Carsome Group, Southeast Asian car e-commerce platform has acquired 19.9 per cent of ASX (Australian Stock Exchange)-listed iCar Asia from Catcha Group.

The total transaction is estimated to be worth more than US$200 million.

Both the companies have made a joint proposal to the independent directors of iCar Asia to acquire the balance of 80.1 per cent of iCar from its shareholders.

Catcha Group will also become a shareholder of the Carsome Group in exchange for the sale of its shares in iCar Asia to Carsome.

iCar Asia’s acquisition will offer an enhanced suite of digital products and services to dealers and consumers in all key markets.

The expanded suite of solutions will offer an end-to-end, super-app experience that covers the entire car buying and selling value chain

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

Founded in 2015, Carsome provides end-to-end solutions to consumers and used car dealers — from car inspection to ownership transfer to financing.

The company continues to grow fast claiming to have an annualised revenue of US$800 million with plans to achieve US$1 billion this year.

“We are excited to have Patrick Grove, co-founder of Catcha Group to join us as he brings along two decades of tech entrepreneurship and capital market expertise. This transaction is an important part of our growth strategy to build the entire automotive ecosystem in Southeast Asia and part of how we are transforming the industry through trust, transparency, and technology,” said Eric Cheng, co-founder of Carsome.

“This is the first step toward consolidation to form the largest digital automotive group in terms of revenue, user base, largest live listing, and the best end-to-end fulfilment capability in the region,” he added.

“Bringing iCar Asia’s extensive traffic and dealer network in the region together with Carsome’s leadership position in automotive e-commerce is extremely powerful. We are excited to join Carsome as shareholders and work with Eric and his team to expand our leadership position and look forward to helping the combined business dominate the US$55 billion digital automotive space in Southeast Asia in the years ahead,” added Grove.

A few days ago Carsome also managed to acquire an equity stake in Indonesian offline car and motorcycle auction service company, PT Universal Collection (PT UC).

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Image Credit: Carsome

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It’s been a chaotic year for investment app Robinhood. The platform played a significant role in the famous GameStop short squeeze in January, where huge volumes of retail investors organised themselves on Reddit to dumbfound hedge funds and send the shorted stock to unprecedented highs.

Now, as Robinhood prepares to go public, could we see more short squeezes like GameStop emerging on a regular basis?

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Robinhood has rarely strayed from controversy. The app’s imposition of restrictions on the investor accounts in the wake of the GameStop saga drew criticism from investors and onlookers alike.

In May, Warren Buffett, one of Wall Street’s most famous figures, likened Robinhood to a casino. “American corporations have turned out to be a wonderful place for people to put their money and save but they also make terrific gambling chips,” explained Buffett.

“If you cater to those gambling chips when people have money in their pocket for the first time and you tell them they can make 30 or 40 or 50 trades a day and you’re not charging them any commission but you’re selling their order flow or whatever … I hope we don’t have more of it.”

However, despite the controversies, Robinhood’s outpaced all of its competitors since the arrival of the pandemic to become one of the biggest names on the investment scene.

As the chart above shows, Robinhood significantly outpaced traditional brokers since the beginning of 2020. Despite drawing criticism in the wake of the GameStop saga, we can see that downloads spiked at the time.

Also Read: 6-month-old Infina wants to become the “RobinHood” of Vietnam with a US$2M funding

Perhaps most significantly of all is that data shows Robinhood account holders have, on average, a much smaller portfolio than those on more traditional brokerage platforms like Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab.

This shows that the app is consciously seeking to build appeal with more casual investors who are looking to place some spare money into stocks and shares.

With a long-anticipated IPO set to launch in July, Robinhood may well win more appeal among retail investors. But what will the impact of having a dominant retail market on one app be? And could we see more GameStop short squeezes as a result?

The rise of the memes

The age of the pandemic has led to a widespread influx of new retail investors into the stocks and shares landscape. Maxim Manturov, head of investment research at Freedom Finance Europe, believes that the addition of stimulus packages has paved the way for more entrants into the investing landscape than before.

The pandemic supplied additional reasons for the retail investment market to grow. To support the economy, most countries adopted stimulating policies, which brought both the loan and deposit interest rates to historic lows,” Manturov said.

“As an alternative to low-rate deposits, many started investing their savings into stock markets, which posted significant gains last year despite the lockdown and the productivity slump.”

Many of these new arrivals have coordinated with social media users to generate money on apps like Robinhood by squeezing ailing assets.

Recently, individual investors arranged on social media to drive up the price of AMC, a struggling US movie theatre chain, pushing up shares by 71 per cent. Off the back of this momentum, AMC announced a US$230 million hedge fund investment– only for the said fund to dump the shares a matter of hours later claiming the stock had become ‘overvalued.’ Subsequently the stock surged even higher.

Also Read: Accelerating Asian IPO markets: How long can the initial public offering boom last?

This event, which is largely similar to that of the GameStop saga in January, has shown that social media-driven short squeezes aren’t a one-off and that people with spare money are increasingly willing to social-invest in nostalgic or novel companies in order to inflate the value of their stocks and generate greater personal wealth.

The impact of meme investors on social media is such that it’s now not uncommon to see articles appearing on websites like Yahoo! Finance speculating where the next short squeeze may come from by investigating Reddit sentiment and plucking the most frequently discussed stocks out of the forum.

Robinhood’s timely IPO will keep focus on wall street

The timing of Robinhood’s IPO could be significant for retail investors looking to capitalise on the next short squeeze. The cryptocurrency landscape is still reeling from Bitcoin’s tumbling price across May and June, and the value of meme crypto assets like Doge is still in retreat.

Robinhood’s flotation coupled with an uninspiring crypto landscape could drive even greater levels of interest towards meme stocks and the lure of short squeezes.

As the data above shows, three notable meme stocks in GameStop, AMC, and Blackberry have all trended upwards following the decline of cryptocurrencies, and Reddit forum WallStreetBets has been eager to pump the three stocks even further.

These aren’t the only stocks that have been targeted, with the likes of Nokia also acting as a nostalgia-driven meme stock and even commodities like silver has seen sentiment growing around it.

Although the pandemic is subsiding, it appears that the rise of meme stocks and sentiment-driven investing is only gathering momentum. The recent surges in AMC price shows that enthusiasm among retail investors for generating quick profits is growing beyond that of the GameStop short squeeze of January.

In going public, Robinhood will open itself up to greater levels of adoption among retail investors. As a result, Wall Street may have to adapt to this new era of short squeezes and social investing.

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Speedhome (formerly Speedrent), an online property rental platform in Malaysia, has announced that it has raised RM7 million (US$1.7 million) in Series A funding from Gobi Partners and Allianz Malaysia, an investment holding company and a subsidiary of global insurance major Allianz.

The Kuala Lumpur-headquartered startup will use the capital for regional expansion and tech advancements. “This fund will help us kickstart our regional expansion in Bangkok and accelerate our efforts towards making Speedhome as the region’s super app for property investors,” CEO Wong Whei Meng said.

It aims to expand regionally to 10 other metropolitan cities in the next five years, namely Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Also Read: Can SEA’s proptech come back to its pre-COVID-19 glory? Experts speak

Established in 2015, Speedhome aims to simplify the rental process. A zero-deposit automated platform, it connects landlords directly to quality tenants providing rental protection services.

It combines mobile technology and automation to bring together a pool of tenants, transparency and interactivity for all users to make more informed decisions during the rental search experience. Landlords are free to advertise and manage their properties and contact potential tenants anytime, anywhere.

The company claims its mobile app has over 575,000 app downloads on Play Store and App Store so far, and a database of more than 128,000 property listings.

In partnership with Allianz Malaysia, Speedhome also provides insurance and rental protection of up to RM42,000 (US$100,000), covering more than standard security deposits.

Speedhome further claims that it helped tenants free up a total of RM37 million (US$8.8 million) over the years through zero-deposit rental.

The proptech firm claims to have managed to soften the adverse impact of the pandemic on the property industry with the introduction of its ‘virtual viewing’ and ‘home runners’ services that addressed the restrictions posed by the various Movement Control Order (MCO).

Thomas G.Tsao, Chairman of Gobi Partners, said: “Speedhome is one of our first investments for Gobi’s SuperSeed Fund II. This investment also marks another venture into the booming proptech industry for our firm. In Indonesia, we currently have two proptech investments that are doing well during these uncertain times — online short-term home rental marketplace Travelio, and premium coworking space operator GoWork. As such, we see great things ahead for Speedhome, and we are optimistic about the company’s ability to perform well in the Malaysian market.”

Also Read: Edukasyon investor Foxmont joins Philippine proptech startup AHG’s US$1.1M seed round

“Digital partnerships are very much part of our strategy at Allianz Malaysia as we look towards capitalising on new opportunities and new markets. However, more importantly, we are equally driven to support our local digital champions, startups like Speedhome, and currently have over 50 active digital partnerships across various sectors. Speedhome has been a standout digital player in the property rental industry, whose innovative ideas have enhanced the way we do business,” said Zakri Khir, CEO of Allianz Malaysia.

The proptech sector in Malaysia has seen a lot of activities in recent months.

In May, Singapore-headquartered PropertyGuru Group acquired REA Group’s operating entities in Malaysia, iProperty.com.my.

Last October, Patrick Grove, co-founder of iProperty Group and Catcha Group, joined hands with serial entrepreneur Eric Tan to launch an online home rental platform Instahome in Malaysia, with a “7-figure USD” seed funding.

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Image Credit: Speedhome

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Vara, a Singapore-based staff management platform for small businesses in Southeast Asia, has secured US$4.8 million in a funding round.

Investors include Go Ventures, RTP Global, Alpha JWC Ventures, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, FEBE Ventures, and Taurus Ventures.

“Our ultimate goal at Vara is to deliver more time, energy, and money into the hands of SMEs and their staff. This funding round enables us to continue developing our products and serving our users with an increasing set of value-additive features to accomplish exactly that,” said Abhinav Karale, co-founder at Vara.

In many countries in Southeast Asia, small businesses form the backbone of their respective economies. For example, in Indonesia, over 60 million small businesses contribute to more than 60 per cent of the country’s GDP and employ close to 95 per cent of the labour force.

Since many of these businesses operate in labour-heavy segments of the economy, their staff is critical to daily operations. However, a vast majority of these organisations still manage their human capital — from tracking attendance to tabulating salary — manually.

For employers, this process of attendance and payroll management is cumbersome, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Vara seeks to address this issue by digitising SMEs and their employees.

Also Read: Malaysian startup HAUZ’s all-in-one platform enables companies to manage workforce remotely

Founded in November 2020, Vara aims to transform how small companies manage their staff. Its product, Bukugaji, is geared towards the Indonesian market and claims to have serviced the staff management needs of over 100,000 small companies.

Bukugaji allows business owners to quickly track staff attendance, tabulate salary and loans, generate payslips, and disburse payroll within a few minutes.

Vara is also part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 startups that have developed new digital solutions to help companies and individuals work, live, and learn better in a rapidly evolving Southeast Asian landscape.

However, the workforce management model is not new as Vara is likely to face competition from several similar players operating in this vertical, including Hauz, Swingvy, HReasily, and more.

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Image Credit: Vara

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Next Gen Foods, a Singapore-headquartered plant-based foodtech startup, has extended its seed financing round by raising US$20 million afresh.

This comes less than five months after it raised US$10 million from a host of investors, including Temasek and K3 Ventures — bringing the total funds raised from this round to US$30 million.

The latest tranche came from a clutch of investors, including existing backers Temasek and K3 Ventures. Others who participated in the round are global fund GGV Capital; China-based agriculture and foodtech venture fund Bits x Bites; Yeo Hiap Seng (Asian food and beverage player); Chris Yeh, co-author of Blitzscaling, a book on how tech companies build scale quickly; and a prominent group of athletes including Dele Alli, the England national team footballer.

Also Read: Alt.Flex.Eat: Flexitarianism is the flavour of the SEAson

The investment will drive the entry of Next Gen’s plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE to the US market within the next 12 months. It will be hiring more than 50 employees across R&D, sales, supply chain, finance and marketing in the country.

The US is the largest plant-based meat market and home to leading plant-based brands Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. According to the Good Food Institute, the US retail market for plant-based foods was worth US$7 billion in 2020, up from US$5.5 billion in 2019.

“The United States is the world’s biggest market for plant-based foods. We are already putting our foundations in place to be in-market within the next 12 months as we accelerate our goal of becoming the world’s number one plant-based chicken. The outstanding response from both existing and new investors shows their confidence in our innovative technology, highly scalable business model, differentiated taste experiences and the ability of our team to make TiNDLE a market leader in the US,” said Next Gen co-founder and CEO Andre Menezes.

“Following our March 2021 TiNDLE launch, we have expanded to three key markets, and we expect to be in more than five by end-2021, a mark that some leading brands do not cross after years of existence. We are scaling at this incredibly fast pace with our asset-lite business model, distribution network, talent, and collaborations with great chefs and hot restaurants,” added CMO Jean Madden.

A portion of the capital will also be used for the continued international expansion in APAC and the Middle East, developing its technology, establishing a research and development centre in Singapore and product diversification.

The roadmap for the next one to two years includes raising Series A funding, product diversification, and continued international expansion, notably into Europe.

Additionally, Next Gen has announced changes to its leadership team. CEO Timo Recker is taking the position of Chairman and COO Andre Menezes is the new CEO. Rohit Bhattacharya, who was previously Director at Temasek, joins Next Gen as CFO.

Next Gen was co-founded by Recker and Menezes in October 2020. The duo personally invested US$2.2 million into the company from the get-go. Recker is the founder and former CEO of German plant-based meat company LikeMeat while Menezes was the General Manager of Country Foods Singapore.

First launched in Singapore in early 2021, TiNDLE is sold in over 70 restaurants in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau. This includes ADDA by four-time Michelin Star Chef Manjunath Mural and two Michelin Star Bo Innovation by Chef Alvin Leung in Hong Kong.

Also Read: ‘Global demand for plant-based meat products will be driven mostly by flexitarians: Next Gen’s Andre Menezes

Developed by Next Gen CTO John Seegers in collaboration with chefs and for chefs, the first TiNDLE product TiNDLE Thy, brings the taste and versatility of chicken. Chefs can use TiNDLE Thy to prepare dishes in multiple culinary applications, and for many kinds of cuisines: Western, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and more.

The global plant-based protein segment is expected to reach US$85 billion by 2030, according to UBS. Global investment in food technology for the first three quarters of 2020 was US$8.37 billion, beating the US$7 billion raised in 2019.

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Image Credit: Next Gen Foods

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