Day: December 10, 2020

C-suite, a Singapore-based O2O learning platform for current and aspiring executives, announced today it has secured a “six-figure USD” in a seed funding round led by angel investors, including its own co-founder and COO Don Tsai.

As per a press note, the fresh funds will be utilised to expand its team and roll out new marketing campaigns.

C-suite positions itself as an exclusive community hub, a social network, a news and views forum and a recommendation engine.

Users can access content through a paid-for app, virtual gatherings and real-world conferences among others. It plans to roll out additional features such as a jobs portal and concierge service, alongside a mobile app, in 2021.

The platform claims to have attracted nearly 200 high-profile members within the first two weeks of the start of its operations.

Also Read: Why a crisis is the best time to hone your leadership skills

According to C-suite CEO and Co-founder Dean Carroll, there are too many bad managers or so-called ‘leaders’ in the business world. And the reason for that is these leaders are just expected to know how to do it, without receiving the tools to make it happen.

“What brought it home to me was participating in leadership training recently and also finding myself a career mentor to guide me along the way. I could see the positive results these things brought in terms of making me a better professional,” he added.

“Even if you are lucky enough to receive in-house leadership training, complete an MBA or EMBA and participate in higher-level business education, it is clear the learning journey shouldn’t stop there. This is most definitely a marathon, not a sprint. Hopefully, the C-suite community can play its small part in helping to make members, their companies and their teams better. Get those elements right and the business success will surely follow,” he continued.

“According to the World Bank, there are two million higher income and upper-middle-income individuals in the world. We will be serving that community as well as the tens of millions of aspirants in the lower-middle-income brackets,” he shared.

Currently headquartered in Singapore, C-suite serves executives across Asia. Its current team of six is spread across Singapore, Indonesia and Hungary.

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Image Credit: C-suite

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Hong Kong-based early-stage VC firm, Access Ventures, has raised over US$30 million for its second fund, DealStreetAsia has reported.

Initially aimed at closing the fund by 2020 with a target amount of US$50 million, the firm is now looking to hit the final close by Q3 2021.

Also Read: 37 VCs to invest US$800M+ in Vietnam’s startups over next 3-5 years

The Limited Partners (LPs) who invested in Fund II include Korea Venture Investment Corp (KVIC), the VC arm of Korean conglomerate F&F, and a number of Singapore-based family offices such as Octava.

LPs from the VC firm’s first fund, such as Line Ventures and Mahanusa Capital, have also come on board to support the new fund.

So far, fund II has made over 10 new investments in countries across Southeast Asia. Its portfolio firms include Indonesian P2P lending platform Akseleran and Vietnamese shuttle bus booking app Godee.

Though Access Ventures seeks to focus on deals across the seed to Series A level, the firm remains open to late-stage investments, especially in the wake of the economic crisis where firms can evaluate their bottom line better.

Also Read: Why Vertex Ventures SEA & India likes to be the first VC to invest in a promising tech startup

For early-stage startups, Access issues cheques in the range of US$300,000 to US$1.5 million for five to 10 per cent stake equity in startups in verticals such as fintech, data analytics and e-sports, among others.

Access launched its debut US$15 million fund in 2017 and made 20 investments across companies, including Moca (acquired by Grab in 2018), Artificial Intelligence firm Kata.ai, and freight forwarder startup Andalin.

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Image Credit: Photo by Peter Nguyen on Unsplash

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WISE AI, an electronic know your customer (eKYC) startup based in Malaysia, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A funding, led by Sun SEA Capital, the venture arm of Sunway Group.

The fresh funds will be used to bankroll its expansion across Southeast Asia.

“The need for digitalisation has been accelerated due to the pandemic, and we see the opportunities for WISE AI to become the market leader. Through our investment, WISE AI is able to explore collaboration opportunities across Sunway’s ecosystem to test, validate and implement new ideas and services as a launchpad for future growth,” said Raymond Hor, Director of Sun SEA Capital.

Also Read: Approaching AI-rmageddon: Will AI talkbots make our lives better or worse?

Incorporated in 2018, WISE AI uses artificial intelligence to e-verify customers when onboarding them for financial services and beyond.

Its clients range from financial institutions and fintech firms to credit rating agencies and governments.

According to Co-founder and CEO David Lim, the benefits of eKYC go beyond financial inclusion. For example, the time saved when authenticating patients’ medical records and helping citizens securely access government incentives and services.

“AI-based eKYC startups in the US and Europe have garnered hundreds of millions of dollars in large fundraising rounds, as industries acknowledge the increasing importance of electronic verification. As this technology sector ramps up, there has yet to be a dominant player in Southeast Asia,” Lim added.

Also Read: How blockchain is using decentralised ID verification for seamless user onboarding

The issuance of new digital bank licenses and eKYC policies have been encouraged by regulators. Bank Negara Malaysia, the central bank of Malaysia, published a policy document on eKYC in June this year, encouraging financial institutions to adopt such technologies in order to facilitate greater digital offerings.

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Image Credit: WISE AI

 

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SLINGSHOT2020, the deep tech startup competition organised by Enterprise SG, today named NextBillion.ai as a champion of the competition at a virtual grand final round.

The event also named two UK-based startups –Gyro Gear and Keyless Technologies– as runner-up and second runner-up, respectively.

NextBillion.ai, which has recently secured its Series A funding round, is a Singapore-based startup founded by former developers at Southeast Asian tech giant Grab.

Using the skills and knowledge acquired during their time at the company –where they were in charge of developing Grab Maps– the co-founders of NextBillion.ai builds hyperlocal solutions for emerging markets where language and geospatial infrastructure can be more complex and unique.

GyroGear aims to help restore independence and quality for life for people with hand tremors, be it because of Parkinson’s disease or other conditions. Founded by Dr Faii Ong in 2016, the startup builds a wearable device to enable patients to perform daily tasks without caregiver support.

Keyless Technologies is a cybersecurity startup that builds privacy-preserving biometric authentication and personal identity management platform, which it claims to be the world’s first. It is meant to eliminate the need to store and manage sensitive information, enabling businesses to adopt passwordless authentication.

Also Read: Shooting for sustainability with SLINGSHOT 2019

Hosted as part of the Singapore Week of Innovation & Technology (SWiTCH), SLINGSHOT2020 awarded a S$200,000 (US$150,000) Startup SG grant and S$50,000 (US$37,000) cash prize to the champion. The runner-up of the event is set to receive S$25,000 (US$18,000) in cash prize while the second runner-up gets S$10,000 (US$7,400).

Held virtually for the first time this year, the competition also named winners for other categories such as its new COVID-19 track: a Netherlands-based startup called Surfly. Providing a co-browsing and video chat technology, the startup won S$60,000 (US$44,000) worth of prizes from Enterprise Singapore and corporate partner L’Oréal.

e27 observes that amongst the grand finalists, agritech and health tech continued to be a popular theme this year.

Agritech startups in the finalist roster included Israel-based eggXYT, a startup that aims to prevent the practice of male culling in chicken farms through the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology, and Australia-based ProAgni, a startup that aims to cut down the use of antibiotics amongst farm animals.

In addition to Gyro Gear, there was also US-based Elidah which builds a wearable device that aims to help treat incontinence for women.

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Working for an NGO, Mayank Rajput would spend his weekends in care centres for the elderly in Singapore. This is when he realised that there was a lack of affordable healthcare facilities for the aged population in the island nation.

“This motivated me to begin my entrepreneurial journey,” he tells e27. “I met my co-founder Ariffin Kawaja while volunteering at one of the care centres. After sharing our thoughts with each other, we found a common ground and decided to start a business in affordable physical rehabilitation, bringing a fun element into it via active gaming using soft wearable sensors.”

After the initial discussions, the pair spent nearly four months for market validation with physiotherapists, sports rehab, fitness & wellness clinics and hospitals in countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, India, China and Australia.

This provided them a better perception about the major problems facing the rehabilitation sector.

Also Read: Indonesian wearable startup Zulu confirms investment by gojek, aims to expand team and launch projects

“We started StretchSkin Technologies in October 2018 with a vision to improve the lives of people in Southeast Asia with affordable digital healthcare,” he adds.

Incorporated in Singapore, StretchSkin develops affordable wearables for different use cases in healthcare, gaming and smart clothing. Its products can be deformed into curvilinear shape to enable functionalities that are hard to achieve by traditional electronic devices.

The products are designed on a hybrid combination of soft functional materials, compliant membranes, sensors and integrated functional chip components.

StretchSkin’s first product is Virtual Exercise Therapy System (VETS), which comes with data-driven personalised recommendation. It is under pilot testing at several elderly care centres in Singapore.

Currently, the enterprise version of VETS is priced at S$2,000 (US$1,500) per unit, or S$400 (US$300) per month for a SaaS model. The B2C version is available for S$1000 (US$750) per unit, or S$100 (US$75) per month for a single user for the home version.

“We have also made affordable data gloves for gaming and active rehab which are under internal evaluation,” Rajput shares.

The rehab gloves and body joints measurement wearables will be available separately, which can be used with the Android app and can be further integrated with VETS for advanced data-driven recommendations.

Use cases

Gaming: StretchSkin’s gaming wearables mimic the standard gaming consoles which are currently available in the market, but with a new experience. Players can control games by moving their fingers or through hand gestures. The wearables are comfortable and facilitates active gaming where players move their limbs to play the games.

Rehab: The rehab patch wearables provide the tools for healthcare providers to keep track of patients’ progress — be it in a clinical setting or at home. The rehab patch is self-adhesive and does not require ionic conducting gel to increase its sensitivity.

Limb flexibility of joints and muscles, rehab duration is some of the data points which is captured through the stretchable electronic sensors.

Smart clothing: StretchSkin’s sensors form the basis of the smart clothing which is used in various applications. The smart clothing captures the users’ movements which can be translated into readable data, for instance, to assess sports-related performances.

Also Read: Fun, games, and health for seniors with Looxid Labs’ LUCY

It can be used by animators to capture an actor’s movement and translate it into a complete animation by combining with specific art work. The wearables are able to track individuals’ performance during physical activities such as walking, running, gym training, yoga among others.

Education: Its sensor technology can also be used by educators to illustrate science-related subjects, such as force, pressure, motion and temperature, in a creative way. Students could be immersed into specific subjects by using the sensors to experiment and understand real-time results.

The target markets

Initially, StretchSkin — which was incubated at IMDA-backed PIXEL — targets markets such as Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. In the long run, it wants to maintain a lead in the US, China, India, and the Middle East in the next five years with affordable and high-performance rehab, gaming, smart clothing, fitness & wellness products in the market.

“For the rehab software platform, rehab gloves and measurement sensors, the users are mainly from smart clothing manufacturers, sports therapy clinics, health coaches, rehab clinics, elderly care centres,” he says.

“For gaming gloves, its key users are gamers, Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality/Mixed Reality developers for the applications in healthcare and Industry 4.0,” he adds.

Over its two-plus years of existence, StretchSkin has raised US$37,000 from an angel investor, besides US$45,000 in grants from the government, incubator and other facilities, including from NTUitive Venture.

The startup is currently in talks for a bridge round of S$300,000 (US$225,000), which will help it in expanding team and the fabrication and certification of its products.

“After that, we will look for a pre-Series A round of US$2-2.5 million. We are currently talking with investors in the US and the Middle East for this round,” Rajput discloses.

In Rajput’s opinion, it is hard to start a venture in the hardware sector as one needs to take into account multiple stakeholders (customers, investors, etc.) at different levels to succeed.

“We need customers and capital to stabilise the business. So most of the times, it’s difficult to get what you desire. For a hardware startup, it’s always challenging to develop a minimal viable product while going through multiple iterations in it with the limited availability of resources,” he admits.

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Image Credit: StretchSkin Technologies

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