GlobalCare, a Vietnam-based B2B insurtech provider, has received an undisclosed amount of funding from VinaCapital Ventures.

It is not clear how GlobalCare is going to utilise the capital. We are contacting the startup for more details and will update this news story accordingly.

Launched in 2017 by Niem Thi Ngoc Dinh and Loi Minh Hang, GlobalCare allows insurance companies and agents to sell policies via a cloud-based and on-premises app. The solution enables end-to-end service management, including monitoring transaction history and processing claims.

The firm also provides insurtech solutions to ride-sharing companies, which offer insurance coverage to its drivers and users. In addition, it develops a technological solution for more than ten major insurance distribution channels and 200,000 agents.

GlobalCare said in a press statement that its network of more than 3,000 O2O stores provides consumers with various insurance products. 

“It offers a product that solves a pain point, an obvious and realistic business plan that has the potential to scale, and a committed and experienced founder and team,” said Trung Duc Hoang, Partner of VinaCapital Ventures.

Also read: Medici, a health-tech firm founded by ex-Grab exec, gets seed funding to foray into insurance in Vietnam

The Vietnamese insurance market is still nascent. As per a Statista report, the non-life insurance penetration rate was at a meagre 0.91 per cent in Vietnam in 2020.

“As Vietnamese learn more about the importance of having insurance to protect them, their families, and their businesses, we aim to provide a platform that removes the inconveniences that can occur when buying insurance products,” said Dinh.

GlobalCare’s latest funding round rides on the tailwind of the pandemic-induced surge in demand for insurance products. 

Last year, as incumbent insurers rapidly increased their technology requirements and capabilities, global investors took bets on insurtech firms to an all-time high of US$7.5 billion and are expected to accelerate in the Southeast Asia market in 2021. 

Vietnam’s Medici, Indonesia’s Fuse and Lifepal, Thailand’s Fairdee and Singapore’s Bolttech are some prominent insurtech startups that have received funding in 2021.

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Image credit: VinaCapital

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WE Rise, the flagship accelerator programme of early-stage impact enterprise incubator Villgro Philippines, announced the 20 women-owned companies that have participated in their programme, including four tech companies.

The tech companies are:

Rumarocket
Founder: Kathleen Yu

Rumarocket is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that helps users identify, optimise, and retain the right talent for the right positions. The company said that its AI can even predict if a team member is about to leave or is going to perform and recommend the right course of action for these employees.

CAWIL.AI
Founder: Cherry Murillon

CAWIL.AI utilises a flexible AI platform that applies itself to recognise objects for its machine learning capabilities. It also highlights customised computer vision tools for machine learning models. The company provides AI solutions to challenges in the environment, provides on-demand data analytics and helps humanity understand the benefits of AI. Currently, they are focused on the ASEA region through fostering partners and clients for environmental management and smart city applications.

Husay Co.
Founder: Leah Rasay

Husay Co. has developed an e-learning platform where artists can both learn and search for job opportunities. It envisions Filipino artists and creative workers thriving in their chosen field and industry. They have worked with over 780 artists and counting, some of which are visual artists, writers, digital artists, and performers to name a few.

Also Read: PDAX raises US$12.5M to take advantage of the popularity of cryptocurrencies in Philippines

For the artists, Husay Co. focuses on getting access to jobs and providing learning courses for those who are in need of upskilling in areas of business, marketing, and worker benefits in order to equip them with better management.

Global CreditPros
Founder: Ronica Jones

Global Credit Pros is a fintech company that aims to halt the cycle of debt for Filipinos as well as take them onto a path of trouble-free retirement. As of the moment, their main target market is the BPO space as this is one of the most resilient industries in the Philippines, growing at 10 per cent a year.

WE Rise takes in 20 female entrepreneurs from sectors such as agriculture, retail, technology, personal care, services, and affordable housing.

According to a press statement, the accelerator began in the midst of the pandemic in 2020 with a focus on access to financing to help close the gender finance gap. Over the course of the programme, the cohort had the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of Villgro’s customised mentorship program, focused learning sessions, and technical assistance.

In hosting WE Rise, Villgro Philippines partners with Value for Women and was supported by Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs’ (ANDE) Advancing Women’s Empowerment Fund (AWEF).

It has hosted a showcase of the companies in late August.

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Image Credit: clin0000

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Since the beginning of the pandemic, misinformation has become prevalent in Asia as people recirculated information to their loved ones, oftentimes without verifying the authenticity and credibility of their sources.

While misinformation has always existed, the rise of new tools such as social media and messaging apps have made the spread of these falsehoods much easier. 

The effects of misinformation

In Singapore, a study by the National Centre of Infectious Diseases (NCID) found that six in 10 Singaporeans have received fake news about COVID-19 on social media.

Misinformation about the pandemic has since shifted from vaccine side-effects, fake cures and conspiracy theories to government policies adopted to combat COVID-19 in Singapore. As countries move in and out of lockdowns in Asia, such misinformation can cause greater damage as people succumb to behaviours such as panic buying and hoarding.

Now, Asia needs to eradicate fake news more than ever, and blockchain could offer a potential solution to combat the growing threat of digital misinformation. 

While the internet has brought much convenience to our lives, it also has deep-rooted issues with trust as trust was not part of the internet’s design. People suffer from fraud, manipulation, and theft on the internet as the solutions we have to solve them in society are non-existent.

Misinformation can impact decision-making, trust, and anxiety levels. Our recent State of Misinformation report has found that 67 per cent of respondents believe that misinformation has impacted elections across the regions.

While people may unknowingly spread misinformation, some, despite not trusting the news and information found online, may spread misinformation mainly because this misinformation confirms their beliefs.

As awareness of misinformation spreads amongst the population, more people turn to multiple sources to verify their information, with trust in traditional media and search engines higher than social media.

However, given that social media has already become the main source of news in Asia, Wordproof’s role is to help fix the internet, such that trust becomes part of the internet’s DNA. 

Also Read: Why Malaysia is quickly becoming a cybersecurity hub for the rest of the world

Creating a safer internet using blockchain

Blockchain was originally invented in 1991 to verify and protect content through a concept called timestamping.

Timestamping touches on a decentralised nature in which each publication obtains a unique hash that would be timestamped into the blockchain, thus avoiding centralised ownership.

Through timestamping, content creators can claim ownership and display transparency regarding alterations of their content.

Website visitors would then be able to conduct their own due diligence to determine the owner of the content, if the owner could be held accountable and whether the content has been tampered with. 

Timestamping can protect internet users from misinformation by allowing access to the history of changes made since the content’s publication. It would also increase transparency and accountability, making it easier for internet users to identify and avoid fake news, creating more trust and protecting them from tampered information. 

Internet safety beyond blockchain

The creation of a safer internet cannot only rely on blockchain. Increasing awareness of fake news across the age groups is crucial, particularly amongst the older generation who have a more challenging time verifying news online, likely due to their generally trusting nature.

Countries in Southeast Asia are also trying to combat fake news through new regulations, which hold people who share fake news accountable for their actions, and campaigns to improve media literacy among their citizens. 

The fight against fake news and misinformation has seen companies such as WhatsApp and Facebook stepping up their game through the roll-out of fact-checking features and services on their platforms.

By adopting the right technology, governments and companies can create more trust for the internet. New technologies are being developed, such as plugins that can support non-WordPress websites.

With the current GDPR data and privacy protection policies, timestamping into the blockchain is a logical follow-up. 

Integrating timestamps into search engines algorithm, social media platforms, and e-commerce would add an additional layer of trust over the internet.

Also Read: Fake news law is good, but it shouldn’t be used to stifle dissent: Singapore’s startup community speaks out

Tier levels are an undividable part of timestamps. They add to the reputation of the content’s originator, enabling highly trusted information to be at the forefront of what is presented to the public and influence the viral impact of information. 

We are optimistic that misinformation will drastically improve in the coming years, so long as we shift towards providing transparency and accountability for the internet and its users. Policymakers, however, would have a major role to play in increasing the speed of this development.

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Image credit: deagreez

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Much has been said about how the pandemic has thrown a massive curveball to startups in the last two years. The recent global health crisis has undoubtedly made it difficult for many, even those that have raised hundreds of millions, to emerge unscathed.

Amidst all of this, our local startup ecosystem is brimming with tenacious founders who are agile enough to tackle whatever is thrown their way. This is why it’s particularly heartening to see these four startup founders from SMU Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE)’s Business Innovations Generator (BIG) incubation programme who not only turned the tide to close significant funding rounds over the last 12 months but also disrupted the way businesses are done.

Lin Fengru and Max Rye of TurtleTree Labs

Max and Fengru are well known locally for leading the way in cell-based technology for sustainable milk and for being the first in the world to produce cell-based human breast milk. What started out as a search for good quality clean milk became a startup now poised to disrupt the multibillion-dollar dairy industry and redefine dairy production.

TurtleTree Labs literally grew from an idea to laboratory and to market in just about three years. In December 2020, the duo announced that they had raised US$6.2 million in pre-series A funding. Subsequently, TurtleTree Scientific was launched in partnership with JSBiosciences to develop and produce food-grade growth factors earlier in January 2021. This will help expand TurtleTree Labs production capabilities to a scale that is commercially viable.

SMU School of Computing and Information Systems alumna Fengru enthused on her entrepreneurial journey with praises for the mentorship and support from the local food industry, government agencies, and the investors she met through the 4-month incubation programme at BIG.

Also read: Startup x Innovation Thailand Expo 2021: A virtual world of innovation

“The BIG team was a super connector. We are linked up regularly to potential investors, partners, and researchers. One of the most significant was an introduction made to A*STAR which assisted us in our R&D and helped pave our path to success,” Fengru complimented in an interview with Singapore’s Ministry of Trade & Industry in August 2020.

“The Startup SG Founder scheme and HSBC-SMU Sustainability Enterprise Initiative offered under the BIG programme have been instrumental in helping us not just from the monetary point of view but also in terms of access to support and resources that gave us the advantage over other competitors,” she added.

Chris Teo of Mednefits

The astronomical cost of healthcare in Singapore accompanied by the loss of his grandmother was the turning point for Chris Teo. Reluctant to be a victim and succumb to the ways of the world, Chris started Mednefits in 2014.

Mednefits simplifies corporate employee benefits by connecting companies and their employees to healthcare providers. What started out as an idea to reduce healthcare costs evolved to become an all-in-one employee medical benefits platform that makes it easier for companies to provide strong benefits programmes. Mednefits not only tracks and processes employees’ claims in real-time, it also allows companies to offer a better and wider range of healthcare benefits to their employees without having to manage these providers.

In November 2020, Mednefits closed a successful Series A round with S$8 million raised, bringing their total funding raised to S$12 million. Today, Mednefits has connected over 50,000 employees in Singapore and Malaysia to over 2,000 healthcare providers.

Teo explained, “Mednefits is not an overnight success. In fact, we spent a six-figure sum developing a product when we first started, only to find out that no one wanted to use it when we finally tested it. It was devastating. But we learnt from these precious lessons and adapted to make it work for people who are actually using it.”

To find out that your idea is not working can take a mental and emotional toll on many startup founders. Teo’s learnings as a founder became insights for market validation and lessons to rebound from failure at one of the many BIG Founders’ Sharing Sessions held regularly for those who have just set out on their entrepreneurship path.

Teo added, “The community at SMU was a strong sounding board for our new business model and offered us a space to share our ideas freely. As entrepreneurs themselves, they helped us define our customers’ pain points which still stand true to us today.”

Rahul Banerjee of BondEvalue

Established in 2016 by Dr Rahul Banerjee, BondEvalue is a FinTech start-up that changes the world of fixed income markets. BondEvalue creates transparency in the bond markets, provides market news and data, and makes bond investments more accessible to investors. BondEvalue was enrolled in the BIG incubation programme in that same year.

Unlike equities, the bonds market has been operating in a traditional environment and remained unchanged for decades. In Asia and Europe, bond trading functions almost exclusively for affluent individuals largely because of the high minimum denomination of US$200,000 in the secondary market. Even private banking clients are unable to access live prices easily, and trading is carried out over the counter or over the phone, making for an opaque process and pricing.

Also read: Harnessing sustainable technology to build a resilient future with IPI

Having identified the pain points in the industry, BondbloX Bond Exchange was added as part of BondEvalue’s offering in October 2020. BondbloX became the world’s first fractional bond exchange using proprietary technology and enterprise-grade blockchain that enables investors to buy and sell bonds in denominations of US$1,000 instead of the usual US$200,000.

BondbloX is regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore with Citibank and Northern Trust as its designated custodians. The exchange combines the power of distributed ledger technology that allows for enhanced transparency and liquidity and faster settlement, while making institutional-grade investment opportunities available to new classes of investors.

As recently as June 2021, the company raised US$6M Series A bringing the total funding raised to US$10 million. The company was named under the “Forbes Asia 100 to Watch” list. They also announced a joint venture in Mexico to form a Peso bond exchange as part of its expansion plans.

Disrupting a traditional industry requires grit and a deep commitment to move things forward. Despite his busy schedule and the demanding nature of being the CEO and founder, Dr Banerjee believes in giving back and sharing his knowledge with the community. He is currently a mentor at SMU IIE’s Global Innovation Immersion internship programme, eager to provide guidance to young talents who are keen on a career in innovation. He is also a trainer on Bond Investing at SMU Academy.

“SMU BIG has been integral in BondEvalue’s growth. I was a traditional banker and learned a lot about startups during the time of incubation. All our initial teammates joined us there. We may have grown up, but we can never grow out of SMU”, said Dr Banerjee.

James Chan of ION Mobility

“Electric motorbikes can cut smog and reduce PM2.5 and greenhouse gas emissions in the air. Imagine that being adopted across all the cities in Southeast Asia like Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, and Bangkok!” said James Chan, Founder and CEO of ION Mobility.

Inspired by Tesla and its vision to be Southeast Asia’s top technology company leading our region’s transition towards a low-carbon economy with electric and electric mobility products for consumers and businesses, Chan founded ION Mobility in late 2019. Southeast Asia is the world’s third-largest market for motorbikes after India and China, yet little progress has been made to introduce cleaner alternatives for these little dirty machines.

Headquartered in Singapore and an all-Singaporean management leading a team of 10 nationalities across its three offices in Singapore, Shenzhen, and Jakarta, ION Mobility is committed to creating great products and seamless user experiences by combining human-centred design with advanced software and hardware. Their goal is to entice the 200+ million motorbike users in Southeast Asia to switch from petrol to electric for a more sustainable future.

In October 2020, ION Mobility raised US$3.3 million in seed funding and more recently secured over S$800,000 in grants from Enterprise Singapore in March 2021, proving that the bleak economic situation from the pandemic had not dampened its ambitions, execution, and growth.

“It was an interesting time to start a company in the typically capital-intensive automotive sector (that does not exist in Singapore), and an even more interesting period to try and raise capital (where risk capital is typically in lesser supply for early-stage hardware startups),” Chan shared through his blog.

Also read: MaGIC graduate PABLO AIR — Leveraging drone technology for social impact

He likens their strategy to countries’ responses in flattening the curve to avoid overloading their healthcare capacity. With great risk comes great opportunities.

“We scaled back on the magnitude and velocity of our forecasts on travel, hiring roadmaps, rental, and renovations in order to stretch our Plan C further into next year and give ourselves options ahead of our Series A raise,” stated James.

“We joined SMU BIG right from the start before we secured our own office. I’ll always be grateful to them for their support from our very beginning, which made our startup journey feel much less lonely and difficult.”

“It was an especially challenging environment to operate in. But what did not kill us can only make us stronger,” Chan quipped.

The company is revving up to unveil its first smart EV motorbike for Indonesia before the end of 2021 and is set to expand its operations in Singapore and Indonesia. ION Mobility stands poised to continue developing its in-house design, research and development capabilities, build up its supply chain, and add to its in-house production capabilities and partnerships.

SMU IIE’s Business Innovations Generator

Keen to find out how SMU Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE) can help you to build your startup or business ideas further and faster? Learn more about SMU IIE’s Business Innovations Generator (BIG) equity-free and founders-centric incubation programme on its website, and its latest cohort of startups!

IIE is also one of the Accredited Mentor Partners (AMP) for the Startup SG Founder scheme that helps early-stage startups and entrepreneurs kick start their business ideas. Subscribe to its quarterly e-newsletter, The Greenhouse Effect, for more inspiring stories from the founders of today.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by SMU IIE

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Dezy, a Singapore-based decentralised finance (DeFi) startup, has bagged an undisclosed amount of funding from a clutch of local investors, including DeFiance Capital, HH VC Investments, Impiro, and angels such as Tranglo founder HY Sia.

With the new investment, Dezy aims to bolster the user and deposit growth, update the educational content, and launch new features, including smoother onboarding options, optimised KYC and underlying insurance on user funds deposited. 

A portion of the capital will also be used to expand its marketing, technical development, and business development teams. 

DeZy was launched in 2021 by four co-founders Eric Dadoun (CEO), Harald Lang (CTO ), Sharmini Ravindran (CMO ), and Simon Landsheer (strategic advisor). It aims to empower people to “achieve meaningful savings, income growth and wealth accumulation” by simplifying decentralised finance. People can borrow, save, trade, or invest without intermediaries like banks or brokerages.  

It automatically converts users’ deposits into Singapore dollar-backed stable coins and disperses them into a range of decentralised protocols. With this, the platform help users generate up to 5.25 per cent annual percentage yield.

Also read: Gwendolyn Regina to lead investments at Binance’s new US$100M DeFi fund

“The opportunity that DeZy aims to solve is certainly one that exists beyond Singapore, but before we look at international expansion, we want to make a meaningful impact domestically first,” CEO Eric Dadoun said.

He added that the company also looks to join the B2B markets and develop longer-term features to give users access to a broader range of savings services. 

As stated on the company’s website, Dezy commits to secure users’ access to decentralised finance with inclusivity, transparency, and no deposit lock-in. 

As per the ‘Singapore fintech landscape 2020 and beyond’ report, Singapore raised US$346 million in fintech investment in 2020, accounting for 6.2 per cent of all funds invested in Asia. 

Last year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched a S$125 million (US$93 million) support package for the financial and fintech industries to help them deal with the immediate challenges caused by COVID-19 while also positioning themselves for future development and recovery.

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Image credit: Dezy

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