Australia- and Singapore-based early stage venture capital (VC) firm Investible today announced that it has closed US$36.8 million in committed capital for its second fund.

This update followed the first close of the fund that the firm announced in June this year.

Investible said that it has made four new investments from this oversubscribed second fund with AU$2.2 million (US$1.5 million) deployed across Australia and Singapore to date. Recent investments include Quantum Brilliance (AU$13 million in seed funding) and Functionly (AU$3.6 million).

Investible has also approved an additional seven investments for Fund 2, most of which it expects to finalise before the end of the year.

In September, Investible announced that it is launching a new US$72 million fund for climate tech startups. It is also currently developing a new climate tech growth hub for startups and scaleups, set to open in Sydney in early 2023.

Also Read: Investible aims to raise US$38M fund targeting early-stage startups in SEA, Australia

In a statement, Investible CEO Rod Bristow said that the momentum of this second fund’s close reflects investors’ confidence in the firm’s performance to date and growing investor interest in accessing quality early stage tech investing.

“Investing right at the start of a founder’s journey is still inherently risky. Smart investors are looking for venture capital firms who have a demonstrated ability to source and comprehensively screen a large pool of high-quality opportunities. In combination with a support offering that reduces the time between the Seed and Series A raises, this approach is key to attracting the world’s best founders,” said Bristow.

“Investible’s approach to building large, diversified early stage portfolios resonates with investors and the success of many of the companies in our first fund show the depth and impact of our active founder support,” he added.

He cited Crunchbase data that said, among global VC funding, early stage funding grew the most: up 104 per cent YoY with over 1,900 companies raising at this stage globally.

“Traditional asset classes are delivering lower returns but alternative assets, including venture capital, are attracting greater allocations of global capital. In a low-rate environment, we see VC as the best way to bring alpha and diversification to the traditional asset portfolio. Our model of investing early with a portfolio approach of a minimum of 35 companies in each Fund is proven to have the best risk-to-return profile when investing at early stage,” he added.

—

Ready to meet new startups to invest in? We have more than hundreds of startups ready to connect with potential investors on our platform. Create or claim your Investor profile today and turn on e27 Connect to receive requests and fundraising information from them.

Image Credit: arthonmeekodong

The post Investible closes second fund with US$36.8M in committed capital appeared first on e27.

Cakap, an edutech platform in Indonesia, has raised US$10 million in an oversubscribed Series B round co-led by Centauri Fund, a joint investment vehicle of Telkom Indonesia’s MDI Ventures and Korea’s KB Investment.

Singapore-based PE and venture capital firm Heritas Capital also co-leads the round, alongside KB Investment and other undisclosed investors.

The injection comes a year after Cakap‘s US$3million Series A+ round in December 2020.

The fresh capital will be used to expand Cakap’s certified course offering, as well as to bolster its market expansion in providing better access to high-quality education in the archipelago.

A portion of the funds will be channelled to improve Cakap’s technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a more personalised learning journey for each student through adaptive learning.

Also Read: Edutech is surging, but here are the 3 issues it is facing

Established in 2013, Cakap develops online learning applications enabling two-way interaction between students and professional teachers through video calls and text conversations.

The startup also expanded its offering into self-paced learning and certification courses that combine sequential multimedia learning, assessments, and LIVE Class ad discussions, giving their students much flexibility to complete a certification for new job-specific skills.

Buoyed by the pandemic’s negative impact on the education sector, the firm claims to have experienced significant growth and achieved profitability in the last two years.

With over 1,000 teachers across the regions, Cakap is said to give its adult and kid students a wide selection of professional teachers both locally and internationally.

The firm is said to have acquired 1.5 million students, with 500 per cent YoY growth in active students and more than 1 million downloads of its apps.

Despite the return of offline schools, Indonesian edutech sector remains excited as hybrid learning has become a useful tool to complement in-person training.

In addition, the archipelago has one of the largest education systems in the world with over three million teachers across 300,000 schools. This creates a fertile ground for edutech startups to thrive, with funding in this sector tripling in 2019.

Other prominent edutech players in the market included Ruangguru, Zenius, CoLearn and HarukaEdu all secured sizable deals this year.

—

Ready to meet new startups to invest in? We have more than hundreds of startups ready to connect with potential investors on our platform. Create or claim your Investor profile today and turn on e27 Connect to receive requests and fundraising information from them.

Image credit: Cakap

 

 

 

 

 

 

The post Cakap scores US$10M in Series B funding round to scale across Indonesia appeared first on e27.

Blockchain technology has come a long way since Satoshi Nakamoto introduced it as a decentralised peer-to-peer financial system. In a nutshell, it presented a solution secured by cryptography for transacting value without relying on any centralised entity.

To date, the technology is rapidly evolving to support various industry verticals, such as payments, cloud computing, smart contracts, and of course, DeFi and NFT. But still, the average consumer is reluctant to fully embrace blockchain because the technology is still in its infancy. Blockchain is adapting to serve more use cases relevant for mainstream people, which requires sufficient learning and time.

Fortunately, the rise of DeFi and NFT is rapidly changing that notion. We are now witnessing a new wave of global blockchain adoption, fueled by powerful incentives. DeFi grew 335 per cent in 2021 alone, to a total value of US$85 billion raising interest from institutions and consumers. The NFT market cap is now more than US$7 billion, recording US$400 million in monthly sales.

The DeFi and NFT sectors continue to surge in total locked value as well as user activity. Together, they are creating novel opportunities for more people to embrace blockchain through the play-to-earn ecosystem.

Play-to-earn: a natural fusion of NFT and DeFi

Play-to-earn games are becoming more popular than ever, attracting mainstream users who have no prior knowledge about blockchain. Players are earning income by having fun while learning about the core tenets of DeFi and NFT under the hood. Through play-to-earn games, thousands of players are inclined to try new platforms that encompass the benefits of DeFi and NFT.

Also Read: Blockchain technology for climate action? Here’s why it works

The idea of DeFi’s peer-to-peer lending and borrowing is stemming into the world of NFTs, where gamers can lend their items to generate additional earnings. In a panel discussion with The Human & Machine Podcast, Tom Tirman, Co-founder and CEO of PARSIQ, illustrated how their IQ Protocol technology is creating solutions for anyone to lend NFT assets without collateral.

“A lot of these assets are becoming very expensive, and we are seeing that people in play-to-earn games are not necessarily the people who can afford to buy a five-figure NFT. This inspired us to create solutions where anyone can borrow NFTs with lower cost and no risk, so more gamers can realistically obtain the NFTs required to participate in play-to-earn platforms,” says Tirman.

DeFi’s lending and borrowing model is empowering new ways for players to enrich their play-to-earn experience. It allows asset owners to earn by lending an expirable version of the NFT to others who borrow it for a relatively low fee. This can help players to try new games without shelling out high upfront capital for each and every play-to-earn platform.

How play-to-earn is creating an inclusive ecosystem

The gaming society has various types of users and stakeholders. Investors seek to deploy capital and help game developers to generate profit. Gamers devote their time to playing hours behind the screen, while others have the skills and capabilities for building them. As an important pillar, developers help grow blockchain adoption by building robust underlying structures. These are crucial to enhance the overall performance of play-to-earn platforms.

“We are channeling resources to various smart contract projects through developer fund programmes. This offers the highly demanded support and funding necessary to build high-performance apps that drive mainstream adoption, instead of merely focusing on the overall user experience,” says Wilson Wu, Head of Asia at Avalanche.

Think of it as a community whose members depend on each other to sustain an economy. The gamers want more features, while investors and developers can supply that. Moreover, organisations such as Yield Guild Games (YGG) are also growing the play-to-earn ecosystem by providing educational support, networking and scholarships. For instance, YGG helps onboard community members to start with play-to-earn games as a scholar, where initial resources are sponsored as part of a profit-sharing model.

Also Read: Leveraging AI, big data and blockchain to build your dream home

This means that players can receive scholarship funding through guilds to start earning. Scholars can then earn NFTs and crypto to eventually exchange them for fiat currency, ultimately leading them to realise their dreams. People across all walks of life can benefit from this communal ecosystem, such as many Filipinos who are earning from Axie Infinity. As a result, gaming guilds are quickly establishing new systems to drive the mainstream adoption of play-to-earn.

Key takeaway

The convergence of DeFi and NFT is painting fresh opportunities for blockchain adoption. You no longer have to be tech-savvy or an experienced trader to take advantage of DeFi. Nor do you need to be a wealthy investor to trade NFTs. With the play-to-earn ecosystem, faster global adoption of blockchain technology can be realised. Now it’s up to the developers, players and organisations to continue defining this path of innovation.

—

The article was first published by The Human & Machine.

Image Credit: The Human & Machine

The post How play-to-earn is fueling the next wave of blockchain adoption appeared first on e27.

The post 5 productivity tools for busy startup founders to stay focused in 2022 appeared first on e27.

The Malaysian Research Accelerator for Technology and Innovation (MRANTI) is a recently launched agency set up by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI). In a pre-launch event held on November 9, MRANTI laid out its mission to accelerate higher “Return on Ideas” in the area of R&D commercialisation. 

According to Dzuleira Abu Bakar, Group CEO of Technology Park Malaysia (TPM), the overall focus of MRANTI will be to “raise the profile of Malaysia as an innovation hub to attract foreign investment, create more jobs, and ensure that affordable products and solutions are accessible to improve the quality of life for all.”

Dzuleira led the Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre (MaGIC) as CEO for two years before taking the role as TPM Group CEO in April this year to oversee the consolidation of MaGIC and TPM to the setting-up of MRANTI. 

MRANTI will be positioned as the one-stop agency with the resources to accelerate the commercialisation of ideas and take them to impact. “We want Malaysia to be better positioned to tackle structural issues hampering the progress of the local startup ecosystem such as low commercialisation rate, low expenditures on R&D (GERD), low R&D spend by the private sector, and overlapping of roles between government agencies,” added Dzuleira.

Also read: Techstars and JETRO to help 26 Japanese startups go global

MRANTI was launched after a task force comprising members from MaGIC and TPM analysed gaps and opportunities within the technology and commercialisation ecosystem in Malaysia and upon engaging with stakeholders across the ecosystem. The task force found that by devising the right support structures and systems, they can unlock synergies between the different agencies and drive faster commercialisation of ready to market technology and innovations developed in Malaysia. 

In setting up MRANTI, the task force studied successful innovation accelerators created in other countries such as A*STAR in Singapore and Innovate UK, as well as several technology parks in the region. While MRANTI will adopt key learnings, they will not try to simply replicate those models wholesale in Malaysia but to localise and improve upon them, Dzuleira explained.

Return on ideas: the MRANTI mandate

Two game-changers have been identified to accelerate technology adoption and innovation in Malaysia: enhancing digital connectivity for inclusive development as well as aligning R&D towards commercialisation, wealth generation, and economic growth. MRANTI is envisioned as a key enabling agency to realise the government policy of accelerating technology adoption and commercialisation. 

In an effort to shape Malaysia’s development into an innovation-driven economy, the introduction of MRANTI will create a technology and innovation launchpad so companies can maximise their Return on Ideas at a quicker rate by implementing better scalable commercial models. “This is itself an innovative concept that will have a great multiplier effect on the Malaysian economy. While the conventional ROI — Return on Investment conveys fiscal yields from capital outlays, Return on Ideas broadly refers to the conversion of knowledge to fiscal earnings,” pointed out Dzuleira.

The premise behind setting up MRANTI is that it will fast-track Malaysia’s innovation ecosystem to become among the world’s best — with diverse industries and a solid foundation rooted in tech and innovation.

This mission, Dzuleira said, will be achieved “by combining developmental expertise with tech infrastructure and services.” Dzuleira added that they will be guided by the “Ideas to Impact” roadmap to help researchers, innovators, and enterprises maximise their Return on Ideas or ROI at a quicker rate.”

Also read: Leave a Nest takes innovation from research to market

MRANTI will connect problem statements (demand) with solutions (supply), bridging collaboration between public and private sectors and increasing private sector participation. They will accelerate R&D commercialisation through active interventions and by facilitating the participation of academia, industry, government, and society as a whole.

This focus is cemented by Budget 2022 which has allocated RM30 million to transform MRANTI into an Industrial Revolution 4.0 Hub. This hub will act as a centre of excellence and support the innovation ecosystem by developing new technology clusters such as smart manufacturing, biotech, agritech, smart city, green tech and enabling tech clusters (e.g AI, 5G, IoT).

Unlocking synergy between TPM and MaGIC

TPM is the largest and most developed incubator service provider in Malaysia based on a combination of physical incubators and tech infrastructure, while MaGIC has played an important role in cultivating technology startups and innovation ecosystems with a wide range of interventions ranging from capacity-building to social innovation.

“The consolidation of TPM and MaGIC will achieve holistic support for commercialisation as we strive towards achieving the larger goal of becoming a high-tech and high-income nation,” remarked Dzuleira.

While TPM has already incubated entrepreneurs in robotics, drone tech, and has provided support to tech-driven SMEs, Dzuleira believes that “TPM has much more to offer to the tech start-up ecosystem, and I’ve been tasked to unlock the potential and value of this organisation through a transformation programme. We are in that transformation process, we are looking at the areas of strengths and weaknesses that the local ecosystem and infrastructure have.”

At an operational level, TPM is a large entity with a complex structure. Over the years, TPM investments towards creating world-class infrastructure and a comprehensive ecosystem for tech-driven businesses have totalled over RM1 billion. 

TPM has provided a platform to large tech industry enterprise players such as ASTRO, Standard Chartered Global Business Services, Iris Technologies, Oppstar Technology, Vivantis Technologies, Solution Group and Solidify Technology. 

Moving forward, TPM — soon MRANTI, is looking at attracting more top technology companies as anchor tenants and plans are in place to build an artificial intelligence (AI) Park along with an integrated AI ecosystem. 

A recent KPMG study placed Kuala Lumpur in the Top 10 cities with destination potential for innovation hubs. The announced plans on the AI Park will give the city a lift in demonstrating its capabilities as an innovation centre. “There will be a lot more technology development within the MRANTI Park located in Bukit Jalil as we turn the corner to increase our revenue base,” expressed Dzuleira.

Also read: How this global IoT and connected transportation leader will transform APAC

MRANTI Park has a lot of potential waiting to be unlocked. Firstly, they hold 686 acres of prime land within proximity to KL city. The designated 300 acres of land area in a prime area of Kuala Lumpur has been plotted for the iconic AI Park that will drive acceleration and adoption of AI in Malaysia, which still lags behind the region. “There is a huge opportunity for AI to flourish in Malaysia with the government also truly invested in the idea that AI holds the key to the nation’s growth in the future,” Dzuleira added. 

“In addition, the commercial zones will be activated to infuse the elements of lifestyle, learning and business. Ultimately, MRANTI Park will be redesigned to make high potential R&D and early technology products economically viable through holistic and comprehensive commercialisation support.”

MRANTI targets and goals

MRANTI is tasked with leading the implementation of the policies announced by the Malaysian government under the RMK-12 framework. Some of the ambitious plans that have been announced by the agency are as follows:

• Upgrade MRANTI Park into an International Innovation Hub: The aim is to impact 5,000 technopreneurs and develop 15 intellectual properties in 2022
• MRANTI will play host to the first Artificial Intelligence Park in Malaysia
• Commercialise 500 products/solutions through the National Technology and Innovation Sandbox (NTIS) and Malaysia Commercialisation Year (MCY)
• Drone Development Zone: Area 57, a five-acre land bank has been identified to develop a centre of excellence in drone development

Developing the remaining MRANTI land plans include building an innovation zone for technology testing, validation, and incubation, all of which are part of the NTIS platform. “Ultimately, the park will be redesigned to make high potential R&D and early technology products economically viable through holistic and comprehensive commercialisation support,” said Dzuleira.

As many as 26 Ministries, 19 government agencies and 19 Innovation Acceleration Networks have committed to participating as partners in this programme. Dzuleira feels this will give a huge boost to encouraging the culture of innovation in Malaysian society and lead to a multiplier effect on the overall economy.

With Malaysia’s RMK-12 Policy Enabler goal, targets are set for MRANTI to accelerate technology adoption and innovation in the following:

• Increasing the share of gross domestic expenditure on R&D to 2.5% of the GDP
• Increasing the share of 70% business enterprise expenditure on R&D (BERD) to GERD
• Position Malaysia as one of the top 20 countries in the Global Innovation Index 

Based on their mantra of taking innovation forward, MRANTI ultimately hopes to accelerate innovation so Malaysia quickly develops into a high-income, high-tech nation.

– –

This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by MaGIC

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

The post MRANTI to drive higher “return on ideas” appeared first on e27.