UNICEF and ING Bank in the Philippines have announced a partnership to launch an initiative called ‘fintech for impact’ for early-stage startups developing digital solutions for teens, children and families.

The startups will receive equity-free investments and technical and business mentorship from UNICEF, ING and other undisclosed mentors for a year.

Also Read: How e27 Pro helps startups remain in view of APAC key investors

“We are continuously working on ways to support people in navigating financial challenges to have a positive impact on their financial well-being,” said Benoît Legrand, Chief Innovation Officer at ING.

This initiative is launched as COVID-19 has bolstered the need for more investments in the fintech sector.

“The investment supports open-source solutions that contribute to a growing body of digital public goods that can advance society,” Chris Fabian, Senior Adviser at UNICEF Innovation, said.

Also Read: Fintech company Achiko wants to help tackle COVID-19 with its new healthtech projects

ING Bank is a Dutch global financial institution with offices in over 40 countries while UNICEF provides humanitarian and developmental support to children worldwide.

The five startups:

Agrabah: A digital platform that connects farmers and fisherfolk directly to buyers and loans.

BeamAndGo: A remittance-based platform that helps migrant workers and their families to better manage their finances.

Educ4All: It connects students to educational loans.

Reach52: It provides affordable micro-insurance healthcare and health products to rural communities.

Saphron: It empowers grassroots micro-insurance agents to collect accurate, efficient data with a powerful new AI-enabled platform.

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Image Credit: Valencia Wong

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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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Carro, a Singapore-headquartered wholesale automotive marketplace, announced today it has secured SGD150 million (US$110 million) in debt financing and additional equity.

Investors joined this round include Mitsubishi Corporation and MS&AD Ventures, the venture arm of MS&AD Insurance Group Holdings.

The development comes as Carro marks its fifth anniversary with a 500 per cent year-on-year revenue growth in September as COVID-19 drives consumers towards digitalised car purchase services.

Also Read: Automotive marketplace Carro adds US$30M to Series B round; acquires Indonesia’s Jualo.com

Additionally, Carro said it is on track to reach S$1 billion (US$740 million) revenue in two years.

“Our strategic partners will help turbo-charge our growth. The funds raised showcase the trust from our financial backers as we remained EBITDA positive throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, we have recently hit record high monthly revenues and EBITDA,” claimed Carro’s CFO Ernest Chew.

Founded in 2015, Carro is a subscription-based car service, which enables consumers to select a plan and drive off with a car of their choice without the hassle of traditional car ownership.

Carro rolled out this service to cater to today’s generation of drivers, who wish to enjoy the convenience of owning a car without needing to worry about annual depreciation and unexpected expenses such as repairs, roadside assistance and insurance premiums.

The subscription service is currently available in four plans: Daily, Roomy, Fancy and Luxury. With the service, subscribers can pay a flat monthly fee that includes all costs associated with car ownership — such as insurance, road tax, warranty, 24-hour assistance, and maintenance costs. At the end of the term, customers can return the car.

Also Read: Digitalisation is driving the new normal for Southeast Asia’s automotive sector

As of September 2020, Carro has raised over S$100 million (US$74 million) in equity from SoftBank Ventures Asia, EDBI, Insignia Ventures Partners and B Capital Group. This included a US$30 million raised in August last year and a US$60 million raise in May 2018.

“Carro’s growth journey has been about using technology to bring a highly differentiated car buying experience that is seamless and transparent. COVID-19 has pushed the envelope for innovation in the auto market; the current economic slowdown means customers are looking for value-for-money cars but are also concerned about their safety. We expect more customers in the region will seek digital purchasing solutions. Hence, we will continue to leverage technology to make car ownership safer, efficient and delightful.,” said Chew added.

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Image Credit: Carro

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Indonesia-based Social Bella, which runs a string of internet properties in the beauty commerce space, including e-commerce marketplace Sociolla, has announced its first international entry into Vietnam.

The news comes shortly after company raised US$58 million in Series E funding round from Temasek, Pavilion Capital and Jungle Ventures in July.

Also Read: Indonesia’s beauty-tech startup Social Bella raises US$58M Series E from Temasek, Pavilion, Jungle Ventures

Social Bella said it will expand into the new market through its e-commerce unit Sociolla.

“Vietnam shares many similarities with Indonesia. We believe that it is the right market for our first international expansion plan,” Co-founder Christopher Madiam said.

Launched in 2015, Social Bella has evolved from being beauty e-commerce to a complete ecosystem that seeks to unlock Indonesia’s growing beauty and personal care market. The company claims that it has created several business units and is estimated to serve around 30 million users in 2020.

One of its major goals is to empower customers to use local brands. ESQA, a vegan cosmetics brand in Indonesia, is one of the local brands that joined Social Bella to expand their market to Vietnam.

“Many Indonesian beauty brands are innovative and they have excellent quality while maintaining affordable price points. The objective will not only be to open distribution access but it will also provide end-to-end supports to ensure proper launch there. To this end, we work closely with our partners to develop a holistic growth plan for Vietnam,” CEO of Social Bella, John Rasjid informed.

Also Read:  How Indonesian beauty e-commerce startup Social Bella finds a balance between commerce, content, community

According to a report by Cosmetics Design Asia, Vietnam’s beauty and personal care market remains resilient despite the pandemic. The beauty sector in Vietnam specifically saw approximately 80 per cent growth incremental beauty spend coming from online channels.

“Even during COVID-19 pandemic, we can maintain our commitment to serving our consumers in a relevant way while remaining competitive. This year, Social Bella steps out to serve customers in our neighbouring country, while supporting more beauty brands,” Rasjid said.

Last year, Social Bella completed its ecosystem as an integrated beauty-tech and end-to-end brand distributor in Indonesia by launching a flagship omnichannel store in Lippo Mall Puri.

At present, Social Bella owns six physical stores across Indonesia.

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Image Credit: Social Bella

 

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ChomCHOB, a point exchange platform in Thailand, has raised THB50 million (US$1.6 million) in funding from venture capital firm InVent in a Series A funding round, according to a press statement.

The fresh funding will be used for product enhancement, platform growth, hiring and marketing.

The company has stated that it aims to become the number one point exchange platform in Southeast Asia by 2025.

ChomCHOB is an application that collects points from credit and debit cards. Users have the option to convert all of their credit and debit card points into ChomChob reward points, which allows them to purchase different kinds of products and services.

Currently, the platform has over 500,000 merchants and claims to have about two million user downloads. Some of its top partners include global fast-food chain McDonald’s.

Also Read: ShopBack’s new feature allows users to get cashback deals at dining spots

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Persistence, a Singapore-based startup focussing on powering institutional Decentralised Finance and Open Finance (DeFi/OpFi) adoption, has secured US$3.7 million in an investment round, led by Arrington XRP Capital, a blockchain VC firm headed by TechCrunch and CrunchBase founder Michael Arrington.

The round was joined by LuneX Ventures, the crypto arm of Golden Gate Ventures, IOSG Ventures (China), Spark Digital Capital, Woodstock Fund (India), Incrypt (crypto arm of First Principles VC).

Also Read: How bright is the future of cryptocurrency?

Singapore- and Hong Kong-based Genesis Block HK, NGC Ventures, Alameda Research, South Korea-based Terraform Labs, as well as prominent blockchain industry personalities Richard Ma (Founder of Quantstamp) and Danish Chaudhry (Head of Bitcoin.com Exchange) also participated.

Started in 2019 by Tushar Aggarwal (CEO), an early member of the LuneX team, Persistence was established to expand the scope of DeFi/OpFi by providing the tools for institutional adoption. This is achieved by tokenising real-world assets (such as invoices) and putting them on the blockchain.

These assets can then be used by companies as collateral for acquiring loans and can be traded on decentralised marketplaces in their tokenised form.

“We’ve laid the technical groundwork for a new era of blockchain-powered real-world value creation and we have built a strong network of strategic partners. It is time to push ahead full-force on our mission to bring institutions and real-world assets to DeFi to help the industry to reach its full potential,” said Aggarwal.

The first use case of Persistence is Comdex, an end-to-end physical commodity trading and trade financing platform that has processed US$41 million in transaction volume.

Bills of lading and resulting invoices can be tokenised on the Comdex platform using Persistence technology. This provides multiple benefits in terms of creation of an audit trail for an industry that still uses paper-based documentation, faster cross-border settlements and easier access to trade finance opportunities for SME/ME commodity traders.

Also Read: How bright is the future of cryptocurrency?

Arrington said: “A core goal of Arrington XRP Capital is to assist blockchain innovators to create value in the real-world. The merging of blockchain and fintech is beginning to usher in a new era of open finance which is poised to transform global finance mechanisms. Persistence is shaping up to be a major building block in this financial revolution and we’re proud to be supporting their journey.”

According to Persistence, blockchain wields the ability to solve the inefficiencies in cross-border payments and business financing, which in turn opens the floodgates to allow a torrent of new capital into the crypto ecosystem, enabling DeFi to emerge from its crypto-focused cocoon and thrive.
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Photo by Pascal Bernardonon Unsplash

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There is a popular Burmese saying, “ရော့ပတ္တမြား၊ ရော့နဂါး” (literal translation: here is ruby, here is dragon), which describes the valued method of exchanging cash and goods upfront between two parties, to ensure that both are not left shortchanged.

In Myanmar, this ‘Cash is King’ mindset and preference for face-to-face transactions are deeply entrenched in people’s everyday lives. Even in e-commerce, cash-on-delivery (COD) is the preferred payment method, constituting 85 per cent of all payments. Some retailers may have gone digital, but payments remain traditional – the delivery man has simply taken on the role of the cashier.

The COVID-19 outbreak has challenged this mindset as physical contact is now seen as undesirable –and more businesses and customers are seeing the potential of digital payments.

How do we go digital?

Many players have addressed the topic of transforming Myanmar into a digital society. On a macro-level, stakeholders have emphasised the importance of technology and infrastructure, while others have urged for greater governmental support.

There are more initiatives that can be implemented, such as switching to a computerised ID verification system or credit register to easily detect and prevent fraud or promoting interoperability between banks.

Nonetheless, the time seems ripe for Myanmar to take the leap. Infrastructure is in place and expanding – Myanmar’s mobile phone connectivity is over 95 per cent and almost three-quarters of Myanmar’s working population owns a mobile phone.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also compelled the Myanmar government to show strong support for digital payments as it reduces physical contact between people.

Also Read: ThitsaWorks gets funding from BOD Tech to offer digitisation solutions to Myanmar’s banks, MFIs

What’s holding us back?

The simple answer is cultural habits. Culture takes time to evolve. On a micro-level, it’s not easy to switch from paying in cash over the counter physically at a store (offline payments), to logging on to the website or app of the store and paying via mobile wallets or cards (online payment).

This explains why hybrid models such as COD, which allow shoppers to browse online and then pay the delivery man in cash in exchange for their purchase, have remained popular amongst the Myanmar people.

Our 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.

And it shows – 40 million or 70-75 per cent of our local population still do not have a bank account. Face-to-face transactions provide that complete assurance and Myanmar people are not ready to give that up just yet.

Keep moving forward

As Martin Luther King has said, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

What we can do is not entirely remove the option of face-to-face transactions but gently nudge society towards a world of digital payments. Payment models such as COD encourage Myanmar people to go online to shop as a start.

Also Read: Why Clik believes that Cambodia is the best place to pilot a new fintech infrastructure

Change can also be encouraged by equipping the main agents of face-to-face transactions: the cashiers and the delivery men. Retail and delivery businesses can offer customers a variety of payment options such as cards, wallets and cash through partnerships with payment aggregators.

Since May, for example, a significant number of modern retail stores now accept payments from multiple wallets. Customers simply present a dynamic and limited-time QR code to the cashier during their checkout eliminating the need to use cash.

Payment aggregators bridge the gap by offering a quick digital payment solution while retaining the face-to-face medium.

Over time, as people experience technology and its benefits, making the switch to digital payments will become more natural. They will start seeing how digital payments can transform their daily lives, even without a bank account.

Our people will not have to queue half a day in front of the electricity office under the sun just to pay their electric bills when they can pay anytime and from anywhere via their mobile phones.

Of course, digital payment acceptance between merchant and customer is just one aspect of a digital ecosystem. There are other connections that can be digitalised, like the one between the merchant and its suppliers (payouts) or between customers (transfers and remittance).

At the core of it all, we need to understand the rationale behind people’s payment habits and offer a pragmatic transition to digital payments. Achieving a truly digital society involves plenty of steps and a concerted effort by every player.

Together, step by step, we are edging closer.

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The new generation of students is born digital. Consciously or not, new-age parents have been actively building their children’s digital cognitive ability by passing iPads to calm down crying babies.

This new trend of parenting had been ongoing for several years now and the pandemic wave had forced even more students onto the edutech bandwagon.

The key challenge of digital education would be to engage and gain the attention of the students. Even during Zoom education, the students can be passively looking past the Zoom screen to a Netflix film on the television screen behind them as they put themselves on mute.

While educators have to battle with the drawbacks of edutech, they are also able to benefit from the real-time marking of scripts, cost-free upload of new curriculum and data analytics on measuring learning outcomes for students.

While edutech might be optional pre-COVID-19, it is now the mandatory toolkits of educators.

The only question is whether educators would take a haphazard approach towards edutech or to take a systematic approach to plan educational outcomes for their students.

Edutech is a major body of specialisation but we can appreciate it better from the areas of technology, teaching approach and social media interaction.

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

Technology

The true and tested backbone of any edutech system would be their Learning Management System (LMS). LMS would be formally defined as software used to deliver, track and manage training and educational outcomes. Reputable LMS would include Google Classroom, Schoology, Blackboard Learn, Canvas and Moodle.

It is the centralised platform where parents, students and teacher come together to ensure that learning outcomes are delivered. There are certain LMS which are more suited to different categories of education.

For instance, Google Classrooms and Schoology are designed for K-12 or the equivalent of pre-tertiary education in Singapore.

Literacy and numeracy skills are the two main types of skills for pre-tertiary education. Numeracy skills are more challenging as negative maths experience at a tender age can affect them going as young adults.

Numeracy skills are noted as important for entrepreneurs by 3E Accounting to be able to seize opportunities faster than the competition. Google Classroom allows teachers to design interactive sessions and play-based learning to create a positive learning experience for young minds.

Also Read: How the Coronavirus is teaching edutech startups a much-needed lesson

Blackboard Learn and Canvas are preferred by tertiary education institutes. Blackboard Learn is used by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Polytechnic, Nanyang Polytechnic and PSB Academy as seen in a simple Google search above.

Canvas is being used by Singapore University of Social Science and Yale-NUS which can be seen on their websites.

Blended learning

When we talk about LMS, we are largely talking about online learning. Even though online learning has its own advantages, schools still retain physical learning as a significant part of the learning journey.

Blended learning is a methodology that combines both online and physical instructor-led training to suit the different learning needs and style of students.

As millennials enter the workforce, blended learning has become more important as it reflects the workplace environment today. Workers have to toggle between working on Zoom as they work from home and working in a physical environment. This work arrangement will be here to stay after the pandemic.

Blended learning is nimbler than traditional classroom learning with its combined online and offline approaches. Instructors can use the built-in reporting features on LMS for deeper, data-driven insights as well as transparent communication process in a face-to-face setting. The interactive environment will also make learning a fun experience.

Social media learning

Do you still remember the earlier point of the key challenge for digital education? That would be the need to induce interaction among students. Social media would be one of the key enablers of such interactions.

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

Georgetown University noted that 96 per cent of students have at least one social media account. While they use it mainly for entertainment purpose, instructors can also guide them towards more useful purposes.

Facebook would be the perfect medium to start social media-based education as both the instructors and students are familiar with it. Schools can start with a Facebook Page to broadcast alerts and updates.

Facebook is also good for video live streaming to broadcast lessons. Twitter can be used as a class message board while Instagram is good for class photo essays.

Schools can also design their own social media strategy to achieve desired outcomes for their students in a systematic manner. Given that there are an array of social media tools out there, there are numerous methods to get the work done.

New world order

Education had been turned on its head by this pandemic. While these technology trends had been gaining traction over the past decade, COVID-19 had forced it upon the mainstream including traditional educators.

They would have resisted the trend of technology successfully if not for the force of COVID as various studies had indicated.

Nonetheless, whether you are using edutech on a volunteer or forced basis, it would be wise to integrate these three basic elements into your educational plan. It would be self-sabotage to over-implement on one area to the neglect of others as the results would be sub-optimal.

If you are on the other end of the spectrum, parents or students, do check if your educators are providing a comprehensive edutech experience.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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Retailo provides a mobile app for retailers to buy items for their stores at wholesale prices from the comfort of their homes

Retailo, an online B2B marketplace based out of Pakistan, has secured US$2.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Shorooq Partners, a seed-stage VC fund based in the Middle East.

500 Durians (the Southeast Asian unit of 500 Startups) and 92-Ventures also joined the round.

Founded by Talha Ansari, Mohammad Nowkhaiz and Wahaj Ahmed, Retailo provides a mobile app for retailers to buy items for their stores at wholesale prices from the comfort of their homes. The platform provides SMEs (including retailers) with a curated list of suppliers through which they can order a variety of products.

Also Read: September update: New Notifications, New Contributor Programme, Quarterly Pro Plans and more

The company’s mission is to enable the 10 million SMEs concentrated in the MENAP region by empowering them with technology and real-time data to improve supply chains. This represents around US$500 billion of annual spending and thus a huge growth opportunity for Retailo.

“We strongly believe in creating impact in the lives of people by giving them opportunities to improve their earning potential. The MENAP region has a significant opportunity to increase its economic prosperity by unlocking the productivity delta that exists between the region and global benchmarks. MENAP is home to 700 million individuals and 10 million SMEs, and its unorganised retail sector presents the perfect opportunity to increase the efficiency of supply chain by utilising technology and real-time data,” the founders said in a joint statement.

B2B e-commerce is a proven and exciting thesis with several successful unicorns globally. The space is currently in its hyper-growth phase and several players in it have raised significant capital from reputed investors globally.

Retailo’s co-founders have a track record of working with companies such as Careem, Rocket Internet, Daraz, foodpanda and Shopistan.

Also Read: Can Foodpanda really return to Vietnam?

Talha was previously the CEO at foodpanda and has previously worked as Senior Director Operations in Careem. Nowkhaiz was Careem’s Head of Strategy for the MENAP region and spearheaded the super app strategy post-Uber acquisition in May 2019. Wahaj is an ex-McKinsey consultant who has earlier worked as GM at Careem.

Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Startups said: “While they operate one of the fastest-scaling business models in the world, their success means millions of SMEs and rural populations are more productive and have more stability and food security. Technology can impact the next billion, and we’re already seeing it here with what Retailo had been doing.”

Retailo has earlier raised funding from strategic angels in the MENA region’s top startups and leading management consulting firms.

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Image Credit: Retailo.

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