Australia-based law firm Allens today announced the seven startups that have joined its legal tech accelerator, Auctus, of which two hail from Southeast Asia.

Allens — which has offices in Singapore, Thailand and Indonesia — said it received more than 120 applications for its 8-week virtual accelerator.

The final seven were chosen from a shortlist of 15 who pitched their startups to a panel of judges.

The two startups from Southeast Asia are inPact.ai, a Singapore-based AI-powered enterprise software platform that turns contracts into structured and analysable data to uncover new business insights; and Avvoka, a startup with offices in London and Singapore implementing document automation, negotiation and analytics tools for in-house legal, law firms and business teams.

The chosen startups will work with mentors and experts from Allens on their legal, growth and innovation strategies as well as attend masterclasses, test and receive feedback on their products from the firm. They will also have the opportunity to participate in facilitated strategic introductions to Allens’s networks.

Also Read: Legaltech on blockchain is set to be the next hot investment sector. Here’s why

Selected startups may have opportunities to discuss further strategic engagement with the firm or potential investors at the conclusion of the accelerator.

“Our first cohort of startups impressed us with the potentially transformative solutions they’re building to some of the most pressing issues faced by our firm and our clients,” said Penelope Barr, Allens’s Head of Legal Product Lab.

“We are excited by the potential of our first group of startups to not only add to our own legal tech offering but to meaningfully contribute to the Australian legal landscape more broadly,” she added.

“When startups stand on the shoulders of a giant like Allens, they both see further and get to their destinations faster, and I’m looking forward to watching the journey unfold with the crop of startups that were selected,” said Steve Glaveski, CEO of innovation consulting firm Collective Campus, which partnered with the law firm to help attract and source for potential accelerator candidates.

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Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working on verifying the investors on the e27 platform.

Being a verified investor means that there are people managing the investor profile in an official capacity. More than just reassurance that these are legitimate investor profiles, it also means that e27 Pro members can directly engage with these investors via the Connect feature.

Check out these ten verified investors that you can connect with for advice, mentorship, and fundraising opportunities”

Peng Ventures
Stages: Seed, Pre-Series A / Bridge, Series A
Verticals: Transportation, Travel
Investment Range: Not Specified
Straight from Peng Ventures:
Peng Ventures is a venture builder that creates, invests, or acquires, and thereafter operates businesses in the tourism and hospitality industry in Bangkok. We focus on business models that have the potential to turn profitable quickly and return the invested capital quickly.
Connect with them

Fosun Capital
Stages: Stages Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C & Above
Verticals: Advertising, Biotech, Entertainment, Healthtech, Internet of Things
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from Forsun Capital: Fosun RZ Capital has over 10 billion RMB AUM. As one of the most globalized venture capital platforms in China, RZ Capital is committed to investing in high-growth, high-tech companies in major economic growth regions and has fostered innovation ecosystems around the world, with offices in China, United States, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and Nigeria.
Connect with them

PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub
Stages: Series A, Series B
Verticals: All / Any
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub: Working closely together with motivated entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, incubators and accelerators, PwC Singapore’s Venture Hub adopts a one-stop shop approach to providing solutions and services to help businesses build resilience, achieve sustainable growth and expand into key markets.

Complex regulations, stiff competition as well as expectations from investors, industry partners and other stakeholders are common challenges in this rapidly developing ecosystem.

Tapping on our global network and deep industry knowledge, we can provide a suite of tailored advisory services for both startups and investors to help spur innovation and expedite growth, while enabling your business to remain competitive and compliant.
Connect with them

Vertical Health Accelerator
Stages: Seed
Verticals: Food & Beverage, Healthtech, Mobile, Sports
Investment Range: USD 0 – USD 150K
Straight from Vertical Health Accelerator: Our modern digital world is fast-paced, and there’s no prize for standing still. To keep moving forward, companies need adaptable strategies for output and internal development as well as for partnerships, mergers, and acquisitions. You can rely on our team to navigate your business towards growth. Our expertise will help you develop the strategies you need, collaborate with the best partners, and make the right deals.
Connect with them

Raffles Venture Partners Pte Ltd
Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C & Above
Verticals: Advertising, Consumer, Cybersecurity, Enterprise Solution, Healthtech, Media, Medtech, Robotics, Travel
Investment Range: USD 200K – USD 5M
Straight from Raffles Venture Partners Pte Ltd: Raffle Venture Partners is a Singapore-based venture capital company that specialises in late stage investments.
Connect with them

NTT Docomo Ventures
Stages: Seed, Pre-Series A / Bridge, Series A, Series B, Series C & Above
Verticals: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Big Data, Cybersecurity, Education, Enterprise Solution, Finance, Healthtech, Internet of Things, Media, Platform, Robotics, Software as a Service, Virtual Reality
Investment Range: USD 500K – USD 5M
Straight from NTT Docomo Ventures: NTT DOCOMO Ventures is the gateway for the startup and venture community in NTT Group. We are rapidly enhancing our innovation of various services, technology, and processes. We also bring together people of diverse interests in order to create new infrastructure.

We offer strong business support and collaboration for the passionate and creative people working at startups everywhere. By shoring up our efforts together, we will create new value that changes established thinking around the world.
Connect with them

AgFunder
Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
Verticals: Agritech, Food & Beverage
Investment Range: USD 200K – USD 800K
Straight from AgFunder: Based in Silicon Valley, AgFunder is a new kind of venture capital firm built on proprietary technology and a global ecosystem of over 85,000 subscribers. We invest in exceptional and bold founders who are committed to building the next generation of agrifood technology companies that will transform our food system. We are one of the most active agrifood tech investors in the world and our mentor network represents some of the most successful executives and founders in the industry.
Connect with them

Rocket Equities
Stages: Private Equity
Verticals: E-commerce, Finance, Information & Communications Technology, Logistics/Supply Chain, Sports
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from Rocket Equities: Rocket Equities is a mid-market M&A advisory firm based in the Netherlands and the Philippines. We consult with fast-growing companies in Europe and Asia to provide the strategy, capital raising, M&A, and digital transformation services.
Connect with them

Marsh Pte Ltd
Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C & Above
Verticals: Biotech, Energy, Finance, Food & Beverage, Mobile
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from Marsh Pte Ltd: Mercer Marsh Benefits is a combination of Mercer and Marsh local offices around the world.
Connect with them

Corwin Asset Management
Stages: Series A, Series B
Verticals: Biotech, Energy, Finance, Food & Beverage, Mobile
Investment Range: USD 25K – USD 1.5M
Straight from Corwin Asset Management: In Corwin Group, we have 3 major businesses pillars to support as our core business, which are Property, Investment and Trade.

For Property, we get involved in whole property chain from acquisition, development, construction, renovation, interior design, property funding, marketing, management, selling, letting and renting for our own assets, stakeholders and investor’s properties.
Connect with them

Watch out for more announcements of new verified investors (yes, there is more!). If you’re an investor and looking to get verified, find out how here.

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Member.id, an Indonesian-based marketing and tech firm focusing on loyalty services, announced today it has secured US$1.1 million in a Series A round, led by East Ventures with a strategic investment from travel giant Traveloka.

The funds will help it scale its content creation capabilities by bringing in more resources and talent, and create a “more diverse” library of digital content.

The startup also announced Luna Maya, a popular local actress and entrepreneur, has joined it as Managing Partner.

In addition to this, the Jakarta-headquartered startup announced its expansion into the creator economy with the addition of ‘Travel Secrets’, a travel content platform. ‘Travel Secrets’ will be part of a new content production division, called TS Media.

Member.id claims TS Media allow brands and companies to tap into Indonesia’s growing creator economy by equipping them with the necessary technology and expertise.

Also Read: Superfanz: Growing visibility for creators in the wake of COVID-19

Launched in 2014, Member.id provides strategy consulting, data analytics and tech solutions for enterprise clients to drive customer retention. On the other hand, its TS Media division is focussed on creating content to raise awareness, driving up customer acquisition for businesses.

“We are now able to offer clients and brands an end-to-end marketing solution from awareness, aspiration, activation, to retention and referrals. By creating quality content across several digital platforms, we have expanded our ability to create beyond travel-related content but have diversified into other areas including culinary, sports and lifestyle,” said Marianne Rumantir, CEO and Co-founder of Member.id.

“We are expanding and creating new programmes with new talent to cater to different audiences. This opens up more opportunities for new brands across different industries to work with us,” she added.

Meanwhile, Member.id noted the strategic investment from Traveloka brings in the unicorn’s extensive networks of merchants and business opportunities for the company.

Also Read: Innovate and go: How Traveloka revamps its services to comply with changing travel behaviour 

“The pandemic has triggered a behaviour change among consumers, in which they spend significantly more time viewing social media content. By creating content that is geared towards domestic tourism, we can be a significant force in driving additional demand for Traveloka,” said Robert Tedja, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Member.id.

Fuelled by the country’s high mobile penetration rates, the creator economy is flourishing in Indonesia. According to App Annie, Indonesians spend an average of 5.2 hours per day on mobile in 2020, the highest in the world.

“As we start living in the post-pandemic era, we are witnessing the shift of media consumption. One of the key trends is the rise of the creator economy, which is the extension of Member.id’s customer management solution,” said Willson Cuaca, Cco-founder and Managing Partner of East Ventures.

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Image Credit: Member.id

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India-based Zolve raises US$15M led by Accel, Lightspeed

Investors: Blume Ventures, Dr. Ashish Gupta (ex-Helion MD), Greg Kidd (angel investor in Twitter), Kunal Shah (founder of Cred), Rahul Mehta (Managing Partner at DST Global), and Rahul Kishore (Senior Managing Director, Coatue Capital), and Founder Collective.

What the funding will be used for: Product enhancement, hiring, and marketing.

About Zolve: Zolve provides financial services to people migrating to different regions. The startup works with banks in the US and India to provide consumers with access to financial products seamlessly without paying any premium or security deposit.

The startup was founded by TaxiForSure co-founder Raghunandan G, who sold his startup to Indian ride-hailing giant Ola. He believes that his latest startup Zolve will enable people to access financial products seamlessly without being limited by borders.

MDEC pledges support towards Government’s Digital Economy Blueprint

The story: The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) has pledged its support and commitment to the Government’s Digital Economy Blueprint – MyDIGITAL, according to digitalnewsAsia.

What is MyDIGITAL?:  A blueprint designed to become the foundation for Malaysia’s transformation into a digital hub by 2030.

Also Read: MDEC seeks to encourage SMEs; digitalisation with US$1.5M grant

More about the story: Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin is set to launch MyDIGITAL on Feb 19.

Ohm Mobility acquires CloudNBFC to make EV financing easy for lenders

The story: Ohm Mobility, a one-year-old fintech and clean transportation startup, has acquired loan management software CloudNBFC.

More about the story: While the details of this deal remain undisclosed, this acquisition will help Ohm in its plans to launch a new platform that is going to make electric vehicle (EV) financing easier for lenders.

“While the government aims for EV adoption on a big scale, financing of EV remains to be one of the biggest challenges. Ohm’s tech platform is trying to make financing of EVs easier for lenders,” CEO and founder Nikhil Nair.

About Ohm Mobility: Founded in 2020, Ohm Mobility combines digital payments, internet of things (IoT) data from vehicles, and data science to help banks reduce lending costs and modernise lending.

Ata Plus, IAP announce strategic alliance

The story: Ata Plus, an equity crowdfunding platform in Malaysia has announced a strategic alliance with IAP Integrated to diversify avenues for funding that are available for companies.

More about the story: By leveraging on the strength of Ata Plus, IAP will be able to present alternative funding opportunities for early-stage companies that approach them, therefore reducing the number of companies that are left unattended or turned away.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Traveloka picks JPMorgan for US listing via SPAC; E-commerce to further thrive in Vietnam

“The hope is that, after a successful equity raise and further growth, these promising companies can return to IAP for their future funding requirements,” said CEO of IAP, Joann Enriquez.

What is IAP?: A wholly-owned subsidiary of Raeed Holdings (Raeed), which is a consortium of six Islamic Banks in Malaysia.

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Image Credit: alexey starki

The post In brief: 2-month-old neobank Zolve raises US$15M; Ohm Mobility buys CloudNBFC appeared first on e27.

It is no secret that sales conversion and customer satisfaction are crucial to any business’s growth and success. The more the sales, the more the revenues and the bigger the business, and there cannot be any sales without customer satisfaction.

Today, in the 4.0 era, keeping customers satisfied and happy has become more crucial than ever. With the power of social media and digital platforms, one bad review can kill a brand. In 2018, it took one tweet from Kylie Jenner for Snapchat to lose USD 1.3 billion in stock.

In Singapore, bad customer service cost businesses USD 26 billion in 2016 and over two-thirds of the consumers switched brands. In Japan, according to a 2017 survey with a thousand respondents, 56 per cent of consumers said that after one case of bad customer service, they’ll simply spend their money somewhere else. According to a report, in 2018 alone, poor customer service cost businesses more than USD 75 billion in losses.

Also read: Connect with 10 more verified investors on e27 today

One of the biggest gaps, when it comes to customer satisfaction is that conversations between agents and customers are actually a BlackBox situation- nobody knows why their performance varies depending on each agent. Sales agents and customer support agents have an important role as direct representatives of the company to potential as well as existing customers, and that is why it becomes crucial to be able to analyse their conversations and give them valuable feedback on how to improve.

As such, Tokyo-based RevComm is helping address this BlackBox problem with its B2B SaaS MiiTel that helps analyse and visualise sales and customer satisfaction conversations by leveraging artificial intelligence.

Solving the BlackBox problem for the customer support industry and helping businesses thrive

Founded in July 2017, RevComm focuses on issues in phone sales and customer support as well as success. To address the BlackBox problem faced by this industry, RevComm helps visualise and analyse the “whats” and “hows” of conversations between sales representatives and customers with the help of their flagship product MiiTel. RevComm’s MiiTel is basically a cloud IP-phone, which is powered by a conversation intelligence platform that increases sales conversion and customer satisfaction rates while decreasing education & communication costs.

Also read: AI Communis: The first B2B ASR-based solution provider in SEA with local language adaptation

The IP-phone is directly connected with a CRM where sales representatives can make a call by simply clicking on a customer’s phone number. Once the call is through, the entire conversation is visualised and analysed with details like the operator’s name, date, time, duration of call, customer’s name and result of the call displayed clearly on the interface. The platform also displays a detailed analysis of the result: from speech evaluation with elements like the number of silences, the number of overlaps, speech rate and the number of rallies to voice evaluation with elements like fundamental frequencies for both customer and operator as well as the intonation strength. The platform also gives a summary of the speech rate, ie, characters spoken per second, for both operator and customer. Keyword appearances are also recorded that help clarify the highlight points of the conversation.

These detailed reports not only provide the employers with valuable insights on the performance of different representatives but also empower sales agents with useful feedback that motivates them for self-improvement.

Combining four separate domains of tech, namely IP-phone, cloud, an analysis engine and web as well as a mobile application, RevComm is providing quick, easy-to-use customer satisfaction and sales conversion solutions to businesses in Japan.


Optimising remote work in the new normal

In addition to the core values of helping address the BlackBox challenge and inspiring self-motivated sales agents, RevComm’s third fundamental vision is to optimise remote work in the new normal. With businesses — both big and small — facing different kinds of challenges amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns since early last year, there is no scope for gaps in customer satisfaction or sales conversion. For any business to survive and scale in the new normal, remote work is key to business continuity. This is where RevComm’s MiiTel can step up and help. Due to its cloud IP-phone, the need for physical phones is eliminated, which helps cut the costs and allows an immediate shift to remote work. Additionally, RevComm’s MiiTel costs just USD 59 a month with no minimum lot or initial cost.

Also read: How this Tokyo-based IoT startup seeks to revolutionise healthcare

RevComm has acquired more than 15,000 paid users in a short span of two years. Today, approximately 30 million sales calls are made via MiiTel in Japan. They have customers in a wide range of sectors, including banking, IT, tech startups and large corporations. BizReach, a fast-growing HR company in Japan, used RevComm’s MiiTel and in only four months saw a whopping 62 per cent growth in profits and their net ROI rose by over 538 per cent. Another company, SmartDrive, a hardware and big data solution provider saw a 140 per cent increase in the number of sales calls with MiiTel. RevComm’s MiiTel has helped many SMEs and startups cross an ROI of 500 per cent and for enterprises, it has gone beyond 1000 per cent.

Last year in October they closed a Series A round at USD 14.2 million with support from several Global VCs and CVCs. They are keen on expanding their business to Southeast Asian markets with a keen focus on Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines.

Find out more about RevComm and connect with them here: https://e27.co/startups/revcomm/

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

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