Taiwan’s crypto-fiat fintech company XREX closed US$17M pre-Series A

Investors: CDIB Capital Group (lead), SBI Investment, Global Founders Capital, ThreeD Capital, E.Sun Venture Capital, Systex Corporation, Metaplanet Holdings, AppWorks, Black Marble, New Economy Ventures, and Seraph Group.

Plans: To expand its fiat currency portfolio, acquire additional licenses, and forge partnerships with more financial institutions and digital wallets. To roll out a user Reputation Index next year to bolster safety, transparency and accountability while encouraging social networking.

About XREX: Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Taipei, XREX fosters global financial inclusion by leveraging blockchain technology in solving the dollar liquidity shortage issues of cross-border merchants and SMEs in emerging markets. It claims to pioneer tools such as BitCheck and MyXchange to help these organisations reduce forex loss, gain access to US dollars and seamlessly cross over from informal to formal economy.

Also Read: Startup Villages helps entrepreneurs move to Italian villages and make the most of their ‘EUR1 house’ schemes

In the last eight months, XREX successfully detected and prevented fraud rings from Russia and Nigeria from using the platform. The company boasts itself as “one of the safest crypto-fiat currency platforms in the world.”

In 2019, XREX closed a US$7 million seed round led by Taiwan-based incubator cum accelerator AppWorks, which also joined this pre-Series A round this year. Other existing investors of XREX include Skype’s late-cofounder Toivo Annus, WI Harper, BitoEx, and the Taiwan government’s National Development Fund.

Revenue-based financing and growth platform Choco Up bags US$120K funding

Investor: Malaysia-headquartered social e-commerce platform Poptron.

Plans: Choco-Up’s funding, part of a larger funding round by Poptron, will support Poptron in their expansion plans in Singapore and other countries in the region at a peak time for the e-commerce industry.

Poptron will also become a channel partner of Choco Up, enabling the small and micro merchants on the platform to gain access to Choco Up’s data-driven financing platform and receive the immediate and accessible financing these brands – which may not otherwise be able to receive necessary capital – need to grow.

About Choco Up: Founded in 2018, Choco Up offers flexible non-dilutive funding solutions and business analytics across eight countries and 10 sectors. With offices in Hong Kong and Singapore, Choco Up leverages data analytics and vast integration to automate growth fund deployment and risk management, providing fast-growing companies with rapid capital deployment to fuel their growth.

About Poptron: It connects socially conscious consumers in Malaysia with ethical, sustainable and socially responsible brands on its platform, which currently hosts over 100 microbrands with more than 2,000 different types of product listings.

Frontiers Lab Asia launches cross-border training programme in gender lens investing

The story: Frontiers Lab, an incubator for solutions to complex, persistent challenges in entrepreneurial ecosystems, has launched “Beyond 2021: Investing across borders and innovation”, a training programme in South and Southeast Asia to connect global angels to women-led ventures and cross-border investing.

The programme focuses on regional entrepreneur support organisations (ESOs) and intermediaries, and the challenges that they face in supporting small and growing businesses (SGBs).

The objective: This series to be held on September 8-9 provides educational workshops on investing, gender lens investing (GLI), and cross-border investing to demystify the GLI opportunity. It is open for application from angel investors across South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Local hosts include ANGIN, Indonesia’s angel investors network; Villgro, a Philippine early-stage impact incubator; KisStartup, a Vietnam-based ecosystem builder; Invest2lnnovate, Pakistan’s female-led venture capital fund; and Spring Activator, a Canada-based incubator-cum-accelerator.

The non-profit project aims to increase access to capital for female-led early-stage startups, as well as create financial equality and independence within the investment community.

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Image Credit: XREX

The post In brief: Taiwan’s XREX rakes in US$17M, Malaysia’s Choco-Up raises funding from Poptron appeared first on e27.

Starting a business or venturing out as an entrepreneur can be an overwhelming endeavour. How are you going to get your business and brand in front of your target audience?

How are you going to find your ideal clients? Where do you even begin with your marketing efforts? Building your network and allowing it to compliment your marketing efforts gives any startup an advantage.

In a world where we have transitioned to Google Ads, SEO and Social Media Marketing it’s important to remember just how powerful your networking efforts are when paired together with your other marketing initiatives.

Networking is all about establishing, growing and nurturing long term beneficial relationships with people. You will notice some of the most successful individuals are often the most connected. Developing these healthy connections can lead to progression and opportunities.

It’s also important to remember that your network isn’t just business individuals or people in a similar field as your own, you should also consider friends and family as part of that network as well.

Spending the time to build your network comes down to one thing, leverage. While having a large network is a good thing, ensuring that it’s a quality network with the intrinsic value you can call upon to help in certain instances is something to keep in mind.

Collecting a pile of business cards isn’t necessarily the best strategy for building your network. Having a common interest, understanding goals and developing a good foundation in the connection is much more effective.

Also Read: Dealing with fundraising problems? These three startups may have the answer

Building credibility by networking

When you begin to build your network online, as well as in-person, your resources begin to grow. Supplying this growing network with reliable data, ideas and knowledge will help increase your reputation as well as make you more visible to others.

Opportunities and referrals

These may be the most obvious points as to why building and maintaining your network is so important. It’s also a huge reason why most startups participate in networking, they want to gain access to quality referrals and business opportunities.

While you may not know how opportunities or referrals will materialise, obtaining them through your network ensures they are high quality and easier to convert as opposed to solely relying on digital marketing efforts.

New thoughts and perspectives

Networking involves interactions with businesses and people from a wide variety of diverse contexts which can create a huge advantage in thought processes and perspectives. Some of these advantages are:

• Break old habits: Inviting in fresh perspectives from your network can allow you to mix things up and force you to take some risks. Some ideas may not work out, while others have the potential for big payoffs.
• Benefit from experience: Even after working for many years in one field your expertise will be limited given there is only so much one person can do. Tapping into your network of people allows you to gain the perspective of individuals who have worked for a variety of different companies or different industries and may be able to provide actionable and solution-based advice that they have personally seen be effective in the past.
• Reach new audiences: If you are finding yourself or your business exhausting current target audiences or not getting the return on investment you are looking for with your marketing efforts, reaching out and tapping into your network can reinvigorate or show you the things you need to re-evaluate and change.

Building a business and accumulating clients can take a lot of time and effort so it’s good to have a solid network of business associates and friends that you can draw energy from when needed.

Taking time to foster and nurture these relationships can empower your success with your start-up or entrepreneurial journey and allow you to cultivate the career and business you’re aiming to build.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast or infographic

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The post What are some networking benefits that are essential for startups? appeared first on e27.

We are thrilled to announce that we are working with Female Entrepreneurs Worldwide (FEW) to provide startups with access to e27 Pro.

Female Entrepreneurs Worldwide (FEW) is the largest business platform for female founders and business executives in Asia. FEW’s mission is to empower women with essential skills and networks to help their business growth and personal development.

FEW focuses on the following aspects: Tech Platform, FEW Incubator and ESG.

• Tech Platform – Members can search business and lifestyle programs and book direct consultations with industry experts who can offer timely advice and expertise to help their business.
• FEW Incubator – Each year FEW Incubator offers cash grants to selected female founders of high-growth technology companies and helps them build a sustainable, scalable and profitable business.
• ESG – FEW also works closely with multinational companies and government bodies to build ESG programs and market their initiatives to a female demographic.

As part of their incubation program, FEW has organised a demo day happening on August 25, 2021, 6 to 9 PM SGT, to highlight 13 selected women-led tech companies across various verticals including edutech, healthcare, fashion-tech, AI and Big data. Investors, business angels and venture capitalists will have an exclusive inside view of these Asia’s women-led tech startups, who are developing cutting-edge innovations and solutions for the new needs of different industries. The programme is sponsored by Apollo Mobility Group, Iptiq and InvestHK.

To join the demo day, click here.

Also Read: Levelling the playing field: How to build a home for women in tech

Opportunities to build your investor network through e27 Pro

Over the past couple of months, we have served over 3,000 connections between startups and investors through e27 Pro’s Connect feature.

In this new normal, there is a distinctive lack of ability for different parts of the Southeast Asia tech ecosystem to reach out to each other.

We used to have thousands of offline activities happening monthly, connecting various local and regional ecosystems, connecting startups, corporates, governments, and investors. Even our very own Echelon Asia Summit used to bring in more than 10,000 people over two days to achieve these meaningful, often serendipitous, connections.

This is a real pain, especially if you are new to the ecosystem and do not have existing networks that can introduce you to new ones. Online webinars and conferences seem to alleviate this issue temporarily, but we find that the startup ecosystem requires more.

e27’s mission has always been to empower entrepreneurs with the tools to build and grow their companies. With e27 Pro, we’re going back to our roots and helping startups with their fundraising by providing a platform that allows not only discovery but a tool to begin conversations with investors and update them on their progress.

With over 300 verified active investors on the platform, e27 Pro members have in their reach the ability to find, connect, and engage with investors that are right for them (not a Pro member yet? Start here).

Get the chance to connect with FEW

FEW is onboard e27 Pro, and members can reach out directly to them via Connect.

Any e27 Pro member can simply visit FEW’s profile and click the Connect button to get the ball rolling.

The post Female Entrepreneurs Worldwide (FEW) partners with e27 to empower women founders in growing their businesses appeared first on e27.

Dekoruma, an online platform offering home furnishing and interior design services in Indonesia, announced today it has raised US$15 million as part of its ongoing Series C financing round.

Key investors in this round include Nexter Ventures by Thailand’s SCG Cement-Building Materials and South Korea’s KTB Network. Existing backers GDN, OCBC NISP Ventura and Foundamental also co-invested.

This round comes over a year after it bagged an undisclosed amount in pre-Series C from InterVest Star SEA Growth Fund and existing investors. According to its co-founder and CEO Dimas Harry Priawan, Dekoruma is currently in talks with investors to add more capital to the current round.

It will use the fresh financing to expand its Dekoruma Experience Centre, an O2O concept, beyond Jakarta. The experience centre — developed at the end of 2019 — reduces acquisition costs and increases online purchases within its vicinity, according to the startup.

The company will also develop new products and services, and integrate its project management system (PMS) NOMA to grab more designers.

Dekoruma also wants to see itself in around eight cities in the archipelago by the end-2022

Also Read: Dekoruma raises Series B funding, aims to expand in the market

“The product and ecosystem that we have built have eliminated inefficiencies that plague the industry. It translates to more affordable products and hyper-transparent services that our customers and partners delight in. We will scale up by expanding our business beyond Jakarta and partnering with more partners and property developers,” said Priawan.

Started as a furniture marketplace in 2016, Dekoruma currently offers an ecosystem connecting home furnishing merchants, interior designers, contractors and property developers. In addition, it recently added property brokerage to B2C customers.

To date, Dekoruma claims to have served more than a million customers, partnering with more than 5,000 designers and contractors and almost all tier 1 and tier 2 property developers in Indonesia.

Dekoruma’s revenue has tripled, and all business units have been operating at CM3 (contribution margin 3) positive for the past 18 months. With a multi-years of runway, the startup expects to become EBITDA-positive by the end-2022.

“Our focus now is to grow our business and hit EBITDA-positive by the end of 2022. Then, we will gear up for an IPO sometime in the end of 2023,” added Priawan.

Also Read: The future of interior design is here

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck at the beginning of last year, Dekoruma claims almost all of its customers have virtually had discussions with interior designers through NOMA.

The home and living industry is about US$10 billion in Indonesia.

Like in other parts of the world, people in the archipelago are still placed under lock-down and staying home. As a result, the demand for home and living has grown significantly.

“Due to the pandemic, we have seen many traditional retailers close their shops, and many interior/contractor projects face supply-chain related disruptions,” Priawan told e27. “This situation has put Dekoruma in a prime position as we are the only company that can digitise the entire home furnishing and buying experience.”

He also said Dekoruma is becoming the third-largest company in Indonesia after Informa (Kawan Lama Group) and IKEA. “We expect the demand to go up further both in the residential and commercial sectors since most offices, F&B outlets and hotels will eventually have to focus on creating safe and pandemic-free spaces,” he concluded.
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Image Credit: Dokoruma

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Vietnamese startup Marathon Education has secured US$1.5 million in seed funding from a clutch of investors, including Forge Ventures (a VC firm launched in partnership with Alto Partners Multi-Family Office in Singapore), Venturra, and iSeed SEA. 

Individuals including Marcel van Miert, chairman of Vietnam Australia International School, and Walter de Oude, founder of Singapore Life, also joined the round.

With the new investment, Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered Marathon intends to serve students taking the National Curriculum by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training across grades 6-12.

It also aims to leverage analytics and technology to identify areas where students are weak and recommend the necessary lessons.

The startup is also developing a platform for tutors to reach students across the country, focusing on academics, especially with COVID-19 forcing all offline classes to shut down.

“COVID-19 has also ushered in a new paradigm shift where consumers have shifted to studying online. Marathon’s approach takes advantage of these converging factors and enables the mass market to access top tutors, which previously would not have been possible,” said Wing Vasiksiri, managing partner at iSeed SEA.

Co-founded in 2021 by Duc Pham (CEO), a former investor at the US-based private equity fund TPG Global, and his brother-in-law Tran Viet Tung (COO), Marathon Education targets Vietnam’s fragmented, under-served after-school tutoring market. 

Incorporated in Singapore, Marathon leverages a live large-class hybrid model to ensure students get access to top-quality education from “top one per cent teachers” and personalised attention from curated teaching assistants during and after classes, even when they are home.

“Marathon wants to democratise access to quality tutors for students across Vietnam,” said Pham.

 “It is estimated that offline after-school tutoring penetration in Vietnam is ~50 per cent. However, given most quality tutors are based in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city, students in tier-2 and tier-3 cities do not get access to tutors of the same quality as their peers in metropolitans,” he added.

According to a Bain & Company analysis, Vietnamese parents also view education as the primary means towards a successful career. The average Vietnamese family spends approximately ~20 per cent of disposable income on education, compared to 6 – 15 per cent in other Southeast Asian peers.

Marathon is in a” stringent” process of selecting experienced tutors through multiple rounds of interviews on a referral basis. It is also in the final stage of bringing on board a CTO. 

While it counts offline players in the tutoring industry as its competitors, Pham said it does not compete with existing edutech players such as Topica, Kienguru, Everest, NPX Point Avenue, and Clevai.

“Our shareholder base also counts early investors in Zenius, Ruangguru, Topica, who can help us de-risk growth from areas that have killed other edtech players,” he added.

Also read: Keisuke Honda-backed edutech startup Manabie secures US$3M more to bring Japan’s high-quality education to Vietnam

Pham claims that Marathon allows tutors belonging to the “top one per cent in their respective subjects” to gain more income than their current jobs, as well as focus on their teaching strength while delegating away operations.

Unlike other booming sectors in the region, such as ride-hailing and food delivery, education is nuanced to the local context due to differences in language, culture, and curriculum. Therefore, Pham looks at the speed of execution and pivot quickly as the competitive advantage in this burgeoning market. 

“Our business model at launch does not rely on spending significant capital expenditure on building out a massively differentiated tech stack from competitors,” he said. “This contrasts the approach that some competitors have taken in spending significant cash on R&D to build up a content library without talking to users and understanding market needs, or converting content libraries that have worked elsewhere in the world and hoping that sticks in Vietnam.”

Also read: Flying Cape nets US$1.5M to scale its edutech platform in Southeast Asia, China

Many Vietnamese edutech companies have raised capital in H1 2021. They include educational services provider Equest (US$100 million investment from KKR), AI-powered language app Elsa (US$15 million Series B led by Vietnam Investments Group), and Educa Corporation (US$2 million Series A from Alibaba-backed eWTP). 

By the end of 2023, the Vietnamese e-learning market is expected to be worth over US$3 billion, according to Ken Research, with the increase in the number of foreign players entering the Vietnam e-learning market. 

The impact of the crackdown in neighbouring China

Vietnam’s close neighbour China recently banned firms in the tutoring sector from making profits, saying that this industry “led to money-burning wars and excessive advertising”. According to the Chinese government, it runs against the nature of education as welfare and harms the traditional education ecosystem.

The most significant driver for the crackdown was the predatory advertising whereby ads content focusing on “guilt-tripping” parents and students to urge them to attend tutoring otherwise lead to negative career implications.

“My immediate reaction is that advertising should never be done in this way,” Pham noted. “I think China is 10-15 years ahead of Southeast Asia in terms of edutech development, and therefore we now have all the precedents in front of us to avoid these pitfalls.”

Pham still believes in the benefits of shifting tutoring from offline to online, as in-school K-12 education offerings may over-deliver for some students who learn faster than others and under-deliver for some who learn a particular subject in different ways. 

Moreover, it reduces the burden of spending hours commuting between different offline tutoring classes, which otherwise could be used for sports or entertainment.

“I view K-12 after-school tutoring as modular, and only necessary to supplement areas where students need help, and should not be a ‘blanket’ offering across all subjects,” he added. 

Drawing on his experience working with established education players at TPG Global, Pham has built his conviction in understanding what Vietnamese and Southeast Asian parents look for when choosing education products.

“By having a bird’s eye view of the evolution of edutech players in the region, I will bet my money on Marathon being the next SEA unicorn,” stated Pham.

The post Ex-TPG exec’s startup Marathon Education raises US$1.5M to change the after-school tutoring market in Vietnam appeared first on e27.