Panic buying, at-home needs, livestream shopping, and e-commerce accelerated the shopping landscape in Southeast Asia (SEA) during COVID-19. Thanks to these shopping trends, Shopback –which has recently expanded to South Korea– is able to continue running its annual mega shopping festival ShopFest from September to December this year. Yes, even amidst the pandemic.

“Many consumers look forward to the year-end shopping season as that is when brands compete to run attractive sales and promotions. However, it can be overwhelming for the consumer as more and more online retailers participate each year,” says Henry Chan, Co-Founder and CEO of ShopBack.

So, ShopBack created a unified platform to seamlessly connect these brands and consumers –at the same time help consumers cut through the noise and better navigate through the various sale events and deals. This is how ShopFest was born, as the first stop for a consumer’s online shopping journey.

The four-month-long ShopFest includes key dates such as 9.9, 11.11, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday. In order to enhance their value offering for the 20 million user base, ShopBack has added new in-app features targeted at growing conservative shoppers that are seeking out more ways to maximise their savings. These new features will help consumers make better purchasing decisions and will roll out across ShopBack’s nine markets at different times over the next year.

Rolling out new features at a time when startups are hibernating or even shutting down, is almost like music to one’s ears. Amidst global uncertainty, how could ShopBack be so sure their new features will be well received by their 20 million strong user base spread across nine countries in SEA?

In an effort to dig deeper into how ShopBack measures customer value and used customer feedback metrics to shape its product development journey, e27 speaks to Candice Ong, Chief Commercial Officer, and Justin Lee, Chief Product Officer, at ShopBack.

What we will learn in this article:

1. The essential effect: Customer behaviour during a crisis
2. Consumers show the way: Utilising customer feedback in the product development process
3. But the process goes on: Preventing analysis paralysis

The essential effect

In the earlier stages of the pandemic, there was a natural rise in the sales of essentials and groceries across the region via e-commerce. This was unsurprising as consumers were required to stay at home to effectively manage the rapid spread of COVID-19, and therefore turned to online shopping to purchase their daily necessities.

But something interesting to note is that although consumers generally reined in their spending, the idea of what a ‘need’ is shifted during this period, says Ong.

“As consumers spent more time at home, we found that they became more willing to spend on home appliances, fitness equipment, and apparel, entertainment and gaming equipment, and food delivery.”

“These were once considered ‘peripheral’ luxuries but as people were forced to stay at home, they seem to have transitioned to be part of a ‘new normal’ of spending, where spending on these categories replaced expenditure on travel and outdoor entertainment,” adds Ong.

For instance, in Singapore alone, ShopBack saw a four-time surge in orders for product categories such as fitness and electronics, while the internet services category (e.g. VPN, anti-virus) increased by around 70 times from Q1-Q2.

The trend of consumers seeking greater value and becoming more conservative in their spending only aggravated during the pandemic as cash flow became a challenge for all societies. According to a recent report by Facebook and Bain & Company, there has been a shift to value-for-money purchasing across Southeast Asia as conservatism sets in. A survey found that on average, 57 per cent of respondents cited “value” among their top purchasing considerations.

Also Read: Building great customer experience when it matters the most

“When COVID-19 hit, we quickly ramped up on building and rolling out new features to further simplify the shopping experience and help our users make better purchasing decisions. One such feature was a price comparison feature, where users can compare prices of similar items across different online stores,” says Ong.

Others included ‘Voucher’ where users can enjoy attractive discounts and cashback when they purchase vouchers from a wide variety of ShopBack’s merchant partners, both online and offline. This also helped merchants lock in sales, while users find value in the cashback from these vouchers and store credits.

And then there is ‘Challenge’ where users can complete specific tasks or challenges set by ShopBack and receive bonus cashback and other attractive rewards.

Consumers show the way

Ong shares that while these innovative value-added features were released in response to the changing shopping behaviours during COVID-19, they were based on their continued data-centric approach to understanding customer behaviour.

Users are big contributors to the ideation stage of the features that Shopback builds. Be it in-person or virtual interactions the tech and product teams take note of the candid suggestions and enhancements consumers wish to see.

“Listening to your customers is a deceivingly simple idea, yet it is often forgotten. No matter how large a business grows, we need to remember that actual human beings are behind every click, impression, and sale,“ says Ong.

In a pre-COVID-19 world, they collected user feedback through focus groups and invited users down to test the product, and they continued to do so during the pandemic via more calls and virtual meetings with users.

“Getting early anecdotes from our customers has been instrumental in shaping the roadmaps of each of our product lines,” says Lee.

Whilst all of Shopback’s products are built with user feedback in mind, the tech and product teams decide the best time to launch these features. “To do this, we need to take into consideration supply-side dynamics and the competitive landscape,” he elaborates.

When the product first goes live, it often starts as a customised version of a design sprint, he adds. And once the feature starts taking shape, it goes into the development pipeline where the team turns their attention to key areas such as operations, sales, and marketing.

The development team does keep track of a development schedule and will also organise demos and internal usability testing prior to the official launch.

The product development cycle largely depends on the size and complexity of the features. For bigger features such as the new Vouchers, the teams involved going beyond just the standard two-pizza development scrum teams.

Vouchers had to be tightly integrated with other parts of their existing product so multiple development teams were combined into a ‘taskforce’ to accomplish the mission, says Lee. And hence it took the team six weeks, including lots of late nights and weekends –from ideation to shipping the feature to production, he continues.

Also Read: A multi-disciplinary approach to product development requires collaboration

Lee stresses the power of OKRs at ShopBack to guide product development and said they were a great way to merge top-down priorities with bottom-up problem statements.

“This (OKR) method has allowed us to stay aligned across all levels on what the focus areas are –be it new features or product improvements, how we define success, and when we aim for changes to take effect,” he says.

But the process goes on …

But it just doesn’t end there. Dishing out changes to your consumer base in such fragile times is full of risks. Which is why ShopBack teams process user feedback equally minutely.

One has to be careful with data. Metrics, if identified correctly, can yield great insights but if overdone, it can lead to the common ‘analysis paralysis’ problem.

So, in addition to dashboards that help track customer responses to the newly launched features, ShopBack also collected valuable insights directly from users. “COVID-19 has not deterred our efforts in this area, our product managers and designers work hard to ring up users who are early adopters of our features to solicit feedback,” says Lee.

For newly launched features, it also helps in quickly gauging user response and re-define ways if it becomes clear that the team is heading in the wrong direction. The user research teams also disseminated email surveys to gather feedback.

Ong says, “We also created ShopBack community groups in several local markets, including Singapore so that local teams can directly engage with customers and collect their feedback. User feedback is extremely important to us, as it helps us to understand their pain points and identify the problems to solve.”

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JazzyPay, a fintech startup based in the Philippines, has raised US$500,000 in a seed round from Singaporean venture capital firm Cocoon Capital.

The company said that it will use the fresh funds for product development, to build its management team and grow its network of partner merchants across the country.

Founded in 2018, JazzyPay provides payments and invoicing solutions to consumers across Southeast Asia. It already has hundreds of partner merchants which include hospitals, schools, clinics, medical suppliers across the country. Some of them are Adventist Medical Center Manila, Adventist Hospital Santiago City, Manila Adventist College and the Dr Arturo P. Pingoy Medical Center.

According to co-founders Kathleen Acosta and Joshua Marindo, traditional players in the Philippines require businesses to pay deposits of US$10,000 per payment terminal, making it difficult for businesses to access digital payments because of its large ticket size.

They also added that they had both experienced personal difficulties of having delayed medical treatment due to an insufficient amount of cash in hand. This particularly inspired them to ensure that essential services and other businesses had easy access to cashless payment options.

Also Read: Grab launches new card to encourage cashless payments in the Philippines

“In an emergency, the payment method should be the least of your worries. With JazzyPay, all Filipinos, including overseas workers, are now empowered to pay for hospital bills and tuition fees for themselves and their families. Our secure platform gives overseas family members assurance that their funds go directly to the intended recipients,” said Acosta.

JazzyPay is fully licensed by the Philippine government and is a registered Operator of Payments System (OPS) regulated by the central bank of the Philippines.

The pandemic’s outbreak has prompted people to adopt cashless payment methods as a form of payment and, in turn, contributed to the rise of a new cashless society that would reduce the risk of the virus. Businesses in the Philippines are now striving harder to digitise themselves.

“COVID-19 has shown how businesses have to adapt fast to a new world to survive and enabling contactless payments is a key step to build resilience,” said William Klippgen, Managing Partner at Cocoon Capital, who recently joined the JazzyPay board of directors said.

The investment by Cocoon also reflects investor’s long-term confidence in the new norm of a growing cashless society.

In the Philippines, recently, notable funding round in the fintech sector includes a US$21 million Series A for Tonik Financial. In a recent survey, it is revealed that the Filipino customers are “more open” to create bank accounts via their smartphone, indicating readiness for more fintech services.

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Image Credit: JazzyPay

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SEA’s farmers can now monetise livestock through blockchain

The story: Singapore-based fintech startup InfoCorp has launched Sentinel Chain, an international platform to accept the use of livestock as collateral via a consortium blockchain.

The platform allows investors from around the world to finance smallholder farmer via livestock-backed financing companies.

About the market: Southeast Asia’s poultry production is expected to reach 12.3 million metric tons (mmt) by 2028 from 9.2 mmt in 2018, up to 80 per cent of which is provided by smallholder farmers.

One of the limitations faced by smallholder farmers in collateralising their livestock includes the lack of a systematic approach to verifying their ownership of livestock. There is also no verified system to help convert the value of livestock into dollars and cents.

Also Read: Hunger for no hunger: How Agrisea grows rice in the ocean to address food scarcity

This leaves farmers helpless in the face of uncertain times such as the COVID-19 pandemic when they require bank loans but are unable to provide legally recognized collateral in return.

What does Sentinel Chain do?: It addresses this issue by creating a digital system to quantify, identify and verify livestock ownership at the local market level, enabling unbanked farmers to finally unlock the value of their livestock assets.

This, in turn, paves the way for them to receive livestock insurance and collateralizable loans. Coupled with a pool of offshore investors, access to credit becomes cheaper and faster, providing these farmers with a comprehensive suite of financial services that empower them to partake in the global economy.

EduSpaze, Kaplan join hands to support Singapore edutech startups

The story: EduSpaze, a Singapore-based edutech accelerator supported by Enterprise Singapore, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Kaplan, a large and diverse education provider, to support the edutech startup community and provide real-world learning opportunities for students in this sector in Singapore.

Also Read: Why edutech is becoming an investor favourite this season

The objectives: With this partnership, both parties seek to collaborate to provide a group of over 20 Singapore-based startups with the opportunity to learn about innovative edutech solutions that can help them with different significant aspects of their business, including on-boarding, better logistics and operations, and eventually help them scale.

The partnership will tap on Kaplan’s expertise in developing industry-ready talent to grow the local talent pool for edtech entrepreneurs and professionals. Where appropriate, Kaplan will leverage its global presence to help these Singaporean startups expand and grow overseas.

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Both developed and developing countries are experiencing a shift in consumers’ patterns. Consumers today are increasingly concerned about the content of their food, its origin, freshness, and safety.

Demand for buying locally and organically grown food is gaining momentum. While e-commerce has had an impact on every industry, but the full presence is yet to be felt in the agriculture sector.

In developed markets, online bulk orders of fresh produce are already a norm amongst businesses like restaurants and wholesale retailers. However, amongst consumers, a change in the buying behavior has been seen in the light of the current COVID pandemic, where most of the consumers began the online purchase of fresh vegetables, fruits, and meat.

There is tremendous potential for Agri e-commerce businesses, but they will need to overcome barriers around customer’s preferences and concerns around buying fresh produce online.

Transparency and trust between the buyers (consumers and businesses) and sellers (farmers) will go a long way to mitigate concerns of customers and motivate them to shift to online purchases with Agribusinesses.

For the startups who are planning to venture into the Agri e-commerce space, managing the food value chain to build customer’s confidence around the quality of produce, food safety, and best value is essential for customer engagement.

Pre-orders through customer aggregation and demand forecasting

Balancing demand and supply is of utmost importance to avoid wastage in the food value chain. Pre- accumulation of orders from large buyers like wholesale retailers and restaurants and small buyers like individual customers, is a way to efficiently plan the demand-supply situation based on the future stock volume requirement.

Crofarm is one such Indian Agri e-commerce venture, that gets an aggregate demand from the buyers ahead in time and notifies the farmers about the harvest requirement based on the secured demand. Since the order volume is pre-planned, therefore the delivery from farm to consumers/buyers only takes 12 hours.

Pre-orders can be incentivised amongst the buyers by group buy promotions. This is one such practice followed Dropee (Malaysia), that enables higher savings, especially for business and retailers.

Also read: How Crowde aims to empower smallholder farmers in Indonesia

Additionally, in case of extra produce, the regular customers can be notified 2-3 days in advance about the availability. This way, all the products can be transferred together during the pre-planned dispatched cycles saving any additional operational cost.

Once pre-accumulation of orders is efficiently embedded in the supply chain, Agri e-commerce start-ups can then use data analytics to forecast demand for future consumption requirements to increase sales. Freshket (Thailand) is one such Agribusiness firm that uses demand forecasting for the same purpose.

Decimating uncertainty about product quality

One of the challenges faced by e-commerce businesses is to mitigate concerns about the quality of the product. Such concerns are more pronounced amongst Agri e-commerce customers, who need assurance about the nutritional value of the food.

A strategy for addressing this concern is to incentivise farmers to share their crop production journey with customers. The farmers who provide proof and detail of the seed quality, crop nutrition, farming technique, etc. can be honored with high-quality premium badges from the Agribusinesses.

While at one hand, this will assure customers about the quality of the food, but on the other hand, it will also justify the premium price paid for the product as per the nutritional value. GoFarmz- Know your farmer (India), provide detailed information about the farmer who is cultivating a particular product, to ensure customers about the quality of the organically grown food.

Another strategy to build trust amongst customers is to enable them to provide feedback about the quality of delivery from a respective farmer. This will serve as a motivator for farmers to increase sales through quality products and packaging.

Enabling food traceability

Food traceability is another way of building a consumer’s/business’s confidence in Agri e-commerce start-ups. With the food traceability feature in the e-commerce platform, consumers can track the live status of their product at any stage of the supply chain.

Food traceability is also important to ensure food safety and operational efficiency. Therefore, an Agri e-commerce startup that invests in minimizing food safety problems is seen as trustworthy by the consumers. Ninjacart (India) will soon be launching end to end food footprint traceability for fruits and vegetables, which will provide details about the farmer; a warehouse that handled the produce; trucks that carried the item, etc.

Servicing customers via various communication channels

Customer convenience should be the center of customer engagement strategies.  Apart from regular communication channels such as email, hotline number, Facebook messenger, small businesses should provide continuous support and quick revert through Whatsapp.

Also read: Thailand’s Freshket raises fresh funding to connect food suppliers with restaurants

The Agri e-commerce platform should connect the buyer with the seller (farmer) to build a trustworthy and long-lasting relationship between them. Trust is important to both farmers and consumers on an Agri e-commerce platform, and higher transparency translates to long-term business and consumer satisfaction. E-commerce platform such as Lazada connects buyers with sellers and enable them to seek information regarding a product.

Assuring quality products through stringent quality checks

A higher rate of a product return from customers can harm the reputation of an Agri e-commerce startup. It also accounts for a higher cost of delivering a replacement or a refund. Quality control at a purpose-built facility enables the to grade produce and discard any defects.

Alternatively, Agri e-commerce businesses can employ a third-party verification team to save the operational cost of physical control checks. Lima Links (Zambia) outsources quality control to farm leaders and farmers.

However, this approach has a problem that the less-skilled farmers might be inclined to ship even a low-quality product, which can potentially harm the reputation of the Agri e-commerce business.

Managing the customer side of the food value chain involves providing improved nutrition and quality product. An Agri e-commerce start-up will have to be sensitive to the growing customer’s need for good quality food that is affordable and acceptable.

Apart from the above-mentioned steps, an Agri e-commerce start-up should aim to build a strong farmer community that is well equipped to meet the nutrition demand of the customers.

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This article is published as a part of a partnership with Future Food Asia. Crowde is one of the 11 finalists of the US$ 100,000 Future Food Asia (FFA) 2020 Award to be hosted from September 21-25.

In Indonesia, roughly a third of the land is used for agricultural purposes and the sector contributes significantly to the country’s economy. Independent smallholders dominate Indonesia’s agricultural commodities production, managing 85 per cent of Indonesia’s rubber plantations, 90 per cent of its coffee plantations, and 95 per cent of its cocoa plantations.

For oil palm, Indonesia’s most valuable agricultural export, the proportion of plantations managed by independent smallholders is smaller – about 30 per cent – but still significant. Hence, the vast majority of companies operating in Indonesia’s agricultural supply chains are either directly or indirectly impacted by the activities of independent smallholders.

Approximately 40 per cent of Indonesia’s population is dependent on the agriculture sector, though it contributes only around 13 per cent to the GDP.

Agriculture, like any other business, requires financing to grow. Accessing finance for these farmers is a major hurdle, only two out of 10 smallholder farmers are eligible for bank loans. While the vast majority remain unbaked lacking credit profiles, they tend to fall prey to loan sharks charging prohibitive interest rates.

This is where Crowde steps in. An agri-focused fintech company, Crowde dreams to revolutionise the agriculture industry by giving access to capital and technology innovation; making it possible for micro and small agripreneurs to grow businesses on their own feet.

Farmers for Farmers

Co-founder Yohanes had his first tryst with the painful realities of the Indonesian agriculture sector while carrying out a community development project during his time at university. He realised there was an opportunity to conduct business differently in the sector and began a farm himself.

Mingling with other farmers he learned that a critical issue that plagued the sector’s productivity stemmed from the access to financing as well as the lack of price transparency due to lack of access to a market. He, along with Co-founder Risyad, started Crowde with a mission to leverage technology to solve these issues of access.

They started their journey with high ambition – trying to target farmers across the island nation of Indonesia. The founders were quick to fall and even faster to get up. They adjusted their strategy to be more focused on two regions, go through multiple crop cycles, and showcase how their platform is adding value.

Also Read: Top-funded agritech startups in Indonesia

Today Crowde is ready to grow beyond Java and Sumatra and as a Future Food Asia 2020 finalist they will benefit from the launchpad it offers to startups.

Solving the problem of access

When a smallholder farmer needs to grow their business, most of them are aware that financing hinders their growth. But after years of working with farmers and helping them scale, Crowde realised that farmers need a lot more. Access to (new) markets, agronomic information about past plantations, projecting and planning for risks, and understanding the supply and demand data.  Their platform offers a full suite of assistance services to increase the odds of success of the farmers on its platform.

After understanding the value of the platform farmers are onboarded to Crowde, where they learn how to budget their farming activities and plan their growing cycle with lower project risk. The platform then helps farmers get a loan from lending companies and to avoid any potential misuse of the funds, rather than giving the money directly to the farmer, he is provided with inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides of the same value based on the growth plan that was decided.

Throughout the growing cycle, farmers can leverage the Crowde platform for information and advice. At the time of harvest, Crowde helps the farmer find a buyer for its products at the right price.

This supply and demand information becomes critical in improving growing decisions for the subsequent growing cycle. This is how Crowde creates a closed-loop platform that is helping Indonesian farmers access a brighter future.

Input, output, and everything in the middle

Lower productivity and dropping quality have been characteristics of Indonesian farm output. Using better quality inputs which are more expensive and hence deem the need for financing can have a direct impact on the final produce farmers take to the market.

In addition to that, providing farmers with well-timed agronomy advice during growing cycles and a more robust supply chain can help improve the chances of these farmers to succeed.

Also Read: These are the 5 game-changers in Indonesia’s agritech sector

Today 61 per cent of Indonesian farmers are above the age of 45 and by 2050 with the expected boom in population Indonesia, the country may lack a young enough talent pool to feed this growth. Moreover, the Agri supply chain, technology, and farmer education also need to rapidly change.

While Crowde has been on this mission for three years now and manages to increase a farmer’s income from 15 to 50 per cent in each growing cycle. But it is not enough. The Jakarta-based startup calls to the agri ecosystem as a whole to continuously assist in this revamp of the country’s most important sector.

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Generally, decent entrepreneurs can succinctly explain what their product does. In fact, good entrepreneurs can describe their market and their customer. For the most part, funded entrepreneurs can pitch their company in terms that an investor can relate to. Hence getting your story straight with a pitch deck flow.

For most entrepreneurs, it’s neither easy nor intuitive to put the investor version of the story together. Thus it is easy to talk product, customer, and maybe market. But when you are talking to investors, your company is your product, and you need to pitch in a way the investor can grab onto.

As can be seen, fortunately, there is an easy formula that works nearly universally. The key to this formula is that it covers all the required subjects, but strings them together into a coherent and engaging narrative flow. (See also why you should sweat your executive summary.)

You need to cover all the building blocks, but the key is in the arrangement of those blocks. Thus here is a picture of the framework, followed by a walkthrough of the pieces:

The astute may have noticed team is not first. Many investors say the team is the most important thing, and I agree, so some people recommend that you start with the team. They are wrong! Hence we are trying to craft a narrative here–hook them with the story of the customer and the problem. Team is important, but as you can see from above it just comes later in the flow.

Also Read: Pitch deck fundamentals: What you need to include to build an effective one

Problem and customer

Every time I sit down with an entrepreneur for the first time, I always start the conversation the exact same way. Before we’ve even settled in, I’m already asking “Who’s the customer and what’s their problem?”. If you are telling a story, this is the logical place to begin. As an entrepreneur, if you cannot describe who your customer is and what problem you are solving for them, you’ve got work to do.

Market

The next thing to do is to talk about how these customers make a market. What its size is, whether it is growing, if it is fragmented, is it ripe for disruption, who the other players are, etc. In short, what makes it interesting.

Solution

Here you want to talk about the solution. Focus on the pain relief, rather than the product. These are the attributes of the product that solve the problem. Highlight benefits, not features. Explain what the perfect solution looks like, not all the details about what you have built.

Product

Here is where you say, “Yeah, I’ve built a solution with those required attributes, and I’ve solved it in a cost-effective way.” Given enough resources, anyone could solve virtually any problem. Emphasise how your solution is both practical and economically viable.

Plan

This is the story of how you are going to get your solution to the customer. Your business model, your go-to-market strategy. What are you actually going to be doing and selling, and what the key challenges are going to be along the way.

Go-to-market

Here is where you get more specific about your actual sales strategy. Are you selling with a direct sales force, over the web, through partners, through distributors? Where are these customers and how can you locate them, talk to them, and bring them on board cost-effectively? What is the customer acquisition cost going to be relative to the lifetime value? (Hint: LTV better be higher than CAC, or you’re in trouble.)

Also Read: How to create a great investor pitch deck

Your awesomeness

Now that your listener has a handle on what you are doing, it’s time to tell them why you have the stuff to pull it off. Yeah, you are super-smart and have the right education, skills and experience, but you also gel as a team. Keep in mind that a high-functioning team is very different from a group of high-functioning individuals. Investors are looking for 1+1=3.

Company development

Here is where you talk about where you are, where you have been, what you need to do next, what resources it is going to take, and how long it’s going to take. You are going to talk about a plan that makes sense, is realistic in terms of both time and resources and is sequenced logically.

Financial model

Now that your potential investors understand what you are going to do, let’s talk about the resulting financials. What is the revenue model? What kinds of gross and net margins will this company generate? How fast can it grow? How much capital will be needed down the road?

Exit options

Looking forward, let’s assume your business starts to grow. Take time to consider who the potential buyers might be. Who cares about what you have built? Are there different kinds of potential buyers? What will they value the company for? What kinds of prices are they likely to pay? How much traction/revenue/growth is required before the company will be of interest to them?

Call to Action

A great call to action needs to express that you know you need help and your desire to get them involved. Start the dialogue by providing the details of your current fund-raising.

This formula allows you to take an enormous amount of detail and weave it into a narrative that hooks the listener immediately with a human interest story about a customer and their problem and starts an interesting discussion about solving it. The result has flow. Flow is key to telling a good story and is key to organising your company’s information into a cohesive investment hypothesis. Of course, this is not the only way to do it, but it’s a tried and true template that works well and has had proven success.

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The article was first published on nfinitiv.

Image Credit: Marcos Luiz Photograph on Unsplash

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Singapore-based SME digital financing platform Funding Societies (known as ‘Modalku’ in Indonesia) has announced the appointments of Frank Stevenaar as its first Chief Financial Officer and Nihit Nirmal as the new Chief Product Officer.

Along with this, the fintech firm has promoted Ishan Agrawal, Vice President (Engineering), as Chief Technology Officer.

Also Read: Funding Societies raises US$40M

These appointment come at a juncture where the startup gears up for larger funding rounds and a sustained growth trajectory.

These key changes will help the fintech firm lay the foundation for outsized recovery once the macroeconomic situation improves post-COVID-19, it said in a press statement.

“As we steer through COVID-19 with good relative success and are recovering to near pre-COVID results, we are cautiously optimistic about 2020, excited for 2021, and planning ahead with concerted leadership from Frank, Ishan, and Nihit,” Kelvin Teo, Co-founder and Group CEO, said.

Stevenaar has 20 years of experience in financial services. He is responsible for overlooking the firm’s finance operations, accelerating its fundraising efforts, and strengthening its shareholder engagement.

Also Read: GoBear grabs US$17M in funding to accelerate its financial services across Asia

Prior to this, Stevenaar co-founded financial services company GoBear in 2015 in Singapore and Thailand, where he developed its finance team and expanded the company across Southeast Asia.

Nirmal is responsible for product management, product design, and driving the company’s digital growth. He comes with 15 years of experience in technology with his last assignment at LendingKart, a digital lending platform in India, where he was Senior VP and Head of Product Management and Growth.

Agrawal oversees Engineering, QA, DevOps, information security and the firm’s IT teams, driving the business through building secure and scalable technology.

Funding Societies provides business financing to SMEs in Southeast Asia, which is crowdfunded by individual and institutional investors.

After five years of lending across Southeast Asia, Funding Societies has disbursed over S$1.6 billion (US$1.2 billion) in financing across more than 2.8 million loans across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

In April, Funding Societies raised US$40 million in Series C funding round from existing and new investors. Its investors include Sequoia India and Softbank Ventures Asia.

Also Read: What are Digital Full Bank and Digital Wholesale Bank licences?

Funding Societies was recently shortlisted for the MAS digital wholesale banking license under a consortium with AMTD, SP Group, and Xiaomi.

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Image Credit: Funding Societies

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(An earlier version of this article — written based on the details taken from an official press release — mentioned the funding amount as US$69M. After publishing, Waresix contacted e27 to update the piece to reflect the actual amount.)

Indonesian logistics-tech startup Waresix said today it has concluded its US$100 million Series B fundraise from existing investors EV Growth and Jungle Ventures, and new investors, including SoftBank Ventures Asia, EMTEK Group, Pavilion Capital and Redbadge Pacific.

This round comes just six months after the startup secured US$25.5 million in Series A round.

Also Read: Indonesian logistics tech startup Waresix seals US$14.5M Series A led by EV Growth

“The capital will be invested in developing the most robust logistics technology infrastructure in Southeast Asia, and further building out our world-class team which will help us in transforming a US$40-billion industry,” said CEO Andree Susanto said.

Founded by Susanto and Wibowo, both alumni of the University of California Berkeley, Waresix connects shippers and business with available warehouses and trucks across Indonesia. The firm aims to improve supply chain efficiency by improving utilisation and removing intermediaries.

It provides multi-modal services including land and marine transportation, general cargo handling, and cold storage to cater inter-island freight movement across Indonesia.

Waresix claims it serves more than 250 marquee corporate clients, such as Unilever, Indofood, Siam Cement Group, Wings, and JD.ID. Its logistics ecosystem spans over 40,000 trucks and 375 warehouses in more than 100 cities and towns across the archipelago.

Also Read: 5 reasons to be bullish on logistics tech in Asia

The company has also integrated its services with key logistics facilities such as the Indonesia National Port, which has allowed Waresix to expand its reach beyond Java and Sumatra which is now across all of the nation’s main islands.

As per an SCMP report, Southeast Asia’s third-party logistics market accounted for US$36.4 billion in 2017 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.5 per cent through 2025. This makes it a soon-to-be US$55.7 billion industry, according to Research and Markets.

The archipelagic makeup of Indonesia has resulted in one of the highest logistics costs in Asia, accounting for nearly a quarter of the country’s US$1 trillion gross domestic product (GDP).

Also Read: Logistics startup Moovaz raises US$7M Series A funding round led by Quest Ventures

In its 2018 Logistics Performance Index, the World Bank found that while Indonesia’s logistics sector has improved in recent years, the country’s logistics cost-to-GDP ratio of 24 per cent still lags behind that of regional peers Thailand and Malaysia. This makes logistics in Indonesia a US$240 billion opportunity.

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Image Credit: Waresix

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Malaysia’s Carsome appoints Benjamin Koellmann as COO

His role: Koellmann will be responsible for driving operational efficiency of the car-trading platform across all the markets, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore.

Before this, Koellmann was part of the early team in Lazada Indonesia and has also been involved in setting up Indonesian grocery delivery platform, HappyFresh.

Most recently he was the Director of E-commerce (Food) at Dairy Farm International in Singapore.

Also Read: Used-car trading startup Carsome appoints new CFO Juliet Zhu, looking to strengthen market position

“With his extensive management experience on e-commerce platforms and being a startup founder himself, we are confident that he will be a strong contributor as Carsome strives towards building trust and assurance throughout the entire supply chain of the used car industry,” Co-founder Eric Cheng said.

F10 Singapore expands into Spain

The story: The expansion will connect the Singapore accelerator programme and its partners — such as Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX), Bank Julius Baer and R3 — with fresh ways to collaborate with innovators across Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, and Valencia.

What is F10 Singapore?: F10 Singapore is the Asia launchpad for F10 Global, Europe’s leading accelerator for fintech, regtech, insurtech and deeptech. The F10 network gives entrepreneurs and startups strategic opportunities to connect with corporate partners which include SIX and the Spanish Stock Exchange (BME).

F10 Singapore first launched in January 2020 to create new opportunities for its Asia-based partners to collaborate with European banks, insurers, and tech experts. The first round of F10 Singapore’s incubation programme received more than 200 applications and strong interest from startups with a focus on solutions for digital assets, enterprise data management, payments and more.

F10 Singapore helps to solve the top problem fintech entrepreneurs face: selling their solution to established banks and insurance companies. F10’s programme goes beyond corporate exposure and facilitates targeted collaboration platforms for its startups and corporate partners.

Each startup benefits from a dedicated F10 Coach to support them in their effort to build successful partnerships with incumbents.

Hasura raises US$25M to help developers build app easily

Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners (lead), Vertex Ventures US, Nexus Venture Partners, Strive VC, SAP.iO Fund

What the funds will be used for: Hiring and commercial product development.

About the company: Hasura is helping to build the modern world of globally relevant, data-driven applications and APIs. Its range of data access solutions helps organisations accelerate product delivery by instantly connecting data and services to applications with GraphQL APIs.

Inflexor Ventures hits first close of its US$230M fund

Plans with the money: To back early-stage startups in the pre-Series A to Series A stage.

Details: The fund which will be capped at US$500 million is also said to be India’s largest domestic, technology-focused investor for 2020, according to The Economic Times.

Focus sectors: B2B/enterprise, AR/VR, Big Data, robotics, cybersecurity, blockchain, IoT, deep-tech, intellectual property and tech innovation.

“We are seeing an increased focus on digitisation and technology innovation globally and it’s going to accelerate further, particularly in India in the current environment,” said Jatin Desai, Managing Partner of Inflexor.

Also Read:  Indian Angel Network launches US$55M VC fund; makes first close at US$27M

“We want to identify the right technology startups at an early stage and help them scale up in India and sell to global markets and in the process hopefully make some decent returns for our investors,” he added.

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Image Credit: Carsome

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Philippine-based Edukasyon.ph has announced the closing of the second tranche of its Series A round from investors such as Alternate Ventures, French Partners, Lorinet Foundation, KSR Ventures, Mustard Seed.

The deal size has not been disclosed.

The edutech startup will use the capital to build new features, deepen its student engagement, and offer more educational counselling.

Founder and CEO Henry Motte-Muñoz said: “In the past five years, we’ve grown Edukasyon.ph from a search-and-apply website to a holistic platform that guides students through day-to-day choices on education, career and lifestyle.”

Launched in 2015, Edukasyon.ph is a marketplace for students to search, compare and apply to higher education institutions and online courses. It positions itself as a platform to engage with corporations, foundations and non-profit organisations.

The edutech firm’s first tranche of Series A came in Q4 2019. Since then, it fully rebranded the platform and brought 700 listed school partners in the Philippines and abroad and achieved 500,000 registered student users.

Also Read: Philippines edtech startup Edukasyon acquires online directory

Grace David, Chief Marketing & Partnerships Officer of Edukasyon, said: “In addition to our startup’s growth, COVID-19 has enabled us to help accelerate the digital transformation of our education ecosystem. Since the start of community quarantine, we’ve fielded 100,000 student inquiries — 20x more than our average pre-pandemic, ensuring access to information, tools, and other learning opportunities that help secure the future of our Gen Z youth.”

In 2018, Edukasyon.ph acquired FindUniversty, an online directory platform.

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Photo by Wes Hicks on Unsplash

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