Lim Kaling, who was the founding investor in Razer back in 2005, announced today he has decided to exit his investment in Virginia Tobacco Company in Myanmar.

He is selling his one-third stake in a joint venture that owns RMH Singapore, a tobacco company which in turn owns 49 per cent of Virginia Tobacco.

Virginia Tobacco is the market leader, which employs nearly 1,000 people and counts army-owned Myanmar Economic Holdings among its backers.

The development comes against the backdrop of the recent events in the Southeast Asian country.

In a press note, Kaling, who is a member of the Razer board, said: “I have been closely monitoring the situation in Myanmar and the recent events there cause me grave concern. I am therefore exploring options for the responsible disposal of this stake.”

Also Read: How the coup d’état would play out for Myanmar’s startup ecosystem

Lim shared the aim of the joint venture he started in 1993 with a friend was to address an economic opportunity in Myanmar as the country was opening up. He had hoped that through his venture, they would be able to help the country spur economic growth and create jobs to raise the standard of living.

“I wish the people of Myanmar a smooth, non-violent journey as they resolve differences in their society for a better future for all, and I hope for a time when I can be an investor in the country and its people once more,” he added.

Meanwhile, The Straits Times has reported that an online petition has been launched by Change.org calling for “Remove Lim Kaling from the Razer board unless he ends business w/ the Myanmar military now”, which had 851 signatures as of 9.24 am SGT on Tuesday.

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East Ventures, an active early-stage VC firm based in Indonesia, has appointed Koh Wai Kit as its new Venture Partner.

Wai Kit brings with him a wealth of experience working in the senior leadership roles at several prominent VC firms.

Wai Kit was an early founding member of Pavilion Capital, where he spearheaded its investments in China, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia.

Also Read : Founders should be able to back up their ideas with sales: Golden Gate’s newly-appointed Principal Jeffrey Chua

He has also served in the investment, strategy and portfolio management functions at Temasek Holdings.

A graduate of the University Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wai Kit was also a member of the Singapore Administrative Service where he was involved in public policy formulation and implementation.

“Wai Kit is a quick-witted thinker with a great deal of empathy, sharing the same core value we hold at East Ventures. We welcome him to our team and are looking forward to work together to grow the platform for all our stakeholders,” said Willson Cuaca, co-founder and Managing Partner at East Ventures.

Founded in 2009, East Ventures has supported more than 170 companies across Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. It is also an early investor in Indonesian unicorns Tokopedia and Traveloka.

Other notable companies in East Ventures’s portfolio include Mercari, Ruangguru, Warung Pintar, Fore Coffee, Kudo (acquired by Grab), Loket (acquired by gojek), TechInAsia, Xendit, IDN Media, MokaPOS, ShopBack, CoHive, Koinworks, Waresix, and Sociolla.

In 2018, East Ventures set up a growth-stage fund, called EV Growth, to further support and capitalise on the development of their ecosystem. The US$250-million fund has since invested in more than 12 companies.

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Image Credit: East Ventures

 

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Philippine fintech startup Ayannah, which is backed by the likes of Wavemaker Partners, 500 Startups and Golden Gate Ventures, is seeking to raise Series B round of funding to fuel its future expansion into Vietnam and India, its founder and CEO Mikko Perez told e27.

Headquartered in Metro Manila, Ayannah aims to provide digital financial services to the middle-class in emerging markets — by partnering with financial companies to launch services on their behalf.

To date, the company has raised over US$9 million from two funding rounds — seed in 2013 and Series A in 2015.

“Apart from cash, there are three key attributes we are looking for in prospective investors: 1) domain knowledge/expertise in fintech, 2) business synergies through both global and local connections and 3) alignment in terms of business strategy, current and future valuation expectations, and exit strategy,” Perez said.

According to Fitch Ratings, there are 290 million unbanked population in Southeast Asia. This has created a financial divide as only 18 per cent of the region’s population has access to credit. Due to the lack of bank accounts and the relevant financial data that comes with it, the majority of middle-class and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) within the region do not have access to products and services offered by traditional financial institutions such as banks.

This has created an opportunity for alternative platforms such as Ayannah to step in and provide digital financial services for the unbanked population. The startup is driving the effort within the Philippines and has its sights set on expanding in the region.

Founded in 2010 by Perez, Ayannah has developed two products — Sendah Direct and Sendah Remit.

While Sendah Direct is a B2B2C SaaS platform that allows partners to provide remittance, payment, loans and insurance services to unbanked customers, the latter is a “bank-grade” SaaS platform that allows consumers and businesses to send and receive cash transfers in an interoperable network.

According to Perez, the company recently partnered with Philippine microfinancing institution CARD to launch digital lending services for its seven million members.

Open Banking

Besides providing digital financial services to companies, Ayannah also runs a data analytics credit-scoring platform (Kaya) that leverages the concept of Open Banking.

For the uninitiated, the idea of Open Banking revolves around banks securely sharing financial data with other financial companies to enable the latter to understand their customers better and offer more personalised products.

Previously, when consumer financial data was stored in silos, financial companies like P2P lending platforms had difficulty verifying a customer’s credit history, thus restricting access to any potential loans.

However, with Open Banking, this problem is solved as companies can leverage shared financial data to accurately verify their users’ credit history and extend loans to them.

Also Read: How startups can aid Southeast Asia’s Open Banking landscape

The Kaya Credit platform also helps partner financial institutions such as insurers and asset managers better understand their customers through the process of eKYC (electronic know your customer), enabling firms to offer more personalised products. Besides, it helps companies unlock access to a larger group of eligible customers, helping them increase sales more efficiently.

“We have revenue-sharing agreements based on transaction fees (either a percentage of the principal amount processed or a flat transaction fee),” shared Perez, a former investment banker at JP Morgan.

The bulk of Ayannah’s revenue stems from its remittance and payments services, although the company has noticed an increasing amount coming from from its lending and e-commerce platforms. “We are expecting more revenues to come from Insurance as a Service and Investing as a Service in the near future too,” he added.

Potential for growth

In documents shared with e27, Ayannah reported 8x growth in gross transaction volume (GTV) y-o-y for its domestic remittance and digital payments service. The company also noted it processed over 11 million transactions from 2.3 million users in 2020, bringing in over US$43 million in GTV.

While there is no generalised forecast for the Open Banking industry within Southeast Asia, the e-Conomy SEA report reveals that digital payments (including remittances) will grow from US$600 billion in 2019 to US$1.2 trillion in 2025, with digital lending increasing from US$23 billion in 2019 to US$92 billion in 2025.

“This growth in digital financial services is a combination of volume converting from legacy/offline financial services as well as the new volume that will be generated as the middle class and SME segment in SEA grows,” Perez opined as he shares Ayannah is looking to expand regionally to capture the lucrative opportunity.

Also Read: 2021: Predicting another bumper (un)predictable year for payments

The company has secured licensing by the Indonesian Monetary Authority (OJK) and has started providing lending as a service for local financial companies from November 2020.

Moving forward, Ayannah plans to venture into providing insurance and investment solutions targeting the local unbanked population of over 139 million.

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Image Credit: Ayannah

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Avion School, a Philippine edutech startup focusing on software development education, announced today it has secured funding from Y Combinator after being accepted into the global technology accelerator programme.

The edutech startup shared that being accepted into Y Combinator allows it to tap into a global network of companies hiring software engineers. Avion had previously raised a pre-seed round from angel investors, including Justin Mateen, Co-founder of Tinder.

Launched in 2020 by Victor Rivera (CEO) and John Young (COO), Avion is an online school that teaches Filipinos to become remote software engineers globally. Students can sign up for a 12-week course that teaches them the engineering stack and skills required by software developer roles.

The startup also provides career placement support to ensure students are able to secure jobs upon completion of the course.

Since launching last May, Avion has kicked off seven batches of students and partnered with over 80 companies globally, including Xendit, PayMongo and Pulley. Avion claims its graduates have gotten salaries at least 40 per cent higher than the market average, with some students seeing their salaries go up by as much as 5x.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Tinder co-founder invests in Avion School that helps ‘Filipinos become software engineers in 12 weeks‘

The Filipino startup shared the fundamental problem it is trying to solve stems from the after-effects of a traditional computer science degree. Students are forced to pay an increasing amount of tuition every year for education that does not prepare them for real-world skills that can help them land high-paying jobs. This forces them to shift over to alternative career paths outside of software development, which Avion claims pay more.

Avion claims its curriculum bridges updated engineering stacks required by startups with “traditional instructional design”. Besides, the school has an Income Share Agreement where the program’s participants do not need to pay the course fees until they are hired.

“The reality is that hiring engineers is difficult because not enough people are trained with the skills required to build tech products. This is a huge opportunity to solve considering there are 3.5 million people in Southeast Asia trained in technical software development skills,” noted Rivera.

“We believe in the potential of Filipino developers and want to showcase that to the world. Focusing on finding and upskilling the supply of talent in the Philippines is also ideal because we have a population of 100 million that are dominantly English speaking and a service-based economy. In essence, we’re building ‘Call Center 2.0’ but with software engineering talent,” he added.

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Image Credit: Avion School

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As Singapore aims to become a regional tech hub, the city-state is reportedly facing a severe talent crunch with more firms moving in. Japan’s dire talent shortage is also known to all and the boom in the startup ecosystem is only making it worse. Talent crunch is a challenge faced by startups not only in Singapore and Japan but all over the region and even globally. According to a 2019 Robert Walters study, in Southeast Asia alone, close to 70 per cent of hiring managers took at least three months to fill an open tech position.

As technologies advance and we move towards a more high-tech digital world, a new skill set is required every day. The job scene has never been more dynamic and we are all struggling to keep up. This affects businesses in that they are unable to take off with projects due to the sheer lack of the right kind of engineers they need. After all, when starting a new business, one of the first things that companies look for is a reliable team of well-trained professionals. However, for startups, it is not easy to find industry experts to run their teams and help them with projects.

Also read: RESC: Promoting sustainability with an IoT battery platform for e-mobility and smart grid

To address this global challenge, startup studios like Tokyo-based GaoGao are stepping up and creating platforms of experienced, well-trained professionals such as startup engineers that can help these businesses take off.

After working for over 10 years in the software industry as an engineer with reputed companies like IBM and LINE, Takuya Tejima decided to take the entrepreneurial route along with co-founder Kenichi Mizuhata. Mizuhata brings in over 11 years of experience in securities and financial services. Together, they established GAOGAO: a startup studio that matches startup engineers to innovators in Japan and across Southeast Asia. Today, with 48 studio members, 25 studio projects. and four startup investments, GaoGao has clients all over the world, including Singapore, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, Tokyo, and the USA.

Bringing in industry experts to help out new businesses take off

GaoGao is helping companies in Japan and across the region take off by basically building a platform of startup engineers for companies looking to start a new business or seeking to undergo digital transformation.

GaoGao is a community-driven ecosystem with coliving and coworking spaces in four different countries across the region. They regularly conduct tech events — both online and offline — to promote networking and partnerships within and across different sectors. To facilitate better collaborations and encourage interactions within key stakeholders, GaoGao has 24/7 online communication channels.

Studies have proven that the right training and good mentorship are key to business growth and scalability. With a knowledge-centric approach, GaoGao conducts internal training programs and team-building seminars. What further makes this startup studio unique is the fact that most of its members come with startup experience. From CTOs to CEOs and founders to investors, they have quite the talent pool when it comes to startup engineers.

Also read: User acquisition strategies to grow your app from Adjust and ironSource

GaoGao’s startup engineers offer end-to-end support to projects by getting involved right at the conceptualisation stage and sticking around till the execution stage. With a rich background in product development and accumulated assets, GaoGao’s engineers are able to deliver an operation-level quality product within three months starting from the specification development phase.

To provide maximum flexibility and support, especially to early-stage startups, GaoGao also offers equity-based payment options. Under this model, companies that do not have the cash but are in need of the studio’s resources can pay them in shares instead.

Ushering towards a digital tomorrow and enabling businesses to future-proof

GaoGao also helps companies in the journey of digital transformation. Led by senior engineers with extensive experiences in enterprise development, this is a dedicated team called GaoGao’s Dx Studio.

From the user hearing stage to implementation, their engineers stand by a startup and help them embrace digital solutions so they can be future-ready. They offer a wide range of services, including CRM development, as well as data infra construction and analysis. This not only helps digitise the operations but also enables companies to leverage data to offer better customer engagement, personalised services, and more.

GaoGao also offers AI and machine learning solutions to help startups drive business operations and improve value more efficiently. Additionally, GaoGao has a dedicated creative design team that offers a wide range of services and solutions, such as website designing, UI/UX and more.

Also read: How collaborations between these Facebook communities yield better impact

With this suite of expert solutions and services, GaoGao is aiming to help businesses not only in Japan but all over the region, realise their dream projects and take a step closer to the future. Startup founders and other stakeholders are already seeing a lot of value in what GaoGao has to offer and it is evident through their multiplying revenues. Their monthly sales value is expected to cross 200K USD in just two years of business.

Currently, they are looking at expanding into Singapore and seeking partners there. They are also planning to invest in startups starting this year. If you want to learn more about them, visit https://en.gaogao.asia

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by 
JETRO

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