Vietnamese company Society Pass, which provides a data-driven loyalty platform, has launched a US$26 million initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US.
The company, which offers about 2.8 million shares of common stock for US$9 per share, started trading under the ticker symbol “SOPA” on November 9, 2021. The offering is expected to close on November 12, 2021, subject to customary closing conditions.
With this, Society Pass has become the first Vietnamese company to complete a traditional listing on a stock market outside of its home country.
“As an acquisition-led technology company, this milestone marks the beginning of our next phase of growth as we expand beyond Vietnam into other parts of Southeast Asia with particular focuses on the Philippines and Indonesia. Our Nasdaq IPO and access to public markets allow us to connect investors to some of the fastest-growing retail e-commerce opportunities in the world,” said Dennis Nguyen, founder, chairman and CEO.
Society Pass was supposed to hit the bourses in early October. However, it shelved the plan for unknown reasons.
According to DealStreetAsia, the company and Nguyen were facing lawsuits from former employees, who claimed compensation and bonuses of US$690,000, besides the company shares. Society Pass, however, made counterclaims for several millions of US dollars, citing the former employees’ breach of contract.
Founded in 2018 by Nguyen, Society Pass operates multiple e-commerce and lifestyle platforms across its key markets. Its business model focuses on collecting user data through the regular circulation of its universal loyalty points. It connects consumers and merchants across multiple product and service categories fostering organic loyalty.
As of September, Society Pass had had over 1.5 million registered users and over 3,500 registered merchants and brands.
Two months ago, the firm relaunched Leflair that it acquired in June this year after the luxury e-commerce brand filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Before the acquisition, Leflair generated over US$10 million in sales y-o-y and was ranked amongst the top 5 e-commerce platforms in Vietnam. The addition of Leflair complements Society Pass’s two other existing businesses: SoPa, an online ordering and loyalty platform, and #HOTTAB, a POS service provider specialising in payment infrastructure, loyalty management and joint marketing programmes for merchants.
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Image Credit: Society Pass
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In this episode, we speak with Gabriel Engel, CEO and Co-Founder of Rocket Chat, a fast-growing Brazilian enterprise messaging platform born through open source. We cover a number of topics relevant to international expansion from the benefits of having a distributed team to serve a distributed customer base, the importance of creating physical space that represents the values of the company and how common values can help you connect across cultures and geographies.
This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets.
With this deal, the Singaporean firm looks to deepen its presence in Thailand by expanding its medication delivery services to 38 provinces by the end of Q1 2022.
This deal will add one million more consumers to Doctor Anywhere’s platform. Before the acquisition, its active user numbers stood at 1.5 million in Southeast Asia.
The company also expects its Thai revenues to grow by more than 5x in the next two years
Both brands will operate in tandem in Thailand and retain their existing core functions while harnessing key resources and know-how to develop new product features for users. The combined network has more than 1,000 medical professionals and partners across diversified specialisations, including paediatrics, cardiology, urology, gynaecology, and orthopaedics.
Jaren Siew, CEO of Doctor Raksa, said: “The regional exposure of Doctor Anywhere will bring immediate scale, strong B2B relationships, and tech capabilities to Doctor Raksa. This will help us to provide an even better product offering for our patients, doctors and employees.”
Surangkhana (Nicky) Surapaitoon, GM of Doctor Anywhere Thailand, said: “The acquisition brings key learnings for us to localise our services to meet growing in-market needs and engage with our users. The information exchange between two competent teams will help us build an effective omnichannel telehealth model for the country.”
Established in 2016, Doctor Raksa offers online doctor consultations, electronic prescriptions, electronic medical summaries, pharmacist consultations and prescription refills. It has over one million users.
Launched in 2017, Doctor Anywhere is an omnichannel healthcare company that aims to make healthcare accessible and efficient for everyone. Its digital platform bridges gaps in the healthcare ecosystem through technology and innovation, enabling users to manage their health effectively through its mobile app.
Doctor Anywhere is currently available in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The group also recently announced the establishment of regional tech hubs in India and Vietnam.
To date, Doctor Anywhere has raised US$104 million. It also comprises a US$4.1 million Series A round, anchored by Kamet Capital Partners, in 2018.
Its other backers include Novo Holdings (Denmark), Philips, and OSK-SBI Venture Partners (Malaysia), EDBI, Square Peg, IHH Healthcare, Kamet Capital, and Pavilion Capital.
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So naturally, the next step would be to demystify NFTs and DeFi since such innovations illustrate crypto’s most compelling use cases.
I recognise how technical Web3 is. Innovation takes place on a day-to-day basis. Acronyms keep popping up (e.g. gm, ngmi, irl, ser, mn, fren, etc.). It’s hard to keep up with all communities out there.
That’s why I am putting together the web3 series. To introduce the most popular use cases. Why people are so excited about the decentralised web, and the technology’s incredible potential.
Let’s review the promise of web3 again: open, trustless, and permissionless network:
Open – web 3.0 is built on the blockchain, most often from open-source software by a community that operates transparently.
Trustless – because there is no need for third parties to interfere. Eliminating slow transactions and higher rates.
Permissionless – as there is no need for authorisation from governing bodies.
On the one hand, web2 connected the world and solved various problems across communication, travel, transportation, food deliveries, healthcare, and many more.
On the other hand, it concentrated power in the hands of a few corporations.
A month ago, a good friend of mine got de-platformed from an investment app. He did not receive any explanation why. That’s just bizarre.
Even the last American president got de-platformed from all major social media platforms. It’s pretty scary to think that your investment account or digital identity can be taken down overnight.
Decisions like what features will be prioritised. Who collects revenue or how data is secured falls into the hands of a few people.
Facebook is perhaps the best example of an influential corporation that keeps on making poor decisions. Despite its resources, great talent, and public scrutiny.
Web3 promises to solve such problems through decentralisation. Meaning, rather than having a group of people make important decisions, we can have communities incentivised through tokens to police, grow, and develop the products they are building.
The most popular use cases of web3 are Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Source: CoinMarketCap
Bitcoin and Ethereum have ~44 per cent and ~20 per cent market share of all cryptocurrencies. While Ethereum has a lower market share than Bitcoin, it offers many more use cases.
DeFi and NFTs have emerged as solid streams of innovation. In turn, today, almost everything in crypto is built on Ethereum.
Which begs the question, what are NFTs and DeFi?
NFTs
There is so much to cover here, but let’s start with the basics. First of all, let’s define what a token is.
“Tokens give users property rights: the ability to own a piece of the internet,” says Chris Dixon, Partner at a16z.
BTC and ETH are fungible tokens. Fungible tokens are interchangeable, similar to the US dollar. Each dollar bill is nearly identical to another dollar bill.
If you buy 10 shares of Google from your broker, you don’t care which 10 shares you received. They are all ‘mutually interchangeable’”
On the other hand, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are unique. You can think of them as web3 media assets. The most popular use case of NFTs today are pieces of art, but it can be a lot more.
Music, code, tweets, gifs, access passes, digital identities, domains, game’s character skins, and even this very essay that I am writing can be converted into an NFT through a platform like Mirror.
To understand all the hype, we need to go back to 2008 and review an essay by Kevin Kelly titled “1000 true fans”. The thesis of the article is simple.
The internet has enabled micro-communities like never before. You do not need millions of followers to make a living. All you need is 1000 true fans.
“A true fan is defined as a fan that will buy anything you produce. These diehard fans will drive 200 miles to see you sing; they will buy the hardback and paperback and audible versions of your book; they will purchase your next figurine sight unseen; they will pay for the “best-of” DVD version of your free YouTube channel; they will come to your chef’s table once a month.”
NFTs are enabling creators to monetise directly with their fans. In the past, artists needed to rely on labels, publishers, or all kinds of different intermediaries to make money.
Today, NFTs enable direct transactions with one’s audience.
Moreover, NFTs can have a code attached to each media piece. In turn, smart contracts can be programmed to facilitate royalty fee collection from secondary sales.
There are three reasons why NFTs are an excellent deal for creators:
Fewer intermediaries – marketplaces like OpenSea and Rarible will indeed continue to exist. Yet, they will be constrained in how much the third parties can charge.
Granular pricing tiering – you can slice and dice different pricing tiers. That allows creators to capture a lot more of the demand.
Marketing costs are decreased to nearly zero – crypto exhibits powerful network effects. Think about BTC and ETH, or even most other tokens. All tokens grew to over a trillion-dollar market cap in aggregate with almost no marketing spend. When each of us owns a token, we are incentivised to spread the word. Skin in the game + network effects = exponential growth at low cost.
Let’s take a look at a few real-life examples of popular NFTs.
Another popular category is collectables, which represent a set of assets. Perhaps the most popular ones are the CryptoPunks (lowest price US$292K) and Bored Ape Yacht Club (lowest price US$115K).
Last but not least, play-to-earn games have been getting a lot of attention, especially in markets like Vietnam and the Philippines, where NFTs have enabled play to earn games.
That innovation is attracting a lot of people in emerging markets. After all, some people can make more money from playing such games, rather than having regular jobs.
While art and games are the first categories getting popular, I expect to see many more. Think of Unstoppable Domains building NFT domains.
Or perhaps, Audius developing a decentralised Soundcloud-like platform where artists can mint their songs into NFTs.
We are in the early days of NFTs, and I am excited to see all the following innovations.
DeFi
When speaking of finance, I am referring to saving, lending, and exchange of value. The core objective of DeFi is to replace traditional intermediaries.
DeFi applications achieve that through freely accessible, autonomous, and transparent software.
“Imagine a global, open alternative to every financial service you use today — savings, loans, trading, insurance and more — accessible to anyone in the world with a smartphone and internet connection.” — Sid Coelho-Prabhu, DeFi at Coinbase Wallet
Perhaps that sounds very ambitious at first glance, so let’s take a look at some numbers. While DeFi is a relatively new concept, Ethereum, the backend platform for most DeFi applications, settled about US$1.5 trillion in transactions in Q1 2021.
Source: Ryan Watkins, Research at Messari.io
Starting with Bitcoin, which unleashed the first widely adopted and highly secure digital store of value. Next, Ethereum brought the innovation of smart contracts and Dapps.
This was followed by a wave of ICOs that were predominantly unsuccessful but produced valuable lessons, which were then leveraged to build what DeFi is today.
“With DeFi, anyone in the world can lend, borrow, send, or trade blockchain-based assets using easily downloadable wallets without having to use a bank or broker. If they wish, they can explore even more advanced financial activities— leveraged trading, structured products, synthetic assets, insurance underwriting, market-making— while always retaining complete control over their assets.”– Marvin Ammori is the chief legal officer of Uniswap Labs
Perhaps the most exciting feature of DeFi is the permissionless and transparent nature of the technology.
Permissionless
Anyone can contribute to building on DeFi platforms like Uniswap or Sushiswap. No central authority has the power to revoke access.
No matter your gender, ethnicity, age, wealth, or political affiliation, you can use DeFi applications (as long as you have an internet connection and smartphone/laptop). That was unheard of up until the first use cases of DeFi.
Transparency
Given the nature of the software being source-available or open-source, anyone has access to it. Meaning, people can quickly review the code and associated capital.
All transactions are recorded on a blockchain. Third parties can build a business around auditing, investigation, or analytics purposes.
As in the case of Bitcoin, if you are located in a developed country and have access to a robust financial system, DeFi might not sound attractive. New complex technology that can manage your money sounds scary.
But think of all people in underserved communities around the globe. Decentralized finance offers access to payment services for billions of unbanked people.
Setting up a crypto wallet and transferring money to your family through DeFi Dapps is often a lot easier than securing a bank account in emerging markets.
Even for me, as an expat that earned higher than the average salary in Indonesia. It took me two years before I could open a bank account.
Now let’s take a look at some of the most popular Dapps in the DeFi space.
Compound – borrow and lend.
Lend your crypto and earn interest in it.
Deposit your crypto as collateral and borrow against it.
Uniswap and Sushiswap – automated token exchange.
Trade popular tokens by using your existing wallet.
Become a liquidity provider by supplying crypto and earning a share of the exchange fees.
Pooltogether – no loss savings. A no-loss game where participants deposit the DAI stable coin on the platform. At the end of each month, one lucky participant wins all the interest earned. Everyone else gets their initial deposits back.
Although it’s not perfect, DeFi has built a reputation as the new open financial system. Of course, nothing artificial is flawless, and there will be some trade-offs. But it’s undeniable that decentralized finance is aiming in the right direction.
Additionally, contrary to the common belief, the percentage of identified illicit activity in crypto as a percentage of total crypto activity from 2017 to 2020 was less than 1 per cent.
Compare that with the estimates of illegal activities in the economy as a whole, and you will arrive at 2 to 4 per cent of global GDP.
Thus, the laundering of cash in crypto remains relatively small compared to our current system.
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Komachine is aiming to change the way B2B commerce and procurement is done in the Asian industrial machinery sector by creating an online platform to connect buyers and suppliers. After gaining traction in the Korean market the startup has ambitions to become the leading industrial machinery internet platform in Asia.
The global machine industry size is estimated to be worth 649 billion USD in market size and is expected to grow to reach $835B by 2027. However, this extremely vital sector is still surprisingly mostly offline based. While industrial machines might be a topic unknown to most of us because learning about them sounds complicated and best left to executives in heavy industry manufacturers. Most people are content to live a happy life without knowing much about it.
But when you consider that industrial machines are involved in some way or another for almost all of the products and services we consume, you realise that we can’t survive a single second on the earth without machines in our life. Nearly every product and service we are buying and using now are made by machines. Despite that, not many people are interested to explore this 649 billion USD industry which affects nearly every aspect of life.
Industrial Machinery: ripe for digitisation
Surprisingly, the machine industry has always been operating completely offline. For over 50 years industry data has been locked up in offline databases leading to opaque supply chains and limited access channels for suppliers and buyer discovery due to various reasons. To understand why the industrial machines sector has still not moved towards online platforms one has to understand the nature of the industry in Asia.
More than 90% of suppliers in Asia are small to medium enterprises SMEs (Small Medium Enterprise) which are mainly operated by the executives from the older generation aged roughly 40~60 who are not native users of online platforms and used to conducting business offline. While there is a fairly decent knowledge of technology within the industry, most businesses have typically not invested the manpower and resources required to excel at digital marketing.
The Industrial Machinery industry consists of companies engaged in the manufacturing of basic power and hand tools, hardware, small-scale machinery and other industrial components. A study of the nature of transactions in the industrial machinery segment reveals that it is characterised by:
Custom Orders: Unlike consumable products, machines and machine parts are usually ordered in customised deals which require business to business communications and negotiations.
Complicated transaction processes result in a long drawn contracting and fulfilment period with higher demands of cost and time.
Within the overall Asian market communication in English has traditionally been a barrier between buyers and suppliers based in Korea and Japan.
Korea: an industrial manufacturing powerhouse
The Korean economy has traditionally been based on the manufacturing industry. A wide range of manufacturing sectors such as Electronics & Semiconductors, Automotive, Ship Building, Construction & Engineering, Petrochemical, Medical, Steel and Machining segments together make up a significantly large share of the economy.
Approximately 20,000~30,000 companies in the machine industry sector in Korea generate more than 40~50 billion USD for the economy every year. However, the lack of English language online marketing channels has held back the industry from expanding business to more countries in Asia.
Komachine is transforming the offline Korean machine industry by building a comprehensive industry database, streamlining communications and transactions and providing custom marketing tools to help maximise online marketing results for more than 3,000 Korean machine suppliers.
As a result, in only 3 years since its launch, Komachine has completed 1,700 transactions worth 30 million USD, thereby connecting 500 machine suppliers with 700 global buyers from 110 countries since 2019. Due to the effect of the pandemic leading to a spike in demand for digital business processes, transaction volume has grown exponentially since the outbreak of COVID 19.
Komachine: connecting industrial machinery buyers and suppliers
Komachine is the number one internet machine Industry platform in Asia currently, connecting more than 3,000 machine suppliers with 100,000 global buyers from 150 countries every month. The chief benefits of the platform are providing online marketing channels to global and domestic machine suppliers and transaction services for global buyers.
With 20 years of experience in machine and parts trading, Komachine founder Charlie Park has built a unique online trading process and system for machine and machine parts, making buying and selling much faster, safer and easier. The platform has helped many companies overcome their initial doubts on how industrial products priced between 1,000~5,000,000 USD can be traded online without physical meetings or offline verification.
The platform has also instilled confidence in users to execute industrial trading online by simplifying complicated processes in terms of quotation, invoice, purchase order, payment, production, inspection and shipping and reducing the dependence on extensive documentation.
With over 1.2 million visitors as of June 2021, more than 70 multinational companies are major customers. Companies like ABB, LS Mtron, SK Telecom, Sony, Boeing, Shell, Kia, GM trust Komachine as their source to procure industrial machinery. Komachine has the largest number of multinational customers listed among Korean startups, winning multiple industry awards as validation of its contribution to the growth of the Korean industry.
Komachine was awarded the presidential award and ministry awards in Korea and won several international startup competitions like Echelon Singapore and TECHBBQ in Denmark.
In addition, 15 patents have been awarded to Komachine for industrial platform business in database and transactions.
Komachine is today the fastest-growing industrial platform ready to rapidly expand in Asia. Unlike other B2B platforms, Komachine is focused on being a result-oriented platform, providing optimised marketing services and easy trading services for both suppliers and global buyers. For any machine suppliers needing to market their services in Asia, Komachine is the right destination and buyers get great value as they can purchase any machines and parts across Asia.
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Komachine
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