Southeast Asia’s gaming industry is on the rise. Between 2020 and 2025, it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.5 per cent, running counter to how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many traditional sports sectors.

The gaming industry, particularly e-sports, has instead thrived, as illustrated by The Asian Electronic Sports Federation (AESF) bringing back e-sports as a medal sporting event at the 2021 SEA Games in Vietnam (which has since been postponed), following its debut in 2019 – hence illustrating the commitment by major stakeholders to back e-sports’ inclusion in a major sporting event.

This mainstreaming of e-sports in Southeast Asia had been gaining strong momentum in the years prior. For one, it has been underpinned by the region’s growing middle-class population, which had been seeing increased spending power, raising more disposable income that can be spent on leisurely activities, including playing video games.

Concurrently, Southeast Asia also continues to witness a growing internet penetration, which has enabled more users to engage in online gaming and spectatorship. 

While Southeast Asia’s e-sports sector is still nascent, there are several factors to support its continued rise – especially when it gains a stronger foothold in the region’s emerging markets. 

E-sports’ economic importance in Southeast Asia

While e-sports was very much the domain of gaming enthusiasts and hobbyists, it has since expanded to become a very promising sector in terms of earnings and industry development.

Especially during the pandemic, more people (namely those from younger generations) are working from home and crave more forms of indoor entertainment.

E-sports can meet that demand by offering content via live stream events or online video games, which contributes to economic earnings such as sales of gaming devices.

It also represents an opportunity for companies and investors to heavily back the industry – especially as more are exploring the implementation of disruptive experiences, given the eventual availability of 5G and the proliferation of more advanced technologies like AI and digital twins.

Also Read: The changing face of gamers and what it means for e-sports startups in SEA

This can encourage the growth of new forms of business opportunities for technology entrepreneurs to see how they can proliferate industry advancements to grow the market further.

Skilled technology professionals will also be key to the industry’s rise, namely in terms of gaming technology development, where Singapore particularly seeks to lean on to meet its aspirations of being Southeast Asia’s leading hub for e-sports.

Outside of its ecosystem, the e-sports sector will also help stimulate the growth of service sectors such as events management – creating opportunities for more live stream events to be conducted over the next decade, at least.

Singapore’s annual Formula 1 race is one instance; its organisers have developed the F1 e-sports Pro Series, which has created an ecosystem of opportunities for Singapore’s various hospitality and tourism industry players.  

Regional growth challenges

Despite its inherently strong potential, Southeast Asia’s e-sports industry still faces challenges for it to grow more actively in the region. More advanced markets such as Singapore have been better positioned to support startups and companies related to the e-sports ecosystem and have organised online gaming tournaments more regularly as compared to more emerging markets such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

This is largely due to greater industry maturity and available resources (both from the public and private sectors) in the former compared to the latter two. 

The lack of recognition for professional gaming as an occupation by government bodies also poses a challenge, particularly concerning international tournaments, as gamers may face issues procuring visas required to stay the course of a tournament or attend training camps.

This could then lead to low governance–  creating a grey area means that raises risks to the wider ecosystem, such as cheating, match-fixing, and illegal betting. 

Another challenge is the region itself. Being highly heterogeneous, key discrepancies such as the availability of payment models differ between the region’s various markets.

Not all countries have more sophisticated electronic payment methods; for instance, Singapore has options such as ApplePay and Samsung Pay, whereas Indonesia is slowly integrating a more secure and easily accessible ‘UniPin’ cashless online payment system.

Contributing to e-sports’ growth

While e-sports face many obstacles in Southeast Asia, many industry actors play an important part in influencing its growth. These include game developers, competition organizers, and even the players themselves.

For example, “Hawaii” Yee Xiao Hao began playing the online game Dota with just friends in Brunei, but later transformed his hobby into a career.

Since then, he has been driving the development of e-sports as a whole in his country for a new generation of gamers, such as his co-founding of the e-sports Association of Brunei.

Meanwhile, game developers, bring specific industry expertise that can add value to a game’s ecosystem, as well as directly organising competitions.

For instance, Singapore’s Riot Games organised the League of Legends World Championships, while Garena developed games such as Free Fire as they realized that mobile games are easier to access, leading to many games optimized for mobile play too, such as FIFA and Call of Duty. 

Sponsorships and investments are also key to e-sports’ future. This is evident in teams participating in competitions that need various resources, of which training is among the most important.

Relatedly, organisers also play a crucial part, as seen in the partnership by ONE Esports and Toyota Motors Asia Pacific for an online Gran Turismo tournament series. 

Still, the growth e-sports has been experiencing would not have been possible without an established governing body to oversee the sport, including responsibilities over regulations and promotion. To date, only some organizations can be classified as governing bodies for e-sports, such as the International Esports Federation (IeSF).

Also Read: The changing face of gamers and what it means for e-sports startups in SEA

Nevertheless, some Southeast Asian governments are taking more direct approaches to nurture the industry, namely by organising and collaborating talent management in e-sports, as seen via bodies like the  Singapore Games Association (SGGA) and the e-sports National Association of the Philippines (eSNAP).

With greater government support and accreditation, there can be seen a shift in attitudes towards e-sports which will be important for its future growth and mainstreaming.

Levelling up e-sports in Southeast Asia

Despite regional challenges, Southeast Asia’s e-sports industry has the prerequisites needed to even grow further, with participation in multi-sports tournaments being one of the major steps in gaining global recognition.

Recently, the Global eSports Federation (GEF) has even announced the first three editions of the global e-sports games, with the first to take place in Singapore in 2021.

While countries and their governments are taking measures to ensure the sport provides more mass appeal, its importance to the region is becoming more prominent, given that will present new sources of national revenue and growth, while stimulating auxiliary benefits such as helping youth development and employment.

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Singapore-based startup Merkle Science, which provides a predictive blockchain monitoring and investigative platform, has closed its US$5.75 million Series A funding round led by Darrow Holdings.

Other participating investors include Kraken Ventures, Bain-backed Uncorrelated Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, Token Bay Capital, Kenetic, and Lunex Ventures.

Merkle Science will use the capital for product development to serve enterprise segments, such as law enforcement agencies and financial institutions. It will also continue evolving its behaviour-based Rule Engine, expanding its token coverage to over 500,000 tokens, and customising solutions for decentralised finance (DeFi) and NFT platforms.

The funding announcement comes in the wake of Merkle Science’s launch in the US market.

Merkle Science co-founder and CEO Mriganka Pattnaik, said: “Our vision is to build the infrastructure necessary to ensure the safe and healthy growth of the crypto industry, starting with understanding the risks associated with cryptocurrency transactions.”

Also Read: (Exclusive) Merkle Science raises US$804K in seed funding round led by LuneX, SGInnovate

“Globally, we have seen strong demand, especially from financial institutions and law enforcement agencies, as crypto-related illicit activity and regulations have taken centre stage. Merkle Science’s intelligence platform is highly customisable and built to evolve with crypto criminal activity, simplifying crypto compliance for our users and ultimately allowing them to focus on their core competencies,” he explained.

Founded in 2018, Merkle Science helps crypto companies, financial institutions, and government entities detect, investigate, and prevent illegal activities involving cryptocurrencies.

Unlike other blockchain monitoring and investigative tools in the market, Merkle’s platform takes a behaviour-based approach to transaction risk management, resulting in more proactive and effective crime monitoring and investigations. This approach enables its intelligence platform to evolve with crypto-related criminal activity, simplifying crypto compliance and ultimately allowing businesses to focus on their core competencies.

Its Blockchain Monitoring tool goes beyond the blacklists, so compliance teams may detect illicit activity from their incoming and outgoing cryptocurrency transactions and meet their local KYC/AML compliance obligations.

The tool also helps regulators understand the risks across all types of crypto businesses, stay on top of emerging technologies, and keep pace with the industry’s increasingly complex illicit activities.

Dean Carlson, head of digital asset investments at Susquehanna and newly-appointed board member at Merkle Science, noted: “As the crypto industry continues to evolve, regulatory challenges are the biggest hurdles to mainstream adoption by financial institutions. The Merkle team has the right mix of regulatory and technology domain expertise to become the gold standard for cryptocurrency compliance and forensics.”

As a board member, Carlson will guide the executive team at a critical growth stage as crypto goes mainstream amid fast-evolving crypto regulations.

With clients across APAC, Europe, and North America, Merkle Science claims it has grown its revenue by over 900 per cent.

In May 2019, Merkle Science bagged seed funding led by Lunex and SGInnovate.

In the past six months, institutional interest for cryptocurrencies and compliance in the US has surged, which has prompted both the co-founders to move their base to New York as part of Merkle Science’s expansion plans.

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Image Credit: Merkle Science.

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Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) refers to the use of smart sensors in machines that enhance industrial manufacturing processes. Also known as Industry 4.0 or the industrial internet, IIoT solutions utilize a connected network of intelligent devices that can monitor, collect, exchange and analyze data on a real-time basis to create value and transform business outcomes.

Using industrial IoT platforms, companies can analyse and act on data produced by connected devices to automate and improve how they design, manufacture, and service products. An industrial IoT platform enables us to leverage machine learning and advance artificial intelligence in real-time to bring in smarter manufacturing methods and enhance products.

Operational efficiency and cost optimization are the key drivers of industrial IoT, as it enables use cases such as asset performance management, predictive maintenance, remote service, connected logistics, and smart factories. IIoT can be applied to a range of industries with applications to save time and resources but increasingly also to innovate new service and revenue models.

Also read: Protégé Ventures as a gateway for VCs to invest in the future

IIoT’s primary focus on intelligent manufacturing is suited to heavy and high-tech industries like semiconductor, mining, aviation, oil and gas, defence, energy, but it also has a wide range of applications in sectors such as agriculture, logistics, finance. IIoT has great promise in the government sector to build smart cities and environmental solutions, as well as in healthcare and cross-industry applications such as smart buildings

The global industrial internet of things market size is expected to grow at 22.8 % to reach USD 1.11 trillion by 2028, according to a report by Grand View Research, Inc.

Sophic Automation: a regional powerhouse in Industrial IoT

For the past 14 years, Malaysia’s Sophic Automation has delivered software development, software and hardware integration solutions in the IIoT and Smart Manufacturing space. Employing a team of 100% local talent, their core competencies are in software, mechanical & electrical design. The company delivers industrial IoT solutions based around 4 main solution offerings to clients:

•       SMARTer worker: digitising traditional workflows
•       SMARTer machine automation: making machines smarter
•       SMARTer operations: digitised and remote operations
•       SMARTer asset: intelligent asset management

Koh, Dim Kuan (DK) and Lee Chee Hoo, founders of Sophic Automation Sdn Bhd (Sophic), started the business in 2007, bringing together decades of experience in leading digital transformation and Industry 4.0 solutions in smart factory and smart city projects.

CEO Dim Kuan says the team culture differentiates Sophic Automation from other software design houses because they continuously develop leaders and promote technopreneurship opportunities internally. “Sophic Automation provides turnkey in customized & hybrid solutions enabling seamless handshake between operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT) which differentiate us from competitors,” says DK. “With our focus on delivering software automation and system integration, we’ve managed to secure business to sustain our team and development,” says DK.

Koh Dim Kuan joined in 2011 as Director, taking charge of the company’s business development activities and operations management. The same year, Sophic secured its first SMARTer worker solution when we were engaged by a multinational semiconductor company to develop a machine monitoring system with mobile application for technicians and engineers to manage production equipment technical issues, and in the same year, Sophic also secured it’s first outsourced product design engineering contract from a multinational electronics company.

Powering Industrial Automation and Building Smart Cities in Malaysia

Sophic is among the top 5 IIoT solutions providers in Malaysia based on revenue and has ambitious expansion plans for the country. They have secured major deals that will play an important part in putting Malaysia on the path to Industry 4.0 transformation. Sophic MSC Sdn Bhd obtained Pioneer status from MSC in May 2012 with Liew Chee Kin joining in 2014 to lead the central region business.

Projects executed by Sophic in Malaysia have ranged from an automated visual inspection packaging equipment solution for a multinational food and beverage manufacturer, to a fully automated chemical compounding system for a glove manufacturer. In 2016, Sophic Automation obtained ISO 9001:2015 certification for smart manufacturing & automated digital solutions.

Also read: Learn the ropes around scaling your startup across borders

They were awarded a business growth fund from Malaysia Technology Development Corporation (MTDC) and secured funding from Multimedia Development Corporation Sdn Bhd (MDEC) under the Digital Malaysia Grow Embedded Systems Industry Project, to develop a Universal Data Bridge and Connectivity Solution. Sophic Automation, has also been awarded “Best Investee Company” by the Malaysia Venture Capital and Private Equity Association in both 2016 and 2018.

Continuing its growth in 2017, Sophic won a smart cities project to enable intelligent video analytics and intelligent operations centre for Penang Island City Council (MBPP). This project entailed the provision of a Command, Control, Collaborate and Cognitive centre for the government sector client. Sophic also set up an intelligent command centre for a semiconductor manufacturer to achieve its lights-off operation objective. Sophic continued to ramp up its smart cities business in 2020 with the design and development of a mobile application, as part of a smart city project, for local state authorities in Malaysia.

Sophic and MaGIC: Partnerships key to accelerating Industry 4.0 in Asia

“As part of our business expansion plan to capture potential demand in the semiconductor and electronics industry in Vietnam, Sophic Vietnam was set up in February 2014 to penetrate into the Vietnam market and provide better services to our customers in the country,” says DK.

“The major gaps we’ve observed from various industries are around getting real-time data from their manufacturing plant,” says DK regarding the challenges Sophic is solving for enterprises adopting IoT. “Data connectivity and IoT has been a key solution we’re providing to address these challenges/problems. As Industry 4.0 is driven by data, data will be key raw digital information to embark on a digital transformation journey,” he points out.

Speaking on the market prospects for IIoT, the Sophic CEO says that thanks to a “strong and active engagement from government policy and agencies who conduct the ground events, as well as funding support to industry, the market awareness in IIoT has been established quite well, but somehow, the adoption rate from industry is not moving fast as expected. Possibly due to an unclear vision of IIoT among small-medium enterprises (SMEs), as well as concern around high investment and operating costs.”

DK is very positive about the growth trajectory of the company: “We’ve been expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30%+ since 5 years, and staff strength is now over 100 people. With our focus on software technology, the talent pipeline will be our core focus so we can expand our R&D activities. We want to bring to market a cost-effective solution that can serve SMEs. Growth through mergers and acquisitions is another option we’re considering down the road.”

Leveraging local and regional partnerships has been a key strategy, says DK: “We strongly believe in ecosystem partnership to leverage our partners’ strength to ensure win-win business for customer, partner and our team. We’ve been able to fully leverage each other’s strengths to conduct successful marketing collaboration, from leads to winning project bids.”

Also read: Leveraging digital-first CX for customer delight and business growth

“MaGIC has provided very good coaching to facilitate our business growth plan. The market promotion initiatives are very important as part of the product commercialization process,” says DK about the benefits of working with MaGIC. “It’s quite natural to expand regionally as part of the business growth process, which is mainly driven by market demand, and we aim to provide better customer services in the region and continuous product improvement. We’ll continue to focus on Vietnam in the near term and China & USA in the mid-term (3-5 years from now) because of strong semiconductor market growth,” says the CEO regarding their plans for regional expansion.

DK hopes their partnership with MaGIC will help create job opportunities at the local level and contribute to Malaysia’s GDP while developing Malaysia’s brand as a technology hub across the region. Sophic’s rapid acceptance in the market was the result of the MaGIC programme he explains: “It has helped us to expedite new product development and market validation by minimizing the customer’s concerns around risks. This paves the way for developing great customer relationships and we can secure a long-term relationship in the client’s overall digital transformation journey.”

“MaGIC’s programme has helped us fast track our new product’s acceptance in the market. MaGIC has worked with us to improve our new customer adoption rate and better predict prospects in the long term. Programmes such as Global Accelerator (GAP) and Global Market-Fit (GMP) are pivotal to our continued regional expansion,” concluded the Sophic CEO.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by MaGIC

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Verihubs, an Indonesia-based ID and data verification startup, has raised US$2.8 million in seed funding led by Insignia Venture Partners, says a TechCrunch report. 

Central Capital Ventura (CCV), an investment arm of Bank Central Asia (BCA), and Singapore-based Amand Ventures also joined the round.

Angels who participated in this round include Shipper co-founder Budi Handoko, Payfazz co-founders Jefriyanto and Ricky Winata, BukuWarung founder Chinmay Chauhan, Modalku ex-CPO Pramodh Rai, and Singapore’s Gotrade co-founder Rohit Mulani.

Under the terms of the agreement, the funds from CCV will be used to expand Verihubs’s offerings for end-users who have an account with BCA.

The startup is also teaming up with Indonesia’s financial services platform Payfazz to help unbanked users deposit money with local agents for their online payments. BukuWarung, a bookkeeping app for SMEs, is also will help Verihubs access transaction data.

Verihubs will also use a portion of the capital to develop its product pipeline, including creating its own credit ratings based on transaction and account balance data. 

Also read: Empowering fintech and e-commerce through digital identity verification 

Launched in 2019 by Rick Firnando and Williem Williem, Verihubs assists Indonesian digital enterprises in authenticating their clients’ identities, verifying their histories, and gaining access to their financial data. 

While Verihubs primarily serves clients in the banking and fintech sectors, its solution can also be applied to e-commerce, rental marketplaces and hospitality.

The firm uses AI-based identity authentication technologies and APIs to reduce verification time from a few weeks to as little as five seconds, allowing businesses to continue authenticating returning consumers via SMS, WhatsApp, or flash calls, and do KYC checks.

End users are required to take a selfie and then submit a photo of a government-issued photo ID when they first log into a Verihubs-enabled app. The AI technology will compare the two pictures and cross-reference the ID with telecom credit ratings and Indonesian government databases, including criminal histories.

The company intends to expand into other Southeast Asia markets after achieving the product-market fit in Indonesia. 

According to a 2020 report released by Fenergo, financial institutions globally suffered from more than US$10.6 billion in penalties for non-compliance with Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Know your Customer (KYC), data privacy and MiFID regulations. In the Asia Pacific alone, fines for financial services firms totalled more than US$5.1 billion due to regulatory crackdowns on their illegitimate behaviours.

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Image Credit: Verihubs

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While holidaying in Hong Kong a few years ago, Huen Su San chanced upon a Korean food brand. A successful businesswoman, she was already running a restaurant chain back home in Malaysia that had grown to nine outlets in Klang Valley.

Su San thought this Korean brand concept would work well in Malaysia and decided to start it as a side venture.

“I could not have timed it better as the Korean food craze landed in Malaysia shortly after. I saw my first Korean dessert outlet grow to four outlets, followed by a successful introduction of three Korean BBQ brands into Malaysia,” she recounted the story to e27.

Cut to now, Su San’s Beyond Korea Dining Group operates ten restaurant outlets across the four brands and two central kitchens.

Having run a successful F&B business, Su San faced many pain points and challenges, and she was determined to resolve them.

Also Read: Everything from soup to nuts: Meet the 27 ghost kitchen startups in Southeast Asia

“I realised that F&B businesses would stand to gain immensely through a co-sharing kitchen and asset-light model,” she said. “Cloud kitchens are a more efficient way to operate and grow F&B online and delivery sales. This spurred me into action to start building Malaysia’s first shared kitchen in 2019, a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.”

Thus, COOKHOUSE took birth. A cloud kitchen enabler, it rents out fully-equipped ready-to-move-in kitchen facilities to F&B businesses for food production. Started in 2020 at the peak of the pandemic crisis, the company quickly grew to four locations, with another two in the pipeline.

As of now, over 35 different brands are operating within COOKHOUSE’s cloud kitchen facilities.

The firm doesn’t own any in-house food brands at the moment.

To go beyond Klang Valley

Su San started her career in commercial real estate in Singapore before returning to Malaysia to join the construction industry. She learnt the ropes of the local events industry after building Glasshouse at Seputeh, an indoor garden events venue in Kuala Lumpur. Having built strong teams around these businesses, Su San had leeway to pursue the cloud kitchen concept.

“COOKHOUSE can be described as a combination of different concepts amalgamated through my different industry experiences,” Su San remarked.

The dark kitchen venture has plans to expand beyond Klang Valley to other states and urban cities in Malaysia. Su San also hopes to explore international markets such as Jakarta, Singapore and Bangkok in the coming years.

“The online food and food delivery market in Malaysia is still in the early stages, and there’s still plenty of room to grow,” she shared.

While the pandemic has resulted in mushrooming all sorts of cloud kitchens in Malaysia, running cloud kitchens is not easy during the ongoing crisis. “Think about the F&B operators badly hit by the pandemic. They are unlikely to start new ventures in cloud kitchens. To run cloud kitchens with several operators like ours, our team has to coordinate many different moving parts simultaneously and have to balance and address the needs of all of our tenants,” the founder and CEO elaborated.

COOKHOUSE’s revenue comes primarily through the rentals and the services offered. It also generates revenues from the fees from its ordering platform at its hybrid kitchens, along with dine-in services.

The ghost kitchen startup recently partnered with Maybank Islamic to assist micro-and SME food businesses to obtain halal certification. They are working together to offer COOKHOUSE’s F&B partners financial assistance and halal certification through its facilities and cloud kitchens.

A self-funded company, COOKHOUSE has fundraising plans. Su San hopes to find the right investment partners to continue to grow the concept across Malaysia and internationally.

Also Read: How a few up and coming virtual kitchens revitalise the pandemic-hit F&B industry in Malaysia

“We started COOKHOUSE just a year ago but quickly grew to four locations, thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of cloud kitchens. While fundraising plans are in the pipeline, achieving profitability is our main focus,” she said.

With the sector continuously growing, cloud kitchens are here to stay in Malaysia.

“New-age tech has already started to blend into cloud kitchens and food delivery markets with the use of drones to send deliveries, robotic arms in kitchens, and of course the use of cloud computing and big data,” Su San concluded.

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Image Credit: COOKHOUSE

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Makmur, an Indonesia-based investment app similar to Betterment of the US, has scored a “seven-digit” seed funding led by Beenext, with participation from Jakarta-based investment group Kinesys Group and Singapore-headquartered Trihill Capital.

Quest Ventures’s Partner Yiping Goh, Kopi Kenangan CEO Edward Tirtanata, GajiGesa CEO Vidit Agrawal, and former unicorn executive Andrew Lee also participated. 

According to a press release, Makmur will utilise the capital to add new features and products and scale the team.

Established in 2019 by Sander Parawira, a former Virtu Financial executive and engineer at Facebook, Makmur enables Indonesians to plan their financial goals (emergency fund, retirement fund, and children’s education fund) on a single app.

Also read: Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam the most attractive fintech hubs in SEA: Study

Users can then reach these goals through long-term investing, regardless of bullish or bearish market condition, with supports of experienced investment professionals based on quantitative research and big data.

Makmur obtained an official license from the Financial Services Authority of Indonesia (OJK) in February 2021. Since then, it claims to have formed partnerships with ten leading investment managers in the country.

The app is available on both Android and iOS, where people can start investing at an initial capital of IDR 10,000 (US$0.7) and no transaction fee. 

With a proprietary dynamic asset allocation technology applied to its goal-based investing and Robo Advisory features, Makmur can generate optimal plans tailored to users’ risk tolerance, investment horizon and prevailing economic conditions.

It also employs optical character recognition and face-recognition technology to offer users a simple and swift account opening experience.

Indonesia’s retail savings and investments market has constantly picked up pace in recent years. The value of the market tripled from US$108 billion in 2008 to US$326 billion in 2018, according to Researchandmarkets’s report. This number is expected to cross the US$400 billion mark in 2022.

On Monday, PINA announced its plan to launch a wealth management and financial planning app in November, following the Indonesian startup’s undisclosed sum in financing from a slew of regional investors.

Earlier in March, Ajaib, an Indonesian online investment platform targeting millennials and first-time investors, also closed its mega US$90 million in one of the largest Series A rounds in Southeast Asia.

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Image Credit: MAKMUR

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Base, a direct-to-consumer beauty and wellness startup in Indonesia, has secured an undisclosed amount of pre-Series A financing led by local early-stage VC firm Skystar Capital.

Existing investors East Ventures and Antler, besides new ones including iSeed Southeast Asia, Pegasus Tech Ventures, and XA Network, also participated.

The new funds will fuel the startup’s tech and overall growth efforts, including distribution, expansion and product development.

Launched in January 2020, Base (not to be confused with Vietnamese SaaS startup Base) caters to Indonesian consumers’ diverse beauty and wellness needs. It claims it offers a fast discovery process and personalised touch of holistic online consultation results on consumers’ profiles to enable an immersive experience.

The one-year-old company offers personalised-recommendation skincare through its smart skin test. It offers organic, vegan, and halal staple skincare products — from cleansers to sunscreen — primarily targeting the Gen-Z and millennial consumers.

Also Read: Social Bella snags US$56M to further expand its beauty-tech biz across SEA

During the pandemic, the company’s annual revenue grew more than 24x in 2021, fuelled by the community affiliate initiative.

Geraldine Oetama, Partner of Skystar Capital, said: “Base utilises technology and data to provide personalised skincare that is effective, paraben-free, and vegan. The growing demand for skincare coupled with Base’s technology and unique, personalised approach makes us very excited to scale Base to the next stage.”

“Base is becoming a safe space for consumers to be more comfortable in their skin, as we champion diversity and offer gender-fluid products like sunscreen that can work for everyone,” said Yaumi Fauziah Sugiharta, co-founder and CEO of Base.

The company recently onboarded Cissylia Stefani-van Leeuwen as its brand director. She has previously held VP Brand roles at Indonesia’s tech-behemoths like Gojek & Tokopedia. Armed with the tech forward-thinking and innovative consumer experiences, Base creates whitespace for an inherently crowded category.

A study by Euromonitor showed that the beauty industry remains resilient towards the pandemic compared to other sectors which have been severely affected. Indonesia’s beauty market is projected to hit US$10 billion by 2025, mainly driven by the fastest-growing categories of personal care (hair care, body care) and skincare, with an annual growth rate of 6%. This robust market opportunity is presenting Base in the right position to scale up its growth.

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Image Credit: Base

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PolicyStreet, a Malaysia-based digital insurance platform, has completed its US$6M in Series A financing round, led by Altara Ventures, Auspac (financial advisory service) and Gobi Partners.

Existing investors KK Fund and Spiral Ventures also participated.

With the new capital, the insurtech startup aims to expand into new markets in Southeast Asia. It also plans to double down on its technological capabilities and business efforts.

Also Read: PolicyStreet raises US$1.8M from KK Fund, Spiral Ventures to grow its millennial-centred insurance platform

The company also announced that it has secured in-principle approval for a General Insurance and Reinsurance license from the Malaysian Labuan Financial Services Authority. The license allows PolicyStreet to create and underwrite insurance products.

PolicyStreet was established in 2017 by former insurance and finance professionals Yen Ming Lee, Wilson Beh and Winnie Chua. The firm offers a digital platform to simplify the insurance buying and policy management experience and make them affordable and accessible to consumers and businesses.

Today, the company collaborates with 40 insurance partners.

The firm previously received both Financial Advisory and Islamic Financial Advisory approval from the Central Bank of Malaysia.

The latest funding round follows a series of strategic partnerships PolicyStreet has recently announced. The company is working with digital platforms such as AirAsia Money and Carro (through its subsidiary myTukar) in Malaysia in the auto insurance segment. PolicyStreet also has a partnership with Foodpanda to provide coverage to its delivery partners.

Dave Ng, General Partner at Altara Ventures, said, “We believe in the potential of embedded digital insurance platforms to flip the existing model and put customers in the centre. We have a strong conviction in the PolicyStreet team to bring innovation and advancement in digital insurtech to our region.”

Also Read: Malaysia’s PolicyStreet gets central bank approval for financial advisory

Thomas Tsao, founding partner and chair of Gobi, noted: “PolicyStreet’s ability to quickly identify gaps in the insurance and protection market, as evidenced by its multiple strategic partnerships, has seen it capitalise on accelerating digital adoption. As more services enter the online space, the insurance and protection market will adapt and build new solutions in response.”

In June 2020, PolicyStreet secured US$1.8 million in a Series A investment from KK Fund, Spiral Ventures and others.

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Image Credit: PolicyStreet

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