As an HR consultant for startups, I’m often asked this question by founders.

In the early stages of their startup journeys, founders typically spend the majority of their focus on product development or sales and marketing, with recruiting often left as an afterthought.

At some point, however, they always arrive back at the classic chicken and egg problem: in order to grow, they need the right talent, but in order to attract and retain the right talent, they need to grow.

To get out of that cycle, I usually advise founders to bulk up their startup’s HR muscle.

There’s certainly no hard and fast rule on when to hire an in-house HR, but generally after achieving product-market fit, there are some rules of thumb around team sizes founders can first take into consideration.

10-15 team members: Resources can be quite limited at this stage. As a founder, you probably didn’t have many issues recruiting the first few employees on your own, but as the business starts to scale and accelerate, the team will also need to expand accordingly. Bringing on outside talent to manage the hiring and onboarding process internally will be critical in preventing HR matters from occupying valuable mindshare. 

15-30 team members: So you managed to get to this stage without hiring any dedicated person to handle recruiting. It still might be wise to bring in someone, as HR expands beyond just recruiting to also include retention. While attrition is quite normal in any startup, retaining an employee (granted they’re performing well) is significantly cheaper than hiring a replacement, which can often waste valuable time and resources. 

30+ team members: If the startup has more than 30 employees and doesn’t have an HR yet, you may need to consider hiring for this role as soon as possible. At this size, sourcing job boards, editing job descriptions, facilitating interview and onboarding logistics will likely distract you from more mission critical things, such as fundraising, product, or business development. 

HR pains of a scaling startup

Many early-stage founders refuse to hire an HR because they view it as an unnecessary expense, and one that’s more suitable for large enterprises. In reality, many founders are unaware of or substantially underestimate the HR problems and needs they’ll encounter as a startup scales and the team sizes grow: 

Recruit specialists vs. generalists

In earlier stages of your startup, you’re likely hiring more generalists that can wear multiple hats due to limited resources. Once your company starts to scale, however, you’ll usually need to divide and conquer, that is recruiting more specialists that can significantly amplify the efforts of each function.

For example, full-stack engineers might be more commonplace in fresh startups, who would then gradually be replaced by separate front-end and back-end engineers as the organisation grows.                                                                                                  

Attracting and retaining talents

This includes everything from building the employer brand and marketing specific job openings to sourcing better quality candidates to adjusting compensation/benefits and work-life balance policies to optimise retention.

Also read: What will the next wave of VC investment in HR tech look like?

Regulatory and compliance requirements

Labour laws can be quite complex from country to country. Founders need to stay informed on basic hiring and firing legal frameworks to prevent the company from encountering any lawsuits.                                                                                                                                    

Company culture, mission, vision, and values development

Setting the vision, mission and values is extremely important, as these help create the company’s culture and establish objectives and goals that help employees navigate the organisation. Unfortunately, many companies lack these core components in the early-stages as the founding team is usually too occupied with other things.               

Performance/OKR/KPI appraisal and compensation structure

Compensation and performance reviews are resource-intensive but nonetheless critical components of any growing startup.                          

Design effective training and development programmes

At a certain scale, a startup doesn’t necessarily need to go outside to seek out talents. Instead, it could facilitate internal training to upskill existing talents and cultivate leaders from within.

However, many founders are not experienced in properly assessing employee capabilities and designing training programmes for them.                               

The different types of HRs

So, you’ve started to face some HR issues as your company has grown bigger and have decided to hire a professional to give you some peace of mind. Actually, there are two types of HR professionals that you most often see in early-stage startups.

HR co-ordinator

This role takes on broader duties and responsibilities, generally encompassing the recruitment, retention, training, management and development of employees; legal issues concerning employment; and salaries and benefits design. 

Recruiter

Given the critical nature and time-intensive nature of talent sourcing, recruiters are often brought in separately to specialise in building a strong pool of candidates for hiring managers to choose from. The scope of their responsibilities include understanding the organisation’s recruitment needs, creating accurate job descriptions, posting job descriptions in different channels, and even attending career fairs or recruiting events to source for candidates.

They also conduct the initial screening interviews before passing the candidate along to the hiring manager, while also managing the job offer process and on boarding.

Also read: 4 rising HR tech startups to watch out for in Singapore

There’s no doubt you will need an HR professional in your organisation at some point. If you have strong hiring needs, and if budget allows, it is best to have at least one HR and one recruiter in an ideal HR team.

But if the budget only allows the organisation to hire one, then you should try to look for a candidate with a multi-tasking gene — that is an HR co-ordinator with a knack for marketing and sales, which are critical for acquiring talent in a competitive industry, or a recruiter with solid interpersonal communication skills, which will often be used internally for talent management and development. 

Choosing one or the other is contingent upon the individual needs of each startup. Nevertheless, no founder wants to be brought down by back office operations.

Although certainly an investment upfront, hiring a high quality HR professional can actually save a founder a lot of time, resources and headaches, particularly those on a hyper-growth trajectory.

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With the Grab-gojek merger talks hitting a roadblock over Grab CEO Antony Tan’s refusal to cede control of the combined entity, the focus has shifted to the merger discussions between Tokopedia and gojek, which have also been in the works for long.

While conversations between these three firms have happened on and off in the past, they have taken a more serious tone recently.

As per the latest report by Bloomberg, Tokopedia is in advanced talks with gojek for a US$18-billion merger deal and that the two tech giants have signed a detailed term-sheet to conduct due diligence of each other’s business.

The report suggests that Masayoshi Son, Chairman of SoftBank, which is an investor in both Grab and gojek, was forcing the two to come together but he failed to convince Tan on the benefits, which in turn is paving the way for a potential marriage between Tokopedia and gojek, Indonesia’s two most valuable startups.

Indeed, Tokopedia and gojek have been engaged in merger talks since 2018, but they gained momentum after the conversations between gojek and Grab reached an impasse.

Also Read: gojek in advanced talks with Tokopedia for a US$18B merger

While a union is still a work in progress and we don’t know yet which two entities will eventually come together, it would be interesting to examine which merger will make better business sense — Grab and gojek or Tokopedia and gojek.

First off, let’s look at the investments raised and valuation being commanded by Tokopedia and Grab.

If we look at Grab and Tokopedia from an investment and strategic points of view, both have surpassed the Series H stage. It means there is no room for the next round of funding, other than an IPO. Plus, neither is profitable as both keep investing money back into the business to further grow, expand and increase customer base.

“However, when compared to the whopping US$10.1 billion raised by Grab to date, Tokopedia’s ‘paltry’ US$2.8 billion looks way more nimble and leaves enough room for a higher valuation at IPO stage,” observed Sergei Filippov, Managing Partner of Singapore-based Morphosis Capital Partners.

Tokopedia, an e-commerce giant, has raised US$2.8 billion over multiple rounds and is currently valued at around US$7-8 billion. This means that the investors’ investments value have more than doubled (2.5-2.75x).

In comparison, Grab, which has raised US$10.1 billion till date, is valued only US$15 billion, meaning the value of the investment has increased only 1.48x.

“This is why I believe a Tokopedia-gojek potential merger holds way more business sense and provides better market value,” added Filippov, who has been closely watching the industry for long.

Incidentally, Grab Financial Group has just raised US$300 million in a funding round led by South Korea’s Hanwha Asset Management, as per a report by The Information. This could signal that the Grab’s financial arm, with all its fintech projects, may go to the IPO separately, which indicates that a Grab has no reason to merge with gojek.

“We should remember that financial services were one of the primary reasons why Grab’s valuation rose from US$3 billion in 2016 (when it was just a ride-hailing service) to US$15 billion in 2020 (when it started to offer wealth management services and insurance plans),” he shared.

Now, in terms of synergy, there is more synergy between Tokopedia’s C2C e-commerce marketplace and gojek’s ride-hailing/delivery/fintech units than between two gojek and Grab, who are direct competitors to each other.

Besides, gojek is already delivering tens of thousands of orders per day for Tokopedia, and there is a lot of on-demand products existing on both platforms; for example, one can buy gold in both gojek and Tokopedia.

“Combining e-commerce and unrivalled logistics network, the potential tech behemoth can play the role of Alibaba or Amazon for Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries,” commented Filippov.

A Tokopedia-gojek deal will also make better sense from a market point of view, as a Grab-gojek deal will only lead to a super monopoly, which will affect end-customers.

“Since SoftBank is a key shareholder in both Grab and Tokopedia, different merger talks are all about making more business sense, please investors and pose more value at a potential IPO to be a success,” according to Filippov. “We shouldn’t forget that all these different merger combinations are also there to test public opinion to estimate potential interest at the IPO stage.”

Unicorn dilemma?

Certainly, Grab, gojek and Tokopedia — all unicorns — make an interesting triangle. But, according to industry watchers, the talks among them indicate that there is a need to address the inevitable question for every tech business at this juncture of its lifecycle: where do you go from here after being coined a unicorn?

In fact, Grab, Tokopedia and gojek are from a similar cohort as Razer and Sea Group — the batch of tech startups founded from the late 2000s to early 2010s. Both Sea and Razer have graduated to the public market and demonstrated admirable success.

“Hence, many will ask whether the likes of Grab, gojek, Tokopedia and even Traveloka could follow suit, and if so, ‘when’,” said Dave Ng, General Partner of Altara Ventures.

In his view, Tokopedia and gojek could be complementary as their businesses have less competitive dynamics. They also operate in the same key market, which makes it potentially appealing to merge and create a national tech champion.

Also Read: Traveloka considers SPAC option as it plans to go public

Secondly, the marriage could create an overall business which now spans across multi-product and services categories, giving more legs to the aspiration of being a true super app.

Thirdly, from a culture and people perspectives, both companies grew up in an “Indonesian tech for Indonesia” environment, and the management of both sides haven’t really crossed swords.

“You can imagine it is likely easier to come to the table vs with someone whom you have tried to eliminate throughout your business life,” Ng opined. “However, this doesn’t automatically translate to more synergy or merit vs the case of a gojek-Grab merger. Otherwise, gojek wouldn’t have explored the option with Grab in the first place.”

Having said that, both these deals have their pros and cons. With the Grab-gojek union, there could be meaningful consolidation of market coverage, better efficiency on the costs side of equation, a combination of the strong regional talent pool and creation of an undisputed dominant player. However, these would only be achieved after considerable rationalisation across leadership, people, operations and processes.

“On the other hand, a Tokopedia-gojek combination may look appealing for various reasons. However, both companies are presumably not profitable yet. At such scale once combined and with multiple business offerings, they would need to figure out how to fund such significantly expanded operations going forward. That is not trivial,” Ng concluded.

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Lazada announced today that it has appointed founding member Magnus Ekbom as the CEO for its Malaysian operations, replacing Leo Chow. This news was first reported by DealStreetAsia.

The company has not disclosed why Chow stepped down from his role and what his new role will look like. However, it states that under Chow’s leadership, “Lazada Malaysia has seen tremendous success with record-breaking growth and achievements year-on-year.”

Nonetheless, Ekbom has been with the e-commerce company since its inception and has served as the CEO of Lazada Indonesia from 2012 until 2015.

In his new position, he will be responsible for further growing Lazada presence in Malaysia and driving its long term strategy as head of the flagship platform of Alibaba Group in Southeast Asia.

Also Read: Consumer satisfaction with Qoo10, Lazada falls on the lower end: Study

Simultaneously, the e-commerce platform has also appointed Jessica Liu as Thailand’s first female country head succeeding Jack Zhang, effective immediately. In her new role, she will continue to serve as the president of Lazada Group and head of LazMall while Zhang will be taking a regional role at the company.

Liu began her career at the publisher China Machine Press, rising to vice president of its economics and management books branch after which she decided to work in Amazon in multiple divisions. She then joined Tmall, a B2C online retail platform operated by Alibaba Group in 2012, initially leading its footwear business. She soon moved to its fast fashion and luxury apparel brands unit.

These appointments come after speculation surfaced around long-running culture clashes between Alibaba and Lazada team in June last year — a claim that was denied by Lazada spokesperson.

Founded in 2012, Lazada is an online shopping and selling e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia which is present in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The company was acquired by Alibaba Group in 2016 after it replaced its CEO with a long-standing Alibaba executive and invested US$2 billion into the business.

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Image Credit: Lazada

 

 

 

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Mynt, a Philippines-based fintech platform offering mobile payments and business loans, announced today it has raised over US$175 million in fresh capital from ASP Philippines.

ASP is a Limited Partnership fund managed by Bow Wave Capital Management, a Private Equity fund with a mandate to invest in strategic partners and investments of Ant Financial and Alibaba Group.

The new funds will go towards growing its product offerings to “further spur” the growth of financial inclusion and digitisation of payments and financial services in the Philippines.

The financing was raised in multiple tranches, with the post-money valuation of the final tranches reaching close to US$1 billion.

Also Read: Top 5 fintech predictions that will take over the world in 2021

Founded in 2015 as a partnership between Philippines’s largest telco Globe Telecom, locally-listed conglomerate Ayala Corporation, and Ant Financial, Mynt operates two fintech companies — GCash, a mobile payments service, and Fuse, a lending platform for Filipinos to get micro and business loans.

“The pandemic has acted as a catalyst in highlighting the importance of digital finance in society today and with this investment from Bow Wave, we look forward to further living out our vision of finance for all, enabling democratised access to payment and financial services to every Filipino,” said Martha Sazon, President and CEO of Mynt.

“Mynt has made great strides in the fintech space in the Philippines. Recognising this fact and our shared values, Bow Wave supports the vision of Mynt to provide finance for all Filipinos,” remarked Itai Lemberger, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Bow Wave.

As more and more Filipinos turn to digital services, GCash claimed it recorded a gross transaction value of over Php1 trillion (US$20.8 billion) in 2020, spurred by services like online payments, bank cash-in and sending money.

Also Read: GCash and Qwikwire partner to innovate real estate industry in Philippines

GCash shared it has reached over 33 million Filipinos with digital financial tools and services through its mobile wallet, using it for a variety of services including opening deposit accounts and acquiring insurance products.

“We are further encouraged by the fact that Mynt’s momentum has continued, even as the country moved out of quarantine restrictions, suggesting a fundamental shift in our customers’ behaviour towards a cashless lifestyle. We are confident in Mynt’s future prospects as a unicorn in the Philippines,” opined Ernest L. Cu, Chairman of the Board of Mynt.

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Image Credit: Mynt

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When Ox Street started, I had a co-founder for about a month — a talented and experienced product manager, who was going to take care of the tech side of things.

Unfortunately, he got an ‘offer he couldn’t refuse’ from his employer and didn’t follow through. That left me as the sole founder, in charge of finding engineers and leading the development of our product.

No problem! I thought my experience with project management and team management in general, as well as my obsession with structure and clear communication, left me well prepared. I was squarely at the peak of “Mt. Stupid”.

We ended up with a product that wasn’t ready for launch, and at the end of October 2019, I made the hard decision to launch with a Shopify storefront and an elaborate set of Google sheets and Google forms to manage our supply side. Even at that stage, I thought we were only about four weeks away from launching ‘the real thing’.

Well, as I crashed down into the “valley of despair”, we stayed about four-six weeks away from launch until we finally switched over to our own product in May 2020 — seven months later than planned.

It’s not easy to build a marketplace from scratch, it turns out, and product management is a serious job that requires both deep and broad knowledge, as well as both creativity and structured thinking.

Currently, we are shipping a daily release on oxstreet.com, and we are the only regional sneakers marketplace with mobile apps.

With our own product giving us full control over the UX for both sellers and buyers, we finally started to get traction over the past six months, and now we are processing over 5x as many orders as in our peak month on Shopify, with less than a third of the marketing spend. To be honest, I really love the PM job, and I do believe I have started my long journey up the “slope of enlightenment”.

There are endless learnings ahead, but the journey from complete zero to halfway adequate in managing a product, not to mention the satisfaction of shipping a working marketplace across three platforms, has been for my personal journey the most enlightening, frustrating and educating experience of 2020.

There is a fundamental ‘technical co-founder problem’

So much has been written about this already I’m not going to add much to it. If you want to launch a high quality product fast and it can’t be off-the-shelf, you need a technical co-founder, who is aligned with the vision and can and will code the first version themselves.

Also read: How Shopback customers help drive the company’s product development journey

This is almost impossible to find on-demand for a business founder for many reasons. My summary is: there are #1) way fewer technical co-founders around compared to business co-founders, and #2) they have their own ideas to build rather than someone else’s.

Find engineers who will talk to you

At the start, we had engineers who were unable or unwilling to explain what was really going on. After missing deadline after deadline as a founder, you crave clarity and some agency. I have rarely felt so helpless as when an engineer told me to “just trust him that he would get it done” (he didn’t).

Later, I found a great engineer who would actually just show me in the code what the problems were. That was a game changer. I finally became aware of the size and scope of the issues we had with some of our core backend services, and it enabled me to become part of the solution instead of an adversary.

Communication is probably the product manager’s most core job, but it starts with hiring engineers who communicate back.

The wireframes are wrong, the designs are wrong, and the spec is wrong

If you are the Product Owner, in the sense that you own the user stories and the vision and acceptance criteria for the product, you must really own the product. One of the key things I did wrong at the start was specifying the user stories and acceptance criteria, and then just leaving it to the engineers. That is not enough.

It takes constant alignment to make sure everyone really understands the user stories and what is expected. Also, you need to put in the work to find out where and how the specs are wrong and which cases have been forgotten.

Git Flow, Github Flow, branching, merging and shipping

Remember that as kid when you read Donald Duck, you thought quicksand would be a serious danger throughout your life? Shipping and managing merge conflicts was my quicksand, and there was a time in May/June where I was super freaked-out about it.

But every real PM I spoke with considered this something that is not even really in the scope of the PM job. They were right. It did not turn out to be a problem.

Why I thought it was going to be a massive issue is because at the time just before release, we had a develop branch that was often unstable, because many different elements were still in flux. Also, there were so many dependencies between our supposedly ‘micro services’ that often a small change would break all kinds of things all over the app.

After we had a fully featured, relatively stable version of the code, it turns out our develop branch is actually stable most of the time, and since we release (almost) daily, our releases are small and conflicts therefore pretty unlikely.

2021

I plan to continue spending 50 per cent or more on product. One of the benefits of my quantitative background is my obsession with data and measuring stuff.

By measuring and tracking conversion through our checkout funnel and making improvements based on that data, we have more than doubled our conversion rate since June. Looking to the future, there has rarely been a more exciting time to have an early-stage consumer app in the market.

Also read: Founders Series: Data driven product development

Ox Street is a leading player in one of the most rapidly growing, passion-driven product categories. And placed squarely in the centre of the great verticalisation/unbundling/re-bundling that is currently happening in online commerce. We need to follow the market, but also transition into shaping our future and defining our space ourselves. Exciting times ahead and we have lots of stuff planned for January.

Resources for product management

This is a shortlist of my personal key sources of learning. I hope others will benefit as much as I have from these:

• Lenny’s Newsletter: Without a doubt one of the best monthly subscriptions I gladly pay for. This is not just a newsletter providing one person’s opinion, but often incorporates knowledge from some of the best companies in the world. One of the best posts is free and you can find it behind the link above.
• This git guide: I actually did learn to check out, modify and merge branches on github. It is really not that hard, and it helped me a lot to understand how it all works.
• Intercom product blog: Clear, detailed, actionable. Just great deep content on how to ship a product.
• The Mom Test: I would (and have been) recommending this book to everyone who wants to learn to ask better questions and avoid inadvertently asking really bad ones. Absolutely brilliant and I wish I had discovered it earlier.
• My team, advisors, investors and friends: In particular Khoa for coming on-board and knocking it out of the park on engineering, Puli and Yan for helping with interviewing, Karthik, Honey, Mike, Andrew, Gibson, Juan, and so many others for answering my dumb questions and pointing my in the right direction.

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As we head into the new year, one question remains at the top of everyone’s minds: what will the future workplace look like?

Having lived through the biggest remote working experiment in history, many companies are now well-equipped to accommodate telecommuting arrangements.

However, as the number of COVID-19 community cases continues to remain at zero in Singapore, we see safety measures being relaxed and more people allowed back into the office. This poses yet another challenge for companies as they now need to adapt to a hybrid workforce, where only half of employees are working in the office, while the other half work from home.

For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), these frequent changes can dampen their productivity and efficiency. Compared to their larger multinational counterparts, SMEs have fewer resources, and oftentimes, employees need to wear multiple hats.

For instance, it’s not uncommon to find an administrative clerk doubling up as an office manager due to limitations in manpower. Thus, these frequent changes in workplace regulations can disrupt their daily duties, causing a dip in productivity and efficiency.

Moreover, through working with our clients and staff, we noticed that having the right digital tools is not enough to keep companies nimble and quick to adapt to today’s ever-changing work environment. Instead, there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the business operates.

To help SMEs tide through the crisis, we have found three proven business methodologies that SMEs can implement to stay leaner, operate at faster speeds, and be more agile. These methods include Parkinson’s Law, Kanban Board and the Agile Method.

Parkinson’s law

According to Parkinson’s Law, any given task requires as much time as it is permitted. Simply put, if you’re given two weeks to complete an assignment, you’ll most likely take the full two weeks to finish it, even though it could’ve been done in five days.

Now, imagine the amount of time you could have saved if the deadline was reduced by half! Thus, Parkinson’s law forces leaders to question how they set their deadlines and rethink how to best manage projects.

There are many ways SMEs can implement Parkinson’s Law in their business methodology. For starters, try cutting all allotted time for tasks and meetings by 50 per cent. Chances are you’ll find that many of these tasks can be accomplished in half the time.

Also read: 7 ways to increase productivity at work

However, if you find that the new deadline is too short, you can always extend it as you see fit. The key here is to experiment in searching for the optimal deadline times.

Parkinson’s law is especially relevant in today’s hybrid workforce, where physical oversight is virtually impossible. Leaders can’t stand over the shoulders of a team member as tasks are being performed, and hence implementing Parkinson’s Law can help to reduce time wasted on tasks.

Kanban Board

Kanban has slowly but surely become one of the most popular methodologies in modern business. This is because Kanban is a very visually representative methodology, requiring a big board either physically or digitally.

At its core, Kanban starts with three columns labelled “requested”, “doing”, and “done”. Each card is passed through the columns as it gets completed, but the kicker is the limit for each column. This forces teams to address problems if a card is stuck in “doing” for too long, creating a bottleneck for the next series of “requested” cards.

Many of today’s most popular productivity applications such as Lark have Kanban capabilities built-in, allowing users to quickly implement this methodology on a company-wide scale, departmental level or even on an individual level.

The Kanban is an effective method to help you understand issues your organisation may have with existing processes. The visual nature of Kanban means that you will naturally recognise bottlenecks when you see a column where tasks arrive faster than they leave and allow you to take appropriate steps to deal with the issue.

Furthermore, the strict work-in-progress limits imposed by the Kanban Board also push you to focus on completing existing tasks before taking on more.

Agile method

The last methodology is the agile method, which emphasises delivering products or outcomes in small increments. This incremental delivery comes with many advantages, as it allows teams to bring new products to the market faster, incorporate feedback along the way, and easily experiment with new features.

With the agile method, teams are also encouraged to continually test out new ways to see what does and does not work. This makes the agile method suitable for an environment where change is constant, such as in a post COVID-19 world, and helps teams remain nimble and adapt quickly.

Also read: How to manage energy and improve your productivity

While startups and computer software companies would be most familiar with this method, it’s starting to gain popularity in other industries as well. SMEs can also stand to benefit from the agile method, as its incremental approach allows companies to pivot quickly according to changes in the environment or market.

Overall, these three methodologies can be adapted and scaled depending on the size of the company. However, it’s crucial to note that above all, embracing change is key in today’s uncertain world. Whether that change stems from adopting one of these methodologies or from one of the dozens across the ecosystem, the process differs from business to business.

Finally, while we may not be able to predict how the future of workplace looks like, one thing is for certain: the way we work and collaborate has changed and will never go back to exactly how it was.

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Nusantics, an Indonesian genomics technology startup, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding, led by East Ventures.

The money will be used to further enhance its R&D capability to improve its microbiome analysis and medical diagnostic kits.

Additionally, Nusantics has roped in Triawan Munaf, a Venture Advisor at East Ventures, as its Commissioner. A former Indonesian cabinet member under President Jokowi, Munaf is currently President Commissioner of flag carrier Garuda Indonesia.

The funding news comes less than a year after East Ventures led the biotech startup’s seed funding round. The VC firm said the fresh financing is a result of the “strong growth” and “swift response” by Nusantics to disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nusantics was started 2019 with the ever growing belief in the importance of microbiome balance in life, that is focused in providing sustainable solutions by integrating science and nature​. ​

Despite its core focus on microbiome research, the biotech startup repurposed its capability to develop COVID-19 test kits that can detect mutations of the coronavirus, including the recent UK strain.

The firm said it has partnered with state-owned biotech firm Bio Farma to produce up to three million test kits per month. First-generation test kits were also distributed to 19 provinces across Indonesia as part of the Pasti Bisa movement, a collaborative effort by East Ventures to stem the rise of the virus-19 cases in Indonesia.

Also Read: Startup of the Month, December: Biopharma company Krosslinker

Plans are underway to develop a third-generation test kit that can detect the coronavirus through salivary samples.

“We plan to develop a new test kit that can detect the COVID-19 virus in a salivary sample. This will be more efficient, less painful for users, and safer for medical practitioners. Saliva will also make infectious and less-infectious detection possible,” shared Revata Utama, CTO of Nusantics.

Last year, the startup opened Nusantics Hub in Jakarta, which it claims is the first skin microbiome laboratory in the archipelago that provides testing and consulting services for skin microbiome balance treatment.

“Indonesia’s rich biodiversity makes it the ‘world’s pharmacy’. We must protect the future of our future generations by preserving this biodiverse wealth and preventing exploitation for other interests that do not benefit us as a nation. This underlines the urgency to support the growth of startups like Nusantics, who possess expertise in this preservation,” Munaf remarked.

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Image Credit: Nusantics

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Poema Global Holdings, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) focusing on tech firms in Asia and Europe, has announced it has raised US$300 million in its IPO on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

The capital stems from pricing 30 million units at US$10 each, with each unit consisting of one share of common stock and one-half of a warrant, redeemable at US$11.50. The company offered five million more units than anticipated.

The units is listed on the NASDAQ Capital Market and is traded under the ticker symbol “PPGHU” beginning January 6, 2021.

The offering is expected to close on January 8, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Led by Emmanuel DeSousa and Joaquin Rodriguez Torres, Co-founders and Managing Partners of Princeville Capital, the SPAC intends to focus on highly-scalable tech companies with high growth rates and sound unit economics across Asia and Europe.

Princeville Capital is a San Francisco-based venture investment firm founded in 2017. With offices in Berlin and Hong Kong, the firm has over US$1 billion in capital under management and 13 active portfolio companies.

Also Read: David Gowdey of Jungle Ventures: Why we will see an IPO from SEA in the next 12-18 months

As per Investopedia, SPAC is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO to acquire an existing company. They are also known as blank-check companies.

While the concept has been around in the market for many years and is used as a mechanism to bring companies public in the US, it has been relatively new to Asia, where companies are yet to jump on the SPAC bandwagon.

This news comes amidst the growing popularity of SPACs as an option to go public for startups within the region.

“A SPAC is one of the options we are evaluating given we have been approached by a few,” Traveloka President Henry Hendrawan said in a statement in response to a Reuters report that it was evaluating a merger with a SPAC as a possible listing option.

Also Read: Traveloka considers SPAC option as it plans to go public

Earlier, Bridgetown 2 Holdings, a SPAC targeting internet economy companies in Southeast Asia and backed by billionaires Peter Thiel and Richard Li, announced last month that it was seeking to raise US$200 million in an IPO in the US.

In an interview with e27, experts commented that the SPAC model that the company is implementing can be “an alternative” way to fundraise for startups in SEA.

“Having seen the more than 100 SPACs emerge in North America earlier in 2020, we are not surprised to see this new SPAC coming out to focus on Southeast Asia. We welcome this initiative, which will provide an alternative path to liquidity and access to public markets for one or more rising tech, financial services or media company in the region,” said Sanjay Zimmermann, Senior Associate at White Star Capital.

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gojek in advanced talks with Tokopedia for a US$18B merger; They’ve signed a detailed term-sheet to conduct due diligence of each other’s business; gojek and Tokopedia have considered a potential merger since 2018, but discussions accelerated after deal talks between gojek and Grab reached an impasse. More here

gojek, Tokopedia make not-so-strange bedfellows as they pursue union; Having an e-commerce biz in its portfolio would broaden gojek’s appeal to public market investors; For Tokopedia, a merger would help command a higher valuation in the capital markets and pose stronger competition to Shopee; The combined entity spanning ride-hailing, payments, e-commerce, and food delivery could raise larger pools of capital at faster pace in the public markets. More here

GoBear shuts down amidst decreased demand for its financial products, services; To date, the startup has raised US$97M from investors such as Walvis Participaties and Aegon; Last May, it acquired digital lending platform AsiaKredit; As of May 2020, GoBear had 100+ commercial partners and its services were used by over 55M people. More here

Conglomerate Malaysian United Industries (MUI) to step up focus on startup investments; It created an early-stage VC vehicle Pan Malaysia Ventures in Aug 2020; MUI aims to invest in tech or tech-enabled businesses at the seed or Series A stage, primarily in Malaysia, and also across SEA; It has no immediate plans of raising from external investors as it will invest from its balance sheet. More here

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Indonesian robo-advisory platform Bibit snags US$30M; Investors are Sequoia India, East Ventures, EV Growth, 500 Startups; In 2020, the company claims to have added 1M+ first-time investors; As per a report, the number of retail investors in the country grew by 56% y-o-y in 2020, mainly driven by millennials. More here

Europe- and Asia-focused SPAC Poema Global raised US$300M in US IPO; Peoma plans to list on NASDAQ; The SPAC seeks to complete business combinations with firms that have validated technologies and attractive unit economics, with a particular focus on Europe and Asia. More here

Genomics tech startup Nusantics raises Series A led by East Ventures; The Indonesian firm will use the funding to continue to innovate in the field of microbiome analysis and medical diagnostic kits; The company is currently developing its third-generation COVID-19 PCR test kit that can detect SARS-CoV-2 in a salivary sample. More here

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Singaporeans working for top e-commerce firms are the most unsatisfied in SEA despite higher salaries, finds study; The iPrice study also finds that that only 31% of women occupy C-level roles within e-commerce companies in the region; Overall, there is a 60-40 disparity between men and women when it comes to being in positions of power. More here

Bullish VCs spot big promise in Vietnam’s e-logistics; Logistics is in its preparatory phase with a lot of untapped potential and will explode by 2022, according to Do Ventures’s Vy Le; Given there is an increasing demand in domestic consumption for foreign goods, both first-mile and last-mile activities in Vietnam are expected to become more vibrant. More here

Heritas Capital aims to hit initial close of US$30M fund II in H1 2021; HVF II aims to invest in up to 15 seed and Series A startups in sectors ranging from foodtech to edutech across Asia; The VC firm recently led a US$3M Series A+ in Indonesian edutech Cakap. More here

Singapore emerges as foodtech hub, thanks to state support; The city-state has positioned foodtech as a key industry deserving of support from state entities from the R&D stage all the way to market entry and sales; It has strong IP rights protection and a highly skilled talent pool. More here

Singapore-based AI food ingredient analysis platform ProfilePrints secures 7-figure pre-Series A; Investors include SEEDS Capital, Glocalink, Leave-a-Nest, BP de Silva Group; ProfilePrints allows food growers, collectors, wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers to predict quality profiles without human intervention or destroying the sample. More here

Malaysian lifestyle social commerce platform Poptron raises US$1M from a NASDAQ-listed co.; It’s planning to raise an additional US$375K via pitchIN; Poptron connects microbrands selling high-quality, natural and eco-friendly products or artisanal goods with like-minded global users. More here

Top 5 fintech predictions that will take over the world in 2021; Digital banking is gaining immense popularity; The main reason for this evolution is that it provides customer due diligence and also eliminates tedious verification processes based on paperwork and visiting banks physically. More here

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How blockchain can help combat ongoing fraud in the Halal food industry in SEA; By using blockchain, the food industry can now ensure that the food sold is traceable back to the source; Food fraud typically involves mislabeling or using fake labels, as in the case of the Malaysian Halal meat scandal. More here

Tribecar partners with Carro, NTUC Income to launch usage-based motor insurance in S’pore; Unlike conventional fixed costs auto insurance premiums, usage-based insurance charges are tied to the vehicle’s mileage, location and timing consumption; Tribecar has adopted this insurance programme, allowing it to provide car-sharing rentals from US$0.38 per hour. More here

Digital trends that will transform SEA businesses in 2021; Virtual onboarding and training of staff, interacting and working with customers remotely, and enabling digital communications for customers and stakeholders will be critical. More here

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The new ‘self-service’ era: where B2B selling is headed in 2021; B2B buyers have come to crave the ‘Amazon-like’ experience they’ve become accustomed to in their personal lives; Sellers need to make info around product details and purchasing methods clear right on their e-commerce platform to provide a seamless shopping experience. More here

Singapore-New Zealand digital economy partnership takes effect; It allows companies in both countries to conduct biz with greater efficiency, increased trust, reduced costs or digital barriers; It will also facilitate cooperation among SMEs, with capacity-building efforts and dialogues held to promote info sharing and exchange. More here

Temasek-backed ABC World Asia leads Series C round in Indian farm-tech startup CropIn; Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan’s family office and UK’s CDC Group also joined; The AI startup provides SaaS products to farms and development organisations globally to improve predictability, efficiency and sustainability of crops; CropIn has raised $33.1 million so far. More here

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Zenius, an Indonesia-based edutech company focusing on developing critical thinking and scientific reasoning, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series B investment.

The money came from new investors such as Alpha JWC Ventures and Openspace Ventures and existing backers, including Northstar Group, Kinesys and BeeNext.

Zenius plans to use the funds to further develop its platform to “meet the growing customer demand”.

The latest round comes less than a year after it secured US$20 million in Series A from Northstar in February 2020.

Also Read: Why digital capabilities aren’t fully deployed in the education sector

Founded in 2004 by Sabda PS and Medy Suharta, Zenius has developed  a mobile app offering a series of products across different verticals. The app focuses on K12 students and claims to have over 90,000 concept videos and more than a hundred thousand practice questions.

Zenius claimed it experienced strong growth in 2020 with revenues increasing over 70 per cent in the second half of the year, compared to the same period in 2019. User growth increased by over 10X from its launch of its live classes in March 2020, with user retention rate at over 90 per cent.

“Zenius has demonstrated over a decade of track record in proven learning outcomes while reinventing the core offering as new mediums have emerged. We believe its proven track record will be a key differentiating factor in the rapidly evolving education landscape and we hope that the fresh round of funding will propel its growth further,” said Ian Sikora, Director at Openspace Ventures.

Also Read: Zenius raises US$20M from Northstar

“In line with our purpose of bringing Indonesia’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) competence to the global level, we continue to work around the clock to develop new features that will help students to get the best learning outcomes through our technology,” added Rohan Monga, Zenius CEO since 2019 and previously COO of gojek.

The edutech startup offered most of its services for free during the first half of 2020 to support the Indonesian government’s learn-from-home initiatives during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Image Credit: Zenius

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