Year: 2020

Easy Eat, a new Artificial Intelligence-powered foodtech startup headquartered in Singapore, has secured an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A investment round from half-a-dozen investors.

The names include Bala Chandra, Managing Partner of Vernalis Capital, and his family office, besides five other unnamed angels.

The less-than-a-year-old startup, which also has offices in Malaysia and India, will use the capital raised to build the team and launch the product.

The startup was founded last year by Mohd Wassem, Rhythm Gupta, Abdul Khalid, Akshay Chauhan, and Alok Ranjan. Wassem has previously built and exited Bobble Keyboard, for which he raised multiple rounds of funding from SAIF Partners, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal (Co-founders of Flipkart), Deep Kalra (Founder of MakeMyTrip, Amit Ranjan (Co-founder of Slideshare), and Prashant Malik (co-creator of Cassandra).

Also Read: AI startup Easy Eat aims to transform restaurants into tech firms and make dining more interactive

Easy Eat’s AI-based tech solution personalises and rewards users’ dining experience. It digitises all customer-facing interaction in the restaurants — from browsing menu and ordering to tracking to payments. It even suggests customising options basis the users’ preferences and history. The more a user uses Easy Eat AI tech, the more personalised it gets.

“Imagine the app taking care of your dining preferences, allergies, calories, choosing best payment options and rewarding you for loyalty without any extra effort,” Wassem said.

On the other side, restaurants can save time and money and better manage the footfall. They will also have access to advanced user analytics (the equivalent of Google Analytics for offline businesses). It will give a fillip to their marketing intelligence, customer strategy and business efficiency.

“While this innovation may not compete with restaurants as an alternate supplier, it certainly has a vast potential to transform the way customers buy and experience dining. Restaurants don’t have to incur any additional cost to use the solution. More importantly, this will increase their bottom-line by 40 per cent,” Wassem added.

The company targets the US$100-billion food & beverages sector in Southeast Asia, where majority prefer eating out — in some countries, more than 90 per cent of the people consume at least one meal outside a day. Plus, the region has a high female working population.

Also Read: Coping with consumer behaviour during the COVID-19 crisis

Easy Eat is going to start online ordering as well as takeaways at zero per cent commission to support restaurants in these tough times. Wassem claimed that tens of restaurants have already signed up for this programme, as they are not happy with the commissions charged by the likes of foodpanda and Grab.

“I was convinced about the idea from the very beginning, and the recent COVID-19 outbreak has further strengthened my belief in it. As the world emerges from the virus, we would see large scale technology adoption in this area. Restaurant offerings, from ordering to payments to service delivery, will all go contactless,” said investor Chandra.

“I was the first investor in Wassem’s previous company and continue to back him in his second venture. The team comes with a strong entrepreneurial, business and technology background. I am upbeat about the future of Easy Eat,” Chandra added.

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Image Credit: Easy Eat

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Ampverse partners with video adtech startup Unruly to recruit more Southeast Asian esports talents

Gaming and e-sports media company Ampverse has announced a partnership with video ads marketplace Unruly, which is owned by UK-based Tremor International.

Through this deal, the two companies seek to combine data-driven insights and content creation to fuel media amplification of gaming and e-sports talent across Southeast Asia.

The partnership aims to provide an opportunity for brands to gain an understanding of how their video campaigns engage gaming audiences across the region.

Ampverse seeks to champion gaming influencers and professional e-sports teams by building an ecosystem across Southeast Asia that enables them to maximise their creative and commercial potential. The media rights and assets company works with the talent to create content using authentic voices that can drive engagement among gaming audiences.

Unruly handles video inventory within premium publishing companies across the region, as well as works with content creators to optimise the emotional impact, performance, and ROI of their creatives using its proprietary pre-testing and targeting tool UnrulyEQ, and adapt existing assets into a range of different formats through its creative studio UnrulyEQ Edit Suite.

Singapore’s online hiring demand decreases due to COVID-19 restrictions

The looming fears around COVID-19 has taken a toll on Singapore’s e-recruitment industry. As the outbreak and its impact on the economy intensified, e-hiring sentiment hit zero per cent growth over last year for the month of March.

Also Read: Who’s driving e-sports and gaming in Southeast Asia: Gamers or fans?

“The impact of the pandemic is real, severe and lasting — especially for industries such as tourism, retail, and F&B — and the priority right now is to protect jobs and the small businesses that may not have the resources to stay afloat in these troubled times,” said Krish Seshadri, CEO of Monster.com (APAC and the Middle East).

With more people staying indoors due to safety protocols, which are increasing dependency on technology to stay connected, it’s understandable that the IT, telecom/ISP, and BPO/ITES industry alongside advertising and marketing, consumer goods, healthcare industry and BFSI all witnessed a surge in e-hiring demand for the quarter. As anticipated, retail/trade and logistics and hospitality industries were the worst hit.

The Monster Employment Index is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity, based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Singapore. The index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.

Global fintech platform NIUM partners with Geoswift to enable fund remittance into China

Global fintech platform NIUM has partnered with Geoswift, a payment technology company that connects China to the rest of the world, to enable overseas customers to remit money into the country.

The partnership allows NIUM’s customers worldwide to send funds directly to a receiver’s UnionPay card account with 14 banks in China in real-time, and another 50-plus banks within 48 hours.

Traditionally consumers or businesses, who want to send cross-border remittances into China for personal or business purposes, had to rely on banking infrastructure or money remittance centres. Recipients in China would need to make trips to bank branches or remittance centers and wait in line.

Also Read: Fund Transfers license granted, NIUM officially launches digital cross-border payments platform in Indonesia

The partnership with Geoswift will help eliminate the hassle and provide convenience and cost-savings to consumers and businesses looking to remit money into China, especially when social distancing measures are being implemented all over the world.

Consumers and businesses can conduct the fund transfers through InstaReM, NIUM’s consumer and SME brand, on its website or app. Banks and financial institutions looking to integrate the service can soon do so via integration of NIUM’s enterprise API tools into their existing systems.

All funds transfer into China can be initiated in any of the 40+ source currencies currently offered through NIUM’s Send service, and recipients will receive the payout in the Chinese Yuan.

Singapore’s digital banking FOMO Pay forays into Malaysia

FOMO Pay, Singapore-based digital payment and digital banking solution provider, has partnered with OCBC Bank (Malaysia) to develop OCBC OneCollect as its first merchant cross-border QRcode collection service project.

This project also marks the opening of FOMO Pay’s new office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and opens up opportunities to provide customer support in a larger territory and signals continued rapid growth for the company in the region.

FOMO Pay collaborates with OCBC in February to develop the application for Malaysia’s first cross-border QR Code collection service, OCBC OneCollect. This service allows any account holder of Singapore’s PayNow participating banks to make Singapore Dollar payments to eligible merchants in Malaysia via direct QR code payment through OCBC OneCollect, instead of just local Ringgit currency transactions.

Key features of these digital banking solutions consist of proprietary QR payment processing system, e-KYC solution, AI credit-scoring profiling solution, multi-channel account auto-reconciliation solution, cross-border switch interoperability solution, and many more.

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The onset and the rapid spread of COVID-19 has rampaged through the business world. Many companies are already shutting down, while many are on life support. If the situation lasts for a few more weeks, the implications will be unprecedented.

Given the situation, it is important to learn how businesses have been affected and in which areas.

US-based Startup Genome, which offers research on the startup ecosystem, has gathered data from entrepreneurs to learn about the impact on their businesses in areas such as capital, jobs, and policy.

Here, the goal is to put the results against policy action to “save startups and provide data-driven arguments for more government action around the world”.

Here’s how these three areas have been affected:

Capital

Funding is one significant aspect that has affected many startups during this period. This is because startups in normal conditions can be different during a calamity and extremely different in case of a pandemic.

Many investors, who had promised to fund startups, are putting deals on hold while others are seeming to have a change of mind.

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Panasonic, in collaboration with ACE and ICMG, launched its “Panasonic Deep Tech Innovation Challenge” on 10th April 2020. It aims to collect ideas from local companies to develop technologies and launch new businesses with Panasonic’s smell detection technologies. These are unique in being able to detect smell and visualise their relevance to human lives.

One such innovation is Panasonic’s Odor Sensing Technology, which has many commercial applications such as healthcare, food manufacturing, and industrial safety. Additionally, they have deep expertise in stress detection by human skin-gas sensing, relevant in various settings such as in the workplace, schools, and homes.

The two-part Challenge

This innovative challenge is in line with Panasonic’s vision to utilise its technologies to bring impactful solutions to existing social and customer issues. Within this challenge, two technologies are up for collaboration: Odor Sensing and Stress Detection by Human Skin-Gas Sensing.

In the first Challenge, Panasonic hopes to co-create new solutions and potentially launch businesses that can deliver its technology to make a significant difference to existing and new issues. Specifically, the technology should (1) provide human safety and comfort through precise odor sensing, and (2) implement preventive safe maintenance by detection of slight odor.

Examples of potential issues to tackle are:

• Exposure to harmful gases by healthcare professionals
• Lack of detection and regulation of harmful chemicals in agriculture practices
• Leakage of harmful substances in industrial areas endangering workers and the surrounding environment

For the second Challenge, Panasonic hopes to collaborate to transfer its technologies to local businesses that can leverage the potential of the technology to create and enhance solutions targeting critical issues. Solutions for this particular challenge should (1) provide fulfilling life through high-precision sensing of the stress marker materials and (2) enable objective standards to identify and understand different states of stress, therefore developing new and implementable solutions.

Examples of potential issues to tackle are:

• Employee wellness management and productivity maintenance due to stress in the workplace
• Reduced efficacy of education due to increasing competitiveness in schools
• Stressed and estranged family relationships due to lack of mutual understanding and support

Who should join and why?

The challenge is open to all startups and corporates who want to be part of this new technology. Registration for the challenge is open until 5th June 2020. All eligible teams and organisations are encouraged to sign up through the challenge website. Applications are completed by answering some questions about your proposed idea and submitting your team’s introduction deck.

Teams are challenged to tap on their technical expertise, business acumen, and creative skills through two different stages of the Challenge. This is a highly valuable opportunity to create new solutions and tackle new markets by using Panasonic technologies. Selected teams that will progress to the final round will have exclusive opportunity to be mentored closely by Panasonic representatives to continue developing their projects for the Demo Day.

Additionally, for Challenge 1, winning teams may have an opportunity to further develop their technologies and businesses as business partners of Panasonic, whereas for Challenge 2, winners may have the opportunity to get Tech & IP licensing from Panasonic and utilise Panasonic’s technologies to create and expand their businesses.

Keen on joining? Take note of the timeline

1. A webinar briefing event will be held on 24 April and 14 May 2020 for participants to find out more about the challenge and interact with the organisers. Register here.
2. Applications will be accepted until 5th June 2020.
3. The results for the first round of judging will be released on 12th June 2020.
4. A mentoring programme will be conducted for successful applicants, to be held from 12th June 2020 to 17th July 2020.
5. The Panasonic Deep Tech Innovation Challenge will culminate with a Demo Day on 22nd July 2020.

Who are Panasonic, ACE, and ICMG?

Panasonic has researched and developed various kinds of sensor technologies, and filed IP about these technologies. The Panasonic R&D Centre in Singapore is starting this open innovation activity to utilise their innovative assets effectively and deliver a better life, work environment and etc in this South East ASIA’s emerging market.

The Action Community for Entrepreneurship (ACE), a national private sector-led organisation, plays a key role in building a dynamic and sustainable startup ecosystem in Singapore. ACE’s mission is to lead the ground-up community strategic support to promote entrepreneurship, scale startups and build champion enterprises. ACE supports startups across all stages through three strategic core functions:

1. Driving co-innovation between startups and enterprises;
2. Helping startups to scale and internationalise
3. Building an access hub of connected ecosystems across countries

ICMG aims to become Asia’s Most Admired Accelerator. ICMG constantly works towards creating new corporate innovations. As the leading corporate innovation accelerator, ICMG Singapore works with different partners (Government, Businesses, Individuals & more) to co-create purposeful innovations for corporates.

For more details about the challenge, please visit their official page.

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

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Facebook in talks about partnering with Indonesia’s home-grown e-payment platforms

Social media company Facebook is in talks with local e-payment platforms to team up in proving financial services in Indonesia’s growing digital payment market, according to a report by The Jakarta Post.

“We are in conversations with partners in Indonesia. However the discussions are ongoing,” an Indonesia-based Facebook spokesperson told The Jakarta Post on Thursday without providing more information.

The number of digital consumers in Indonesia has grown sharply in recent years.The number reached 102 million in 2018, or 53 per cent of the country’s population, rising sharply from 64 million or 34 per cent of the total population in 2017, according to a recent study from Facebook in collaboration with Bain & Company.

Indian news aggregator Dailyhunt rakes in US$23.5M led by Bytedance

Bengaluru-India based news aggregator platform Dailyhunt has raked in US$23.5 million in a Series G financing round led by Bytedance, according to Moneycontrol.

This brings Dailyhunt’s valuation to US$542.8 million.

Existing investors include Falcon Edge, Goldman Sachs, and Advent Management also invested in the round.

Dailyhunt is an online platform, which provides bite-sized news, information and magazines in 14 different languages, claims to have over 51 million daily users and a presence in over 400 districts locally.

Also Read: News Roundup: Singapore’s online hiring demand dips due to COVID-19; FOMO Pay forays into Malaysia

“The coronavirus has helped Dailyhunt. They have been able to touch user numbers which they have been trying to reach for over a year now,” a spokesperson of Dailyhunt told Moneycontrol.

Orbo.ai buys Gemia, an American photo enhancement software company

India’s deep facial technology company Orbo.ai has acquired Gemia, an American photo enhancement software company, to further enhance its platform, according to Inc42.

The company, however, did not disclose the transaction amount.

Gemia will help Orbo.ai to enhance its product and to accelerate its media and entertainment segment. However, Orbo.ai will continue to offer services provided by the American company.

Orbo.ai’s clients include Intel, Cisco, GE Healthcare, Samsung, TCS, KPMG and DataMatics. The company is reportedly planning to explore newer avenues like bringing research-based vision products on their hardware.

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Globally, few countries are unaffected by a coronavirus pandemic that is changing the way we live and work. In Australia and across the Asia Pacific, businesses and entire industries are being forced to rapidly adapt the way they operate and engage with their customers.

One of the worst hit areas of the economy is the retail industry, which has been built on the curation of delightful, in-store experiences between retailers and consumers. With high streets, towns and cities in lockdown aside from only those stores deemed an ‘essential service’, retailers are bereft of the customers, and therefore the cash flow they rely on.

A retailer’s ability to survive through the challenging few months ahead depends on how quickly they can adapt, evolve and pivot their strategy to accommodate the changing needs of a customer base who they can no longer engage with face-to-face, in-store.

While for many, the coming months may be daunting – and cash flow has slowed – it doesn’t have to be the end of a business. In fact, many tech-savvy retailers are understanding the value of an online presence, how it can help them build a bridge towards the retail spring and how it can keep their cash flow flowing in the short- and medium-term.

Crunching the numbers

During these uncertain times, cash really is king and there is a no more important measure to closely monitor both daily and weekly. Before you can put in place systems to help you manage your cash flow, it’s necessary to deep dive into your finances and understand every dollar, where it’s going and where it’s coming from.

Analyse your financial statements and retail reports to understand your cash flow, inventory, and expenses. With regards to your cash flow, determine how much money you have in the bank and how long your resources can last. Knowing how much financial breathing room your business has will help you make decisions on what to do.

Also Read: How COVID-19 is changing traditional retail and e-commerce in SEA

Then consider your stock, and how much of your capital is tied up in your inventory. If your retail business deals with perishable or seasonal goods, how much do you have and how quickly do you need to deal with it? If your business is set up to sell online, identify the products that would have the highest demand and find ways to put them in front of your customers.

Finally, get a handle on how much you owe and when you owe it by. If possible, call your creditors, landlord, suppliers and anyone else and ask them if you can either defer payment temporarily or renegotiate payments. During a global crisis like this one, you might find that people are more altruistic and willing to help you out. 

What to cut and what to prioritise

You might find that you can alleviate some of the financial pressure on your business by temporarily putting a halt to non-essential spending. Identify your business’ needs and wants, and cut back on the latter. Expenses like utilities and retail management software are examples of a ‘need’, but things like your in-store Spotify subscription or other luxury expenses would be considered a ‘want’ and thus need to be eliminated temporarily.

Go through your business bank statements to identify your expenses over recent months, then use that to figure out which costs remain essential and what can be put on hold for the next couple of months. It’s likely that every dollar matters, so be ruthless – there’s nothing to stop you reinstating subscriptions and other expenses when normality begins to return.

Unless you’re not doing business at all, marketing is likely an expense you’ll want to maintain, though – especially when considering how it will help you communicate crucial changes and new processes to your customers.

If you’re still selling, it’s more important than ever to get in front of your customers. Identify which channels, campaigns and efforts have the potential to deliver the best ROI, then double down on them. 

Improve cash flow

Cutting non-essential spending will ease cash flow concerns slightly, but you still have to find ways of bringing money into your business. What products do you sell that would help people navigate these times? With more consumers staying home, do you have items that can help your customers be more productive while working from home?

Also Read: How COVID-19 is changing traditional retail and e-commerce in SEA

If your retail business sells homewares, fitness equipment or arts and crafts, for example, you might find your products in high demand. If you have a lot of excess stock, that’s a lot of money tied up, so consider how you can incentivise people to buy it through promotions or discounts. Gift cards, too, could be a great way to get money flowing into your business so look for ways to build that into your sales plan, too. 

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

While it’s easy to feel adrift and isolated, we’re a community and we’re in this together – it’s OK to ask for help. Governments, businesses and industry bodies are rushing to create programs to help small businesses stay afloat during these turbulent times.

In Australia, for example, if your turnover has reduced by over 30 per cent, you may qualify for a government subsidy through the new JobKeeper Payment. It’s a fortnightly payment of AU$1,500 per eligible employee for a period of up to six months.

In addition, the Government has agreed to a temporary ban on evictions over the next six months for commercial and residential tenants who are unable to meet their commitments due to the impact of coronavirus. There’s also a series of business support funds and initiatives being introduced in states and cities across the country.

In Melbourne City, for example, businesses may be eligible for AU$5,000 worth of grants to develop an e-commerce site. Another great resource is LoveLocalRetail. Powered by Vend, it’s a coalition of tech companies coming together to provide advice and offers to help small retail businesses respond. Please, wherever you’re based and whatever you sell, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for help. 

The independent retail industry in Australia and across Asia Pacific is a resolute and dynamic community, capable of great innovation and overcoming challenges. This may be the biggest challenge many of us have faced, but by taking quick and adaptable steps to take charge of your short- and medium-term finances, you might find that the challenge seems that little bit more manageable.

We don’t have a crystal ball, so we don’t know exactly how long the current situation will last, but we’re confident that a beautiful retail spring will dawn, with busy high streets, beautiful shop fronts and delightful experiences between retailers and their customers once again.

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With COVID-19 causing severe turbulence in the stock market, the move towards investing in digital assets is increasing. Coronavirus has impacted all financial products whether it be traditional equities and bonds, commodities, or even cryptocurrencies.

Digital assets have the potential to disrupt entire industries and the global market. The economic impact of the pandemic has resulted in a surge of interest in digital assets, mainly Bitcoin (BTC).

In early February, Google searches for bitcoin surged by 33 per cent, demonstrating the increase in interest for an alternative to a bank controlled economy. As a result, out of all digital assets offered, I believe this could be Bitcoin’s year with an impending boom in digital asset adoption across the globe.

Bitcoin adoption

Although one of the more traditional digital currencies, from interviews with our clients and from talking to folks in the market, it seems a lot of investors were getting margin called, or their fear from other assets tanking had transposed to the digital assets world.

Those that were getting margin called in their other assets had to sell BTC in order to gain liquidity to continue to fund those other assets. This is perhaps evidence that BTC has finally been adopted as an alternative asset since the wider adoption (and trading of) BTC by both retail and institutions, the more macro-effects will have an effect on its prices.

Also Read: Is Bitcoin the safest currency in times of rising global tensions?

Challenges faced by bitcoin

Although Bitcoin was created with an intention to replace traditional currencies, it is still hard for it to be adopted as a mainstream currency because of the time it takes for transactions to be confirmed.

Imagine buying ice cream and having to stand there to wait 10-30 minutes. The ice cream will have, more likely melted in the time it has taken for the shopkeeper to confirm that your payment has been accepted.

In fact, the authorities in Indonesia (where Zipmex is legally regulated) have decided that digital assets are a commodity and should be regulated under their Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (BAPPEBTI).

Whether or not digital assets should be viewed as a commodity is a debate for another day since there are many types of use cases of digital assets whether it be stable coins, asset-backed or utility tokens.

An attractive investment post-COVID-19

Many agree with the fact that Bitcoin is like digital gold – a commodity in which you can invest in during current tough times. Its price is determined by the belief that is instilled in it.

In fact, after the almost 40 per cent drop in prices, BTC has rebounded significantly. At the time of writing, it has increased by approximately 70 per cent from its lowest point this month.

Also read: Is Bitcoin the safest currency in times of rising global tensions?

If you compare this with the Stock Exchange of Thailand( SET Index) Thai stocks have been decreasing since the start of the year, and after BTC has recovered, Thai stocks are still hovering around their rock bottom prices. It remains to be seen whether recovery will come any time soon.

Hence, at Zipmex we believe in providing digital assets as an alternative financial instrument, especially in times of crisis.

Global recession and bitcoin 

With a global recession looming, purchasing power of traditional currencies is bound to be impacted. For those who understand the benefits of cryptocurrency, I predict there will be a surge in interest in owning bitcoin.

This will be mainly down to cryptocurrencies’ ability to alleviate a portion of pending pressure on traditional markets as we enter a global economic downturn.

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