Day: May 12, 2021

EduSpaze, a Singapore-based edutech accelerator, has announced a partnership with Latin Leap, a Colombia-based VC studio.

This is aimed at providing strategic and commercial support for Asia’s edutech startups to capitalise on the global growth momentum.

Furthermore, it will also help drive deeper co-operation between the Latin American and Asian tech ecosystems.

Singapore has consistently sustained top rankings in the global education field and is recognised to have one of the best education systems in the world.

In contrast, Latin America continues to lag behind in terms of educational outcomes and hosts some of the world’s weakest education systems.

As much as 50 per cent of students in the LatAm region do not reach the basic PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) proficiency levels and are on average three years behind the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) in components such as reading, math and science.

Also Read: Meet the 7 startups from edutech accelerator EduSpaze’s second cohort

In light of these concerning statistics, there is a dire need for innovative edutech solutions to strengthen the local system and ensure that these Latin American children and adolescents are able to access quality education.

“One of the most crucial challenges that Latin America faces today is the lack of access to quality education. The region has one of the world’s weakest education systems and grapples with high levels of inequality,” said Laura Gomez, General Partner of Latin Leap.

“In times of unprecedented change, when the next 100 years will see the equivalent of 20,000 years of progress, Latin America’s usual strategy of catching up is not sustainable and faces the threat of becoming irrelevant. The only way is to anticipate and leapfrog the region. Innovative edutech solutions from Asia can help the region close this gap and enhance access to quality education for all,” Gomez added.

“Both EduSpaze and Latin Leap are aligned in investing our resources in purpose-driven companies that can create a strong educational impact. EduSpaze will help identify pedagogically-driven Southeast Asian edutech companies with a proven market fit and is able to similarly implement needs-based solutions that can drive effective and meaningful education for Latin Americans,” added Alex Ng, Managing Director of EduSpaze.

“Latin Leap would thereby provide the much-needed access and network for the startups to capture new opportunities, internationalise and build a stronger global edutech innovation ecosystem,” he shared.

Founded in 2019, EduSpaze is managed by seed capital firm and startup incubator Spaze Ventures, and supported by Enterprise Singapore.

Its accelerator supports companies that address sector-specific challenges within the education industry and provides selected startups up to S$500,000 (US$376,950) funding, mentor support and an environment for pilot project implementations.

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Image Credit: EduSpaze

 

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Axiata Digital Advertising (ADA), a Malaysia-based digital marketing solutions company, has secured US$60 million in funding from SoftBank Group.

Post the investment, the Japanese telecom group will own 23.07 per cent shareholding of ADA at an enterprise valuation of US$260 million.

With the newly raised capital, ADA aims to continue the development of its AI models, with a primary focus on precision targeting for the marketing industry.

In addition, ADA will also invest the funds in content analytics, automation of content creation, and build data platforms that predict consumers’ insights that help drive business decisions.

SoftBank said in a statement that it will make ADA a core to its digital and data marketing arm.

Founded in 2018, ADA is a group company of Malaysian telco giant Axiata. ADA designs and executes integrated digital, analytics and marketing solutions to help businesses gain market insights, optimise cost and reach and acquire customers.

Also Read: Mosaic Solutions raises US$1.5M to provide data analytics, inventory management solutions to SEA’s F&B industry

So far, the company has a footprint across nine markets in South and Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and South Korea.

“We believe this alliance between SoftBank and ADA will reshape the digital marketing and data landscape in the Asia Pacific region. This move is part of our Beyond Carrier growth strategy as we seek to expand beyond the traditional telecommunications business. By combining our diversified solutions and technologies with ADA’s expertise, we expect we can both generate significant synergies,” said Daichi Nozaki, Head of Global Business Division, SoftBank.

“The post-COVID-19 norm is a digital-first economy, which ADA has been successfully building towards. The capital and business alliance with SoftBank will further propel ADA’s analytics, data and AI digital marketing solutions for the benefit of our customers across the region,” added Srinivas Gattamneni, CEO of ADA.

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Image Credit: ADA

 

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HashMix, a Singaporean hashrate tokenisation company, has raised US$3 million in a new funding round.

Backers in the round are HashKey Capital, Kenetic Capital, GBV Capital, FBG Capital, LongHash Ventures, Continue Capital, SevenX Ventures, and Fenbushi Capital, among others.

The fresh capital will be used for protocol development, marketing, and talent enhancement.

The crypto mining industry has been plagued by centralisation and illiquidity. Although cloud mining allows investors without expensive hardware to mine cryptocurrencies and the emergent hashrate tokens provide liquidity for Bitcoin mining, they are only solving a piece of the puzzle

HashMix, founded in September 2020, aims to further democratise and activate the mining economy by introducing a decentralised universal marketplace for various mining capacities using the non-fungible token (NFT) technology.

HashMix’s tokenisation protocol can convert the mining power for any Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum hashrate, or storage mining power in the Filecoin network, to NFTs tied to hardware, with the benefit of traceability, tradability and transparency.

Also Read: Joseph Phua’s Turn Capital acquires Dapp Pocket to create SEA-focused retail crypto exchange

This prevents the risks of overselling and fraud and effectively bridges different computing powers.

Coupled with a set of protocols for trading, swapping and lending, HashMix enables miners and Defi participants to buy and sell hash power seamlessly and access numerous financial options such as staking and liquidity mining.

The HashMix ecosystem is supported and incentivised via HashMix’s native token HSM. The team plans to roll out its first mining power NFT next month.

According to a report by Global Market Insights, the market valuation for cryptocurrency will cross US$1.8 billion by 2027.

With the recent rise in popularity of decentralised finance and the emergence of smart contracts, experts anticipate the market to grow further at an exponential rate.

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The Brooker Group, a Bangkok-based publicly listed financial consultancy firm, announced today that it will invest a total of US$48 million in a diversified portfolio of decentralised applications (dApps) and decentralised finance (DeFi) tokens.

The group has identified huge growth potential in a range of decentralised projects and will begin investing in 15-plus high-growth companies, including Binance, Uniswap, Enjin and Filecoin in the second quarter of this year.

The group said that this new direction to digital assets DeFi and dApps will eventually make up approximately 50 per cent of its total assets.

Additionally, the group disclosed in its Q1 report that it holds 122.3158 bitcoins on its balance sheet at an aggregate value of approximately US$6.6 million.

Also Read: Thai bank SCB’s venture arm launches new US$50M VC fund for blockchain, DeFi, digital assets

“The next frontier in financial technology will be DeFi. We believe that legacy funds have a responsibility to their clients to invest in emerging technology or risk being left behind as the sector matures,” said Varit Bulakul, Head of International Business Finance Advisory at The Brooker Group.

Initially, Brooker Group investments will be held by centralised exchanges including Coinbase and Binance while a strategic custody provider is chosen.

Founded in 1994, The Brooker Group has a wide range of assets in its portfolio of digital assets, alternative funds and real estate.

Despite much of the focus in the industry remaining on the US and Europe, the trading activity of digital assets in Asia is gaining more momentum.

According to analysts, the last few months saw the the biggest crypto bull run since 2017.

Some of the other large companies that have invested in the cryptocurrency sector include, MicroStrategy, Tesla, Ruffer Investment Company, and many more.

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Image Credit: Brooker Group

 

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Sky Mavis, the Vietnamese startup behind the blockchain game Axie Infinity, has announced a US$7.5 million Series A fundraise, led by Libertus Capital.

A host of institutional and individual investors, including Collab + Currency, Blocktower Capital and Backed VC, besides individuals such as Mark Cuban, Alexis Ohanian and Kevin Lin, also participated.

The startup’s seed investors — it previously raised US$1.5 million — including Animoca Brands, Hashed, Pangea Blockchain Fund, Consensys and 500 Startups Vietnam also returned to join the latest round.

The fresh funds will be used to scale Axie Infinity and non-fungible tokens (NFT) gaming to “billions of users”, as well as to hire aggressively to bolster “our ranks with missionaries”.

“We believe that games, with real, player-owned economies will become places where we live, work, and play. These new digital nations will take time to build and require expertise in philosophy, economy, and game design. With our new investors, we get everything we have been looking for and more,” said Sky Mavis COO and co-founder Aleksander Leonard Larsen.

Also Read: Tokens 101: How they work and where they provide value

The blockchain venture was founded in early 2018 by Larsen, Nguyễn Thành Trung, Đoàn Minh Tú, , Hồ Sỹ Việt Anh and Jeffrey Samuel Kim Zirlin.

A technology-focused game studio, Sky Mavis creates virtual worlds with player owned-economies and marketplaces for trustless trading of unique digital assets, besides infrastructure that enables its products to reach millions of players worldwide.

Axie Infinity, which is a top game on Ethereum, is a virtual world full of fierce, adorable pets, called Axies, which can be battled, collected and even used to earn an income.

The firm claims Axie Infinity has approximately 41,000 daily active users, of which 45-50 per cent is from Southeast Asia (mostly from the Philippines and Indonesia). It also has more than 40,000 Axie holders and generates over US$12 million in monthly NFT volume.

(NFTs enable new types of games. Just as mobile gaming unlocked new design space and player archetypes, so too will NFT games. These games won’t look like the games of the past and will require an entirely new perspective and skillset to build.)

Primarily, the startup earns money from direct NFT sales and takes a 4.25 per cent cut on each trade that happens on its internal NFT marketplace.

“Our NFT marketplace has processed over US$55 million since inception, and this month is our best ever with US$14.6 million traded between players. In the future, we will publish other games on our ‘Mavis Hub’ (Steam for blockchain games) and take a cut of their revenue in return for letting them use our platform and access our userbase of players,” he disclosed.

In addition to Axie, Sky Mavis is currently working on a wallet, a scalability solution called Ronin, and a Blockchain gaming store.

Also Read: Vietnam’s Topebox raises US$1M to launch latest blockchain game My DeFi Pet

“Axie Infinity is at the intersection of gaming and NFTs, two of the fastest growing and most promising cryptocurrency use cases. With over 30,000 daily active users, they have proven product-market fit and an incredibly passionate community. We’re excited to support Sky Mavis as they scale to the next 300,000 and then 3 million users,” said Ari Paul, CIO at Blocktower Capital.

“Sitting at the intersection of digital play, property ownership, and the future of work, Axie Infinity is one of the most fascinating and ambitious gaming projects in the world. With over 30,000 DAUs and 40,000 Axie holders, and no signs of slowing down, we’re witnessing a powerful, community-run digital nation form in real time,” a joint statement from Derek Schloss and Stephen McKeon from Collab + Currency said.

Blockchain v/s ordinary mobile games

“Blockchain enables the user to truly own their game assets by using NFTs. Our data shows that they become more engaged and confident in spending money, knowing they can always sell them if they want. It also means that we, as a game company, cannot inflate the economy with too many assets since everything is transparent and tamper-evident,” Larsen explained.

“This adds another level of safety for the user, which again increases their confidence in the game. Players can also bring their NFT assets with them into other experiences that aren’t made by the initial developer,” he concluded.

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Image Credit: Sky Mavis

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