Indonesia-based property tech platform Jendela360 announced an undisclosed strategic investment round from an entity affiliated to local conglomerate group Sinar Mas Group.

This investment followed a US$1 million funding round led by BEENEXT that the company announced in June 2020.

Jendela360 plans to use the new funding to accelerate its business growth, extend the rental and sales operation and aim to be the number one player in the industry by continuing to expand its products and services, invest in its technology and, naturally, toward hiring. The startup also wants to scale into new markets and go deeper into existing markets.

In an email to e27, Daniel Rannu, co-founder and CEO of Jendela360, gave a further explanation about the company’s plan with the funding.

“Before the pandemic, we only focused on long-term rental. But because of the pandemic, we have to enter the shorter-term rental market and property sales market sooner than we expected. This turns out to be a blessing in disguise … as now, more than ever, people are willing to try on a digital solution to find their desired properties. We’ve experienced tremendous (four times) growth as a property tech in the past 18 months,” he wrote.

Also Read: Sustainability starts at home: How I aim to tackle climate change as PropertyGuru CEO

“Since the Indonesian property market is a HUGE market. Our strategy for the next few years is to simply expand nationwide. Lucky for us, we founded Jendela360 to serve the Indonesian market where we have 270 million people living here, and there are still large parts of the pie that we can take on.”

In addition to its four-times growth, the startup also claimed to be operationally profitable.

Founded in 2017, Jendela360 aims to streamline the process of property transactions in Indonesia with its O2O approach. It offers data-driven apps powered by machine learning engines to generate leads and pair them with the right agents efficiently.

Rannu believes that the key factor to help the property industry digitalisation is by utilising the right technology, combined with the wisdom on how-to-do interaction, instead of replacing agents.

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Japan’s Arkray launches US$87M VC arm to back healthcare startups in Asia
It will invest up to US$2.6M each in startups across Japan, SEA, India and Israel; Focus sectors are digital healthcare, medtech, biotech, AI, IoT medical devices, cloud pharmacies, medical diagnostics, personal wellness & self-care, pet-tech, medical and functional foodtech.

Hyperlocal mapping: a solution for real-world interactions in retail metaverse
Hyperlocal mapping allows mobility companies to engage their workforce, vehicles, customers and products by validating pick-up locations on private maps with high precision.

Tinder founder’s JAM Fund invests in PayMongo’s US$31M Series B financing round
Other backers are ICCP-SBI Venture Partners, Kaya Founders, GFC, SOMA Capital, and angels; The B2B payments firm will venture into more financial products involving disbursements, capital lending, “buy now, pay later,” subscriptions and recurring payments.

StockViva closes US$5M Series A funding
Backers are Farquhar VC, Kharis Capital, Hong Huan Group, and Angelhub; StockViva’s mobile app provides real-time online education services by financial key opinion leaders, and online trading connection with different financial institutions in Asia.

Singapore AI startup 6Estates raises US$6.2M Series B+ round
Investors are Sinar Mas, Seeds Capital, and Farquhar VC; 6Estates is an AI fintech platform that specialises in multilingual natural language processing and machine reading comprehension technologies.

Singapore AR startup BuzzAR bags US$3.8M funding
Investors are F50 Elevate, Ian Wilson of Marina Bay Sands, and Peter Hlavnicka of SenzeCare; BuzzAR helps retail and commerce firms create personalized and location-based AR experiences for their customers; it has also acquired a mobile game called The Cooking Game VR.

Jendela360 raises funding from Sinar Mas affiliate to expand in Indonesia
Jendela360 aims to streamline the process of property transactions in Indonesia with its O2O approach; It offers data-driven apps powered by ML engines to generate leads and pair them with the right agents efficiently.

Animoca Brands acquires motorsports game developer Grease Monkey Games
The deal will allow Animoca Brands to benefit from Grease Monkey’s significant game development capabilities and expertise; So far, Grease Monkey has logged 45M downloads across both mobile and PC worldwide.

Malaysia city and property data company Urbanmetry raises US$2M pre-Series A
Lead investor is Monk’s Hill; Urbanmetry is a property data company that harvests, cleans, and analyses large amounts of city data, through AI and proprietary algorithms to extract trends and patterns in the built environment.

PRIMO gets pre-Series A funding to expand its omnichannel marketing platform
Investors are Fuchsia VC, Beacon VC, SOSV, and Infinity Technologies VC; PRIMO claimed 2x growth y-o-y on average over the past three years; It’s working with retail, FMCG, banking, finance, and insurance firms.

Chillchat closes US$1.85M seed funding
Investors include Solana Ventures, FTX Ventures, Animoca Brands, and Griffin Gaming Partners; Chillchat builds the pocket metaverse: a Create2Earn virtual world focused on user-generated content where players can quickly and easily create NFTs in the form of characters, pets, and worlds.

SOSV names 13 startups for 12th consumer tech cohort
SOSV has more than US$1.2 billion in assets under management from 1,120 companies in its portfolio; It said that tech firms in its portfolio raised a total of US$215 million in 2021.

US adds e-commerce sites operated by Tencent, Alibaba to ‘notorious markets’ list
They reportedly facilitated substantial trademark counterfeiting; The US Trade Representative identifies 42 online markets and 35 physical markets that are reported to engage in or facilitate substantial trademark counterfeiting or copyright piracy.

Sequoia to raise up to US$600M for new crypto fund
Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire said that the VC firm views cryptocurrency as a megatrend that would carry on over the next two decades; The cryptocurrency fund will be one of three new sub-funds under Sequoia Capital Fund.

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Singapore-based climate-tech venture firm Aera VC has announced the US$30 million first close of its new fund.

The fund, backed by families investing in climate solutions, will support startups accelerating the planet toward a sustainable future, the firm said in a statement.

Aera VC has already backed Houston-based chemical decarbonisation firm Solugen (valued at US$1.8 billion), Shiok Meats (Singapore), Carbon Chain (London), Noya and Twelve (San Francisco), and Fable Foods (Australia).

Separately, the VC firm has also launched an investment DAO (distributed autonomous organisation) called Aera Force, with 2000 ETH (approx US$6 million). It has been earmarked for pre-seed projects harnessing the power of blockchain to conquer climate and carbon-related challenges.

Established in partnership with the creators of Dream DAO, Aera Force will expand the global community of innovators, scientists and founders formed in the past five years by Aera VC.

Also Read: Investible launches new US$72M fund to invest in seed-stage climate tech startups

“The entire world needs to be rebuilt and decarbonised,” said Aera VC Founding Partner Derek Handley. “At Aera VC, our long-term vision is about investing across the sustainability spectrum by backing breakthrough technologies that reverse climate change, whether they spawn from blockchain innovations or through scientific discoveries. Every industry needs to be reimagined, from finance, food, and fashion to chemicals, cement, and construction.”

The new Aera fund expects to make up to 30 new seed investments over the next two years and contribute to follow-on rounds. The fund is continuing to accept further subscriptions up to US$100 million from institutional investors in 2022 who will join the international community of family offices.

The company’s new headquarters in Singapore positions Aera VC as one of the first global climate funds in the Asia-Pacific region. Aera VC portfolio companies have raised over a billion dollars since receiving Aera’s backing.

Aera VC was formed in 2016 by Handley, who was joined by fellow New Zealander Nick Winstone to launch the VC firm from their bases in New Zealand and New York. Handley has been investing in environmental and social-impact ventures since serving as the founding CEO of Richard Branson’s B Team sustainability collective in 2013.

In October 2021, Wavemaker Partners, an active Singapore-based VC firm, launched a US$25 million climate-tech venture builder in Southeast Asia.

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As we set out on the Agile journey, picking Kanban seemed like a no-brainer. It is visual, easy to use, and a perfect fit for the PM tool we have been developing. However, after a short few months, we realised scrum was indeed a better fit and switched. 

Here is our story. Hopefully, it will give you some insights. 

Why did we choose Kanban? 

As a small engineering team with a new product (we developed a project management tool called Teamhood), we had no strict timeliness or process to follow.

Thus, Kanban seemed like a perfect fit. It allowed us to visualise what was happening, prioritise the most necessary items and track their progress.

The team would meet for a daily standup to discuss progress, and monthly retrospectives would be held to see what could be improved. All of this was great until the product beta went live, and the engineering team’s focus had to shift. 

Why did it not work? 

With the launch of our beta version, we got the first paying customers. Yay! But with that came customer expectation management and a need to provide reliable forecasts for the new features.  

With the engineering team working in Kanban, the sales and marketing teams had issues in knowing when to expect new features. As a result, they could not plan timely marketing and sales actions to promote the new features coming out.  

Moreover, the clients needed to know when specific features would be live, and the engineering team could not provide those answers. As such, we knew it was time to change. 

How Scrum improved our process 

Thus, instead of Kanban, we switched to Scrum and introduced new practices to improve the process. 

First, we have chosen 2-week iterations to ease estimation and feature predictability. We had to think about which features could be delivered in two weeks and commit to them. This was especially useful for the sales and marketing teams that were communicating with existing and potential customers. 

Also Read: How can you build a living, thriving community around your SaaS product?

We have also divided the work into several boards to better separate different processes. Design, roadmap planning, backlog, UI/UK, and development are all done on different boards, thus better categorising all work items.

We have introduced various new ceremonies to ensure all the processes are under control. Roadmap planning and prioritisations, backlog review, backlog planning, backlog refinement, backlog planning, and others were added to ensure we deliver value to our customers and work on the most important features.

Lastly, we have started using T-shirt sizes to estimate the features. This helps us ensure each feature we commit to can be delivered during one iteration. Otherwise, we rework the feature to make sure it can fit the iteration or push it back to the drawing board. 

What’s next? 

We have successfully moved away from Kanban and into Scrum territory. However, the Scrum application is far from the textbook. Some could argue that it is far more resembling Scrumban. I don’t disagree. 

Will we move towards full Scrum in the future? No one knows. However, we will not do it just for the name. Instead of applying any of the practises blindly, we tend to look and see what works best for the process and our needs now.  

Have you changed Agile practices with your team? I would love to hear your comments. 

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Indonesian edutech startup Zenius acquired local offline cram school chain Primagama. According to a source, this acquisition includes all offline branches of the institution in the country. According to a statement on Primagama’s site, the company currently operates more than 250 branches in various provinces in Indonesia, serving four million students with 3,000 employees. It operates using the franchise model.

By the time this article was published, DailySocial has reached out to a Zenius representation.

Founded by Sabda PS and Medy Suharta, Zenius is known as one of the pioneers of online tutoring services in Indonesia. They debuted with offline tutoring and packaged material on DVD before becoming a fully online service.

Primagama itself was founded in 1982. The collaboration between the two organisations will allow the integration of online-to-offline learning models or blended learning, utilising their infrastructure and capabilities.

Previously, in the early 2010s, Primagama has developed an online service called PrimagamaPlus. However, due to a premature market, the service did not manage to gain traction as direct (offline) tutoring remained the primadonna of the time. Currently, the applications are available to support the learning process, but there has not been much traction.

Zenius’ corporate action was held amidst the collapse of many offline tutoring businesses due to the pandemic. The school-from-home scheme as introduced by the authority throughout the pandemic has caused declining demand for offline tutoring, especially when edutech services are gaining popularity.

On the other hand, Zenius’s collaboration with Primagama has the potential to provide a more engaging learning experience, especially once offline learning activities resume.

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

According to the 2021 KPAI survey, 78 per cent of students demand to return to class. Virtual spaces are considered less effective. Fifty-seven per cent of students find it difficult to follow the subject matter and conduct practicum.

Zenius growth

Zenius currently has several products with the best-selling being its online tutoring service. Throughout the 2019/2020 school year, the Zenius tutoring application was accessed by more than 20 million users. It contains around 100,000 learning videos and practise questions that are accessible for free. In addition to that, Zenius also provides Live Class services for direct guidance with selected teachers; there is also a written national exam simulation and several other learning products.

Apart from formal learning, the company also provides Zenius Land app for toddlers, ZenPro for professional learning with more general subjects, and teaching management platform ZenRu, in addition to its focus on students.

In early 2021, Zenius secured a Pre-Series B round backed by a number of investors, including Alpha JWC Ventures, Openspace Ventures, Northstar, Kinesys, and BeeNext. Earlier, they announced an investment of US$20 million in a Series A round. Zenius’s valuation is currently estimated at over US$100 million.

Market competition and value proposition

Indonesian edutech sector is growing rapidly. The two head-to-head players in the market are Ruangguru and Zenius – statistically, Ruangguru’s site visits and application downloads are far more superior. In addition to that, the two companies owned similar sub-product variants.

Zenius puts a strong emphasis on providing quality learning materials. Instead of driving students to simply memorise information, the materials by Zenius stresses the importance of understanding fundamental concepts and critical thinking through various case studies.

Apart from Zenius and Ruangguru, a number of edutech startups are performing a manoeuvre in the market. Recently, CoLearn secured a Series A funding of IDR244 billion (US$16 million). The app heavily focused on math and science subjects, helping students complete homework independently. Other than that, there are also Pahamify, Squline, and others.

Also Read: How edutech is solving the global teacher’s crisis

The presence of Primagama in Zenius’ line of business has the potential to strengthen its value proposition once it succeeds in wrapping up a hybrid learning experience – this could also be the first in Indonesia.

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The article was written by Randi Eka Yonida in Bahasa Indonesia for DailySocial.

Image Credit: torwai

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Vietnam-focused accelerator-cum-VC fund ThinkZone Ventures recently hit the final close of Fund II at US$60 million, dedicated to startups from pre-seed to Series A with cheque sizes up to US$3 million. With this, it joins a small number of local VCs established based on a government Decree of 2018 (concerning investments in local startups).

“This is a typical example for other local VCs to follow suit,” said Dung Tri Tran, Programme Manager in Hanoi & Central Region at Swiss Entrepreneurship Programme (Swiss EP) Vietnam, a partner of ThinkZone since its early days. “The ThinkZone team showed a strong focus and resilience in the lengthy but noteworthy one-year fundraising process of Fund II amid the devastating pandemic.”

Fully backed by Vietnamese investors

Against the pandemic headwinds, ThinkZone Ventures Founding Partner and CEO Do Bui admitted that his team had to tweak strategies several times before officially securing funding from all Vietnamese Limited Partners (LPs). “We first tapped into the abundant funding sources outside of Vietnam,” said Bui. “However, persuading foreign investors, who have limited hands-on experience of the local startup ecosystem, to inject millions of US dollars into a far-away fund wasn’t easy, especially only through Zoom calls and online discussions.”

The unfavourable prospects urged ThinkZone to pivot and tap into the local resources. Vietnam’s conglomerates, especially those who have been its long-term partners, turned out to be the silver lining.

“Every investor, be it foreign or local, has money. They all expect high returns,” Bui said. “But Vietnamese startups, most of them are solving local problems, will benefit from business synergies with local LPs.”

For instance, Phu Thai Holdings Group, whose Chairman Doan Pham has also been serving as Chairman of local VC fund BK Fund (a partner of ThinkZone Ventures) since 2020, joined ThinkZone Fund II as an LP. The group owns more than 30 businesses across distribution, retail, logistics, investment, and education. 

In combination with other LPs’ businesses in F&B, medicine, finance, and foreign trade, these diverse ecosystems provide ThinkZone’s portfolio startups with headroom to validate business models and scale across the country. Moreover, with the support of IPA Investments, an experienced player in the Vietnamese public market, ThinkZone Fund II can foster startups from seed through to exits with larger M&As and IPOs. 

“What I have always been contemplating is how to leverage my company’s resources. Learning from startups is one prominent pathway,” said IPA Investments CEO and VNDIRECT Chairwoman Huong Pham. “As Vietnam is developing exponentially, our next-gen founders are having the upper hand to startup and enjoy greater opportunities in the market.”

Fund II even hit the jackpot by partnering with corporations in traditional sectors such as plastic and packaging. They include Stavian Group, owner of Vietnam’s top polymers distributor Stavian Chemical.

“Venturing into tech startup investments serves as an extended arm for traditional businesses without hefty in-house R&D while still leveraging lucrative exit opportunities,” Bui explained. “By putting money in a reliable local fund, they can also optimise portfolio management cost and efficiency, enjoy larger cross-industry support for their startups from a group of different LPs, and then exert a larger impact on society.”

With this, ThinkZone Ventures believes it is primed to provide significant added value for local startups, making it an ideal addition to any potential investment deals joined by other foreign VCs.  In addition, by utilising Vietnam dong (VND) as the sole investment currency, a local VC firm can deploy its funds with better timings and flexible investment structures.

From an accelerator to a top-notch VC firm

Launched in February 2019 by Do Bui, a serial entrepreneur, ThinkZone has grown from an accelerator to become a prominent VC firm with an impressive portfolio of high-growth startups. Its investments include earned-wage-access (EWA) startup GIMO, fresh food-to-table platform FoodHub, online ride-hailing platform EMDDI, English teaching startup Educa, and social commerce platform OnGroup. ThinkZone also runs Innovation Lab, a training programme for startups and corpoprations.

With 13 deals in 2021, ThinkZone Ventures is one of the most active investors in Vietnam, as per data compiled by Tech In Asia. The firm has consistently formed partnerships with international partners, including AWS, Hubspot, Deloitte., and especially the Swiss Entrepreneurship Program (EP). Funded by the Swiss government, Swiss EP provides the accelerator with capacity-building support through international entrepreneurs-in-residence (EIRs) and experts.

“Swiss EP’s support left its mark on our accelerator development as it connected us with an experienced head of accelerator, international business lawyers, and startup mentors throughout the years,” Bui stated. “This enables meaningful networks within the local and regional ecosystems, especially in terms of public-private partnerships pilot programmes to boost local innovative businesses and technologies.”

This year, ThinkZone Fund II plans to invest up to US$200,000 each in companies at the idea stage. It also has the resources to join their follow-on rounds,

In a bid to arm its portfolio startups with the necessary networking opportunities, product and business development mindsets and financial management capabilities, Fund II will allocate 20-30 per cent of its total capital to the accelerator programme. 

Its investee GIMO, for instance, presents ThinkZone’s typical well-rounded support for a portfolio company. Having joined ThinkZone Accelerator Batch 3 in 2020, GIMO managed to fulfil its co-founding team, receive initial capital and seed funding in 2021, and access important resources, including lending capital.

“GIMO aims to make digital financial services accessible for underserved blue-collar workers in Vietnam through EWA model. Sustainable and low-cost sources of funds will help us to realise our vision better,” said its Co-Founder and CEO Quan Anh Nguyen. “ThinkZone Ventures has made this possible with support from its network of investors and partners.”

To date, GIMO claims to have provided on-demand pay to nearly 100,000 workers, primarily in the manufacturing and retail sectors. The number of beneficiaries has also grown 130 per cent monthly, the company claimed when it raised US$1.9-million seed funding. The startup has also been accepted to Silicon Valley-based Y Combinator Winter 2022 Batch.

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

To put regulations into practice

Since 2019, ThinkZone has taken the plunge to join various formal and informal platforms to help improve Vietnamese regulations, including the revision of Decree 38 — the legal framework behind establishing local VC funds, such as ThinkZone Ventures’s Fund II and BK Fund.  

“This February, ThinkZone and Swiss EP joined a discussion with Enterprise Development Agency and National Innovation Center [both under the Ministry of Planning and Investment of Vietnam] to identify 15 points of adjustments in Decree 38,” said Tran of Swiss EP. “We need more time and effort, but this is a change for the better.”

Despite paperwork hurdles, ThinkZone managed to break the mould and launch Fund II according to local regulations and international standards. Bui added that ThinkZone professionally formulated the fund structure with a limited partnership agreement (LPA), even when it is not required in the registration documents addressed in the Decree. 

The agreement has clauses such as management fee, profit margin, promised performance, the commitment of General Partners, and decision-making processes for each investment level.

However, Bui expressed his concerns over the true USP of the Decree. “There are still unanswered questions down the road, and we haven’t seen a clear competitive advantage of forming a VC fund under the new regulation compared to that of our previous Fund I, which was run as an investment company,” said Bui. “However, ThinkZone is confident with what we have learned from international VC models’ best practices to apply it into the Vietnamese market.”

Also read: 2021 policy and initiative highlights: A foundation for SEA startup funding

In the past, it was common knowledge that most new-formed VC funds chose an easier path of establishing their entities outside of Vietnam, mainly in Singapore, to enjoy favourable investment incentives and avoid regulatory roadblocks.

“We notice that there are plenty of veteran investors in the local startup ecosystem, but they are hesitant to communicate with policymakers to transform the present-day local investment landscape,” Bui added. “The responsibility doesn’t lie solely on the government. Private sector players also have a role and should be willing to invest money, understand regulations, give feedback, and in the end, contribute to the long-term development of the society.”

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Image Credit: ThinkZone

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3D food printing, restaurant tech, blockchain, virtual kitchen, functional food and drinks are at the forefront of the food industry that will impact us in 2022.

Southeast Asia is a region that is intensely passionate about food. Every country in this part of the world has a long and proud culinary tradition that inspires great pride. But when it comes to innovations in the foodtech industry, Southeast Asia is still lagging behind the US, Europe, Israel, and other western countries.

Yet several foodtech companies in this region are working hard to catch up, building on trends that look likely to grow even more significant in the years to come.

Here are five such trends we’ve identified and the homegrown Southeast Asian entrepreneurs spearheading them:

Food delivery

Food-obsessed Southeast Asia had been one of the earliest adopters of food delivery services even before the COVID-19 pandemic, in which lockdowns increased the demand for such services exponentially.

Grab Food, by Singapore-based ride-hailing app Grab, is a leader in the region, but FoodPanda and Gojek have significant market shares too. With a compound annual growth rate of 11 per cent, competition in this sector is heating up, leading to further innovations, including financial products and possible mergers with other e-commerce players.

Having firmly entrenched themselves among the region’s most well-known – and well-used – brands, food delivery services, and apps look to grow from strength to strength.

Plant-based and cell-based meat

The meat industry has been identified as one of the biggest causes of climate change, producing 60 per cent of greenhouse gases from food production and 35 per cent of all global emissions.

This is one of the driving factors behind the rise of plant-based meat products, an industry that is estimated to be worth US$85 billion in 2030.

Popular brands such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have developed plant-based meat that meets the standards of consumers who are health and environmentally conscious but reluctant to give up meat.

Also Read: The spotlight on foodtech: Why we believe that what we put on our plate will determine the future

Both brands have had high-profile launches in Singapore and Thailand, partnering with major fast-food brands like McDonald’s and Burger King. This will only raise awareness, interest, and ultimately, demand for more plant-based food products.

Urban or vertical farming

Most Southeast Asian countries have been traditionally agrarian societies. The agricultural sector in this region has been facing numerous problems, amongst which are climate change, water access, urban expansion, and rising consumer demand.

There is also a growing demand for transparency over where food comes from and what pesticides were used. Using the latest aquaponic or aeroponic techniques, vertical farms in urban areas offer an exciting solution.

It’s probably no surprise that Singapore – being a tiny island where land is precious – is leading the way with companies such as Comcrops and Sky Greens, but the Philippines has also introduced new laws to promote urban farming, and there are homegrown efforts in Malaysia and Thailand as well. Such efforts are likely to grow in profile in the coming year.

Next-gen functional food and drinks

Southeast Asians have long practised traditional methods of wellness and nutrition, such as TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) and Ayurveda. Hence, it’s perhaps ironic that when these ancient practises become trendy in the West, they become popular all over again in their native countries.

Recent research has found real health benefits in foods and ingredients such as tempeh, green tea, turmeric, and ginger, all of which have been traditionally prescribed as health boosters.

Known as functional foods, these ingredients reflect growing demand from consumers who want to eat healthy, prevent disease, and strengthen their immunity.

Startups such as Bangkok-based Jamulogy, which produces nutritionally dense functional drinks based on the Indonesian tradition of jamu, are meeting this demand.

Also Read: How COVID-19 accelerated digitalisation in the F&B industry in Malaysia

3D food printing

3D-printed food sounds like something out of Star Trek, but this promising new technology is estimated to hit over US$432 million in market value by 2025.

The main challenge for 3D food printing is incorporating a variety of ingredients, tastes, and textures. The many enterprising startups in this field are hard at work tackling this challenge; some have even managed to include regular ground beef.

The most exciting application, however, is providing personalised meals with precise amounts of ingredients for optimal nutrition, serving the needs of everyone from hospital patients to malnourished communities.

Singapore-based Anrich3D, a spinoff of Nanyang Technological University, is one such startup that is planning to go commercial within the year.

An emerging industrial trend too exciting to be ignored

Although Southeast Asia still has a lot of catching up to do in the foodtech scene, the region’s longstanding passion for food makes it a place to watch for some of the more exciting innovations to come.

With rising foodtech accelerator programmes in the region, such as Space-F and Big Idea Ventures stepping in to drive the growth of the region’s promising foodtech startups, we will indeed witness a variety of innovations disrupting the way we enjoy our food.

2022 will be the year that homegrown foodtech startups in this region see rapid growth and perhaps even make a few international headlines.

Having been long overlooked by the West, it’s about time Southeast Asian food culture gets its time in the spotlight.

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Singapore-based mobile gaming startup Potato Play announced today that it has raised US$5 million in a new financing round from investors, including Everblue Management, Play Ventures, Atlas Ventures and Beenext.

The startup intends to grow aggressively with new hires and scale its hit casual puzzle game Merge Restaurant globally with the latest infusion.

The round comes one and a half years after Potato Play raised US$1.75 million in a seed funding round led by Beenext.

Founded in 2018, Potato Play uses data-informed rapid-iteration to create and publish casual games.

Also read: Mobile, e-sports, live streaming shaping SEA’s gaming startup landscape in 2021

The startup claims its games clocked 18.2 million downloads, including popular titles such as Merge Restaurant, Merge Rush Z, Sword Hunter, Merge Quest, Crossing Gaps and Pocket Racing.

Potato Play has witnessed multiple recent successes in the merge category — a subgenre of puzzle games wherein users combine/merge objects of similar type within the game to create new and improved items. 

This category is slated to grow 19 per cent YoY within the US$93.2 billion mobile gaming market, per a Newzoo report.

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Image Credit: Potato Play

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When it comes to investing in the climate tech and sustainability sectors, Amasia decided to take a different approach than other venture capital (VC) firms in the scene. Instead of focusing on deep tech innovations, the Singapore- and US-based firm focuses on capital-efficient software solutions.

In an interview with e27, Amasia Managing Partner John Kim gives the example of solutions such as carbon capture –and why it is not the direction that Amasia is taking.

“It is a very capital intensive technology … that could be part of the solutions. But there are still lots of question marks with this technology, such as the fact that you have to use a lot of power to get the carbon out of the atmosphere. And this costs a lot of money,” he says over a video call. “At some scale, it should be able to help us. But at what cost? And what are the ramifications of that?”

Another point that sets the firm apart from its peers is its focus on shifting behaviour as a solution to mitigate the risks of climate change.

It has built a framework of behavioural change that helps the firm in deciding their investment direction: Review (how to help consumers, corporations, and government make better data-driven decisions about climate), Renew (or shift focus towards reuse and recycling), Rethink (how to rebuild infrastructure to enable expansion to remote places), and Rebuild (a less wasteful supply chain).

“Climate change is obviously a big issue; perhaps the biggest issue of our generation. A lot of people who are trying to solve this problem are trying to do it with some sort of breakthrough technology. But if you look at history, from the 1800s until now, our emissions have gone up by around 1,000 times. The overwhelming majority of it actually has to do with per capita emissions,” Kim says.

“As time goes on with new breakthrough technology, we are able to produce [whatever we have been manufacturing] more efficiently with fewer emissions. But the issue is that when something gets cheaper, people tend to buy a lot more of it,” he stresses, explaining why the change in behaviour should be the starting point in the mission.

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

Mindset shift

When asked about the climate tech startups scene in the Southeast Asian region, and the challenges that they are facing in scaling their business and securing investments, Kim says that the “classic” hurdles faced by other verticals are also relevant to these startups.

The sheer size and diversity of the region have always been known to possess unique challenges to startups when they intend to expand their business, but with climate tech startups it is especially relevant considering the different climate policies that each country is implementing.

Then there is also the challenge with local investors’ perspective, particularly the patriarchs of family offices that venture capital tends to team up with.

“If we compare to the US or Europe, it doesn’t matter how old you’re, what industry you’re in … everybody just knows that this is the thing that we got to get on board, we just have to do this. In SEA, we are catching up quickly, but I still it’s a little behind from that perspective,” he says.

“They call it the noise-to-signal ratio; there just tends to be a lot more noise in emerging markets than there is in developed markets. And I think that’s just because the data is more trustable in a sense,” he continues.

This is why there is a greater urgency for Amasia to convince investors that a balance between profits and impact is possible.

“[When we first began], the idea of impact investing was very, very nascent. There was still this idea in people’s minds that if you’re going to make a positive impact on the world, you’re going to get fewer returns,” Kim explains.

“As time goes on, there’s a lot of data, a number of academic studies that are demonstrating that, not only that you can make money and create an impact, but these two things are kind of mutually reinforcing … People used to think that these things are mutually exclusive, but they tend to see it as mutually reinforcing now.”

This is also the reason why Amasia focuses on capital-efficient software companies instead of deep tech companies.

“If you look at venture returns in general … historically, the funds that performed the best have a little bit more focus on software. The world of bits versus the world of atoms. There are some funds that do very well, for instance, in biotech devices, but in general, if you look at the averages, software-focused funds tend to do better,” Kim elaborates.

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

“The intersection and the Venn diagram of capital-efficient software companies –which has historically returned better within venture and investing in general– with the sustainability-focused solutions, that is where we’re going to actually make an impact. The fact that there are not that many other people doing this, just made blindingly obvious sense to us that there needs to be a firm at the intersection of these two things.”

Making an impact

Amasia supports companies at the seed to Series B across the US, SEA, India, Europe, and Latin America. They are putting emphasis on founders who aim to foster behaviour change through their solutions –they also need to have global ambitions.

The history of Amasia began with Kim and US Partner Ramanan Raghavendran having dinner one time in Singapore –and the conversation developed into impact investing.

They began by doing angel investing before eventually securing “millions of US dollars” through two funds.

Recently, the firm announced a lead investment in a US$7.5 million Series A for Living Food (a farm-to-fork e-commerce platform that aims to promote responsible and sustainable consumption) and participation in ClimateTrade’s pre-Series A funding round.

In the near future, Amasia aims to continue supporting its portfolio companies and is now considering raising new funds. But Kim says that the firm is not in a rush.

“We’ll probably start having conversations towards the end of this year,” he closes.

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Image Credit: Amasia

 

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The recent surge in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has fostered diverse conversations across many segments of society.

Some are bullish on these digital assets that are non-interchangeable and stored on a blockchain, leading to the growth of this industry from US$100 million in 2020 to US$41 billion in 2021, reaching near comparable levels to the conventional art market.

Others are less excited, calling NFTs elitist, encouraging bad art and environmentally unfriendly.

What is clear is that we are in the early days; in an informal poll I conducted on LinkedIn two weeks ago, more than 6 out of 10 do not own NFTs.

While nascent technologies are prone to draw polarising views (e.g. the early 2010s when Facebook (now Meta) was criticised for enabling stalking compared to growing social capital), there are valuable career lessons that each of us can learn from the rise of NFTs regardless of our stance.

We, as individuals, are like non-fungible tokens. There can always be another designer, writer, engineer, investor, or entrepreneur, but no other designer, writer, engineer, investor or entrepreneur like you (non-fungible).

Just as tokens represent an asset or utility, we too represent value that we offer to our customers, users and employers.

Value yourself like an NFT

Liquidity: Like NFTs, talent is illiquid, unless established within a community with strong demand.

The non-fungibility nature of NFTs where one token is one of a kind and never precisely the same as another creates illiquidity.

Today, the majority of NFTs sold on OpenSea, the leading marketplace, have not been sold for 90 days or more, signalling that, for the most part, NFTs are not liquid.

Also Read: Making sound NFT bets: Think before you mint; ruminate before you ape

As a result of this illiquidity, it is hard to correctly price NFTs until a community forms around the NFT collection and a critical mass of individuals generates demand. Talent is no different.

The skills, knowledge and capabilities you have are illiquid until it is visible (a community recognises it) and desired (there is demand for it).

For example, I may be the best author in the world (I am not, stay with me), but if no one comes across my work (no community). There is no desire to read my work (no demand). I cannot convert this talent into value, whether further writing opportunities, engagement, network, or cold hard cash.

While it is tempting to focus on the returns, we can potentially gain from our talent (in the form of salary, stock, company benefits, etc.) as it is similarly tempting to obsess over the floor price and trading volumes from NFTs, it is worthwhile to take a step back and reflect on what community we want to visible to, and what we want to be desired for.

Understanding who and what gives us liquidity can identify if you are ‘correctly priced’ and valued in your current role.

Some questions to consider

• Who is the community I am part of? Is this the community I am proud to be part of? Whether you realise it or not, you are part of a community even if you do not work in tech. Your community is the group of people you most frequently interact with. It may not necessarily be your colleagues, for example, a teacher’s community is primarily one made up of students.
• Is the community around me sufficiently large for my ambitions? Just as founders and venture capitalists look for “billion-dollar market size”, the size of the community often determines the upper limit of what is achievable.
• Is there a desire for my skills and capabilities within this community I am in? Value is only created when there is demand. Why is one NFT collection worth 6/7 figures (Bored Ape Yacht Club) whilst others are sold in dollars? The fundamentals of supply and demand hold that value is created and recognised when many more people want what is less available.

Rarity and value are closely correlated, so find a way to be rare

This brings us to rarity. The rarity of NFTs, talent or anything else in the world is closely correlated with value. There is a caveat, though, what I discussed above has to hold first, rarity without a community that demands it is worthless.

I have a crushed piece of paper with some scribbles next to me as I write this article. This is a one of a kind, non-fungible artefact that is worthless because it is not visible by anyone, even if it is, it is not desired.

Happy to be proven wrong if anyone is keen on buying a crushed paper ball.

Also Read: More than hype: 3 reasons why NFTs are here to stay 

The struggle we often face is: what is rare in today’s day and age, where everyone on social media seems to be killing it in their field?

In almost every nook and cranny, there appears to be champions and winners who have captured the lion’s share of the reward. What could possibly be rare?

As it turns out, NFTs can give us a clue. The rarity of an individual NFT within a collection is often not just defined by the rarity of a single trait (though it can be helpful to have a 1/1 trait), but the collective rarity across multiple traits.

Don’t have a particularly rare skill? Combine it with another, and it starts to be unique. Add in yet another for a trifecta combo, and the likelihood that you have a rare combination of skills that few others have increased dramatically. What are three skills that can make you one of a kind (or a 1/1 NFT) when combined?

Utility: The future is as important, if not more, than the present

The third key driver of an NFT’s value is utility. What do I stand to gain by owning the NFT?

The majority of NFT projects have roadmaps:

• “Compete against GaryVee in an hour-long ping-pong duel!” (VeeFriends)
• “Every Lazy Lion owner can receive a banner image NFT featuring their own unique, randomly generated private bungalow!” (Lazy Lions)
• “We will launch a children’s storybook NFT” (KumoXWorld; Disclaimer: I’m a Kumo Resident; aka own a KumoXWorld NFT).

The most successful NFTs sell the future alongside the present. Why might one spend 6 to 7 figures on a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT?

Besides the hedonic value and social status, the future of BAYC is exciting more NFTs (spins offs such as the Bored Ape Kennel Club) or exclusive invites to events from New York to Hong Kong.

Also Read: Demystifying NFTs and DeFi

We are no different when pitching ourselves to prospective employers, investors or partners in answering the question. “What do you stand to gain by working together with me, besides what I can bring today?”

Laying out where you are headed generates not only excitement (“I want to be associated with you before you reach your ambitions”) but also creates alignment (“Let’s grow together”).

I find the most exciting NFT roadmaps to be those where the community is actively involved in shaping future outcomes. There is an innate desire for humans to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

We are drawn towards the opportunity to shape our future alongside others who share similar interests or goals. Find individuals within the community that recognise your talent, and enlist them in your journey.

While rareness, liquidity and utility are helpful to assess the value of NFTs, it is important to recognise that value is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. What is valuable to me may not necessarily be valuable to you.

It is common for us to think of careers defined by the companies and roles. Yet, decisions on how we are valued are ultimately made by ‘buyers’, individuals seeking us out for our talent, such as the recruiters and hiring managers (if you are an employee) or customers and investors (if you are a founder).

These decisions, like NFT pricing ones, are often based on highly subjective preferences, which is why it is critical to find the right ‘buyer’. Individuals who value us for who we are and want to engage with.

There is much we can learn from the boom in NFTs to shape our careers, discover a community that desires what we can offer (be liquid), develop a combination of skills (be rare), bring others alongside you for the ride (showcase utility), and above all, surround yourself with individuals who value us for who we are (right buyer).

While the jury on the impact of NFTs is still out, we can all take a leaf and increase our value at the workplace.

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