Vietnam’s funding landscape flourishes in H2 2020; Despite the limited number of new investors entering Vietnam’s market in H1, H2 is witnessing a pickup in fundraising activities, keeping Vietnam ahead of Singapore; According to Do Ventures, 55% of investors preferred Vietnam as an investment destination for the next 12 months, followed by Indonesia (42%) and Singapore (14.6%). Tech Collective

Grab, BRI Ventures, Mandiri Capital join LinkAja’s US$100M Series B round; The strategic investment from Grab allows both parties to collaborate on areas of market access and technology and accelerate financial inclusion in Indonesia; LinkAja claims it currently has 58M+ users, of which 80% come from tier 2 and 3 cities. e27

Singapore’s Ascent Capital raises US$88M for debut Myanmar-focused fund; LPs include Temasek, ADB, JG Summit Holdings; The fund targets investment opportunities of at least US$5M in companies across consumer, education, healthcare, financial services, logistics, TMT. TechInAsia

Online travel is expected to bounce back to US$60B by 2025, says e-Conomy SEA Report; Funding for unicorns in mature sectors (e-commerce, transport & food, travel and media, etc.) decreased from US$5.1B in H1 2019 to US$3B in H1 2020; Platforms are now refocusing on their core business and established strengths in order to prioritise a path to profitability. e27

99 Group acquires SRX to expand market share in Singapore; SRX is a property platform and real-estate data provider that utilises AI to provide an instant and accurate estimate of a property’s value; Previously, 99.co has acquired Indonesia-based property tech startup UrbanIndo. e27

Singapore e-motorbike maker Scorpio Electric bags US$6.3M funding; It will invest in the completion of its HQs and its 3,600-sqm assembly plant, which is expected to produce up to 8K motorcycles annually; SEA has 200M+ motorcycles and 15M annual transactions; Scorpio is owned by SGX-listed luxury automobile distributor EuroSports Global. e27

Chinese language learning platform LingoAce raised US$6M Series A+; Investors include Sequoia India (lead) and Shunwei; The edutech plans to expand into Thailand and Indonesia; To date, it has delivered lessons to more than 100K students across 80 countries, and has 2K+ certified teachers. e27

Singapore’s B2B sales productivity startup Nektar.ai raises US$2.15M; Investors include Nexus Venture (lead) and Insignia; With over 40K B2B sales teams globally and over 15M sales professionals, the B2B sales market is valued at US$8B+; Nektar addresses this opportunity by connecting unstructured data from emails, calendars and Zoom to CRM systems. e27

How 73-year-old Thai Wah works with tech startups to break new ground in noodles production; Over the past four years, Thai Wah has collaborated with multiple partners within agtech, foodtech and supply chain spaces; It claims it produces 300K+ tonnes of tapioca and rice starch and glucose and noodles a year and has the largest market share in Thailand and in SEA. e27

The future VC will be a hybrid between accelerator and incubator. Here’s why; With the combined power of the capital, network and talented investment partners, accelerator-equivalent resources and the possible creation of shared services to be leveraged on, VCs will be positioned strongly to either give birth or find the home run they have been chasing relentlessly. e27

Report: Communications roadmap is key to successful startup fundraising in times of crisis; The channels through which investors are gaining access to potential investments are other VCs, investors, proprietary networks and pipeline companies; This indicates that recommendations still play a great role in helping the investors secure these deals. e27

How Malaysia is gearing up for 5G; The country will first need to lay a firm foundation for its networks; It aims to ramp up wireless broadband speeds from the current 25Mbps to 100 Mbps; It also plans to achieve 100% 4G coverage in populated areas; Strengthening the 4G foundation is important for Malaysia’s 5G rollout. Gov Insider

Will China lead the AI game by 2030?; China wants to introduce AI in almost all areas of society, from agri and medicine to manufacturing; It also plans to integrate AI into guided missiles, use it to track people in closed-circuit cameras, censor the internet, and even predict crimes. e27

Social accountability platform Hona secures funding from Draper University Ventures; Hona brings a fresh approach to goal-setting and habit tracking, using proven methods in behavioural science, group accountability and blockchain; In August, it won the first place at DU’s Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship programme. e27

How Cooklab seizes new opportunities during the pandemic to become Indonesia’s answer to Blue Apron; The foodtech startup offers ready-to-cook meal kits containing pre-measured ingredients and cooking guide for customers at home; Its recipe was designed to be as easy-to-follow as possible; it is also available on various e-commerce platforms in addition to its own dedicated mobile app. e27

Myanmar’s Karzo wins regional edition of Startup World Cup 2021; The logistics provider triumphed over 15 companies in SEA to win; It stands to win US$1M in grand finals in US in May 2021; With 5K drivers on its platform, Karzo connects corporate enterprises and SMEs to logistics suppliers across Myanmar. e27

Lessons from the buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) boom; A survey says an estimated 1.1M people (38% respondents) in Singapore have used BNPL; Men (45%) are more likely to use BNPL than women (32%); While good for retailers, the survey also found 27% of the 1,000+ surveyed had taken a financial hit because of a BNPL service. e27

Study: PH firms says virtual collaboration will be top 5G use case; The appetite to invest in 5G is high, as nearly half (45%) of Filipino decision-makers are willing to spend up to 15% of their budget on 5G, compared to respondents in Indonesia (40%) but less than those in Japan (60%) and Singapore (51%), which were also surveyed. Newsbytes.PH

Five emerging fintech startups in Indonesia; With a population of 270M+ people, Indonesia is the largest economy in SEA and also the second-largest recipient of investments in the region; Firms such as Kredivo, Akulaku and Modalku are leading the way, but others are now emerging strongly behind them; They are Pluang, ALAMI, Halofina, SuperAtom, and BukuWarung. Tech Collective

Gobi-Core Philippine Fund (GCPF) discloses investment in live-streaming startup Kumu; It has earlier backed Edukasyon and MariaHealth; The fund plans to invest in a total of 7 local startups by end-2021; GCPF is a US$10M fund jointly formed by Gobi Partners and Core Capital in 2018. e27

Going green: What types of ethical investments can you partake in?; The concept has been gaining ground in recent years due to growing environmental and geopolitical concerns; Today, ethical investing is a lot more sophisticated and there are multiple asset classes that address a wide range of environmental and social concerns; You must ensure that your portfolio is curated to align with your personal values and beliefs. SingSaver blog

Are central bank digital currencies (CBCDs) a game-changer?; CBDCs hold a lot of promise: they could allow anyone to receive salary payments, invest in a private company in Switzerland, and automate their health insurance claim from a single app on their mobile phone; All these could be accomplished without having to log into multiple accounts, exchange local currency for Swiss francs, or file any additional forms. TechInAsia

How to use OKRs to avoid startup failures; One of the biggest benefits of using OKRs is the ‘surfacing up of problems’ early; The weekly reviews ensure the uncovering of problems as every team needs to report their progress as well as confidence level in achieving their key result; In the the case of early-stage startups, reviews can be done even twice a week or daily until they find the product/market fit. e27

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Singapore’s Economic Development Board (EDB) is launching Tech.Pass to attract leading founders, leaders and tech experts into the country.

The initiative aims to utilise their expertise to aid the development of the rapidly-growing tech ecosystem in the city-state.

Targeted at the top tier of tech talents, Tech.Pass will allow holders to contribute across the ecosystem in a variety of roles — ranging from founders and mentors to lecturers and consultants.

Applications will open in January 2021, with 500 places available upon launch.

To qualify, individuals must possess experience in leading large tech companies, or in developing tech products with mass adoption.

Also Read: Why Singapore is ASEAN’s sandbox for innovation in healthtech

The pass will be valid for two years and can be renewed only once upon expiry. To have the passes renewed, individuals will be assessed against certain criteria, including income, total business spending and the number of locals employed.

As per a press release, the pass will be part of the Tech@SG programme. Launched last year, the programme seeks to support the expansion of high-growth companies in Singapore by ensuring they have access to established tech talent.

The EDB claims this initiative is part of the government’s efforts to ensure Singapore remains globally competitive. It will create opportunities for local tech talent to work and learn alongside their global counterparts.

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Image Credit: Photo by Swapnil Bapat on Unsplash

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Here are the latest changes you will encounter on e27 now on:

Revamped Connect button on investor profiles

We launched a revamped version of our Connect button in the Investor Profiles. No more Google forms! You can directly connect with investors, fill out your requests and get going.

You do need to make sure that your profile and fundraising details are updated though. We are moving one step further to better connect with startups and investors.

Our next iteration will be a dashboard for Startups and Investors, so do look out for that in a month.

Membership management features

Since we launched our Pro Membership program, we haven’t had a simple way for users to better manage their Membership programs. You now can do so in your profile pages, by hitting the edit button.

This will give you full access to your memberships management dashboard, where you can upgrade your memberships, change your payment card, view your past receipts or cancel your membership if it hasn’t been working for you.

Recommended reads

I’m embarrassed we took so long time to get this done (what were we thinking!) but we finally did it. We now showcase recommend reads after articles, so that you have more content you can check it that’s relevant to what you’re already reading.

We now have badges, including those for Pro members

We are excited to have launched badges on the site. There are going to be many different ones coming, but we are starting with badges for Pro users first.

We believe that badges are a great way to show recognition and how active you are on the e27 platform, hence in due course, we will be launching many more badges.

Our contributor badge has already launched as of this article, and I’ll mentioned more about this in next month’s release notes.

Improved pagination

We have also made tweak to our Startups and Investors databases to better allow users to filter all the information.

The never ending Show More clicks are now gone, with a more intuitive pagination system so that it’s easier to sift through the thousands of profiles.

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The post October update: Revamped Connect button for investor profiles, Membership management features, badges and more appeared first on e27.

Singapore-based private equity firm Ascent Capital has closed its inaugural Myanmar-focused fund at US$88 million, as per multiple reports.

In January this year, the Ascent Myanmar Growth Fund I had raised US$80 million.

AMGF I, which originally targeted to raise between US$50 million and US$100 million, had announced the first close in October 2018, with the debut investment in internet service provider Frontiir.

Its anchor investors include Myanmar’s Aung Moe Kyaw, founder and co-chairman of Grand Royal Group, and Singapore’s Tony Chew, co-founder of MDC Group and chairman of Asia Resource Corporation.

Temasek, the Asian Development Bank, and JG Summit Holdings are the other LPs.

Also Read: How understanding culture can drive digitalisation of payments in Myanmar

“In spite of the short-term tailwinds facing the economy, we remain positive about Myanmar’s long-term potential,” said Lim Chong Chong, Founder and Managing Partner of Ascent Capital.

“We will maintain our focus on sectors which will benefit from Myanmar’s robust growth, namely in consumer, education, healthcare, financial services and technology while furthering United Nations’s social development goals,” he added.

Launched in 2018, Ascent Myanmar Growth Fund focuses on providing strategic, long-term growth capital to Myanmar businesses with potential to become local and regional champions. It invests in mid-market opportunities, and targets investment opportunities of at least US$10 million.

The priority sectors of focus are consumer, education, healthcare, financial services, logistics and TMT (telecom, media and technology).

It is also open to unique opportunities in other sectors which have the potential to leverage on Myanmar’s long-term growth investment thesis.

According to a report by International Finance Corporation, fundraising in emerging markets is expected to encounter greater resistance in the next two to three years, especially for funds targeting small and mid-size companies.

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Image Credit: Photo by Sébastien Goldberg on Unsplash

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Southeast Asia is the 5^th largest economy in the world with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) valuing at US$2.5 trillion, of which 7 per cent comes from the digital economy. This makes the region one of the most sought-after markets among tech entrepreneurs and ecosystem players.

Sitting at the heart of it all is Malaysia. Known as one of the pioneering trailblazers for Southeast Asia’s digital economy, Malaysia has taken serious steps to become a top tech destination for startups as it continues to attract companies and digital entrepreneurs. It achieved this with its slew of initiatives and incentives that prioritises digital innovation and pushed for the accelerated growth of its startup ecosystem.

Even with the ongoing pandemic, Malaysia continues to demonstrate strong support for its startup community. The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) has been one of the fastest to respond to this socio-economic threat through the quick development and rollout of its #DigitalvsCovid Movement. All this took place within one week after the Movement Control Order (MCO) had been announced. This initiative saw over 80 local tech companies coming forward to render digital solutions and proactive support to businesses and consumers that the MCO had adversely affected.

Additionally, the Government also introduced an extensive list of high-impact initiatives that cater to startups, such as Malaysia Debt Venture’s Technology Start-Ups Funding Relief Facilities, the National PENJANA Fund that the Ministry of Finance recently introduced, and the National Technology & Innovation Sandbox that the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation manages.

These efforts seem to be paying off as the recent Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2020 from Startup Genome has concluded that Kuala Lumpur is home to the 11th best Startup Ecosystems in the world. Several reasons contribute to this accomplishment — its strategic location in Southeast Asia, the continued robust government support it offers, the ever-evolving modern infrastructure of this country, its fast-tracked work visas, low cost of living with good talent development pools, and the nation’s relentless digital aspiration.

Also read: How Malaysia has become a global digital investment destination

Great launchpad to the region

Malaysia had proven itself as a highly sought after launchpad for companies who want to engage Southeast Asia. This was apparent to Francesco Argento, Founder and CEO of Ezyspark – a corporate training match-making platform. He ran his operations in Malaysia for over 10 years and found the country to be a good place for startups to launch a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), test the market, and then expand to the rest of Southeast Asia.

Sunil Coushik, Founder and CEO for Boole Technologies – a systems integration solutions provider, also echoes Francesco’s sentiments. Although many of their target customers are US-based, they saw a need to establish themselves beyond their existing markets and believed how starting a solutions company where market demand existed is critical to their success.

“Malaysia is an ideal hub for us to enter because it has a lot of mid-to-enterprise customers that were easily accessible and willing to invest on our solutions. On top of that, we also saw an opportunity due to the lack of competition in this region. Although there are a lot of system integration companies and value-added resellers in Malaysia, not many are focused on actually building technology solutions and that was where we saw a gap we could serve in,” added Sunil.

Ease of access to other countries in the region had been the primary reason for Anna Yamauchi, Founder of Trambellir – an online Medical Tourism booking site, to start her business here.

“Malaysia has great access to its neighbouring countries like Thailand and Indonesia, and since I’m aiming to expand my business into the region, Malaysia became the important foothold for me,” she said.

Also read: Cashflow and financing: what companies need to know

Great support for the startup ecosystem

Adrian Wisaksana, Chief Technology Officer for MECAPAN – a beauty-tech startup from Indonesia, opened its doors in Kuala Lumpur since 2019 through the Malaysia Tech Entrepreneur Program (MTEP) initiative. According to Adrian, Malaysia provided great support for startups and also openly welcomes foreign talents that will contribute further to the local startup ecosystem. With English being a widely used language here and having a friendly and clear process for businesses to bring in foreign talent, MECAPAN intends to make Malaysia the base of its Engineering Headquarters.

Great talent access

Malaysia is also known for its vast and versatile pool of potential talent, a point of attraction for tech startups and companies looking to expand their teams. With English being a widely used language in the country, it is not surprising that Malaysia has become the choice for some to establish their regional operations here.

“We want to expand our presence here and have already planned to hire engineers from Malaysia as well as from its neighbours. We believe that having a unified language is necessary to build an effective and cohesive team,” added Adrian.

For Boole Tech’s Sunil, he had already seen and met the kind of talent available here Malaysia offers in 2004.

“When I opened my first company in this region (Bubble Motion), we hired 20 from Malaysia. Because of this, I was confident that if we put together a team in Malaysia and provided them with the right resources and management direction, we would succeed. Also, the cost base of being able to recruit Malaysian talent had been very compelling and, with that same talent pool, we expanded to neighbouring markets,” he shared.

Accessing Malaysia via MTEP

With such compelling reasons, what can tech entrepreneurs do to access and engage with Malaysia? With MTEP, it’s easier said than done.

Using this digital work pass, foreign tech entrepreneurs can get into Malaysia and quickly tap onto the entrepreneur ecosystem instantly and seamlessly. It’s so quick, they will be on the fast-track to reap the benefits from Malaysia’s digital and tech ecosystems and even prepare for the inevitable launch for Malaysia and the region.

As Francesco puts it: “The good thing about MTEP is that it allows you to open your startup without needing to set up any legal entities from the get-go. So, in your first year, you can test your idea without incurring any high costings. The MDEC team had also been very helpful throughout my application process. Even after getting my pass, MDEC continued to assist me in connecting with potential stakeholders.”

Sunil had similar views as he shared: “I applied for a long-term visa to ensure that I could focus on growing the business and recruit more talents in the future. MDEC had done a fantastic job, both on MTEP and creating a (convenient) visa window for foreign talents. This enables global entrepreneurs who want to build a company in the region to look at Malaysia as their first option,” he added.

The MTEP visa prioritises the entrepreneurial aspect of its applicants and how they can add value to the vibrant tech ecosystem of Malaysia. This allows the nation to further unearth and tap potential entrepreneurial talents that might have been looked over under normal circumstances.

“As someone who learned software engineering and product development on my own, I do not have a college degree. For most visa application processes, a college degree in the field of work would be a basic requirement. However, thanks to the MTEP recognising the entrepreneurial aspect of what I do, I managed to establish MECAPAN’s presence here in Malaysia and (am now) working towards expanding our presence to the rest of Southeast Asia,” added Adrian.

“Malaysia, ranked 12 among 190 economies worldwide on the ‘Ease of Doing Business Index’, is a testament of our ongoing commitment to enhance competitiveness, productivity and good governance. We will not rest on our laurels and, instead, continue to remain steadfast in propelling the startup ecosystem forward. This includes attaining global recognition that will resonate with the economic epicentres of every continent.  With MTEP, the regional and global tech startup communities can now use these benefits that Malaysia has to offer. We believe this will help strengthen the country’s position as a global hub for startups and entrepreneurs,” according to MDEC CEO, Surina Shukri.

If you’re a foreign entrepreneur and want to find out more about MDEC’s MTEP service or are keen on starting up your tech entrepreneurship journey in Malaysia, head over to https://mdec.my/mtep/.

As for those keen on learning and understanding more about Malaysia’s first-mover efforts to accelerate its digital economy growth and expansion, then now is a good time to register for an all-access pass at the ongoing Malaysia Tech Month 2020 (MTM 2020) event. Running from now until the end of November, MTM 2020 – a free for all participants event – is a combination of MDEC organised events and the extensive curation of other unique technology panels and platforms that tech ecosystem players have organised. This includes satellite events that tie-in with the goal of reinforcing Malaysia as the Heart of Digital ASEAN and expanding its role as a digital and technology hub that is highly-sought among digital investors and funds.

For more information and to register for MTM 2020, head over to https://mdec.my/mtm2020.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by MDEC.

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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