Day: March 19, 2021

Brick, an Indonesia-based fintech API provider, has secured seed funding from a slew of investors, including US-based Better Tomorrow Ventures and PT Prasetia Dwidharma.

1982 Ventures, Antler and San Francisco-headquartered Rally Cap Ventures, besides notable angels such as executives of Aspire, Carousell and Modalku, also participated.

Brick will use the funds to scale its platform, increase coverage and expand to markets within Southeast Asia. The company also plans to launch new APIs for telcos, mobile wallets, e-commerce platforms and payment initiation products.

Launched in 2020 by Gavin Tan (CEO) and Deepak Malhotra (CTO), Brick’s fintech APIs allow users of client companies to connect their financial accounts and access different financial services. The company claims it is compatible with more than 90 per cent of “adult bank accounts” in Indonesia and is currently working with more than 250 developers hailing from 35 tech companies.

“We experienced first-hand the lack of modern infrastructure needed to deliver fintech experiences that customers are demanding. That is why we started Brick to power the next generation of fintech companies with easy to implement, cost-effective, and inclusive fintech infrastructure,” said Tan.

Also Read: Why banks will benefit from open API

“We are still in the early stages of fintech innovation in Southeast Asia and it cannot exist without good data infrastructure. Tech companies in Southeast Asia still do not have easy access to financial APIs. We’ve seen first-hand the fintech innovations that are enabled by creating financial APIs and are excited to back Brick, our first SEA investment,” shared Sheel Mohnot, General Partner at Better Tomorrow Ventures.

“For fintech companies, time-to-market is a very important aspect of their product launches. Brick will allow Indonesian fintech companies to launch their core products faster. We believe that Brick will lower the barrier of entry into fintech, and thus it will contribute to the growth of fintech companies in Indonesia,” said Arya Setiadharma, CEO of PT Prasetia Dwidharma.

Brick noted the high demand, coupled with strong regulatory support from Indonesia’s regulators, makes Indonesia an ideal market for its services. Central bank, Bank Indonesia, released a set of open banking API standards in 2020, paving the way for the adoption of embedded finance.

The company is also part of BRI Ventures’s Sembrani Wira accelerator programme, where it will work with the bank to co-create “innovative and inclusive” fintech infrastructure.

“With digital banking on the rise, we see open banking and API partnership as keys to succeed in the digital world. We believe this is just the beginning, and we look forward to future collaborations with Brick,” commented Markus Rahardja, Head of Sembrani and VP of Investment & BD at BRI Ventures.

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Image Credit: Brick

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IP intelligence company PatSnap lands US$300mn Series E, becomes unicorn; Lead investors are SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tencent Investment; Founder and CEO Jeffrey Tiong said in an interview he wants to expand into Japan, where spending on research and development lags only the US and China. More here

Deep-dive
Talent attraction strategy focused only on incentives isn’t enough to drive candidates’ interest: Ninja Van; Imran Bustamam, Regional Head (HR) says flexible work hours, external training courses for staff development and pantry benefits are not enough; Employees today have much higher expectations when it comes to what a “good” employer should offer in terms of the employee. More here

‘Want VC funding? Your startup needs to be valued at least US$700mn in 10 years’: Jeffrey Paine; The founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures says about 40-50% of the 52 B2C firms in SEA with US$200mn+ valuation are overvalued, which will cause them some trouble in the next two-three years. More here

Commentary
Sea should stick to its core businesses, especially gaming; To grow its business and profitability, it might be a better idea for Sea to focus on developing another in-house game along the lines of its highly-successful Free Fire, along with continuing to steer its e-commerce and digital finance business to profitability. More here

Golden Gate-backed ALAMI acquires Sharia-compliant rural bank: Report; The deal will provide BPRS Cempaka Al-Amin with the fresh capital to comply with new rules set out by the Indonesian Financial Services Authority; In Jan, ALAMI raised US$20mn+ co-led by AC Ventures and Golden Gate. More here

Investible aims to raise US$38mn fund targeting early-stage startups in SEA, Australia; It has also appointed Rod Bristow, previously CEO of publicly-listed Clime Investment Management, as its new CEO; The fund’s inaugural fund has made over 32 investments, including Mosaic Solutions in the Philippines and Eden Farm in Indonesia. More here

Indonesia’s cross-border shipping solutions firm Andalin raises Series A from Sembrani Nusantara Fund; This is SNF’s third deal after its investments into Indonesian drink brand Haus! and local D2C shoe startup Brodo; Andalin claims it saw demand for its services spike in 2020, with shipment volume increasing by 5x and average revenue per client rising by 450% y-o-y. More here

ESB, Indonesia’s answer to Toast, bags US$3M in Beenext-led Series A round; ESB offers a cloud-based mobile ordering system that syncs up automatically with restaurants’ POS system, kitchen management system and ERP; Within six months of launching, ESB claims to have generated over 20 million annual orders for its customers. More here

‘Zombeast’ parent Storms to take its hyper-casual games to Indonesia, Africa with Series A financing; Investors are EDB New Ventures, Singtel’s founding investors — AIS (Thailand) and SK Telecom (S Korea); Storms is a joint venture between Singtel, SK Telecom and AIS that operates as a publisher for gamers and people who want to create games. More here

Bali, Batam climb up digital competitiveness index (DCI) in Indonesia as up-and-coming tech hubs: Report; In its latest Digital Competitiveness Index, East Ventures stated the country’s DCI increased from 27.9 in 2020 to 32 in 2021; This indicated a more even distribution of opportunities in provinces across the country, particular between top- and middle-tier provinces. More here

ShuttleOne launches Tezos-based lending, remittance platform for SMEs; The Singaporean fintech company uses blockchain to help informal workers remit money at a lower transfer fee and in a more transparent manner; It also helps SMEs connect with licensed money service providers and provides real-time settlement of cross-border money transfer services. More here

A look at Shopee’s key milestones as it rose to become SEA’s top e-commerce player; Besides purely shopping, Shopee also has various in-app entertainment options, such as live-streaming function ‘Shopee Live’, and interactive game show ‘Shopee Quiz’. According to Statista, Shopee saw approximately 14.1mn online visitors in Q4 2020; In 2017, Sea’s e-commerce registered a revenue of US$18mn; By 2019, it had ballooned nearly 50-fold to US$840mn. More here

Indonesian fintech API provider Brick bags seed funding; Investors include Better Tomorrow Ventures, PT Prasetia Dwidharma, 1982 Ventures, and Antler; The company will use the funds to launch new APIs for telcos, mobile wallets, e-commerce platforms and payment initiation products. More here

Singapore first to roll out AI programme for non-techies; A collaboration between Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and a multinational corporation and technology company launched AI programmes intended for the youth and the non-techies to further educate them on AI technology. More here

Baidu-backed iQIYI enters JV with G.H.Y Culture to boost SEA presence; iQIYI is a Chinese video-streaming giant whereas G.H.Y Culture & Media is an entertainment and content provider; iQIYI will tap on G.H.Y’s expertise in the production and promotion of dramas, films and concerts in APAC. More here

ADB Ventures debuts with investments in India’s Euler Motors, Smart Joules; Euler is an EV manufacturer and fleet operator focused on last-mile commercial logistics in India and SEA; Smart Joules provides energy efficiency-as-a-service for large hospitals and commercial buildings. More here

ComfortDelGro to invest US$37mn in clean energy tech over next 5 years; It also inked an MoU with the NUS to invest about US$7.4mn in a mobility-focused laboratory called the CDG-NUS Smart & Sustainable Mobility Living Lab; In addition, the company will also seek to set aside another US$29.7mn to replace its fleet of diesel buses with electric buses. More here

Amazon partners with Singapore’s Sunseap to export clean energy; The project is expected to generate 80K megawatt hours of clean energy annually, which is enough to power over 10K homes in the city-state; The project is set to be completed in 2022 and will supply renewable energy for the US giant’s offices, fulfilment centres, and AWS data centres. More here

Temasek leads US$50mn round of Chinese logistics startup Duckbill; It provides container trucking transportation services, international freight forwarding, and warehousing services by using big data and AI; The company claims to have served up to 6K firms to date and transported 700K containers by 2020. More here

Zilliqa’s ecosystem growth arm injects US$5mn to support 15 promising startups; This investment will be funnelled through two new initiatives in the ZILHive ecosystem — ZILHive Incubator and ZILHive Ventures; These two initiatives serve to supplement the US$5mn already previously committed to grants, accelerator, and education initiatives in 2018. More here

Branding lessons from a first-time startup employee caught up in a pandemic; With the global pandemic forcing almost every economy into lockdown, operational resiliency and brand communications became paramount; This was true both internally (for employees and inventors) and externally (for partners, customers and the wider market). More here

How no-code platforms are providing a boost to the real estate industry; No-code offers development platforms and tools to create new applications without the need for a single line of code; These platforms use a combination of drag and drop graphical interfaces and templates to enable non-IT professionals to create and optimise an application. More here

Story of my life: What I learned while building my SME financing startup; Across ASEAN, the SME bank loan-to-GDP ratio varies between four to 20%; Therefore, this has resulted in a multi-billion dollar funding gap for SMEs, which presents a huge lending opportunity in the region. More here

How the gig economy is empowering women in Vietnam; Undoubtedly, food delivery is one of the most popular gig jobs; As more people are forced to stay indoors, on-demand food delivery has become a lifeline for people to purchase necessities from their homes’ comfort; A spokesperson at Loship shares that the number of new female drivers signing up for its platform even more than double in the past year, particularly when COVID-19 took a heavy toll on Vietnamese women’s income. More here

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Image Credit: Sea

 

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ADB Ventures, the impact venture arm of the Manila-headquartered Asian Development Bank, has announced its maiden investments in two Indian startups.

The investments in the startups — Euler Motors and Smart Joules — are part of ADB Ventures’s gameplan to back early-stage tech companies that solve development challenges in emerging Asia and the Pacific, the company said in a statement.

Founded in 2018, Euler Motors is an electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer and fleet operator focused on last-mile commercial logistics, which aims to accelerate India’s and Southeast Asia’s transition to sustainable mobility. It has raised US$9.4 million in Series A round, which also saw participation from Blume Ventures, Inventus Venture Partners and other investors.

Euler Motors will use the funding to launch its new three-wheeler cargo vehicle this year and plans to expand across India.

Smart Joules, founded in 2014, is an energy efficiency-as-a-service company that claims to deliver savings of up to 40 per cent on energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions for hospitals and commercial buildings.

It has raised US$4.1 million in a Series A round led by Sangam (VC firm) and ADB Ventures. Other backers include Max I. Limited (conglomerate of Max Group) and unnamed angel investors.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Grab weighs US IPO through SPAC merger; After Grab, gojek invests in LinkAja; Ryde plans for SGX IPO

Smart Joules intends to use the funding to strengthen its management team, enhance its digital technology platform, expand its presence across hospitals and scale its cooling-as-a-service offering for commercial buildings and industries.

“ADB Ventures will spur high-impact cleantech, agritech, fintech, and healthtech innovations in developing Asia with its ecosystem building. Our vision is to crowd-in US$1 billion of commercial investment towards the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030,” ADB Vice President Ashok Lavasa said.

Additionally, ADB Ventures Equity Fund has announced it has received US$60 million in funding commitments from Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Government of the Republic of Korea, Climate Investment Fund’s Clean Technology Fund, and the Nordic Development Fund.

The fund will largely focus on climate and gender impact in South and Southeast Asia.

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The story: Malaysia-based car e-commerce platform Carsome has appointed Mei Han as the CEO of its B2C arm Carsome Certified.

The new role: As the CEO, Mei will focus on integrating and elevating consumer experience both online and offline by riding on Carsome’s product, tech and data capabilities.

Carsome Co-founder and Group CEO Eric Cheng commented that Mei’s appointment is crucial in Carsome’s bigger vision of expanding Carsome Certified in Southeast Asia. This arises from the company’s focus on vertical expansion from the consumer-to-business (C2B) to a B2C model in 2021, as part of Carsome’s “natural growth progression”.

His background: Prior to his current appointment, Mei was the Director of Platform Strategy in Carsome, responsible for product development and business intelligence.

What is Carsome: Launched in August last year, Carsome provides end-to-end solutions to consumers and used car dealers, from car inspection to ownership transfer to financing. The company currently transacts an annualised 70,000 cars totalling US$600 million in transacted value and has more than 1,000 employees.

Also Read: Carsome snags US$30M Series D to strengthen its C2B and B2C offerings

Lendlease announces two key hires

The story: Lendlease, an Australian property and investment group with a presence in Southeast Asia, has appointed Richard Kuppusamy as Head of Lendlease Digital (Asia).

Preetham Nadig has been appointed as VP Engineering of the digital unit and Head of Lendlease’s Singapore Product Development Centre.

The roles: Kuppusamy will oversee the leadership, management and performance of the digital business unit for the region, whereas Nadig will be responsible for driving Lendlease Podium’s product technology roadmap and the development of digital solutions for the built environment.

India’s solar analytics startup Prescinto raises US$3.5M seed

Investors: Venture Catalysts (lead), Mumbai Angels, Lets Venture and Inflection Point Ventures.

What is Prescinto: It is an IIOT and AI-powered clean energy SaaS platform that claims to increase solar power plant generation by 5 per cent.

Its AI identifies the root causes of the plant’s underperformance in real-time and helps in reducing costs of operation and maintenance. With an aim to increase clean energy without additional investment, the startup identifies and reduces the losses in the plant. This resulted in a return of 20X-50X for solar asset owners and operators in the first year itself.

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Image Credit: Carsome

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Malaysia-based Jocom International Holdings, which runs a grocery mobile app, announced today that it has raises approximately SGD5.6 million (US$4.1 million via listing part of its share capital on Singapore’s first regulated private securities exchange, 1exchange (1X).

The company will use the financing to enhance its technology and expand its presence into markets like West Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia. Jocom has already started making inroads in China, channeling sales of Malaysian products to Chinese consumers.

The 1X’s second cross-border listing, as well as the third private securities exchange listing of its kind in Singapore.

1X is part of CapBridge Financial, and is backed by Singapore Exchange, SGInnovate, South Korea’s Hanwha Investment and Securities Co, Hong Kong’s Cyberport Macro Fund and AMTD Digital.

Founded in 2015, Jocom is an online grocery app that operates via its subsidiaries Jocom MShopping and Jocom Ethirty seven.

What makes Jocom different from other online grocery store apps is that it has full control over the entire order journey of its customers, from purchase and fulfilment to the delivery fleet and storage facilities.

Since its inception, the company claims to have built a sizeable base of three million users, 500 vendors and 15,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs).

Also Read: Dropezy bags funding from Taurus Ventures, Kopi Kenangan to scale its next-day grocery delivery service in Indonesia

Additionally, Jocom has expressed in a press statement that it has generated approximately US$40 million in sales revenue between 2015 and 2020.

According to the firm, the COVID-19 pandemic was a boon as it claims to have increased its sales by 30 per cent year-on-year.

“Our outperformance during Malaysia’s Movement Control Order at the height of the pandemic has proven our resilience and relevance as an essential, mobile-enabled business and we believe this is an opportune time to launch an overhaul of our own platform. Funding aside, our new status as a listee on a private securities exchange backed by the SGX will also expose Jocom to a new pool of investors and enhance its positioning for more business opportunities in the future,” Jocom founder Joshua Sew said.

According to Datareportal, since 2015, Malaysia’s e-commerce market has tripled in size to over US$3 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach US$11 billion in 2025.

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Image Credit: Jocom

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