SOCAR raises US$55M Series B from EastBridge Partners, Sime Darby
Investors are South-Korea-based EastBridge Partners and Malaysian multinational Sime Darby Berhad; The Malaysian car-sharing platform plans to use the funding to support continuous tech enhancements, the introduction of clean mobility initiatives, and further development of its P2P car-sharing marketplace TREVO.

E-commerce firm Blibli to acquire Ranch Market operator in Indonesia
Blibli, which is backed by Indonesian conglomerate Djarum Group, will buy more than 797.8M shares of Supra Boga Lestari; Kusumo Martanto, CEO of Blibli, said in a statement that the acquisition was made to strengthen the company’s ecosystem and accelerate business expansion.

Growthwell Foods raises US$22M Series A to manufacture plant-based meat, seafood for F&B businesses
Investors include PE firm Creadev, GGV Capital, Iris Fund, Temasek and DSG Consumer Partners; The startup plans to use the capital to accelerate its business expansion and product development efforts within Southeast Asia.

Wealthtech startup Ajaib set to be unicorn with DST-led round
The online brokerage platform is understood to be raising over US$100M in its latest funding; It would be the company’s third round in this year alone, including a US$65M in March and a US$25M round in January.

SCB Abacus raises US$12M Series A to accelerate product development, talent acquisition
Backers include Openspace Ventures (lead), Vertex Ventures, and CAI Partners; SCB Abacus is a fintech spin-off in the local banking industry that enables the company to combine “the resources of a leading national bank with the expertise and scale-up experience of international venture capitals.”

Tokopedia CEO defends merger with Gojek to lawmakers
William Tanuwijaya said the merger was never intended to control the domestic market and that people still have abundant choices for similar services offered by both Tokopedia and Gojek; Reuters first reported that Indonesia’s anti-trust agency’s plans to scrutinise the merger to check for potential monopolistic behaviour.

Singapore taps Temasek, EDBI to boost SGX appeal
Gan Kim Yong, minister for trade and industry, revealed four core plans: establishing a co-investment fund, setting up a growth fund for initial public offerings, enhancing the Grant for Equity Market Singapore (GEMS) scheme, and forming a strategic partnership model for SGX.

How Tribecar aims to build business, environmental sustainability with a subscription-based car-sharing model
Tribecar has introduced a subscription service that allows customers to rent a vehicle for only S$88 a month instead of the usual price of S$128; It also runs an initiative where new drivers can sign up for this subscription service without paying for an additional New Drivers’ Surcharge during the included free hours.

Ackcio nets US$3M Series A to expand industrial monitoring applications
Investors include Atlas Ventures, Enterprise Singapore, Wavemaker Partners, and Aletra Capital Partners; Ackcio provides cutting-edge, long-range, mesh-based wireless monitoring solutions to industries such as construction, infrastructure, rail, and mining.

Vietnam’s Clevai bags US$2.1M to bolster AI-driven adaptive learning
Investors include Altara Ventures, FEBE Ventures and FJ Labs; Clevai is an AI-enabled, after-school tutoring platform for students from kindergarten to K-12; Its Clevai Math product provides live-streaming classes in mathematics with teachers from the country’s top-tier schools.

Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed Giftee invests in loyalty, rewards platform TADA
The TADA investment marks Giftee’s second investment outside of Japan and is part of its expansion in Southeast Asia; Tokyo Stock Exchange-listed Giftee provides an end-to-end solution, from e-gift issuance to distribution.

Crowdfunding for startups: Where to begin and how to go about it
Crowdfunding is one of the most secure methods of raising cash because no one is going to ask you to return it; They just want the goods or services that you committed to providing.

E-payments continue to drive the Philippine economy post-pandemic
The government aims to increase customer preference for digital payments by converting 50% of total retail payments to digital form and increasing the number of financially included Filipino adults to 70% by onboarding them to the formal financial system via payment or transaction accounts.

Choco Up invests US$630K in Singapore augmented reality startup BuzzAR
BuzzAR provides location-based solutions that allow retail and commerce firms to create personalized AR experiences for their customers; It also offers an AR wayfinder, which uses a point cloud to help users navigate shopping malls and view shop details with their phone cameras.

The post Ecosystem Roundup: SOCAR raises US$55M; Tokopedia defends merger with Gojek to lawmakers appeared first on e27.

Healthcare is all the rage. In 2020, venture funding into health tech companies nearly doubled, reaching a record US$14 billion. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, another US$7.2 billion was poured into the sector globally. For too long, healthcare has been seen as an industry too complex, too manual, too regulated, and too unwieldy for innovation.

As the world moved on to become more productive with the help of tech, globalisation and Moore’s law, healthcare remained analog, local, and inefficient– all of which had driven up the cost of healthcare. 

Then came the year 2020, when a pandemic forced the entire healthcare industry to rethink the many broken and ossified aspects of it– vaccines were made and approved at record speed, data-driven healthcare became a norm, and telehealth utilisation more than quadrupled from figures that had taken over a decade to achieve.

Technology is now seeping through healthcare systems that had revolved around brick-and-mortar facilities– hospitals, research laboratories, and care homes, just to name a few. In this article, we discuss some of the most exciting trends that are set to change everything we know about healthcare. 

Virtual care

When it comes to healthcare, there is (was) no remote working. Earlier use cases of virtual care were largely limited to niche, low acuity services. Thanks to unprecedented regulatory approvals, virtual care has now woven into a much broader set of care models across the entire acuity spectrum such as remote monitoring of blood sugar levels for diabetics, teleconsultation in family medicine, digital triaging at the emergency department, and even remote ward rounds in hospitals.

The implications are massive, as the maturation of virtual care will fundamentally change patient/clinician interactions and redefine healthcare supply/demand dynamics. Competition among clinicians will no longer be local, and home-based care may soon become a norm.

Imagine consulting a physician from the comfort of your home, and have your care team organise care workers, medical supplies, and equipment delivered to your doorsteps. 

Also Read: Pharma entrepreneur Thomas Miklavec shares his journey on expanding his startup across SEA

Data-driven healthcare

Healthcare data has long been kept within the walls of healthcare systems and electronic health record (EHR) providers. Such practices have limited the power of data and encouraged top-down, heuristic decision-making in clinical medicine. The rise of virtual care and the unbundling of healthcare services will force the migration of patient data out of EHRs and into a cloud where all providers can access it.

At-home care, home-diagnostics, virtual care, patient-reported outcomes, remote patient monitoring, genetics, social factors all contribute to a more holistic and longitudinal understanding of patients health, and are infinitely more valuable together than they are apart.

Rich and holistic patient data will in turn lead to higher precision in clinical medicine, faster research for drug development, better underwriting of risk for health payers, and ultimately – better patient outcomes. 

Value-based care

For many, allocating a significant portion of their retirement savings for old age medical treatment is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. As alluded to in my previous paragraphs, healthcare suffers from an intractable cost-disease. Having to spend a quarter of one’s savings for major surgery or millions of dollars for novel oncological therapies is simply unsustainable for both governments and individuals. 

A major driver of ever-increasing healthcare costs is the misalignment of incentives between payers, patients, drugmakers, and providers. As healthcare becomes more transparent, competitive, and tech-driven, it is almost certain that we will usher in an era where patients will pay for therapeutic outcomes (performance) rather than inputs (doses, consultations).

For healthcare systems, value-based care practices will encourage greater focus on improving, rather than attracting patients for more procedures and longer stays.

For patients, novel therapies may come in shorter therapeutic windows at a lower cost. For payers, the benefits of healthier policyholders are all too obvious. 

Bio at the crossroads

The sheer potential of biology in the coming decade probably warrants an article of its own, but we will try to cover as much as possible. 

Like healthcare (among industries), biology has long been seen as a laggard among the sciences. Compared to the many breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, and even computer sciences, much of what researchers do in biology have remained the same since the first major small molecule drug, Aspirin, was discovered in the 1890s.

As biology lacks constants and predictability, such complexities, coupled with a vast number of unknown unknowns, meant that drug discoveries are often highly bespoke and artisanal processes. However, as material sciences and computational power approach a certain level of maturity, they are beginning to allow for the unlocking of biology.

Last year, researchers at London’s Google Deep Mind unveiled the Alpha Fold A.I. system that is capable of accurately predicting up to 99.1 per cent protein folding patterns at speed. The breakthrough was touted by Arthur Levinson, CEO of Genentech, as a ‘once in a generation’ advance in biology.

Also Read: Moving mental health out of Freud’s era and beyond the couch with big data

Alpha Fold demonstrated how computational methods hold the potential to transform life sciences research and speed up drug discovery. A new generation of industrialized biology platforms is now poised to enable ‘plug and play’ medicines, or new therapies that leverage a common foundation and reuse programmable components.

One such example is Moderna, whose technology will have likely a lasting impact on drug discovery timelines.

The time is ripe for us to completely rewrite the playbooks for one of society’s most critical industries that is healthcare. The transformation will take time, but if technology is applied right, we may be able to solve many of healthcare’s problems within the next decade.

As venture investors, the critical task of choosing who and what to fund for the future of healthcare will be paramount. 

–

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

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

Image Credit: olegdudko 

The post Are biomedicine and healthcare coming of age? appeared first on e27.

The Singapore government and its sovereign wealth fund Temasek will establish a new co-investment fund, starting with SGD1.5 billion (US$1.1 billion) in the first tranche.

Called Anchor Fund @ 65, this fund will support promising high-growth enterprises and market leaders in their public fundraising in the city-state’s public equity market, whether through primary, secondary, or dual listings.

In addition, it will provide pre-IPO financing to catalyse the growth of target enterprises and support them in their journey towards an eventual public listing.

Also Read: Temasek, DBS team up to launch growth US$500M debt financing platform for Asia’s tech startups

65 Equity Partners, a wholly-owned investment platform of Temasek, will manage the fund commercially. In addition to anchoring the investee enterprises’ public listings, Anchor Fund @ 65 aims to drive good corporate governance and facilitate shareholder value creation.

Additionally, EDBI, the investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board, intends to establish a new Growth IPO Fund to invest in later-stage enterprises, typically at two or more funding rounds away from a public listing.

Through this fund, EDBI will partner with companies to grow their operations in Singapore and work towards an eventual public listing in Singapore.

Starting with a size of up to SGD500 million (US$370 million), this fund will bridge the gap between EDBI’s typical growth-stage investments and the investments of the Anchor Fund @ 65, strengthening end-to-end access to financing for companies in the Singapore ecosystem.

Lastly, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said that it would enhance the Enhanced Grant for Equity Markets Singapore (GEMS) scheme to expand the scope of support for the Listing grant and Research Talent Development grant.

The GEMS scheme, introduced in February 2019, aims to strengthen Singapore’s equity capital market through a Listing grant, a Research Talent Development grant, and a Research Initiatives grant.

The Listing grant helps issuers defray some of their listing costs. At the same time, the Research Talent Development grant aims to groom equity research talent through the co-funding of hiring expenses and enrich research coverage of Singapore-listed companies.

Also Read: SGX, Temasek team up to advance digital asset infrastructure in capital markets

On the other hand, the Research Initiatives grant intends to support crowd-sourced initiatives to propel the development of Singapore’s equity research ecosystem.

Last month, Banking major DBS and Temasek signed an agreement to jointly launch EvolutionX Debt Capital, a US$500-million development-stage debt financing platform. Based in Singapore, EvolutionX aims to accelerate growth and nurture the next generation of technology leaders.

—

Image Credit: Temasek.

The post Singapore launches US$1.1B fund, new initiatives to spur IPO growth appeared first on e27.

Have you ever woken up and seen an email saying your personal data got hacked? I bet that’s happened to you too and, sadly, there’s nothing we can do about it … yet. I definitely don’t want my special meal data out on the dark web. Sigh.

This post aims to shed light on the problem with the internet today and how blockchain technology is redefining web 3.0.

A brief history of the internet

Do you know what the internet is? If not, I highly recommend this short video by Vox. 

In short, whenever you type a URL into the web browser (let’s say www.nattariya.com), the web translates that data into bits (a string of zeros and ones) and transmits your query to open that website to your wi-fi router in radio waves.

The router then picks up the signal and sends the query to the Domain Name System (DNS) to look up where www.nattariya.com is hosted so that they can fetch the data on that website and show it on your laptop. 

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

If the data is hosted in another part of the world, the Internet Service Provider (ISP) will route your query over internet cables (yes, actual cables that go underwater) to get that data from the server somewhere in the world.

Once the data is fetched, it will return the data to the ISP, and the ISP will send it to your laptop the same way. And, all of this happens in split seconds.

The problems with the internet today: State and security

In truth, your data is not stored on ‘the cloud’, but rather at data servers somewhere, and that data is owned by the applications you’re using, rather than you.

Typically, the applications would use data servers offered by ISP or some big tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Big names promise big trust that they will be able to store and guard our data safely. 

This leads to a major problem with the internet today: you have to trust that the applications and companies you’re dealing with will be able to safeguard your private data and, more importantly, trust that they will not sell your data to the wrong people. 

The reason why the internet has this problem today is because of two things:

The internet is a stateless protocol

It doesn’t know who owns what and who sends what to whom. The family of protocols that the internet is built on, such as TCP/IP for data transmission, SMTP for the transmission of emails, or HTTP for the transmission of Hypertext, regulates data transmission, but not how data is ‘stored’. 

As a result, applications such as Facebook, Youtube, and Google are built on top of the protocols to store and manage data.

Therefore, these applications record and manage the ‘state’ and hold valuable user data. This is why selling user data to advertisers is the most common business model for Web 2.0. 

The internet was not designed with ‘security in mind

It was designed for transaction speed. Because data is stored and managed by centralised applications, the data on these servers is protected by firewalls, and system administrators are needed to manage these servers and their firewalls.

Trying to manipulate data on a server resembles breaking into a house, where a fence and an alarm system provide security. If you know how to jump the fence and break the alarm, you can get the data easily. 

The lack of security is an issue, as reflected by ransomware and data leaks.

AT&T lost the private data of 70 million users, Bangkok Airways faced a breach that took customers’ data, including passport numbers. We have come to accept those limitations as part of our lives and can’t do anything about them. 

How does blockchain fix the ‘state’ and ‘security’ problems in Web 3.0?

The internet, or what we typically call Web 2.0, stores data on a client-server model. The data that you store or query is stored on a server owned by a centralised entity somewhere. Blockchain allows ‘state’ to be recorded and stored in a decentralised way.

Also Read: Practical tips to protect your business from cyberattacks

Applications built on the blockchain will be able to utilise this ‘shared data layer’, which means that applications can no longer own or monetise user data. It also gives us availability, integrity and authenticity guarantee: we can always access data, and no one can change it.

On the other hand, encryption technology enables data ownership as it allows data to be transferred securely. For example, if A sends bitcoin to B.

Only B will be able to access the bitcoin because he has a private key. This concept of sending and receiving value on the internet was impossible because we lacked a worldwide ledger system (a.k.a. blockchains).

The recent breakthroughs in blockchain and encryption technology combined make it possible to transfer and store data differently. 

For the first time in history, we have the ability to add ‘secure properties’ to the internet. If you want to steal data, you would need to break into multiple houses around the globe simultaneously, which each have their own fence and alarm system, to breach them.

Web 3.0 is essentially a new way for individuals to use the Internet without giving up their privacy and valuable data. 

Can we use blockchain today?

The most important challenge in blockchain today is scalability. Contrary to traditional computers, the capacity of blockchains does not grow with demand. When you’re buying a new laptop, you’re adding to the worldwide compute capacity.

When running a blockchain node, you’re not increasing the network capacity. This is a major issue. Compared to a laptop, Ethereum’s performance is only 10 Kilohertz, whereas your laptop can process as fast as 3-4 Gigahertz.

For perspective, 1 GHz = 1000000 kHz. That’s right, your laptop is hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than Ethereum and makes Ethereum look like a nice little calculator. 

What use cases are suitable for blockchain technology?

Since blockchain, coupled with recent encryption and cryptography breakthroughs such as homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs, gives us secure computing, it makes sense to use it for use cases that require high integrity and security, e.g. financial services, first. In the future, once the technology scales, why not use the internet that comes with security guarantees for every transaction?

In 20 years, we’re going to expect everything to be secured. We’ll see those niche use cases expand as the network scales. The security-enabled by these new technologies will likely extend all the way to the hardware level. 

Also Read: How should SMEs and startups prepare to handle a ransomware attack?

You might not be using an iPhone but instead, a ‘secure phone where your information remains yours.

How do you interact with web 3.0?

In Web 2.0, Windows or iOS is a way to interact with programs developed by third-party applications. You install an app, visit a website, or install software and things happen on your device.

In Web 3.0, the model is flipped on its head. Instead of many devices executing many software instances, the network itself operates a single and secure instance of an application.

Today, the most common way to interact with secure computers is through sending and receiving tokens, and the standard of interaction is ERC-20. So start trying out Web 3.0 today by downloading Metamask and sending tokens from your exchange wallet to Metamask wallet.  

Welcome to the age of Web 3.0!

This post first appeared on www.nattariya.com and was inspired by a chat with Guillaume Le Saint of Atato on the Asian Fintech Podcast.

–

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.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

Image Credit: stnazkul

The post What is web 3.0 and why should you care? appeared first on e27.

Dagangan, a social e-commerce platform that supplies fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) to underserved rural communities in Indonesia, has secured US$11.5 million in Series A funding led by Monk’s Hill Ventures.

MMS Group, K3 Ventures, Spiral Ventures, and PnP also participated.

Dagangan will use the new capital to grow its in-house white-label products such as frozen foods, groceries and homeware appliances.

A portion of the money will be used to expand its digital product features such as pay later, logistics pick-up and delivery, talent acquisition. Dagangan will also grow partnerships with community leaders, key opinion leaders, local entrepreneurs, and village chiefs.

In addition, Dagangan plans to expand its footprint in tier-3 cities and tier-4 villages, including Java, Sumatra, and Kalimantan.

Also Read: YC-backed Super raises US$28M to grow its social commerce platform in Indonesia

The new round comes about three months after Dagangan bagged an undisclosed amount of pre-series A funding from CyberAgent Capital, Spiral Ventures, 500 Startups, and Bluebird Group.

Founded in 2019 by Ryan Manafe and Wilson Yanaprasetya, Dagangan supplies FMCG through its Android app and partnerships with community leaders. It uses a tech-enabled hub-and-spoke approach to reach out to key opinion leaders (KOLs) in a new market. For example, village chiefs, microentrepreneurs, or community heads in critical areas.

After establishing these key relationships, Dagangan will work with the supply chain, including FMCG producers and wholesalers or warung owners (shop owners), to deliver group orders cultivated by the KOL to consumers within 24 hours.

The group orders are placed on the company’s app. Dagangan also produces its private-labelled products such as groceries through its partnerships with local farmers.

To remove the need for multiple distribution layers and create a more efficient supply chain, Dagangan also enables direct product delivery from manufacturers or farmers to users.

Its group-buying model aggregates demand based on location, enabling users to make a joint purchase with other buyers, assisted by agents who will facilitate the end-to-end user experience.

To date, Dagangan has covered more than 5,000 villages in over 50 regencies. It has also distributed over 20 local products from smaller farmers and distributors to a broader market.

It distributes more than 20 private-labelled products, such as rice, brown sugar, and snacks items. Today, Dagangan has more than 20,000 active users that manage over 3,000 SKUs.

“Supplying basic daily necessities to rural communities in Indonesia continues to be one of the most complex problems to solve with existing inefficient supply chains and logistics networks. Dagangan’s hub-and-spoke model has shown impressive traction and an early proven track record that is impacting communities,” said Peng T. Ong, co-founder and managing partner of Monk’s Hill Ventures.

Super, another social commerce platform serving rural Indonesia, recently attracted a US$28 million oversubscribed Series B round led by SoftBank Ventures Asia.

—

Image Credit: Dagangan

The post Dagangan nets US$11.5M led by Monk’s Hill to supply FMCG to underserved rural communities in Indonesia appeared first on e27.