Day: March 12, 2021

Zilliqa Capital today announced its launch as a Singapore-based company that aims to become the “central business and investment hub” for the Zilliqa Research blockchain platform.

In a press statement, Zilliqa Capital explained that it will invest in Ziilliqa’s native utility token ZIL as a strategic asset. It will selectively invest in Zilliqa and relevant non-Zilliqa businesses.

The firm aims for investments across Southeast Asia (SEA) and India, particularly in decentralised and fintech solutions across investing, wealth management, insurance, lending, payments, and remittances, as well as critical infrastructures that will enable Web 3.0.

The firm also announced Michael H. Conn, Co-Founder and former CEO of Ether Capital, as its CEO and Co-Chief Investment Officer. Conn’s past experiences include senior leadership positions at AllianceBernstein, Société Générale, Trust Company of the West, AsiaVest, and Quail Creek Ventures.

Also Read: Uncovering the rise and challenges faced by deep tech startups in Singapore

Zilliqa Research blockchain’s Co-Founder, President, and Chief Scientific Officer Dr Amrit Kumar will also serve as Co-Chief Investment Officer and Director.

In an email to e27, Conn further explained the firm’s investment plans, stating that its involvement can be from the accelerator level, through seed, Series A, and beyond.

“Zilliqa Capital’s strategy will be driven by a strategic holding in the Zilliqa platform while simultaneously nurturing and investing in Web 3.0 projects with high-growth potential across the broader blockchain ecosystem. Our mission is to grow the financial ecosystem across Southeast Asia and India, by investing in financial technology and decentralised applications and use cases in areas such as investments, insurance, lending, payments, and remittances. We are geared towards financial inclusion and helping bring real-world solutions to the unbanked and underbanked in the region,” he wrote.

The Zilliqa Blockchain is being used by fintech companies such as Xfers for its Singapore-Dollar-backed stablecoin and regulated exchange HGX.

Its ecosystem also includes startups such as Unstoppable Domains, Mintable, Switcheo, Xanpool, Transak, Coin Rule, and Elliptic.

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Snyk, a UK-based cybersecurity company, has announced it has raised US$300 million in a Series E funding round from a slew of investors, including Temasek, at a post-money valuation of US$4.7 billion.

The Accel- and Tiger Global-led round also saw participation from existing investors Addition, Boldstart Ventures, Canaan Partners, Coatue, GV (formerly Google Ventures), Salesforce Ventures, Stripes and funds managed by BlackRock.

New investors include Alkeon, Atlassian Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Geodesic Capital and Sands Capital Ventures.

The transaction included both primary and secondary offerings and resulted in US$175 million of new capital pumped into the business.

The company has now total of US$470 million in its kitty.

Snyk said the fresh funds will go towards addressing a “fast-growing” global demand for the company’s cloud application security platform.

The company also announced the hiring of Jeff Yoshimura (Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer), Erica Geil (CIO), Shaun McLagan (Vice President, Asia Pacific Japan (APJ) Sales). Snyk also added two new Board Members, Michael Scarpelli (CFO of Snowflake) and Ping Li (Partner at Accel).

Also Read: Driving profitable growth for cloud native companies

Since starting in 2015, Snyk claims it has enabled 2.2 million developers to build securely, with a vision to empower every modern developer in the world to develop fast and stay secure. It also works with global customers to empower developers to automatically integrate security throughout their existing workflows.

“Our relentless focus on the experience of the 2.2 million developers building applications of all kinds securely with Snyk has resulted in our success to date, and we believe there is an exponential, generational opportunity still in front of us,” said Peter McKay, CEO, Snyk.

“We first met the Snyk team at the start of their journey, as early investors. Throughout our partnership, we’ve witnessed first-hand Snyk’s dedication to developer and security teams and their original vision become a reality,” opined Ping Li, Partner at Accel.

“Salesforce Ventures was an early investor in Snyk and we’re excited to grow our partnership even further, particularly as Snyk is deployed across various development teams at Salesforce,” commented Alex Kayyal, Partner at Salesforce Ventures International.

“As transformation accelerates in this digital-first world, Snyk’s vision to enable companies to embrace security earlier in the development cycle continues to resonate deeply,” he added.

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More drivers, wider range of services on the horizon for gojek users in Singapore, says co-CEO; The firm is prioritising areas such as helping small merchants move online as well as enhancing its payments and financial services offerings; Investing in and growing its markets outside Indonesia is a key priority. More here

‘SEA is lagging behind in the growth of insurtech, financial advisory, embedded finance’; Ganesh Rengaswamy of Quona Capital however says he sees growth in open banking platforms, embedded finance in different value chains like retail, digital banks, insurtech, and relationship-based, digitally-driven banking and financial services. More here

How a great back-end tech helped GrabFood capture half of SEA’s food delivery pie despite being a latecomer; Launched only in 2018, a Momentum Works report has found that GrabFood already amassed an estimated GMV of US$5.9bn in 2020. More here

Grab weighs US IPO through SPAC merger: Bloomberg; Still, a US listing via a traditional IPO is not off the table, the report says citing sources; Merging with a SPAC would allow Grab to accelerate the listing process; Indonesian unicorns such as Traveloka are also considering going public through SPAC. More here

B Capital launches US$126mn Ascent Fund II targeting seed, Series A startups; B Capital has been riding on the rising popularity of SPACs within the region by filing one of its own; According to an SEC filing, it’s looking to raise up to US$300mn for its SPAC. More here

Oyo’s Singapore subsidiary secures US$204mn term loan from SoftBank; This’ll help the budget hotel brand to bolster its ops, which have been hit hard by COVID-19; The development comes at a time when it has started recovering from a very low booking rate during the lockdown last year which continues still in many ways. More here

Singapore’s on-demand bus services firm Swat Mobility considers Japan IPO; Swat uses high-precision route-optimising tech to pool multiple passengers; It sees Japan as a promising market for on-demand bus services in the wake of fatal accidents involving elderly drivers. More here

Goldbell looking to foray into autonomous mobility space, says Future Mobility unit MD Kelvin Tay; The company sees immediate opportunity in the ‘controlled environment autonomy’, wherein autonomous vehicles will be put in a controlled environment to reduce the possibility of accidents. More here

M Capital’s maiden fund hits final close at US$31mn, to invest in 40 early-stage startups; It focuses on technology-enabled B2B or B2B2C companies, with an average initial cheque size of about US$500K; The VC firm has made 11 investments, including ASX-listed 3D Metal Forge, and Naluri. More here

East Ventures appoints Roderick Purwana as Managing Partner as it takes charge of EV Growth; EV Growth was originally formed in 2018 as a JV between East Ventures, SMDV and ZVC; EV Growth’s Fund I (with a corpus of US$250M) has invested in notable growth-stage companies including Ruangguru, Waresix, and Shopback. More here

After Grab, gojek joins LinkAja’s US$100mn+ Series B financing round; LinkAja is focused on digital payments for retail, public services and other daily needs, with 80% of users coming from tier 2 and 3 cities; This integration builds on gojek’s existing partnership with LinkAja, which included payment for transportation and ticket reservation services. More here

S’pore health-tech startup Mesh Bio raises US$1.8mn seed; It offers a solution that helps specialists, general practitioners and doctors lacking specialist training in endocrinology predict diseases before they even occur; It will use the money for SEA and Hong Kong expansion. More here

Ex-Nordic Eye chairman’s new Singapore-based fund to back tech startups solving logistics challenges; Tradeworks.vc has a global focus, targeting early growth startups in seed and Series A stages, and is looking to invest US$100K-US$2mn per deal; The VC firm has raised US$1.5mn at launch; Guernsey-based OracleVC is the anchor investor. More here

Temasek joins Snyk’s US$300mn Series E to help expand its cloud security services to APAC; The round was led by Accel and Tiger Global; The transaction included both primary and secondary offerings and resulted in US$175mn of new capital pumped into the business. More here

1982 Ventures partners with 3 Korean investors to help country’s startups enter SEA; 1982 has signed an MoU with Infobank, C&Venture Partners, and BTC Investment to collaborate in pursuing investments in Korea and SEA; 1982 Ventures focuses on investing in early-stage fintech startups across SEA; Its portfolio companies include Homebase. More here

What will a Grab-Singtel and Sea digital bank look like when it launches in S’pore from 2022?; Both companies are likely to cross-sell services and offer customised experiences, due to the breadth and depth of their customer relationships and data analytics. More here

Ryde plans for IPO on SGX, aims to capture 30% of Singapore’s ride-sharing market; The IPO is slated for 2022 at a US$148mn valuation; Ryde claims its app has facilitated over 16mn bookings to date and been downloaded close to 700K times. More here

Rise of the she-economy: 11 femtech companies and organisations aiming to empower women in SEA; The global femtech industry is poised to grow at over US$3.04bn by 2030; Experts believe femtech sector promises plenty of profitability but for it to truly grow, the investment world and tech developers need to be “more aware and focused” about the opportunities that the industry brings. More here

SEA-focused medtech firm Genetica secures US$2.5mn; Investors include Greylock Partners’ Dave Strohm, Meritech partner and MD Craig Sherman, and Miasnik Ventures CEO Guy Miasnik; Genetica is an AI-enabled genomic testing company that analyses and decodes genes to help with personalised nutrition, sickness prevention, and children’s development planning. More here

Kopi Kenangan’s founders launch angel fund for Indonesian startups; The average ticket size ranges from US$10K to US$150K in investment; Kenangan Fund doesn’t have a preferred sector; So far, it has invested in podcast platform Noice, automotive aftermarket services provider Otoklix, and e-grocery startup Dropezy. More here

Temasek forges US$500mn partnership with LeapFrog Investments; The partnership will see a multi-fund investment strategy by Temasek as it becomes an anchor investor in LeapFrog’s funds; The partnership aims to ramp up its impact investment; LeapFrog has so far received US$2bn+ from global institutional investors since its inception in 2007. More here

MDEC announces new women-led data science and AI department; Based on the AI Readiness Index IDRC and Oxford Insights, Malaysia is ranked 28th with a score of 63.66 involving the readiness to use data science and AI for healthcare, education and transportation sectors, and is ahead of Brunei (49th), Thailand (60th), Indonesia (62nd), Philippines (74th) and Vietnam at (76th) position. More here

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Image Credit: Grab

The post Ecosystem Roundup: Grab weighs US IPO through SPAC merger; After Grab, gojek invests in LinkAja; Ryde plans for SGX IPO appeared first on e27.

Genetica bags US$2.5M pre-Series A from Silicon Valley angels

Investors: Notable Silicon Valley angel investors Dave Strohm (life-long Partner of Greylock Partners), Craig Sherman (early investor of Facebook and Salesforce) and Guy Miasnik (Co-founder of Athoc that was later acquired by BlackBerry in 2015 at the valuation of US$300 million) participated.

What will the funding be used for: The fresh financing will support expansion plans within Southeast Asia. Genetica currently has offices in Singapore and Vietnam (Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City).

About Genetica: Based in San Francisco, Genetica provides low-cost gene test solutions that decode genes to provide its users with personalized reports on optimal plans for fitness and diet; children development and critical illness prevention.

Malaysian digital insurance platform Ouch! raises US$365k in pre-seed funding

Investors: Vynn Capital and Temokin joined a number of angel investors in the investment round.

What will the funding be used for: The fresh funds will go towards product and business development efforts. Ouch! added it will improve its platform and service for users by rolling out features and upgrades across the year. The company is also planning to raise pre-Series A funding later this year.

Also Read: Why a robust digital insurance distribution system is the future in APAC

About Ouch!: Launched in 2019, the Malaysian insurtech company focuses on addressing the insurance needs of the younger generation. Ouch! claims its platform can educate users about their coverage and risks, and allow them to purchase and manage digital insurance products.

ConvertCASH launches “We Pay for You First” as a Service platform

The platform: The service allows users to pay monthly car and home instalments up to 45 days without any interest. Launched in November 2020 to help users with cash flow issues in handling their monthly instalments, convertCASH is targeting to reach one million registered car users in Malaysia and 200 million registered car users globally.

About ConvertCASH: Headquartered in Singapore, ConvertCASH claims it is Asia’s first “Installment Payment Extension as a Service” platform. It is present across Malaysia, Indonesia, Australia and the ASEAN region, with plans to expand to Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines in the second quarter of the year and to Japan, Korea, China in 2022.

The post In brief: Genetica raises US$2.5M to bring its genetic decoding platform to SEA appeared first on e27.

Budgets hotel network Oyo’s Singapore unit has secured US$204 million loan facility from SB Investment Holdings (UK), a unit of SoftBank, says an Entracker report, citing regulatory filings.

This is aimed at bolstering Oyo’s operations, which have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. The transaction was originally planned for 2020.

A Business Insider report said citing sources that a significant part of the money will go into technology and data analytics.

Also Read: ‘RedDoorz, OYO use too many short-sighted tactics to artificially pump vanity metrics’: ZEN Rooms CEO Nathan Boublil

The development comes at a time when the company has started showing signs of recovery from the ongoing crisis. Several reports have said that the company has managed to sustain its gross margin to 100 per cent of pre-COVID-19 levels.

Started in 2013, OYO Hotels & Homes is a leading chain of hotels, homes, and spaces. The firm, which is run by India-based Oravel Stays, operates more than 18,000 franchised and leased hotels in more than 500 cities across 10 countries including India, China, Malaysia, the UK, the UAE and Indonesia.

To date, Oyo has amassed US$32 billion in funding from 23 investors such as Airbnb, Didi, Grab, Sequoia Capital and SoftBank Vision Fund. It has also made seven acquisitions.

In January this year, Oyo raised US$7.4 million in funding from Hindustan Media Ventures.

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Image Credit: Oyo

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