Singapore’s Carro secures US$110M in debt financing, additional equity; Investors include Mitsubishi, MS&AD Ventures; The car marketplace claims it has achieved over 500% y-o-y revenue growth in Sept and is on track to reach US$736.7M in revenue in two years. TechInAsia
Frontier Digital Ventures (FDV) raises US$67M via share placement to fund its three acquisitions; The ASX-listed firm has signed an agreement to acquire Fincaraíz (Colombia), Avito (Morocco), Tayara (Tunisia) from Adevinta; FDV is focused marketplaces with a particular focus on property and automotive verticals and general marketplaces; Since its IPO in 2016, it saw its valuation rise from ~US$36M to over ~US$360M. e27
Singapore’s GIC invests in US-based self-storage player StorageMart; The company has around 225 properties across the three countries; StorageMart, with locations in the US, the UK and Canada, is majority owned by Stanley Kroenke and the Burnam Family. DealStreetAsia
Why are VCs launching SPACs? Amish Jani of FirstMark shares his firm’s rationale; The early businesses that are going out tend to be consumer based, but there’s as good an opportunity for enterprise software companies to use the SPAC to go public; There are tens of billions of dollars in value sitting in the private markets and at the same time an opportunity to go public and build trust with public shareholders and leverage the early tailwinds of growth. TechCrunch
Pakistani B2B marketplace Retailo raises US$2.3M from 500 Durians, Shorooq, 92-Ventures; The startup provides an app for retailers to buy items for their stores at wholesale prices from the comfort of their homes; Retailo’s co-founders have earlier held top positions at Careem, Rocket Internet, Daraz, foodpanda. e27
Malaysia’s on-demand workforce and jobs platform GoGet raises US$2M led by Monk’s Hill; The startup has over 20K GoGetters and claims to have helped over 5K businesses, including MNCs and SMEs, to connect to verified flexible workers; Its customers include Lazada, IKEA, foodpanda, which use GoGetters for regular tasks, including delivery, packing, and event support. e27
Myanmar’s ThitsaWorks gets funding from BOD Tech; The fintech firm provides solutions for banks, NBFCs, MFIs to collect, manage and analyse data needed to run effective operations and to manage risks; It claims its solutions are being used by 70 clients and its services benefit over 2.5M borrowers. e27
Singapore’s logistics-tech startup Tramés raises funding from Kamet Capital; Tramés is a supply chain orchestration tech company, which aims to create a streamlined and unified workflow for shippers and their logistics partners; It offers features such as a blockchain-enabled document repository to facilitate collaborative drafting and confirmation of shipping documentation. e27
How Rocketship VC uses data to make investment decisions; The VC, which has invested in 44 firms around the world, says spotting a company before it becomes popular is hard; It’s something that Rocketship sees its data giving an advantage over and over again. e27
How edutech startups can accelerate active learning; As millennials enter the workforce, blended learning has become more important as it reflects the workplace environment today; Blended learning is nimbler than traditional classroom learning with its combined online and offline approaches. e27
How understanding culture can drive digitalisation of payments in Myanmar; The younger generation, who are growing up with technology, may have no issues adopting digital payments right off the bat; But the older generation, who have emerged from a closed-off society for over half a century and suffered through the banking crisis in 2003, naturally have their reservations digital payments. e27
What this digital shift means for people with disabilities in SEA; Laws such as Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the European Accessibility Act provide for equal access to people with disabilities; While demand for digital accessibility is increasing elsewhere in the world, things appear to be progressing slower on the SEA front. e27
Why Trivago co-founder thinks having lots of money as a startup is a challenge; Rolf Schrömgens also says Trivago earlier followed the traditional leadership model where you have one leader in a team but that didn’t work for it; It recently changed it to have more or less three leaders per team. e27
ASEAN companies urged to leverage on intra-regional e-commerce trade; They should build their e-commerce platform at a faster pace and diversify their businesses towards innovation and automation, especially in the current volatile business environment; ASEAN has an opportunity in the booming e-commerce market to fill leadership and innovation, says FedEx Express’s Kawal Preet. Malay Mail
Accelerator ShelterTech asks applicants in SEA to disrupt the affordable housing space; ShelterTech (run by NGO Habitat for Humanity) gives participating startups and scaleups access to key industry players, from corporate executives and investors to academics, government officials and innovators; The participant will receive US$10,000 in catalytic funding. Digital News Asia
Singapore SMEs digitalised, leveraged data at higher rates than global peers amid pandemic, says study; In the island nation, businesses used data-driven insights to tackle the top two challenges during the pandemic: retaining existing customers (38%) and attracting and retaining new customers (36%); The study also found that consumers in Singapore are more price-sensitive than their global peers. SGSME
Digital transformation amid a pandemic; COVID-19 has driven the adoption of different business models and new ways of service delivery; The first step of a company’s digital transformation journey should involve putting together a corporate-wide strategy that has a vision, sets goals to reach it, and gives the team a purpose. SGSME
New green finance centre in Singapore to drive Asia-focused research, develop talent; To equip professionals with skills in climate finance and applied knowledge in Asian markets, the centre will offer courses across different levels: undergraduate, postgraduate, continuing and professional education. SGSME
Thailand rolls out 5G Ecosystem Innovation Center (EIC); The centre will serve as a sandbox for the development of digital innovations for 5G apps and services across various industries in the country; EIC is designed to accelerate the 5G ecosystem and incubate local digital SMEs and startups to embrace technologies such as Cloud, AI, and IoT in the digital transformation. Open Gov
Royal Malaysian Customs Department (RMCD) adopts blockchain; By digitising shipping processes, the platform will provide RMCD with an automatic and immutable tracking tool; This will lead to a more highly secure, transparent, efficient and simpler workflow, with near real-time information sharing from a diverse network of ecosystem members. Open Gov
The path to success for challenger banks in SEA; The sweet spot for challenger banks is to target the unbanked and underserved customer segments like gig workers, MSMEs, rural households or millennials; The keys to building a sustainable challenger bank business in SEA are low costs, user-centric design, and winning the trust of these new customer segments. Tech Collective
Nearly half of Singapore bosses want to return to pre-COVID-19 working modes but many staff do not: survey; It also found that a higher-than-average proportion of Singaporean employees worry that companies won’t look out for their best interests, and would put profits and performance ahead of safety. Malay Mail
ING, Unicef unveil initiative to support fintech startups in Philippines; Five startups will receive equity-free investments, as well as technical and business mentorship from Unicef, ING, and other experts for one year; The 5 startups are Agrabah, BeamAndGo, Educ4All, Reach52, Saphron. NewsBytes
Pivoting on customer support strategies for the future of e-commerce; It’s recommended that retailers double down on chatbot investments for crisis communications, where speed and convenience are absolutely key to ensuring a positive customer sentiment; Retailers that plan to operate on significantly reduced human agent capacity for the foreseeable future, must consider a tight, omni-channel customer service solution. Internet Retailing
Why it’s time retailers finally pay attention to older customers; The stereotype of this demographic being frugal and penny pincher ranks high, but there is also a misconception that the older demographic is unwilling to embrace technology, despite the fact that over-55’s are one of the fastest growing demographics on social media. Inside Retail
What is the impact of prolonged uncertainty on HR technology?; Using products that don’t have transparent ethical decision-making processes puts your workforce at risk; The next five to 10 years of a career (in and out of HR) will be won by the people with the best video output; It’s the new “dress for success”. HRM Asia
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