Kilo, a Vietnamese B2B e-commerce platform that connects wholesalers with micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), has received US$5 million in pre-Series A financing.
The round is co-led by California-based Altos Ventures and Australian VC firm January Capital, Techcrunch has reported. Existing investor Goodwater Capital, Ascend Vietnam Ventures, Decisive Capital Management, Ratio Ventures, and other angels participated.
Kilo will use the fresh capital to grow the team and add new features, such as financing, logistics and self-service e-commerce store creation for the MSMEs.
Founded in 2020 by e-commerce veteran Narayan Kartick, Kilo is a one-stop-shop supporting local SMEs’ digitalisation with shopping and management tools. It enables them to save costs and reduce risks through optimising inventory turnover, offering a diverse assortment of products, and leveraging transparent pricing.
Kilo also assists shop owners on multiple sales channels, including Kilo’s app, Facebook and Zalo, an instant messaging app with 62 million users in Vietnam.
Before founding Kilo, Kartick held the role of CBO at e-commerce giant Tiki that is eyeing a US IPO, and the former vice president of Seoul-based Coupang, which also made its market debut on the NYSE in March.
Kilo boasts that it has grown the net merchandise value by 320 times since launching in October 2020. As stated on its website, the startup taps into an ~US$180 billion retail consumption space in Vietnam, with small retailers covering 80 per cent of the market.
The e-commerce space is ripe for an explosion in the region, with Vietnam’s TIKI and Indonesia’s GoTo eyeing IPOs while snagging sizable deals earlier this month.
Last week, Vietnam’s B2B e-commerce platform Telio secured US$22.5 million in a pre-Series B round led by VNG Corporation. Last week, Society Pass became the first Vietnamese company to complete a traditional listing on the US stock market.
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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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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.
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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With COP26 ongoing, there is an urgent need to resolve the complexities of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement related to carbon markets and the net zero goals.
We held an informal session last week, seeking to highlight and advance the voluntary carbon markets as a mechanism to reduce emissions, the issues surrounding scaling the voluntary carbon markets globally, and how we can ensure climate impact remains at the heart of our activities.
From Paris Accords to Net Zero, what bold moves do we hope to see from leaders at COP26? What is the importance of carbon pricing and the role of international carbon markets in achieving net zero? What opportunities are in carbon credits as an asset class?
From additionally to double-counting, how can we resolve the challenges facing the voluntary carbon markets? With multiple standards and a lack of regulation, what should companies look out for when offsetting as part of a decarbonization strategy? What do we expect from the year ahead?
We were very honoured to have Michael Sheren, Senior Advisor to Bank of England and UNDP, as our moderator as well as the panel of distinguished speakers – Dr Ma Jun, Chairman of the China Green Finance Committee; Dr Christine Chow, Head of Stewardship of HSBC Global Asset Management; Dr Lorenzo Bernasconi, Head of Climate and Environmental Solutions at Lombard Odier; as well as our Chairman and Co-founder, Dr Bo Bai.
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
Adain co-founder Charles Lin (second from right in the back row) with his team members
Charles Lin successfully ran a marketplace for bike, car, private jet and yacht rentals Automo out of Indonesia until COVID-19 struck early last year. The business got hit when the pandemic severely affected the transportation industry and kept people confined to their homes.
As the situation went from bad to worse, Lin’s team started looking for new opportunities rather than waiting for the pandemic to subside. After days of brainstorming and deliberations, they zeroed in on an idea: an online platform to connect users with local service providers for everything they need.
“The initial idea of Adain was conceived internally, and later, my wife and brother-in-law chipped in to help brainstorm and streamline our vision and plans,” Lin said. “We started building the mobile app at the beginning of 2021 and released it for the public in September 2021.”
Adain, roughly translated as “everything available”, is designed to bring value to anyone and everyone in Indonesia — from small business owners, big organisations and freelancers to homeowners.
While buying products online is easy, finding service providers online is still hard. The sector is fragmented, with many providers relying on product e-commerce platforms to advertise their businesses.
“We are a Carousell-like platform. However, unlike Carousell, we focus on hyperlocal needs, apart from focusing on services, to connect providers and users much more efficiently. Smaller providers can also gain exposure to users who need their services in areas where big providers are not able to provide the service,” he elaborated.
How it works
A user can open up the app and select a potential category that he/she may need help with—for example, cleaning services. Based on his/her locations, the platform will automatically list all the details of the vendors. One can scroll through the list and find the nearest one. This allows the user to see which providers are located where. He/she can then message the service provider directly to check for availability, price and book a time slot.
“Our target audience is anyone and everyone in Indonesia, where freelancers, small business owners and large corporations offer their services to people. Users can sort through providers in a transparent and easy-to-navigate app or quickly post their needs for providers that have the right expertise,” Lin explained.
Adain is designed as a bi-directional platform where businesses can actively find new potential customers through the platform instead of waiting for enquiries. This way, it is easier for users to get quotations or offers for their needs that saves time and effort.
At the moment, Adain focuses on solving problems that people face daily, such as cleaning, technical works, home renovation, automotive and tutoring services. The company charges no commission. Lin claims that currently, Adain has more than 400 service providers focused on home needs on its app.
The company plans to add on-demand services to generate revenues when it has a bigger pool of quality providers in different categories. “We will start monetising when we roll out our on-demand services. Users won’t have to scroll through the options manually but get an assigned provider based on their criteria.”
The firm started off with the three key cities in Java, namely Jakarta, Bandung and Surabaya. “We are slowly acquiring vendors outside of Java, as our hyperlocal model will provide value and opportunities for users and providers across the whole of Indonesia,” Lin shared. “We already have plans to expand to Singapore, as we believe the high-density population similar to Jakarta is ripe for a hyperlocal model of connecting users to providers.”
Adain has already onboarded an angel investor to support its expansion and growth. “This investor came on board after a meeting of just 30 minutes. He wants to change the way services are acquired, similar to how Carousell altered the way used products are sold, or Tokopedia changed the way Indonesians shop today.”
The startup is currently in talks with a handful of VCs to raise a seed financing round. “We want to realise our vision of helping millions of Indonesians to get easier access to services for any headaches they may have at home or office,” he went on.
In this segment, the company could face competition from the likes of Recommend, which provides on-demand home and local services. Recommend recently bagged US$4M in a Series A funding.
What are your plans with your existing venture Automo?
“Automo has been placed on a hiatus due to the restrictions in movements within Indonesia. We facilitated enquiries for more niche demands for yachts and private jets during the pandemic instead of daily rides for cars,” he disclosed.
“Now that Indonesia is slowly returning to normalcy, we are planning to reopen our app for booking daily rides in January 2022 when the festive periods are over and people start going back to the office. In the meantime, we are focusing on the more niche demands for non-work related transports, as people start venturing to local attractions such as island hopping and travel in private jets for smaller groups,” he concluded.
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Image Credit: Adain
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Over a thousand people were tuned in to X-PITCH 2021, the X Games for Startups. TOP 150 semi-finalists — who are selected from 3,680 startups in 42 countries — were present at the Grand Finale on November 11 to pitch their business online (for international teams) and in a 60-second autonomous car ride at Hutoushan Innovation Hub, Taoyuan City, Taiwan (for local teams), followed by a three-minute online presentation to the judging panel and a global audience.
Eight startups emerged as winners at the Finals, and the TOP 3 teams will receive US$1 million investment in total. The list of the winners is as follows:
“With the number of participating countries and startups, X-PITCH has become one of the world’s largest startup competitions in its first year and is probably the most challenging one in the contest format. X-PITCH is also a platform for global startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem builders to connect with each other. A lot of value-added activities and resources are provided to the participants,” said Kevin Yu, Founding Partner of Taiwan Accelerator (TA), the Organizer of X-PITCH 2021.
This event was held in collaboration with e27 as the Official Media Partner and Investor Matchmaking Platform of X-PITCH 2021.
“A continuation of our earlier partnership, e27 is honoured to be appointed as the platform to power all the investor relations for the participating startups. This will be achieved through the e27 Pro Membership’s Connect feature, which allows the startups to connect and interact with the VCs from X-PITCH global contest yesterday. Beyond that, e27 has a pool of verified 400 VCs available for the startups to browse and connect, to start building up their investor networks,” says Thaddeus Koh, co-founder of e27.
The startups will also get to try the new scheduling feature available in the platform to ensure smoother coordination of calls with potential investors.
e27 will continue to monitor the progress of the X-PITCH startups and work with X-PITCH to further assist startups in the process.
Google, Fidelity, Tencent join GoTo’s US$1.3B first close of pre-IPO round
GoTo will invest the funds in customer growth and engagement, to expand its payments and financial services offering, and enhance hyperlocal experiences; Various reports suggested GoTo plans to list in Indonesia by the end of 2021 before proceeding with a US listing with a potential valuation of US$40B.
Tiki scores US$258M Series E led by AIA
Other investors are Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund, Taiwan Mobile, Yuanta Fund and STIC Investments; Tiki will collaborate with AIA to develop an insurtech platform offering insurance products and financial services for the customers.
SEA fintech funding hits record high of US$3.5B in first nine months of 2021
A strong interest in late-stage fintech firms, which secured 10 out of 13 mega rounds this year, drove the surge in investments; Grab Financial, VNPay, Nium, GCash, Voyager Innovations, Ascend Money, Xendit, FinAccel, and Matrixport are also among the most funded fintech firms in the region.
Grab’s revenue slips by 9% in Q3 2021 as mobility takes back seat
In Q3, revenue from Grab’s mobility business was down 26% y-o-y to US$88M; The segment’s GMV also fell 30% from a year ago to US$529M in the quarter, while its adjusted EBITDA dipped about 26% to US$64M.
Society Pass launches US$26M IPO on Nasdaq
Society Pass was supposed to hit the bourses in early October but it shelved the plans for some unknown reasons; The firm looks to expand beyond Vietnam into other parts of SEA with particular focuses on the Philippines and Indonesia.
Former Shopee, Lazada exec’s startup Hypefast raises US$19.5M Series A
Investors are Monk’s Hill Ventures, Jungle Ventures, and Strive; The startup is in the business of acquiring digital and e-commerce-native brands in Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand; The firm, which recently emerged out of stealth mode, said it has now acquired 25 brands.
TreeDots lands US$11M Series A to tackle food wastage problem in SEA
Investors include East Ventures, Amasia, ACTIVE Fund, and Seeds Capital; TreeDots redistributes unsold stocks from suppliers to businesses such as restaurants and cafés, allowing them to source affordable food supplies.
Carousell scoops up US$10M from Temasek-backed Heliconia
The new capital follows Carousell’s US$100M fundraise in September, a round that brought its valuation to over US$1B; Carousell is eyeing a debut on the US stock market through a merger with a SPAC, a deal that could push its valuation to about US$1.5B.
GuildFi raises US$6M to develop Web3 infra to connect games, NFTs, communities
Investors include DeFiance Capital, Hashed, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Alameda Research, Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, and Play Ventures; GuildFi serves as an infrastructure to onboard, connect, and add value to players, guilds, games, and investors alike.
Co-Living startup The Assembly Place raises US$4M seed funding
Investors include Eric Low See Ching of Oxley Holdings, Kemmy Tan (CEO of M+S) Ismail Garfoor (PropNex Singapore); The startup curates spaces in convenient locations with flexible leases, catering to younger outliers who prefer the short-term nature of leasing; From having just 6 rooms in 2019, TAP has since expanded to 350 rooms across Singapore.
Consumer data, analytics startup Milieu Insight raises US$5M funding
Investors include MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia, OSK Ventures, and Genesis Alternative Ventures; Milieu Insight connects businesses directly with their target audience for market research; It collects consumer opinion data across a multitude of lifestyle topics and sectors through a proprietary mobile app known as Milieu Surveys.
Ex-Grab exec’s book-keeping app Lista lands funding to reach out to new MSMEs
Investors include 1982 Ventures, East Ventures, Saison Capital, Alternate Ventures, Willy Arifin, and former Grab Philippines President Brian Cu; Lista helps MSMEs manage their finances, such as debt tracking, transactions recording, and invoice issuing.
Ex-Xendit employee’s D2C daywear brand Kasual nets funding from East Ventures
Kasual offers in-app manufacturing solutions for customers to order personalised men’s pants: build your own product; To date, Kasual has over 80K users and delivers over 3K pieces of personalised products to their customers monthly.
Digital bookkeeping startup Peddlr raises US$500K funding
Investors include Foxmont Capital, Paulo Campos (Zalora), Constantin Robertz (Locad) and Kaya Founders Investment SPV; The company’s technology accelerates the bookkeeping process through digital ledgers, allows merchants to track inventory, and increases cash flow visibility with auto-generated financial reports.
