Tier One Entertainment, a Filipino gaming, and e-sports entertainment startup has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A round of funding.

Led by Gobi Partners, the round also saw participation from Warner Music Group, Singapore’s family office Octava, Japan’s internet company KAYAC, and American early-stage VC firm Atlas Ventures.

The infusion of financing will power Tier One to set up local operations in other Asian countries.

The proceeds will also be utilised to hire back-end teams that will further support their talents, expand its e-sports operations in Blacklist International (Tier One’s e-sports team), and set up its first content creation hub in the Philippines.

Tier One was founded in 2017 by e-sports veteran Tryke Gutierrez, cosplay and gaming superstar Alodia Gosiengfiao, and seasoned entrepreneur Brian Lim.

Also Read: EVOS raises US$12M in Series B to accelerate the growth of its e-sports platform

Together, they visioned to revolutionise Southeast Asia’s e-sports landscape by turning talents into gaming superstars.

As COVID-19 accelerates gaming and e-sports interest, Tier One plans to take advantage of this growth by acquiring more up-and-coming talents in other markets.

Some of its commercial partners include Adidas, Uniqlo, Riot Games, Mountain Dew, and Tik Tok.

As of now, the company has locked in top talents in the Philippines, Myanmar, and Malaysia.

“We have come a long way since our first business meeting at my home in 2017. With the growth of mobile gaming, streaming and e-sports as an avenue for youth entertainment, we came up with the foresight to develop and house these talents by building our very own YG Entertainment of gaming,” Gosiengfiao said.

“The gaming industry is going through a golden age and this funding will help accelerate our growth by allowing us to replicate our success in other markets. In just a few years of operations, we have found a winning formula in e-sports and gaming by developing a robust business model around top-tier content creation and authentic distribution,” Gutierrez added.

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Image Credit: Tier One Entertainment

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Week after week, we continually implement improvements on e27 Pro features tp make your experience better and more valuable. One of the improvements we have made was making the Connect feature more robust, in the aim of helping you successfully make meaningful connections with investors.

One of the things we want to highlight are the investors who have been very active in responding to connection requests, as well as in providing business feedback and mentorship to our Pro members. We are planning to launch Active Investors icon and the Investor widget this quarter to better feature these investors.

In the meantime, check out 5 active investors you can get connected with:

Spiral Ventures

Investment: USD 300k – USD 1M, Series A, Series B

Straight from Spiral Ventures: Spiral Ventures (SV) is a Japanese ventures capital fund and headquartered in Singapore. SV has been investing in early stage and tech startups in Southeast Asia, India, and Japan since 2013.

Also read: Meet the engineers, developers, and products managers of e27 Luminaries

Golden Gate Ventures

Investment: USD 50K – USD 3M, Seed, Series A, Series C & Above

Straight from Golden Gate Ventures: Golden Gate Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm investing across Southeast Asia. Since 2011, the firm has invested in over 30 companies across more than 7 countries in Asia. The firm invests in internet & mobile startups across many sectors, including e-commerce, payments, marketplaces, mobile applications, and SaaS platforms.

Qualgro Venture Capital

Investment: Pre-Series A / Bridge, Series A, Series B

Straight from Qualgro Venture Capital: Qualgro Venture Capital is a Venture Capital firm based in Singapore, investing mainly in B2B companies in Data, SaaS and Artificial Intelligence, primarily at Series A & B. Quality & Growth.

Monk’s Hill Ventures

Investment: Pre-Series A, Bridge, Series A 

Straight from Monk’s Hill Ventures: Monk’s Hill Ventures is a Venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology startups in Southeast Asia. We take a first-principles approach and are sector agnostic, investing across industries and sectors including healthcare tech, edutech, fintech, and logistics.

Also read: “Investors are returning to being more sensitive to value”: Goh Seng Wee of Brain Too Free Ventures

Wavemaker Partners

Investment: USD 250K – USD 5M, Angel / Pre Seed, Seed, Pre-Series A / Bridge, Series A

Straight from Wavemaker Partners: Wavemaker Partners invest in a broad range of technology-driven companies in the US and Southeast Asia. With 15 member funds across 4 continents, they are able to provide their Asia-based founders with world-class access, insight and scale. It is headquartered in Los Angeles and affiliated with the investment bank, Siemer & Associates.

 

The Connect feature is exclusively available for Pro members. If you want to start connecting with these investors, get a Pro trial account now!

 

Image credit: Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

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Yesterday, together with the launch of e27 Luminaries, we have looked at the list of engineers, developers, and product managers that have played a great role in growing their companies throughout the pandemic. Through the platforms that they have worked on, they were able to make a difference, not only in their companies but also in the Southeast Asian tech startup ecosystem.

Now, we are moving on to the next stage of bringing innovation into the market: business development.

There are many different elements in business development. According to Investopedia, business development includes activities such as sales, strategic initiatives, business partnerships, market development, business expansion, and marketing. It plays a crucial role in getting a disruptive product out there, and eventually, bringing change to the ecosystem.

Here is a list of business development professionals at e27 Luminaries:

Andre Widjaja, Chief of Business Development at GudangAda

As one of the company’s earliest hires, Widjaja has played a crucial role in building the sales and business development team, setting the foundation for further expansion. He is spearheading the company’s business development to support business growth through customer acquisition and market outreach.

Recently, GudangAda announced a US$25.4 million Series A funding round. The company said that it has a full market coverage of FMCG wholesalers in Indonesia, and it is now targeting seven to ten per cent of the nation’s large retailer base for their next phase of growth.

Also Read: Meet the engineers, developers, and products managers of e27 Luminaries

Raunak Mehta, Chief Commercial Officer at Igloo

According to Igloo, Mehta played a crucial role in the company’s success. To date, the company has entered into 20 successful business partnerships since 2016 and will be expanding its partnership to 50 by 2021, across key markets such as the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam.

“Despite the uncertainties posed by the pandemic, Raunak was able to snag swift and decisive wins for Igloo, securing partnerships with the region’s largest insurance, telecommunications, e-commerce, travel and financial services companies such as Allianz, Cigna, MSIG, Sompo, Shopee, foodpanda, Bukalapak, Telkomsel, Blibli, Fabelio, RedDoorz, Union Bank of the Philippines, Mobifone and Loship to name a few; to launch lifestyle-focused products such as COVID-19 insurance, personal accident, phone screen protection and transit insurance for its partners and their customers.”

Christine Kombong, Business Development Executive at Jala Tech

Jala Tech explains that during the pandemic, the shrimp farm owners that they are serving are struggling to monitor their farms due to travel restriction. This situation was made worse with the farm owners’ lack of understanding on how to use technology.

“Facing this issue, Christine and the team concept the Smart Farm programme … that engages farmers to work as a community and assist them in adopting the technology, also educate farmer with the best aquaculture practice. As a result … the programme also improves five to 10 per cent of farm productivity by lowering the 10 per cent of feed consumption and increasing the survival rate from 70 per cent to 75 per cent.”

“Because of the success of the programme, she got the opportunity to pitch it to the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. In 2021, the government is taking this programme and willing to implement it in several locations across Java.”

Jonathan Bryan, Chief Marketing Officer at KoinWorks

According to KoinWorks, the uncertainty brought by the COVID-19 pandemic has led to customers holding on to their cash and delay investing. But Bryan was able to handle the situation by focusing on a segmented promotion programme to re-maximise the marketing budget, and improving the company’s relationship with the media.

He also initiated the innovation in one of KoinWorks’ investment products, KoinRobo, to answer the needs of the users and people in Indonesia.

“Through those initiatives, Jonathan successfully gained user trust to keep investing and contribute to the growth of the total purchase of KoinRobo by up to 90 per cent in December 2020.”

Also Read: For e27 Luminaries, we are looking for companies that fulfill the following criteria

Aleksandra Hessel, Head of Business Development at The Nurturing Co

Hessel joined The Nurturing Co in early 2020, a little after the circuit breaker measure being implemented in Singapore.

“We would spend almost an hour with each team for the next few months, sharing and learning as she settled into her role. When Phase 3 started, she really started to step up. As a key person in a small team, Aleks has had to carry a lot of the weight of helping grow our Singapore customer base, across retail, F&B, hotel and corporate customer bases. Leaning into her own networks to help drive brand awareness and trust.”

“She is amazing at promoting the values of our company … We were extremely lucky to have her join us at such a key moment, and she is key to our future success here in Singapore and elsewhere.”

Jenn Lim, Business Development Manager at TurtleTree

As one of the earliest team members in the company, Lim has seen TurtleTree grow from a handful of team members to 25 full-time employees. Her contribution has helped TurtleTree to win various recognition from both investors and the startup ecosystem in general.

“She helped to build a structure to the company at the start and is active in developing the business. Her contribution has brought us to win the Temasek Liveability Challenge, which is key to exposing the company on a global platform. Following that, we also participated in the Entrepreneurship World Cup and emerged at the top.”

Carmelita Lumempouw, Marketing Manager at Quincus

As a marketing manager, there are several initiatives that Lumempouw has started. She also helped the company win several accolades, from ORIGIN Innovation Awards 2020 for Jonathan Savoir as Founder of The Year, 2020 Women in Supply Chain for Katherina Lacey (Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer) and several HRD Awards Asia 2020.

“She also successfully implemented #QuincusTalks, a monthly webinar series that covers supply chain, logistics, tech and, most recently, creating spaces for females in supply chain.”

Sujinun Jutakorn, VP of Sales at Xendit

In March, Xendit announced a US$64.6 million Series B funding round that the company intended to use to expand its digital payments infrastructure service.

Starting off in 2014 as a P2P lending platform, Xendit evolved into a payments infrastructure company that enables businesses to accept digital payments without the need to implement integrations with individual providers. It has since expanded its services to include services such as fraud detection, lending, and tax management.

Xendit claims it processes more than 65 million transactions, amounting to US$6.5 billion in payment value annually.

Joanna Chua, Business Director at Sqreem Technologies

During the pandemic, Sqreem Technologies was able to secure partnership with the government of South Africa to provide real-time contact tracing and communication system. The partnership was meant to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Channel Sqreem, their platform, can track an individual using their mobile device ID without needing to know personal information of the device owner.

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The e27 Luminaries is an initiative by e27 to celebrate the unsung heroes of the SEA startup ecosystem. Discover these notable companies and individuals here.

Image Credit: Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

The post Winning the deal: Meet the business development professionals of e27 Luminaries appeared first on e27.

Super, a social commerce platform serving second- and third-tier cities and rural areas in Indonesia, announced today it has completed a US$28 million oversubscribed Series B round led by SoftBank Ventures Asia.

Returning investors include Amasia, Insignia Ventures Partners, Y-Combinator Continuity Fund, and Stephen Pagliuca (co-chairman of Bain Capital and co-owner of Boston Celtics).

Partners of DST Global and TNB Aura also co-invested.

The company will use the fresh capital to double down on its presence in East Java and launch in other Indonesian provinces later this year, besides developing its white-label products.

This round follows the previous oversubscribed US$7 million Series A led by Amasia, which was also joined by the likes of Y- Combinator, B Capital, Insignia, Alpha JWC Ventures.

With this round, Super’s total investment raised to date has crossed US$36 million.

A graduate of Y Combinator, Super is a social commerce platform. It offers Superagen, an agent-led commerce that empowers community leaders to become self-made entrepreneurs by enabling them to sell various products to their communities.

The startup also builds a logistics network with “the lowest cost” and facilitates communication for social-buying behaviour, so the agents can sell various products through social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp.

Also Read: Leveraging social e-commerce to maximise your brand in China

“Imagine community leaders in remote villages acting as the Walmart of their community by aggregating demand. Super is doing the same. We deliver products to the agents once they hit the minimum order volume. They in turn carry out the last-mile delivery for their users,” explained CEO and co-founder Steven Wongsoredjo.

In his view, the price of goods in second- and third-tier cities can be up to 200 per cent higher than prices for the same goods in Jakarta. But purchasing power in these more remote areas is usually a fraction of what it is in Jakarta.

“Coming from a family business that serves the retail industry in these more remote regions, I was aware of this problem from a young age. It seemed so unfair that a mother in rural Indonesia could only buy one cup of milk for one US dollar, while that same dollar could buy you two-three cups in Jakarta. We wanted to provide fair prices for citizens everywhere, so we set up Super,” he shared.

The founding team quickly realised that the key to providing reasonable prices lay in a more efficient supply chain.

“We saw how the explosion of social commerce in China and India allowed for cheaper prices for consumers in those markets,” added co-founder and former Googler Debeasinta Budiman.

“We also find great satisfaction that our agent-based model empowers mostly female micro-entrepreneurs in areas of the country that traditionally offer less economic opportunities. The fact that we connect large suppliers to these agents eliminates the need for excess fleets and warehouses in a traditionally bloated supply chain. So as we expand our reach, we also help decrease Indonesia’s carbon emissions. Super’s business model is a win-win for everyone,” he continued.

The company mainly generates revenues through direct purchase from the principal and taking a share of the profit when selling to agents, as well as through white-labelling of products. The firm recently launched its own white-label brand, SuperEats.

Super currently operates across 17 cities in the East Java region of Indonesia. The company leverages a hyperlocal logistics platform to deliver consumer goods to agents, usually within 24 hours of order.

The CEO claims that the startup partners with thousands of community agents to distribute millions of dollars’ worth of goods to their communities each month.

At present, Super is focused on FMCG products and will look to expand its product range with the current fundraise.

Also Read: A look at the future of social commerce

Speaking of the competition, Wongsoredjo said. “If you track down social commerce in Indonesia, there are a few players, some of who do fashion products and some cosmetics etc, but there is no one in the FMCG space. Then, there are unicorns like Tokopedia but they are actually complementing our business.”

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Image Credit: Super

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Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of most economies worldwide, and Singapore is no exception. Singaporean SMEs employ two-thirds of the workforce and contribute nearly half of the city state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Covid-19 has wiped out thousands of SMEs, particularly in the Food & Beverage and retail sectors, with the remainder forced to go online and embrace e-commerce to ensure survival. And although the vaccine rollout is gathering steam, this consumer shift is here to stay.

While uncertainty is a constant in business, the adoption of modern technologies that provide SME owners reliable and up-to-date data reduces risk levels and allows enterprises to adapt quickly to unforeseen changes. With real-time data at their fingertips, SMEs can stay afloat during uncertainties by scrutinising cash flows, shifting business resources, and being lean, mean and responsive to sudden and unpredictable events.

Keeping SMEs afloat in uncertain times

Oracle NetSuite is one of the world’s leading enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, enabling businesses to manage inventory, track financials, host e-commerce stores and maintain customer relationship management systems.

Peter Quek, ASEAN General Manager of Oracle NetSuite recalled that when the pandemic hit, the immediate challenges were about securing the safety of the employees while ensuring that the operations were not impacted, and allowing business to carrry on .

“I had the privilege of talking to the CEO of Unistar — a credit and finance company based in the Philippines who invested in NetSuite almost four years ago. Amidst Covid-19, all of their offices and outlets were closed but they were able to continue business as usual. This not only helped them but their customers as well,” he said.

One such SME customer is Zilingo, a B2C fashion and lifestyle e-commerce startup operating in Asia Pacific and the U.S. The fashion industry as a whole was hard hit by the pandemic, but Zilingo was able to stay agile and adapt to the evolving needs of its customers.

Also read: Winning the deal: Meet the business development professionals of e27 Luminaries

COO Aadi Vaidya said, “The first thing we did was to see what our manufacturers were capable of doing with whatever they had. Thanks to NetSuite’s ERP, we quickly helped our lingerie manufacturers based in Sri Lanka switch to producing masks while our beauty manufacturers began producing hand sanitisers. That way, Zilingo’s operations could continue and we could weather the storm.”

Scalable, accessible and reliable

Even the smallest of SMEs use some form of accounting software to track finances, but the data collected is largely surface level and divorced from other parts of the business. NetSuite’s cloud ERP solutions streamline financial data with other key processes in the organisation, allowing SMEs to manage orders, production, supply chain, procurement and fulfilment activities as well as oversee financial planning from one platform.

Having all the necessary business data in the cloud gives SMEs added advantages such as scalability and accessibility, especially during the pandemic when employees switched to home working. Additionally, regulators and governments responded to Covid-19 with added tax incentives and deductibles, which can be reflected in NetSuite’s cloud ERP for companies to easily update and access.

Also read: Building a privacy-first internet: How developers and enterprises can adapt to the new privacy normal

The richness of data is vital even for those in the funding ecosystem, such as VC and NetSuite customer Accion Venture Lab.

Southeast Asia investment officer Paolo Limcaoco said: “It is almost impossible for a VC to invest into a startup where data visibility is lacking because that does not give us the whole picture- cash crunch, revenues, monthly burn and other key points. This was important even before the pandemic but has become even more pertinent now.”

Driving productivity and efficiency

Studies show that the digitalisation of Singapore SMEs could add up to US$24 billion to the country’s GDP by 2024 due to higher revenue and productivity gains.

Peter from NetSuite believes data visibility is more crucial now than ever before.

“With a robust ERP, you have access to a wide range of data points that you can leverage to understand the gaps in operations. From efficiently managing working capital to handling supply chains with tact, data visibility is key to all crucial touchpoints that help with business growth,” he said.

Also read: Dinner date with data: How F&B retailers can use retail data to drive sales in a post-pandemic world

The Singapore government has stepped up efforts to provide incentives for SMEs to leverage digital technologies to transform their businesses, such as the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)’s SMEs Go Digital programme.

Grants and funding support

A notable grant under this programme is the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG), which helps fund SME adoption of pre-approved digital solutions such as customer relationship management, data analytics, financial management, inventory tracking, online collaboration tools, virtual meeting and telephony tools, queue management systems and temperature screening solutions.

SMEs can get up to 80% funding support by adopting a solution from the five pre-approved NetSuite SuiteSuccess solutions that have been designed to support growing businesses.

By reimbursing much of the cost of new technologies, the Singapore government via PSG plans to expedite SMEs’ implementation of smarter cloud solutions.

The PSG grant is open to businesses that are registered and operating in Singapore, of which a minimum of 30% is owned by local shareholders. The purchased/leased solutions (NetSuite’s ERP in this case) must be used in Singapore, and the company must have at least three local employees at the point of application or deployment of the solution.

Qualified SMEs can get pre-approved quotes from NetSuite, and discuss the specific solution with a NetSuite specialist consultant. After choosing a pre-approved solution, SMEs need to submit their application together with the pre-approved quote on the Business Grants Portal.

NetSuite pre-approved packages under the PSG will cover the first-year license, implementation services if included, Learning Cloud Support (LCS) training and the number of users included in the pre-approved package.

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Disclosure: This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by NetSuite.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

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