As per PwC’s 19th Annual Global CEO Survey, 81 per cent of banking CEOs are more concerned than any other industry sector about the speed of technological change. Consumers’ behaviours and expectations are also changing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

It’s no secret that traditional banks need to adopt technology solutions quickly to digitise their physical processes. This is to serve their current customer base better and regain their market share against fintech competitors such as neo-banks, online banks or Peer-to-Peer lending platforms. 

These 21 startups below are blazing a path in innovating and supporting traditional banks’ digital transformation and expansion on all fronts. 

Let’s look at how they are working with these financial institutions and heat the competition in the financial sector in Southeast Asia.

Also read: Digital transformation is crucial for banks to remain competitive amid the fintech buzz

1- Verihubs

Founded in 2019 by Rick Firnando and Williem Williem, Verihubs helps Indonesian digital businesses authenticate their customers’ identities, check their backgrounds, and get access to their financial information. 

While Verihubs’ solution is largely used in the banking and finance industries, it is also useful in e-commerce, rental markets, and hotels.

The company utilises AI-based identity authentication technologies and APIs to cut verification time from weeks to seconds, allowing businesses to continue authenticating returning customers via SMS, WhatsApp, or flash calls while still performing KYC checks.

Last month, the YC-backed startup bagged US$2.8 million in seed funding led by Insignia Venture Partners.

2- BJTech

Started in 2015, BJTech is an Indonesian AI conversation platform aiming to improve customer service for SMEs. 

Its first products are an intelligent banking app and a “virtual friend” that automatically does things for companies. It later developed an easy-to-use platform for businesses to create their chatbots. 

Its smart chatbot service assists banking, insurance, and logistics companies in connecting, building relationships, and understanding their target customers. The bot is deployed across various messaging apps simultaneously to target a diverse audience demographic.

As noted on Crunchbase, the firm has raised a total of US$1.4 million in seed funding from three investors, including GDP Venture and Stellar Kapital.

3- 6Estates

Co-founded in 2015 by Dr Luan Huanbo, Dr Wang Chao, Prof Chua Tat-Seng, and Roger Yuen, 6Estates is a spin-off from NExT Research Centre, a joint research centre by the National University of Singapore and China’s Tsinghua University. 

The company specialises in finance back-office intelligence automation using unstructured data. It combines AI and RPA technologies to deliver an AI-powered process automation solution for trade finance, credit assessment, audit and compliance.

In 2019, the startup collaborated with Indonesia’s Bank Central Asia to develop an AI and RPA solution for trade finance. In the same year, it received an undisclosed Series B funding round led by GDP Venture, with participation from Bank Central Asia through its VC arm named Central Capital Ventura.

4- Active.ai

Co-founded in 2016 and located in Singapore, Active.ai offers full-stack AI solutions for financial institutions. It provides machine learning, natural language processing, and natural language creation technologies, which could be used in messaging, speech, and IoT devices.

The firm supports clients in deploying products on-premise or in the cloud. It also offers a conversational banking platform to financial institutions.

Users may use the site to check their balances, see transactions, make payments, and obtain advice, among other things. The bot may be used on Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Line, Telegram, or a custom platform. Wealth managers and financial services firms may also utilise the platform to connect with consumers.

In 2019, the startup called US$3 million in its extension of Series A funding, bringing the total amount to over US$11 million. 

5- Silot

Built by Andy Li in 2017, Silot is a Singaporean startup that offers a suite of AI-enabled banking software and merchant banking services. 

Merchant onboarding, KYC, cross-channel banking, account opening, and QR-based payments are among its offerings. 

Silot’s current clients include leading banks in Southeast Asia, such as Nobu Bank (Indonesia) and Krungsri Bank (Thailand).

In 2018, the startup raised “multi-million US dollars” in a pre-Series A funding round from Arbor Ventures and Eight Roads Ventures to support its expansion in Thailand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and other markets in the region.

6- CredoLab

Created in 2015 by Peter Barcak, CredoLab provides credit evaluation and decisioning solutions for banks, consumer financing firms, telecommunications, insurers, and retailers. 

The company analyses various data points from the smartphone device with its AI-based proprietary algorithm, transforming the digital footprint of consumers into predictive scorecards.

It creates bank-grade digital scorecards for banks, lenders, e-commerce, travel, ride-hailing, e-wallets, insurance, and retail businesses, as well as any other company that wants to make better credit choices.

In 2020, the Singapore-based company bagged a US$7 million in Series A investment led by GBG to expand in the US and other markets. 

Also read: AI-powered decision-making for the banks of the future

7- AntWorks

AntWorks was founded in 2015 to provide an operations processing automation platform called Robotic Process Automation (RPA). It targets to provide services ranging from AI-based data recognition to operational automation on a single platform. The platform reads data from non-standard format documents, which account for 90 per cent of all in-house papers, using fractal theory-based AI technology.

In 2018, the Singaporean startup took part in Season 2 of Bangkok Bank InnoHub and got the chance to collaborate with other members of the Bangkok Bank financial group and raise funds through the bank’s business networks. It raised a US$15 million Series A funding round from Japan’s SBI Holdings in the same year.

8- Pand.ai

Pand.ai was created in 2016 to provide AI-powered chatbots to financial institutions in Southeast Asia. It provides conversational-based micro-learning and gamification to help clients increase marketing efficiency while improving financial adviser sales productivity.

The Singapore-based startup uses a natural language processing (NLP) engine to allow financial institutions to communicate digitally with customers. 

Last year, Bualuang Ventures injected a 7-digit USD pre-Series A funding round into Panda.ai. It is also a member of Season 2 of Bangkok Bank InnoHub in 2018.

9- Growthbotics

Founded in 2018, Growthbotics is a provider of a conversational AI solution for finance and banking. Client onboarding, fraud detection, anti-money laundering, stable coins for intra-banking and cross-border banking, and other services are among the company’s offerings. 

Its features include client authentication based on facial and voice recognition, payment gateway integration, and bot-based chat assistance.

The Malaysia-based startup is powered by its own proprietary AI framework and uses Node.js, Python, Solidity as main programming languages.

10- Computer Vision

Established in 2020, Computer Vision (CVS) is a client identification and verification solution for fintech and banks based on sophisticated image processing technology. 

The Vietnam-based CVS owns the feature of extracting information from photos to help banks automatically process customers’ records more quickly and systematically. In addition, the project also includes image-related solutions such as searching on a data set of millions of customer-related images for businesses, time attendance, face attendance, license plate recognition, and analysis of facial features.

In 2020, CVS raised a US$500,000 investment from NextTech Group and the Next100.tech fund to help the financial and banking industry embrace digital change.

Also read: An unlikely duo: Will banks and fintech have a happy marriage?

11- akaBot

Launched in 2018, akaBot is a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform that helps businesses automate their processes and save money.

akaBot merge AI and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to build complete smart automation solutions without intruding on the existing IT system. It can interface with corporate applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, SAP, among others. 

The firm counts Vietnam’s most prominent banks such as Vietcombank, TPBank, BIDV among its clients.

12- FlowAccount

Founded in 2014, FlowAccount is a cloud-based accounting service that helps freelancers, small business owners, and accountants in Thailand manage their accounting, payroll, and expenditure responsibilities all in one place. The startup claims its services are used by 50,000 clients and are connected with banks and e-commerce platforms.

Earlier this year, Thailand’s KBank provided its 1,000 SME clientele with the FlowAccount solution to help them function more effectively by keeping them up to speed on their financial situation regularly, controlling expenditures, and gaining better access to financing sources.

The company raised US$4 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital India in 2021.

13- ThitsaWorks

Launched in 2016, ThitsaWorks offers a banking software suite to microfinance institutions. 

It provides business intelligence for visualisation tools that collect aggregated financial data, cloud-based core banking software for supporting digital banking and lending, and a financial bot for payback plans, among other services. To control risks, it also provides solutions for collecting, managing and analysing data.

In Myanmar, the fintech company says that its solutions are utilised by 70 financial institutions, including banks, non-bank financial institutions and microfinance institutions. Its services assist over 2.5 million borrowers.

In 2020, the startup landed undisclosed funding round from BOD Tech to offer digitisation solutions to Myanmar’s banks.

14- HARA

Dattabot co-founders Regi Wahyu and Imron Zuhri started HARA in 2014. The Indonesian company is a global and open blockchain-based data exchange that allows customers to make better data-driven decisions.

It helps alleviate rural poverty by creating jobs and empowering and educating women to become “agripreneurs.” HARA also works with banks and insurance firms to provide these farmers with financial services.

Its mission is to solve the invisible territory for banks and insurance. The company provides knowledge that assists banks and insurance firms get the data they need to calculate risks.

Also read: Blockchain will force banks to change their feudal mindset

15- Ayoconnect

Co-founded by Jakob, COO Chiragh Kirpalani and CTO Adi Vora in 2016, Ayoconnect’s application programming interface (API) platform allows developers to easily offer a variety of white-label financial solutions to their consumers.

Ayoconnect combines financial data from several sources to enable its close partners to provide better, more inclusive financial services to millions of Indonesians.

Its clientele includes Bank BRI, Bank Mandiri, Permata Bank, DANA, Gopay, Shopee, Bukalapak, Lazada, Blibli and Akulaku. It has also partnered with several Indonesian banks to accelerate its open finance activities.

Earlier this year, the Indonesian startup snagged US$10 million in Pre-Series B funding from strategic investors to expand into Open Finance. 

16- STACS

Founded in 2021 in collaboration with Bluecell Intelligence, a Singapore-based online financing solutions provider, STACS aims to help companies certify and monitor green and sustainability-related loans and bonds. 

The startup allows loan and bond specifications to be encoded into security tokens. It interacts with data sources such as IoT devices and satellite photos to provide real-time impact reports on a distributed ledger. This helps to avoid “greenwashing,” when something is made to appear more ecologically friendly or sustainable than it actually is.

The firm counts Deutsche Bank, Bursa Malaysia, EFG Bank and Bluecell Intelligence among its clients. 

In April, STACS raised a US$3.6 million Pre-Series A funding round led by Wavemaker Partners.

17- Bento

Bento, a Singapore-based digital wealth management solution provider, offers a hybrid B2B platform designed for banks, wealth managers, brokers, and insurance firms. It enables consumers to deploy digital wealth solutions at a cheap cost of entry and with a short time to market.

Its module may be used as a complete solution or only to meet a specific requirement.

In 2020, Grab acquired Bento to provide retail wealth solutions to millions of people in Southeast Asia.

18- PrivyID

Co-founded by Marshall Pribadi and his partner in 2016, PrivyID is a legally binding digital signature provider. The firm integrates its digital signature technology with online credit card application systems of six prominent consumer banks in Indonesia, including Bank Mandiri, BRI, BNI, BNI Syariah, CIMB Niaga, and Bank Mega.

The Indonesia-based firm stated that this partnership enhanced the online credit card application experience for over 50 thousand consumers within a year of its launch.

19- Flow

Flow was founded in 2016 by banker-turned-entrepreneur Borowski. The startup utilises AI and machine learning to create debtor profiles to help banks and non-banking lenders recover their non-performing loans through mediums such as automatically-generated SMS, interactive voice recordings and predictive dialling systems.

The firm launched its first operations in Vietnam in 2016 and has since expanded to Indonesia and India.

In 2020, the startup raised a round of debt capital from Genesis Alternative Ventures.

20- Liquidity Marketplace (LMX)

LMX was founded in 2016 by financial and technology experts from HSBC and Goldman Sachs.

The firm connects corporates, banks and non-bank financial firms via an all-to-all marketplace, where they can borrow and lend directly with each other by eliminating intermediaries. This helps clients achieve lower costs and higher yields while also bolstering risk controls.

In 2018, LMX raised US$1 million in seed funding, led by Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund, a partnership between Singapore-based online assessment and venture building platform Startup-O and Javelin Wealth Management.

21- Bank-Genie

Founded in 2016 in Singapore, Bank-Genie is a mobile-native software that enables banks and financial institutions to create virtual retail branches.

Using a mobile device such as a tablet, POS terminal or smartphone, these financial institutions will be able to offer services such as bill payments, insurance premium payments, and other bank account management services.

The startup secured an undisclosed Series A investment from SBI FMO Emerging Asia Financial Sector Fund (SBI-FMO Fund) in 2017.

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Image Credit: Verihubs, AntWorks, FlowAccount, Ayoconnect

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edamama, an e-commerce startup targetting millennial mothers in the Philippines, has secured an undisclosed amount in debt funding from Innoven Capital.

This brings the company’s total investment raised thus far to over US$6 million. In July, edamama bagged US$5 million from a clutch of investors, including Gentree Fund, Robinsons Retail Holdings, Kickstart Ventures, Foxmont Capital and angels.

The deal marks Innoven’s first-ever investment in the Philippines.

The company will use the new capital to accelerate its logistics and fulfilment capabilities in advance of a Series A funding round early next year.

Also Read: edamama, an e-commerce platform for moms in Philippines, raises US$5M

edamama was established in 2020 by the husband-wife duo of Nishant and Bela Gupta D’Souza. edamama offers over 25,000 SKUs spanning nearly 1,000 brands. The company said in a press note that it leverages a personalized, content-driven approach to provide a digital gift registry, baby product subscription services, and a wide selection of online classes for children and parents.

The e-commerce startup claims it has millions of site visitors and has grown its gross merchandise value by over 50x since its launch.

The company also recently launched its direct-to-consumer fashion label ‘bean by edamama’.

Innoven Capital is a joint venture between Seviora Holdings (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Temasek) and the UOB Group. The firm has made over US$800 million in loan disbursements across Asia in the past six years. More than 20 of its portfolio are unicorns, including Byju’s, OYO, Carsome and FirstCry.

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Image Credit: edamama

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Bizzi, an AI-powered invoice processing automation solution in Vietnam, has raised US$3 million in a pre-Series A round led by Money Forward, a fintech company headquartered in Japan. 

Other investors include Do Ventures and existing investor Qualgro.

Bizzi plans to improve its product features and functionality and expand its customer network to other Southeast Asian markets with the new investment.

“We will support the company in building the largest receivables and payables management platform in Vietnam by sharing the know-how cultivated in the Money Forward Cloud business,” said Tatsuya Kanto, chief strategy officer at Money Forward.

Co-founded in 2019 by CEO Nghia Vu and CTO Nguyen Nguyen, Bizzi is a SaaS platform that automates the time-consuming accounting process for finance teams.

Also read: How automation and innovation will boost SME success in Singapore

Bizzi’s unified platform, powered by AI and robotic process automation (RPA), can be connected with vendors’ existing ERP/accounting solutions and automate financial operations such as bill payment, receipt scanning, compliance, and bookkeeping.

The startup claims that its technologies reduce the invoice processing time by 80 per cent, lower the cost by 50 per cent and boost transparency and tax compliance. 

According to a press statement, Bizzi has achieved a monthly invoice processing value exceeding US$300 million.

Secured by Amazon Web Services and applying international information security standard ISO 27001, Bizzi boasts of winning large clients such as Grab, GS25, Circle K, Tiki, Guardian, Medicare, Pharmacity, and over 4,000 vendors.

As per the “Accounts Payable Automation Market” report, the worldwide accounts payable automation market is predicted to reach US$3.1 billion by 2024, with a CAGR of 11 per cent during the 2019-2024 period.

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Image Credit: Bizzi

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Singapore recently experienced several flash floods after heavy downpours, with the national water agency, PUB, issuing more than 30 flood warnings for at least 10 locations at one point.

Such extreme weather events look set to become the norm for Singapore should planet-warming emissions continue. According to a report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Singapore is at risk of experiencing more punishing heatwaves, severe coastal flooding events and bouts of heavier rain if planet-warming emissions are not reduced to net-zero by 2050.

The real estate sector has one of the highest carbon footprints of any sector, contributing 39 per cent of global annual process-related carbon dioxide, according to the United Nations (UN) Environmental Program.

Within Singapore, the sector is responsible for 20 per cent of the country’s carbon emissions. It is therefore crucial that property developers work to reduce such emissions by tapping into design and technology when retrofitting or developing new buildings.

Effects of climate change

Since the pre-industrial period from 1850-1900, the world’s temperature has risen by one degree Celsius and, according to the latest climate change report by the UN, every region in the world will experience more extreme droughts, intense and frequent rainfall and flooding.

In Singapore, annual mean temperatures have risen from 26.9 degree Celsius to 28 degree Celsius and rainfall in the city has become intense in recent years as well, with the annual rainfall total for Singapore increasing from an average rate of 67 millimetres per decade from 1980 to 2019.

Higher annual temperatures would likely drive an increase in the use of air-conditioners, leading to increased energy demands and higher domestic carbon emissions in the country. As such, the building of air conditioners will need to be continually monitored to ensure that they run optimally.

Sensors, such as those enabled by wireless powered solution Transferfi, can be used to help monitor vibrations and the need to maintain equipment, enabling facilities managers to ensure that building air-conditioning systems are running optimally.

Also Read: Komunidad nets US$1M funding to help businesses adapt to the consequences of climate change

Incorporating emerging technologies for sustainability

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a technology that has been used by construction professionals to gain advanced insights into building design and infrastructure. Since 2012, the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore (BCA) has made the submission of BIM for certain projects mandatory.

By digitally representing all aspects of a given structure, organisations are able to cut down on waste and delays by identifying potential challenges before the field execution. While the submission of BIM has been mandated for certain projects, industry specialists who are not adequately trained are unable to access its benefits.

As such, industry specialists turn to companies like VRcollab, which offers a game-like experience of BIM models where architects, developers and specialist contractors can easily collaborate with a common view of the project, thus maximising efficiency and the potential for sustainability gains.

The use of digital modelling systems has also enabled architects to design buildings such that they work with, rather than against the local climate, thus reducing the energy needed to cool buildings.

Other emerging technologies being incorporated into buildings include motion sensors and smart controls, which help to regulate electricity consumption within a building or adjust indoor temperatures in response to current outdoor temperatures

One smart sensing technology example is Xandar Kardian, which uses radar to detect human presence through their heart rate and breath, turning down lights and air conditioning automatically when people are no longer detected. 

The benefits of net-zero and green buildings

Green buildings are energy-efficient structures and the global green building industry has the potential to cut energy consumption by 50 per cent or more by 2050. Presently, however, the building sector is responsible for global emissions roughly equivalent to that of China.

The sector must operate at “net zero carbon” by 2050 if global warming is to remain under 2 degrees Celsius. As such, net-zero buildings have come to the forefront as these highly energy-efficient buildings generate or supply the energy they require from renewable sources to achieve net-zero carbon emissions.

The adoption of net-zero buildings, however, has been slow, with the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC) recording only 500 net-zero commercial buildings and 2,000 net zero homes worldwide in 2017, well under one per cent of all buildings worldwide.

A monumental and coordinated effort is needed from businesses, governments and non-governmental organisations, to bring the building sector within striking distance of the Paris Agreement targets.

Increasing the adoption of green and net-zero buildings is beneficial for people as well. Green and net-zero buildings have been found to not only increase the health, functioning and well-being of inhabitants, they also foster higher productivity and improve cognitive functioning.

Recent studies have found that green buildings provide optimised environments that are beneficial for people’s health, through their features of natural lighting and better air quality. On the other hand, net-zero buildings help to improve the quality of outdoor air, given that they do not use fossil fuels and emit zero pollutants.

Net-zero buildings could, in fact, produce more energy than they use and would even be able to power electric vehicles with the energy produced, further reducing outdoor air pollution.

Also Read: Life after COVID-19: How and why smart cities need to focus on sustainability

Towards a sustainable future

While green buildings have been increasingly adopted worldwide and have been able to help us in reducing our carbon footprint, the building sector must work to operate at “net-zero carbon” significantly earlier than the deadline of 2050, if global warming is to remain under two degrees Celsius.

To achieve this, the building sector must shift its focus from green buildings to net-zero buildings in order to truly combat climate change.

While the incremental costs of net-zero buildings will be a concern for many, this premium will pay for itself in the long run as the savings from running the operation will offset the upfront incremental costs.

In our fight against climate change, the adoption of net-zero buildings will be an absolute key for us as we move towards a sustainable future.

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Upmesh, a Singapore-based startup providing e-commerce functionality for live commerce merchants on social media, has closed a US$3 million seed financing round led by Indian VC firm Leo Capital.

Beenext, Prasetia Dwidharma Ventures, and iSeed SEA, besides Chinmay Chauhan and Abhinay Pedisetty (founders of BukuWarung), Royston Tay and Kwok Yang Bin (co-founders of Zopim), and Jonathan Barki (GoTo Financial, also participated.

Founded in 2020 by Wong Zi Yang, Soh Jan, Nhat Vu, and Shawn Teow, Upmesh helps sellers automate capturing orders and collecting payments when selling physical goods on Facebook Live.

The foursome came together in early last year to build live streaming interaction tools on top of the Twitch API. But during their research into live streaming in Southeast Asia, they discovered various challenges plaguing live seller merchants, such as collating orders with pen and paper.

Seeing an opportunity here, the foursome set out to create a regional platform with the depth of localisation necessary to suit each country’s live selling culture and expectations.

Also Read: Is Southeast Asia ready to give birth to interactive e-commerce platforms like Pinduoduo?

In the current form, Upmesh combines the respective strengths of e-commerce platforms and social media platforms to introduce community and discovery into a previously intent-driven online shopping experience.

How Upmesh works

The company provides merchants with a web app and dashboard. Merchants log in via Facebook and grant the web app permissions to access their Facebook page.

With these permissions, the web app can capture comments and tag them to the inventory items that the merchants have uploaded. Upmesh then uses Facebook Messenger to send a checkout link to the customers from the merchant’s Facebook page. Customers then click the checkout link to complete the checkout process and make payments.

The company has onboarded nearly 300 merchants in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines since its launch. It claims it currently processes almost US$40 million in annualised GMV.

“Enabling e-commerce functionality in live commerce is just the first step. Moving forward, we are working tirelessly to make Upmesh become the best place for communities around live selling to gather and share great products in a transparent format,” says CEO Wong Zi Yang. “Driven by a regional appetite for live streaming and the normalisation of e-commerce, the potential waiting to be unlocked by the evolution of e-commerce into a social, community-driven form in Southeast Asia is limitless. We are barely scratching the surface.”

Live commerce has in recent months gained prominence in markets all over the world as consumers turn to social media to discover, buy, and sell items.

In China alone, an estimated US$140 billion is transacted annually via live commerce, making up approximately 15 per cent of all online retail. Whatnot, an American live commerce platform funded by a16z and Y Combinator, in September 2021 closed a US$150 million Series C.

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Image Credit: Upmesh

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