Singapore-based HR-tech platform Darwinbox has bagged US$72 million in a new funding round led by Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) at over US$1 billion valuation.

The round also saw participation from existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia, Lightspeed, SCB 10X, JGDEV, Endiya Partners and 3One4Capital.

This round takes the company’s total funding raised to date to US$110 million.

Darwinbox will use the capital for global expansion, accelerate technology, and strengthen its product, engineering and customer success teams. It also plans to scale its go-to-market presence in multiple geographies.

The company intends to triple its team within a year, adding more than 100 team members in Southeast Asia across its Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Manila and Bangkok offices.

Also Read: DarwinBox bags US$15M to expand its enterprise HR-tech platform in SEA

Since its last fundraise from Salesforce Ventures a year ago, Darwinbox has grown 300 per cent in Southeast Asia.

Founded in late 2015, Darwinbox is cloud-based human capital management (HCM) platform catering to HR needs across the employee lifecycle, including recruitment, onboarding, core transactions (leaves, attendance, directory), payroll, travel and expenses, employee engagement, performance management, rewards & recognition and people analytics.

The firm said in a press note that its product is powering digital HR for more than 1.5 million employees from 650-plus enterprises worldwide. Its clients are Zilingo, Zalora, Carousell, Tokopedia, MatchMove, Funding Societies, Mitra Adiperkasa, and JG Summit Holdings, to name a few.

Founded in 1995, TCV has invested over US$16 billion across 350 investments of varying structures, including mid-stage, late-stage and public company investments. Its investments include Airbnb, Believe, Brex, Dream Sports, FarEye, HireVue, Mollie, Nubank, Razorpay, Nerdy, RELEX Solutions, Revolut, RMS, Sportradar, Spotify, Trade Republic, The Pracuj Group, and Zepz.

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Image Credit: Darwinbox

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Many months ago, I felt super uninspired. I have time for my morning routine, work that I love doing, can eat all the delicious food around Bali, have routine yoga and meditation sessions, sunbathing and sunset every day, in short: I have a beautiful life every single day.

But looks like, I’ve made my life too easy and predictable. I literally get burnt out from stacking pleasure!

I didn’t know what was wrong with me at first until I came across a thread shared on Twitter by a quite well-known VC’s LP that sounds similar to my ‘symptoms’. I followed down the rabbit hole of the newfound suspect of my vanilla life to YouTube, and spend a few hours watching podcast after podcast by Andrew Huberman.

Turned out I was trapped in a situation called: dopamine addiction. I kept giving myself more and more rewards and stimulation every time without even needing to try hard (late-night TikTok scroll is one of them). And now that I feel numb to all of the pleasure I’ve built in my life, I need to stop and do dopamine fast.

Dopamine fast is when you stop giving yourself constant predictable rewards/pleasure for a while. Think silent retreat, not using your social media for a while, fasting, etc.

Also Read: For your mind only: How to deal with founder’s burnout

The key is to be mindful and be present. This is also a good time to practice meditation, journaling, enjoy quality time with your loved ones without gadgets, etc.

I’ve learned that we also get burned out if we can’t see the immediate results of what we’re doing. I break goals in small chunks (I have OKR even for my personal life). I make it a habit to create a daily intention and checklist that will show my progress on that day.

I notice and celebrate my micro-progress and write it down in my gratitude journal. I also celebrate progress with my team/best friends.

Give random rewards to yourself. The anticipation of pleasure is what releases dopamine. Pause, reflect and recognise that you’re doing something positive. A well-known stoic practice is to journal the answer to these questions:

“What went well today? What did I do to contribute to that outcome?”

Last but not least, take joy in the pursuit. We’re always getting there and it’s fun!

Enjoy the first half of January 2022!

Ps: To increase my dopamine level, I’m stepping up my game and organise a conference for Remote Skills Academy with 35 speakers from Indonesia and around the world. Check out Remote Skills Summit Indonesia 2022

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Startup Genome returned with its new The Global Startup Ecosystem Report: Cleantech Edition. The report named Singapore and Sri Lanka as the two promising cleantech startup ecosystems for Asia.

Sri Lanka was named as in the Ecosystems To Watch list due to the availability of affordable talents in the country. Top verticals in the market included cleantech, agritech, and foodtech.

Meanwhile, Singapore is noted for the strength of its funding and general startup ecosystem performance. In the market, the top verticals included fintech, cleantech, agritech, and foodtech.

In general, the top cleantech startup ecosystem in the world is still being dominated by startup hubs in North America and Europe with the top five being Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv, Stockholm, London, and Los Angeles.

One factor that Singapore and Sri Lanka have in common, that had pushed them to become a promising cleantech startup ecosystem, is the amount of government support and startup-friendly regulations that these two markets have.

In terms of funding, the report noted the decline of Series A funding in Asia in recent years. But it also noted that despite the decline, it recorded a two-times increase in total late stage investments (Series B+) in 2020, from US$1.17 billion in 2019 to US$2.47 billion, driven in part by several huge investments in EV companies.

Also Read: COVID-19, the environment, and the tech ecosystem: what opportunity is available out there for us?

In general, cleantech companies have the highest age at transaction of any sub-sector, with the average company taking 3.8 years to reach Series A and 5.5 years to reach Series B – almost eight months and 11 months longer than for tech startups across sectors.

What it takes to scale a cleantech startup

In the report, JF Gauthier, Founder & CEO of Startup Genome also named the common problem that cleantech startups are facing globally: the so-called “scale up gap.”

“If we could scale all of the cleantech innovations we currently possess, we might be halfway or —-who knows-— all the way to a net-zero economy. Sadly though, cleantech startups often run up against significant barriers when bringing their solutions to global markets. And while more capital than ever has been raised and invested recently by VCs, investors also poured money into cleantech startups 15 years ago and saw very few results. More capital
alone will not solve the scaleup gap,” he explained.

He further elaborated that historically, many of the world’s most successful startups have been in the software business, and for good reasons.

“Software startups offer solutions that have an inherent and large cost advantage, replacing labour with high variable costs with software that has a near-zero marginal cost. Cleantech companies, however, invest vast amounts of time, money, and technical skill to develop solutions that then start out with a big cost disadvantage, sometimes to the order of 100 times. These solutions compete against traditional technologies with huge economies of scale, fully depreciated production assets, and decades of production experience. It’s no wonder cleantech startups are far harder to scale than software-based businesses,” Gauthier stressed.

Also Read: How consumers are prioritising sustainability beyond the single lens of eco-friendly products

He offered the following as possible solutions to help build a thriving ecosystem:

– Creating demand-side policies
– Mobilising early stage capital with global industry expertise and customer relationships
– Bringing scaling skills and business experience to passionate cleantech entrepreneurs
– Combining venture investors with foundations and government funds to create larger and more patient capital

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Singapore-based mental health startup Intellect has secured US$10 million in a Series A financing round led by US-based HOF Capital.

Other institutional backers are Headline, East Ventures, MS&AD Ventures, DG Daiwa Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners and Pioneer Fund.

The round also saw participation from a string of angels, including Henry Chan of Shopback, Rajive Keshup of Cathay Innovation, Neel Palrecha (former VP of Engineering at Headspace), Samvit Ramadurgam of Forge, Sagi Shorrer of Peak, Anubhav Nayyar of Snap, Gaurav Girotra of Tinder, along with family office funds of billionaire founders.

Intellect will spend the capital on expanding its footprint in Asia and increasing its product, engineering, and commercial headcounts.

Besides, the company also intends to level up its product offerings to include the whole spectrum of mental health care, ranging from self-care to live counselling, coaching, to crisis management.

The round comes five months after Intellect’s US$2.2 million pre-Series A round led by Insignia Ventures Partners, alongside new investors Y Combinator and XA Network.

Also read: How to tackle employee mental health to build a resilient workforce

Launched in 2020, Intellect aims to make mental healthcare and wellbeing support accessible for everyone through its end-to-end, 24×7 mental healthcare system in a single app.

The pandemic has boosted the demand for mental health support in the last two years. According to the World Health Organisation, new depressive and anxiety disorder diagnoses spiked 400 per cent in 2021.

“Existing mental health benefits and mental healthcare systems are under-equipped to service this surging need at scale,” stated Intellect CEO and Co-Founder Theodoric Chew. “Intellect goes beyond supporting workforces, going deeper into our broader vision of building an entirely new mental healthcare system tailored specifically for Asia.”

For companies, Intellect’s mental health benefits solution includes clinically-based digital therapy programmes and telehealth services, which connect employees to a panel of professional coaches and clinical therapists within minutes.

The app’s consumer version offers an introductory mental well-being platform with self-guided skill-building lessons and bite-sized “rescue sessions” to deal with stressful emotions.

As of last August, Intellect claims to have clocked over 2.5 million users and 20 enterprise clients globally, covering 12 countries and 11 languages.

In 2021, the startup claimed to have recorded a y-o-y revenue surge by over 20 fold. It involved a significant uptick in enterprise clients signing on to its corporate mental health benefits solution — such as online ordering and food delivery platform foodpanda and digital loyalty and e-commerce platform Shopback.

Intellect also partners with insurers and global benefits brokers across Asia to offer mental health solutions on a much larger scale.

The startup has over ten clinical studies underway in collaboration with leading universities and institutions, namely the National University of Singapore (NUS), King’s College London, University of Queensland and the Singapore General Hospital. 

According to Statista, the digital health industry in Singapore is estimated to increase at a 6.94 per cent annual rate (CAGR 2022-2025), resulting in a projected market volume of US$2,8 billion by 2025.

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Image Credit: Intellect

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Surge, a Sequoia Capital-operated scale-up programme for startups in India and Southeast Asia, has announced the 20 new startups graduating from its sixth cohort. 

Of the total 20 startups, 17 have already received US$60 million funding from Sequoia and other investors. Surge stated in an announcement that the sixth batch comprises the largest number of software startups, with more than half building and providing cloud infrastructure, developer tools, data protection, and SaaS. Other startups belong to the categories: cybersecurity, fintech, agritech, e-commerce, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, and edutech. 

“As many products and services continue to move online, we’re starting to see greater diversity in the types of SaaS startups applying to and taking part in Surge,” noted the programme. “Sixty per cent of Surge 06 companies are building solutions for global markets from day one.”

For the first time, Surge also has onboarded startups from Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan, besides India, which is home to 50 per cent of participants. 

Below is a snapshot of the five startups based out of Southeast Asia:

• Grupin is an Indonesia-based social commerce platform offering an interactive, community-based shopping experience to consumers, along with the benefit of large discounts on bulk consumer products.
• Infina is a retail investment software that allows young, tech-savvy Vietnamese to start investing with little sum and lower risk.
• IIIMMPACT is a Malaysia-based fintech firm that provides a full suite of APIs ranging from mobile top-ups, utility bills, government services, insurance and travel under one umbrella.
• Manatal is a Thailand-based SaaS platform for end-to-end recruiting and onboarding.
• HelloMida is a Vietnam-located DTC fashion brand that allows Southeast Asia’s digitally native GenZ customers to express and celebrate their uniqueness through a real-time retail model.

Also read: Startup funding rounds: A handbook from seed to exit

Launched in 2019 by Sequoia India, Surge has evaluated over 10,000 companies for its accelerator programme and has grown to a network of 112 startups and 246 founders. 

Upon joining each cohort, startups will receive a seed investment of around US$1 million to US$2 million. The four-month programme also provides training, global immersion tours, and assistance from a network of extraordinary mentors coming from successful companies such as Gojek, Google, Uber, WhatsApp, Zilingo, and more. 

Surge focuses on early-stage projects, which mean that participant could be someone with an idea and a slide deck or an early-stage founding team that already has the product-market fit and a round of seed funding.

The programme’s goal is to supercharge these projects and give them an unfair advantage to scale and grow, form a team, make smart business model choices right from the get-go, and raise a Series A round soon after. At the end of Surge, founders will have the opportunity to raise capital during an “UpSurge” week from a curated list of angels, seed funds and VCs. 

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Image Credit: Surge

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