Singapore-based technology-driven media company Hepmil Media Group has secured US$10 million in a Series A round of financing led by Quest Ventures, Pavilion Capital and Bent Pixels.

Hepmil own the media companies SGAG, MGAG and PGAG, besides the digital creator agency Hepmil Creators’ Network.

This round marks Hepmil Media’s first fund-raise from institutional investors since its inception in 2015.

The group will use the funds to grow its content and creators’ platform and capabilities and expand its e-sports and gaming network. The group also has plans to grow more revenue streams, particularly in developing content capabilities to serve regional commerce players in their direct-to-consumer efforts.

Must Read: #MeToo in startups in SEA and the silence surrounding it is deafening

It will also expand into Thailand and Vietnam in 2022.

Karl Mak, CEO and co-founder of Hepmil Media, said: “The digital media space in Singapore and Southeast Asia has transformed rapidly over the last decade. More people are spending their time online for entertainment and fulfilling their everyday needs. We also see more brands looking for an integrated digital media solution capable of reaching and engaging an exponentially growing audience in a compelling manner to drive conversion. Through expansion and investing in capabilities building to push new, innovative solutions for brands, we hope to be able to redefine Southeast Asia’s digital media and entertainment sector and to remain the preferred platform for brands to work with.”

Hepmil Media’s original content arm produces content that reaches over 30 million Gen Zs and millennials across the region weekly. At the same time, its creator network partners with over 300 of the region’s top digital content creators who generate over 3 billion monthly views.

Hepmil Media Group has offices in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta and Manila with over 100 employees.

The firm entered Indonesia early this year via a partnership with EVOS Esports, which aims to address the expanding e-sports market across the region and give brands and talents an additional platform to connect with a highly engaged audience.

The funding will also be used to support the group’s strategic expansion plans in the coming months, including the creation of Bent Pixels Asia Private Limited, a joint venture between Hepmil Media and Bent Pixels in Asia Pacific.

Also Read: Pivots are hard, but worth it: Here are the life lessons we gained

Headquartered in Singapore, Bent Pixels Asia will enable Hepmil Media to expand its influence and reach within the e-sports community in Southeast Asia by being the preferred provider for YouTube reserved media in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

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Far from appealing and trendy projects like carbon exchange or offsetting, sustainability is also a matter of under-looked and partly ignored things. To my dismay, e-waste is one of them. Why

Because dealing with trash is not noble? Because it asks us to choose between consumerism and sobriety? Because finding value in waste is never considered by companies (let’s debunk this later). Well, hard to say.

What is 100 per cent sure, though, is that e-waste is going to be one of the biggest challenges of our century … and no one knows it.

Eco-Business wrote a couple of years ago about “Defusing the e-waste bomb in Asia”. Nothing much has changed, so I guess it’s time to put this topic in the spotlight again.

So what’s the situation now in Southeast Asia? Is it the same everywhere? Are there model students in the classroom?

Is Singapore paving the way as they do in other fields (agritech, new sustainable tech, food waste)? And most importantly, what’s the risk of e-waste in the end?

To reply to these questions, I felt the need to write this mini-series to explore the situation —and possible future(s)— about e-waste in Southeast Asia, with a strong focus on three significant countries: Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

This first article is just playing the role of an appetiser to help you understand what the problem is and why a portion of Asia’s future is at stake here. Okay, no more time to (e-)waste! (Sorry, I had to do it!)

Also Read: Throwaway gold: How data can tap into the unrealised potential in plastic waste

So, let’s set the scenery first. According to the Global E-waste Monitor 2020:

• A record 53.6 million metric tonnes of e-waste was generated worldwide in 2019, and it is expected to reach 74 metric tonnes by 2030.
• Asia generated the highest quantity of e-waste in 2019 at 24.9 million metric tonnes, and the region shows the fastest growth in e-waste trends.

• While developed nations are now taking e-waste seriously by ensuring proper disposal, most middle and low-income countries do not have an adequate e-waste infrastructure. In some countries, e-waste management is even totally absent. It should not come as a surprise as e-waste management requires processes and players —thus, money— to thrive.

A vast definition …

Electronic waste or e-waste describes all discarded electronic equipment and devices. It’s not only laptops and smartphones; e-waste also includes TV, DVD players (feel old yet?), printers, machinery.

Also Read: Waste Labs raises pre-seed money to digitise, plan, improve waste collection processes using AI

They can either be:

• Refurbished/Reused after being repaired
• Resold on secondhand platform
• Recycled through material recovery
• Disposed of, purely

The 3R covers these different end-of-life scenarios (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), a key concept about waste and circularity. NEA’s section is available here in case you want to read more about it.

E-waste isn’t always easy and convenient to recycle. Local governments sometimes have e-waste collection days a few times a year, but that means that homeowners have to store the unwanted items in the meantime.

Several electronic stores will accept electronics for recycling at no cost (Best Buy and Staples). And several electronics companies take their products for recycling, including Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Dell.

New usages for consumers (streaming, video content-based social networks) and corporations (5G, IoT, new wave of tech) are also massively contributing to increase e-waste “mathematically”.

Indeed, new usages mostly imply better performance and up-to-date equipment, meaning the lifespan of connected devices dropped. To show this phenomenon, we can have a look at the average lifespan of the equipment.

In the 1990s, devices were supposed to live for 20–25 years; today, the average is around four to five years. With substantial gaps between consumer goods (under three years for some smartphones, for instance) and company machinery (about seven to eight years).

The growing trends of the new tech will probably make this lifespan shorter shortly, hence the need to take action now, especially in Asia, where digitisation and middle-class development is growing way faster than in other areas of the world.

More sophisticated tech also implies devices that are harder to recycle. Nano alloys, the blending of tiny portions of minerals on some motherboards, make recycling very hard (and costly!), even if you have the entire process.

You have 0.4g of gold in a random smartphone, but is it worth getting it back as you will need a tremendous amount of energy to recover it? Hmm, food for thought for you to think about the vicious link between mineral resources depletion and energy consumption.

Also Read: Go smart or go waste? Smart construction in Asia is up for grabs

… for a vast problem!

E-waste comes with a whole bunch of nasty consequences. It is tough to be exhaustive in a one-shot article, but the main issues revolve around the environment, human health and social trouble.

Environmental problem

There along comes the elephant in the Room! I guess I do not have to mention this one extensively, don’t I? You guess that dumping e-waste in the wild is not great for the planet? You guessed it right.

Examples to show the impact of e-waste on the planet;

• Improper management of e-waste contributes to global warming; A total of 98 Mt of CO2-equivalents were released into the atmosphere from discarded fridges and air-conditioners that were not managed sustainably.
• For pollution, let’s sum it up by saying that e-waste is mostly burned or buried, leading to toxic gas emissions (made of Mercury, Lead or CFCs, for instance). This causes tremendous problems for biodiversity. E-waste causes air pollution, water and soil pollution as well. For example, heavy metals and flame retardants due to e-waste burning can infiltrate soils and cause contamination of underlying groundwater or crops. When heavy metals contaminate the soil, the crops become vulnerable to absorbing these toxins, which can cause disease and drops in agricultural yields.
• The vicious part about this consequence is that — just like Cloud-based infrastructures — this footprint is outsourced somehow. Few countries take care of e-waste, so we do not see the impact. In Southeast Asia, a lot of e-waste is sent to be “processed” by Indonesia. But outsourcing e-waste management to countries that are not prepared to take care of it sustainably is a huge mistake and lead to terrible consequences (see the example of Ghana below).

In future articles, we will talk about the iconic example of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to explain how critical e-waste is for this country. Mentioning the situation in Phnom Penh is also worth, even though less heard of.

Human health problems

As mentioned earlier, toxic gas emissions are harmful to our health. Especially, mercury, lead, cadmium or polybrominated flame retardants can induce adverse health effects on human health (brain, heart, skeleton).

It can also considerably affect the nervous and reproductive systems of the human body, leading to disease and congenital disabilities. Plastic burnt in the process won’t make it better for sure either.

I don’t have the time to list all human health problems due to e-waste but if you want to know more,  check out the “disaster in the making” of e-waste-induced illnesses in China.

Social problems

These problems mentioned earlier lead conclusively to social trouble; fight for money made of illegal recycling and resources recovering. In some countries, you have parallel economies out of any government control that is thriving.

Add the tensions on markets and supply chain disruption— that is not due to e-waste management — and you have a dangerous cocktail ready to explode.

Also Read: Fixing food waste problem means less hungry people and a great economy

The situation in Agbogbloshie, Ghana, speaks for itself, with kids being intoxicated and stolen from their families to take care of dumped e-waste.

To finalise this explanation of issues due to improper e-waste management, I wanted to add one last thing. It’s not a problem per se, though, and it might even be part of the solution. Indeed, I wanted to focus on the $$$ value lost in e-waste.

If I told you that the value of raw materials in the global e-waste generated in 2019 is equal to approximately US$57 billion, would you believe it?

Then, you should, because that’s the number stated in the 2020 Global e-waste monitor report.

Another number to understand why we do not bother yet. Statista estimated that a single metric ton of circuit boards usually includes 40–800 times the gold ore concentrations mined in the US. The number is 30 to 40 times for copper.

All this give perspective, right?

Need to rethink an entire model

Today, we are not here to discuss the solutions to reduce e-waste— that’s for another day! But this article’s just an intro for you to understand what’s at stake. However, we can briefly mention some solutions (Note this order is on purpose!).

• Sobriety: Decrease our consumption of electronic devices — Companies and consumers alike
• Sustainable design: Design devices and software that are more flexible and easier to maintain/recycle (all hail Fairphone)
• More transparency: Increase consumer pressure on hardware manufacturers to get more clarity in manufacturing processes and recycling.
• Government intervention: To lead the way, Governments must provide processes, infrastructures and a legal framework to make things possible. Some countries (Japan, Taiwan) are pretty advanced on such topics today. But countries that rely on entire underground activities cannot just kiss them goodbye. E-waste regulations must be national and regional to be fruitful. We will start to look at this in the following articles, taking Singapore’s case as an example.
• Innovation; Recycling e-waste today is not a piece of cake. Innovation can help us get more value from our e-waste, but it’s the ultimate solution that should not be mentioned; first, it will not save us by itself.

I will take time in the future to explain in-depth these possible solutions — and others — but it seems pretty apparent that decreasing e-waste will ultimately lead to the necessity of rethinking an entire model and a change of mindset overall. Quick fix measures won’t be the long-term solution!

Also Read: How this Singaporean AI startup makes waste collection and recycling easy for cities, organisations

Hope to see you for the following article about Singapore coming out in December. So wait before you buy the new iPhone for your sister, please.

In the meantime, stay safe and join the #ReuseRevolution.

Sustainably yours …

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Indonesian courier startup J&T Express has secured US$2.5 billion from Boyu Capital, Hillhouse Capital Group and Sequoia Capital China, Reuters has reported.

Chinese internet and gaming powerhouse Tencent and VC firm SIG China also joined.

The round brings the unicorn’s valuation to US$20 billion, second only to Indonesia’s most valuable startup GoTo.

The proceeds of the round will be utilised to support J&T Express’s expansion plan in China and Latin America. J&T also looks to raise US$1 billion in a listing in the Hong Kong stock market as early as Q1 2022, according to a Reuters source.

Also read: The 27 Indonesian startups that have taken the ecosystem to next level this year

Launched in 2015 by ex-Oppo executives Jet Lee and Tony Chen, J&T Express engages in the delivery of goods, both shipping by land, sea or air. The firm owns automated sorting warehouse networks in Singapore and Indonesia.

Since its inception, J&T has made inroads into Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and China, besides Indonesia. The foreign markets are said to make up 70 per cent of J&T’s business.

Driven by the pandemic-fulled boom in the e-commerce sector, J&T has witnessed healthy growth across all markets. In Indonesia alone, the startup delivers around 2.5 million parcels each day, up 40 per cent from the pre-pandemic level.

J&T also serves as the delivery partner of brands, such as Bukalapak, Tokopedia and Shopee, which cover two-thirds of its service orders in the archipelago.

Last month, the firm acquired its Chinese competitor Best’s logistics business Best Express for US$1 billion.

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Image Credit: J&T Express

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When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Philippines, the economy became vulnerable, and millions of Filipinos were put out of work. With mobility restrictions putting physical transactions on hold, digital solutions swept in to save the day.

The need to digitise everything became the catalyst for cashless transactions and, eventually, the rapid rise of crypto adoption. This is a massive development, considering that cash is still king in the Philippines, and around 70 per cent of the population remains unbanked and underserved.

But digital solutions still triumphed amidst the pandemic, especially those that were accessible via mobile phones because around 79 million Filipinos relied on their smartphones for their day-to-day activities. 

Play-to-earn games like Axie Infinity and accessible mobile apps like Coins.ph enabled Filipinos to dabble into crypto to earn extra income amidst the pandemic. MetaMask, the non-custodial crypto wallet primarily used by Axie Infinity players, reported that its monthly active users over the past year grew by 1,800 per cent, with around 2 million users coming from the Philippines alone.

As of October 2021, the Philippines currently ranks 15th in Chainalysis’ global cryptocurrency adoption list. It won’t be long for the country to rise in rank as crypto adoption continues to grow.

It’s important to note that the pandemic wasn’t the only driver of crypto adoption in the Philippines—hundreds of Filipinos have been investing and trading in virtual currencies since the early years of crypto.

Also Read: Go-Jek acquires majority stake in Philippines’s blockchain fintech company Coins.ph

Financial institutions and regulatory bodies have also been studying the benefits that decentralised solutions bring to the financial sector and gradually integrating them into their operations over the years. 

Let’s take a deeper look into how blockchain and crypto adoption evolved in the Philippines.

Crypto milestones in the Philippines

Investing in virtual currencies was undoubtedly difficult in the early years of crypto. Early crypto adopters in the Philippines shared that they had to buy and sell crypto using foreign crypto exchanges such as Mt. Gox and Bitstamp and claim free Bitcoins through faucet websites. 

It wasn’t until Coins.ph entered the scene in 2014, providing new vehicles for Filipinos to make everyday financial transactions such as payments, remittances, and online shopping using crypto.

It also allows Filipinos to quickly make cross-border payments, which are often challenging to accomplish traditionally due to tax implications, complicated processes, and high fees.

Fintech company Satoshi Citadel Industries (SCI) also forged its ground within the same year to build the blockchain ecosystem in the Philippines.

Upon seeing the growth of crypto adoption in the Philippines, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) issued an advisory informing Filipinos of the features, benefits, and attendant risks when dealing with VCs.

Crypto adoption in the country increased over the years, albeit slow as crypto was still considered a risky investment and existing regulations did not cover virtual currencies.

By 2017, Bitcoin quickly rose in popularity when its value intensely increased from US$1,000 to over US$19,000 within a few months.

Also Read: Blockchain Space launches in the Philippines to help the industry grow

The BSP at the time began to require crypto exchanges to register with them as remittance and transfer companies and put adequate safeguards to address the risks associated with crypto.

Many local financial institutions made more mainstream crypto solutions for Filipinos in 2019. UnionBank and Coins.ph, for instance, rolled out the first crypto ATM in the Philippines to help their customers exchange their virtual currencies for cash and buy and sell crypto on the spot.

The bank also introduced its stablecoin called PHX to help rural banks access remittance and payments under its blockchain-based i2i network. 

In the same year, Filipino crypto holders were permitted to sell crypto for cash through all 7-Eleven stores across the Philippines as part of an initiative by crypto investment app Abra and payment processor ECPay. 

By 2020, Filipinos can finally access 16 cryptocurrency exchange service providers approved by the BSP, including PDAX, which has been making waves in the crypto scene in the country since 2017.

More than just a provider of crypto trading services, PDAX has also been collaborating with industry leaders further to foster the blockchain and crypto community in the Philippines.

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

We partnered with UnionBank and the Bureau of the Treasury to launch a blockchain app called Bonds.ph.

The app is designed to allow Filipinos, especially those unbanked, to invest in the government’s new retail treasury bond and help the country raise funds to recover the economy amidst the pandemic. Within its first month, the app was downloaded almost 25,000 times from 85 countries.

Crypto adoption increased even more in 2021 when Axie Infinity rose in popularity, enabling Filipinos to earn crypto just by completing quests in a game. Some players can even earn as much as P25,000 per month just by playing the blockchain game.

As we near the end of 2021, it’s safe to say that crypto will remain in the Philippines, especially as it’s given Filipinos a new way to weather the pandemic.

More importantly, crypto allows Filipinos to enter the formal financial system and build their wealth, which millions have always struggled to achieve over the past few years.

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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

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Image credit: mehaniq

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Bareksa, an integrated digital investment platform in Indonesia, has obtained an undisclosed sum in a Series C funding round from Grab.

Through this partnership, Bareksa will gain access to Grab users and partners, offering them investment opportunities with payments handled by OVO.

The funding aligns with the startup’s strategy to strengthen the synergy between Grab, Bareksa and OVO as Indonesia’s leading digital payment platform.

In 2019, Bareksa had raised Series B funding from OVO.

Also Read: Grab acquires US$274M-worth stake in Emtek, fuels talks of OVO-DANA merger: Report

Karaniya Dharmasaputra, co-founder and CEO of Bareksa, said: “Grab’s funding will further strengthen our presence as the first integrated online mutual fund marketplace in Indonesia. By synergising with Grab and OVO, Bareksa will be able to provide wider access, educate the benefits of investment and provide a seamless e-investment experience to millions of driver-partners, kiosk owners and MSMEs, as well as Grab and OVO users.”

Karaniya, president director of OVO, added: “The synergy of the Grab-Bareksa-OVO triangle is expected to increase its contribution in helping to encourage financing of the national economy. With the full support of Grab and OVO, Bareksa believes that it can further support the vision of the Indonesian government and regulators, particularly the Indonesian Financial Services Authority and Bank Indonesia, in expanding national capital market services while increasing financial literacy and inclusion.”

In 2020, the penetration rate of mutual funds in Indonesia was only 3 per cent of the GDP. However, during COVID-19, the number of capital market investors increased. Data from the Indonesian Central Securities Depository (KSEI) noted that until August 2021, there were 6 million capital market investors. KSEI said that throughout 2020, 70 per cent of retail investors bought mutual funds through the fintech platform.

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