begin to slowly reopen as governments start lifting their border restrictions to accelerate the economy. Taking this into consideration a health passport for travel post-COVID-19 will become extremely crucial.

In an official statement, Singapore also said that it will be reopening its borders for international tourists from select countries from September 1. Other countries such as Hong Kong are also slowly beginning to lift off border restrictions.

Accredify is an edutech management company that resolves the issue of fraudulent certifications and transcripts across educational institutions.

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Image Credit: Accredify

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Facebook has announced the completion of its second accelerator programme in Singapore.

The programme is being run in partnership with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and is powered by Plug and Play.

The event saw 14 startups participating for partnerships and investment opportunities.

Also Read: Facebook partners with e27 to help empower community leaders in APACm.

Before the pitch day, all companies underwent a rigorous six-month training programme, which provided them with mentorships and networking opportunities to accelerate their business.

For this edition, startups were required to demonstrate the use of Facebook tools and trends, such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Messenger, and social commerce.

They were also intended to adopt trusted data and AI practices, such as IMDA’s trusted data-sharing framework and/or model AI governance framework.

All startups that pitched in the event will join Facebook’s startup “alumni programme” that will continue to connect them to a global network of startups.

“Supporting the startup community has never been more important as we all face the impact of COVID-19 and the disruption to our regular in-person programs. This cohort has demonstrated incredible resiliency as they worked to not only keep their startups going but take the opportunity to assess and realign their business priorities for the better,” said Virginia Yang, Director, Platform Partnerships and Programs APAC.

Below is the brief of the 14 startups:

Lucep (Singapore)

A sales and marketing tool that connects leads from FB ads directly with their sales agents.

Outside Voice (Singapore)

Helps enterprises conduct interviews with customers at scale via video chatbots.

Privyr (Singapore)

A mobile CRM  for sales professionals who run their businesses from their phone.

Trabble (Singapore)

A SaaS platform that helps businesses in the travel and hospitality industry automate guest engagement on their channels.

Also Read:  Facebook partners IMDA to launch Facebook Accelerator Singapore, welcoming applications for second edition

UIB  (Singapore)

A virtual assistant that facilitates frictionless on-boarding and seamless communications between people and devices.

Aris (Thailand)

A Facebook live tool that helps businesses to create a home-shopping experience on Facebook Pages.

Assemblr (Indonesia)

A platform to create, discover, share augmented reality experiences.

AVANA (Malaysia)

A social commerce enabler that helps businesses convert social media from promotional to transactional and automate business processes.

Ecomobi (Vietnam)

A social selling platform that enables brands to sell products directly to end-users via a social seller community and AI chatbot technology.

Halosis (Indonesia)

A social commerce platform that integrates AI chatbot and personalised solutions to help social media sellers convert chat into sales.

Infofed (Thailand)

An online platform to operate online e-sports management. It manages interactive contents created by tournament participants.

Qiscus (Indonesia)

A conversational platform that helps businesses deliver excellent customer experience.

Social Light (Philippines)

It places WiFi in low-income communities and monetises by collecting plastics and exchanging free WiFi subsidised by brands thereby giving them sales, consumption, competition data and CSR.

Also Read: Are you a community leader? Facebook wants you.

TravelFlan (Hong Kong)

A B2C digital solution provider that uses AI, Big Data and Machine Learning to provide end-to-end digital solutions.

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Image Credit: Unsplash

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