Filipino loyalty and e-commerce platform ZAP has secured an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from True Digital Group (TDG), the digital arm of Thai telco True Corporation.

ZAP will use the capital to become a one-stop shop that captures every interaction between customers and merchants, adding value through various tools and services offered.

“To help close the gap in consumer’s digital journey, we see a very hopeful opportunity with ZAP as the local market expert. We believe that together, we will be able to deliver an exciting experience for consumers in the Philippines,” said Dindo Marzan, True Digital Group Country Head in the Philippines.

Started in 2013, ZAP has developed a platform primarily to help bring F&B merchants of any size online. During the pandemic, the company pivoted and launched E-Store service in June 2020. Since then, its business has grown 5x, from supporting 75 stores in August 2021 to 483 F&B companies.

Also Read: Meet the VC: Philippines’s Kickstart Ventures on becoming the country’s gatekeeper for startup ecosystem scale-up

ZAP currently works with over four million users and 2,000 stores.

“Our initial investment in ZAP was backed by the belief that their platform could digitise the Filipino consumer and enterprise experience,” said Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart Ventures. “Over the last decade and through a pandemic, they’ve continued to prove the value of their unified data and analytics platform that has provided enterprises with a strategic advantage to develop and promote consumer products.”

ZAP was a part of Kickstart Ventures’s inaugural batch of portfolio companies in 2012. Kickstart, the corporate VC arm of Globe, invests in early to early growth-stage tech startups in the Philippines and globally, including startups in major innovation hubs like Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Canada, the United States, and Israel.

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Ahmed Nizar and I started Casa Mia Coliving a couple of years ago. During the earlier stages of our careers, we had the opportunity to work across the globe, from New Delhi to Seattle and Toronto to London.

When we rented our homes, we had the knack to always end up in the “wrong” neighbourhood for too long; we didn’t seem to have the luck to find the right “strangers” to be our flatmates and hunting for that perfect house was a mammoth task. It was not a living and working overseas experience that we envisioned.

We learned a lot from these international experiences, and we decided to take these learnings and capitalise them into Casa Mia Coliving.

If the concept had existed when we needed them earlier in our careers, our young professional life in those cities would have been a better experience. Still, Casa Mia Coliving would not exist today.

Launching a co-living startup during COVID-19 was a challenge when the business was so reliant heavily on movement between borders. We took the challenge in our stride because we saw an opportunity even with the presence of a global pandemic. 

Today, we have 150 bedrooms in central Singapore across popular neighbourhoods such as River Valley, Tiong Bahru and Orchard. We have reached an annualised revenue of US$2.5 million, and we continue to experience fast growth.

How did the pandemic affect Casa Mia Coliving?

Most businesses went into “survival mode” when the pandemic struck. We took the opportunity to accelerate our business by focusing on what was essential for Casa Mia Coliving. One of these was digital transformation.

Also Read: Most Singaporeans pay too much for their mortgage. Here’s how innovation can fix that

Back in 2019,  when Casa Mia Coliving was just launched, we relied heavily on virtual tours of our homes where our prospects could easily use the tool to check out the rooms they wanted to rent. 

We were one of the few coliving spaces having the feature in Singapore, and now, the trend has picked up among our competitors. Although we must say that it’s becoming a common feature to host virtual tours, it is still not executed well and professionally.

Rethinking our obstacles

Many opportunities could be found during the last year. For us, we don’t need global borders to open to growing our community of coliving members.

We have a substantial number of untapped young professional ex-pats in Singapore who are seeking to find their “perfect” place and flatmates.

It is a great opportunity, and we stay focused on building our brand name, our member community and targeting the professionals already in Singapore. The effort paid off, and we grew our business by 100 per cent.

Leverage during the ‘downtime’

The ‘downtime’ that the pandemic brought was the perfect time to build. As we mentioned earlier, not in the physical sense, but we focus on building up our digital transformation.

We came up with ColivHQ, a software that brings together customer support, property management and content management and billing system for the whole team. It has increased efficiency for the team and created a better understanding of the status of our homes and members. 

The COVID ‘downtime’ has enabled us to be one of the few operators here to have a proprietary software platform to manage coliving operations end-to-end. The pandemic highlighted that an outdated and inflexible business model was not the way forward. It was an excellent opportunity for change.

Also Read: Why your next tech startup should be in the real estate industry

Looking into the future

I believe that the future is bright for coliving space. This year, we aim to double our Singapore business and launch a second city in the coming months.

We are breaking even and intend to keep being profitable as we continue to grow, as we do not believe in growth at all costs. Coliving is a business where scale is significant.

We have strong unit economics with a 10x LTV/CAC ratio, but that’s possible only by focusing on the right real estate partners and assets. We can run a profitable business at our scale with our unit economics. 

 We also intend to build a customer-centric culture and focus on the end-user. And we do not forget to also focus on talent, the young professionals we have in Singapore.

If you are in a traditional industry, such as real estate, focus on accelerating the transformation to digital by bringing in tech-savvy talent from adjacent sectors.

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For Asian startups with growth plans, international expansion is certainly one of the key priorities. Most businesses tend to look at China or the US due to the sheer size of the market but Japan is often overlooked. As the third-largest market in the world, Japan represents a significant opportunity. Not only is it a highly stable economy with enormous purchasing power — a population of 127 million with a per capita GDP of around $41,000 — the Japanese economy is also expected to pose a healthy 4% growth in 2021, showing signs of strong post-pandemic recovery.

Overseas companies have traditionally had concerns around cultural and language differences that have made them averse to building a presence in Japan. Companies have also found it hard to hire Japanese talent with international experience in the past since Japanese entrepreneurs predominantly stuck to business within Japan. However, things have changed significantly over the last decade or so.

Japan has always been a hotbed for tech and innovation with the many legacy brands that dominated in automotive, electronics, and industrial hardware. As a society, the Japanese people are technologically advanced and receptive to innovations. With the use of AI becoming increasingly common, Japan is poised to once again be a tech leader thanks to its advanced expertise in deep tech manufacturing and robotics. Particularly noteworthy sectors in Japan’s innovation ecosystem are manufacturing & robotics where Japan is producing over half of the world’s robots and fintech where Tokyo ranks amongst the world’s most competitive financial centres.

Why Japan is a great market to build your company’s presence

Faced with an ageing, declining population, the Japanese government has laid out its vision to become the first country to prove that it is possible to develop and grow your economy through innovation. Japan is committed to building what it calls “Society 5.0” — a new ultra-smart society where all things will be connected through IoT technology and all technologies will be integrated. To realise this vision the Government of Japan knows that various players including startups, SMEs and enterprises, will all need to contribute and create new innovative solutions such as intelligent robots or digital agriculture.

Also read: Malaysian tech companies take on the global stage at Expo 2020 Dubai

Japan recognises that it will need international collaboration if they are to become a leader in the next wave of technological innovation and digital transformation. “The Japanese large corporates — while they have strength in certain areas — require and are looking for collaborations with foreign startups with certain technologies that Japanese corporates are lacking in expertise,” explained Khoo Kiewai, Director for JETRO’s Business Dev & PR. She added that these collaborations can also be brought to a third country for global expansions.

The willingness of Japanese companies to consider international solutions is now much higher than before, as the country shifts from the old mentality of trying to build everything in-house. For startups operating in Asia today, the opportunities to form strategic partnerships with Japanese companies represents a significant avenue for international expansion.

JETRO: making collaboration with Japanese companies possible

Japan External Trade Organisation (JETRO) is a government arm working to support overseas companies looking to form partnerships and collaborations in Japan for innovation. There is a wide variety of support that the organisation offers global startups, covering all levels of tech and with varying stages of maturity. This includes ​​introducing startups to potential investors and clients, providing translators and local experts when needed, promoting companies in media, as well as connecting them to conferences and workshops.

“JETRO provides many opportunities for startups to present their products and technologies to Japanese corporates, either through webinars, pitching events, or direct one-to-one business matchings,” discussed Khoo Kiewai. “We have many free supporting services by providing market information, professional consultations by legal and tax experts, different business matching or pitching events for participation, connections to regional governmental bodies for incentives, among others.”

These services support startups of all different business stages, from the initial market research stage to the final incorporation stage. JETRO also continues to support them after incorporation, on their further expansion in Japan to other regions of the country.

Below we look at three cases where JETRO support has resulted in strong collaborations and alliances in Japan for overseas startups.

SWAT Mobility: bringing smart mobility solutions to Japan

A recent Proof of Concept (PoC) has applied international routing technology to freight delivery in Japan. SWAT Mobility was selected for the HIKYAKU LABO Accelerator 2021 program run by Sagawa Express Co. Ltd. Applying its proprietary routing technology, SWAT Mobility developed a freight dispatch route optimisation service for Sagawa. The cargoes collected and delivered by Sagawa Express in Tokyo were dispatched using SWAT’s route generator and driver app to perform vehicle allocation, route generation and driver navigation for the deliveries.

The project has confirmed the potential for a significant reduction of the number of vehicles and costs through maximisation of the floor area usage by vehicles. SWAT’s routing technology localised for the Japanese market has built-in Zenrin’s highly accurate and fresh road network data which is complete with complex road regulation information specific to Japan, such as intricate narrow roads and one-way/time zone regulations. The technology will also derive the optimum driving speed for each time zone and each road, through machine learning using vehicle GPS data.

Also read: Keeping us cool is heating up the planet, but energy savings may change that

Masashi Suehiro, SWAT Mobility Country Manager (Japan) says that Japan’s ageing population has made it expensive to maintain public transportation, increasing the need for sustainable transportation solutions in low ridership areas. “Many organisations in Japan have a sustainability or digital transformation/innovation agenda and want to implement smart mobility solutions that help to reduce the number of vehicles on the road,” he remarked on why Japan was a promising market for their technology.

Suehiro described the challenges in working in Japan: “the unique road conditions in Japan “made it challenging for us to integrate road information and provide accurate routing in Japan. JETRO has supported us greatly by connecting us with relevant municipal governments that may require our system. For example, JETRO introduced us to the Kitakyushu city government, with whom we are working on a trial right now. JETRO also provided a platform for us by organising online events where we presented our services to city governments.” The potential for Japanese cities to optimise bus services is a major target market for SWAT.

Crown Digital: world’s first robotic barista

Keith Tan, CEO and Founder of Crown Digital is a wealth manager turned entrepreneur who started Crown Digital in Singapore as a team of baristas and coffee lovers. With their first product — ELLA the robot barista – it pivoted to a technology company that addresses the challenges of high rent, inconsistent quality, and labour shortages for the retail coffee market in Japan.

Tan says that ELLA proved that technology can reinvent user experience, as they began with the goal of delivering a gourmet experience to the world’s growing community of grab-and-go commuters. In the ongoing pandemic, their mobile ordering and contactless solution allow the business to operate without compromising the health and safety of people.

Speaking of their entry into Japan, Tan says it was a proud moment to launch ELLA outside of Singapore: “We are delighted to partner with JR East on this exciting test marketing collaboration and be the first foreign company to integrate the SUICA payment system into our offering. ELLA is serving quick and efficient cups of coffee to the time-pressed commuters at  Tokyo and Yokohama Stations – this is a huge milestone for Crown Digital.” As ELLA deploys across major Asian transit hubs, Crown Digital is implementing solid expansion plans backed up by sector leaders such as JRE and Stellar Lifestyle.

Tan believes the support from JETRO was key to their expansion into Japan, saying:  “Japan is an innovation powerhouse however, it’s not easy for foreign companies to enter the market largely due to barriers such as culture and language. It’s all about working with the right partners and getting a foothold in Japan. JETRO played a vital role in introducing us to JRE and played the role of a catalyst in this partnership. JETRO assisted us to overcome the cultural challenges and maximise this partnership.”

Brain Pool Tech: assessing the risk of natural disaster

Brain Pool Tech provides an easy-to-use software-as-a-service product that integrates drones and satellites to assess location risk for natural disasters. Derived from high-resolution geolocated map data, environmental sensors, and movement patterns of assets on the ground. Dr Cullen Owens, Chief Business Officer and co-founder, started the company with Dr Voges in 2019. Through unique artificial intelligence, algorithms to provide real-time insights their technology can assess the risk of locations from natural disasters. 

Japan’s geography leaves the country highly prone to natural disasters making Japan, a natural go-to-market for expansion for BrainPool tech. Dr Owens feels that while language is a major barrier, “specific differences in cultural and business expectations were also sometimes conflicting. We have learned to be patient and thoughtful as we continue to gain traction in Japan.”

Also read: CM.com enables growth for Southeast Asian businesses and beyond

JETRO has been an important partner in their journey:  “JETRO has done everything from introducing us to potential investors and clients to providing translators when needed to the promotion of our company both in media as well as through conferences and workshops. Our CEO, Dr Kai Voges was featured as a speaker at the geospatial conference which resulted in several new, international partnerships thanks to JETRO,” explained Dr Owens.

Dr Owens said the company is ready to “launch our MVP software ecosystem to our first client in Q2 of this year. We also look to capitalise on an opportunity with the World Accelerating Tomorrow Challenge with Tokio Marine and potentially other large Japanese Multinationals through the Plug and Play Japan accelerator. Finally, we are currently raising seed money to incorporate in Japan and Australia and to carry us into a ‘scale-up’ company status through multiple recurring revenue contracts in Japan, Australia, and now potentially the United States.”

Interested in finding out how you can expand to Japan, what support is available to you, and what opportunities await you? Schedule an exclusive one-on-one consultation with JETRO!

Please leave your details in the form so we can facilitate.

*Note that there will be pre-screening to check your match with JETRO and updates will be sent via email.

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Photo by Ben Cheung from Pexels

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

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.

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All it takes is an idea.

This is the line so often used to encourage innovators to come up with problem-solving, game-changing solutions to the world’s problems. But it is rarely – if ever – as simple as that.

Ideas need to be explored and tested before they can become actual solutions. Scientific research, in particular, plays an important role in manufacturing knowledge that drives innovation and progress that spills over to society and the economy.

But most of the time, ideas don’t leave the idea stage because the people who have them are not able to explore and test them. This is especially true for young researchers who do not have the opportunity to work on their own ideas due to lack of resources and support.

Research grants from various institutions help address this, though generally their criteria are stringent and are geared towards specific solutions as a result.

In 2009, Leave a Nest launched the LNest Grant with the aim of supporting passionate early career researchers to pursue their own ideas and projects. Since then, the LNest grant has offered close to 200 independent grants to over 360 researchers.

Nurturing explorations

The LNest Grant began as a brainstorm of Leave a Nest members when they first earned profit as a company: how can they use the money for something good?

Staying true to their vision of “Advancing Science and Technology for Global Happiness,” Leave a Nest launched the LNest Grant to help bring potentially world-changing ideas from the minds of researchers out into where it could be accessed by key industry players that can help nurture those ideas into actionable solutions.

Fuelled by their own profit, the LNest Grant aimed to support passionate young researchers to pursue ideas or projects that fascinate them. It was designed to give them access to financial resources that would offer the opportunity to explore their ideas and accelerate the research process.

Also read: Japan is looking for deep tech startups to collaborate with

Over the years, Leave a Nest has expanded the grant by working with various companies like  Panasonic, Yoshinoya, Sony, and Fujifilm to offer grants to young researchers.

Recently, they worked with Delightex, a research and venture creation company that seeks to create new services around creating delightful moments with naturally occurring substances.

Through this partnership, Leave a Nest was able to offer a grant to anthropology researchers to explore the potential of building new solutions around traditional medicines, herbs, and rituals.

Seeding ideas

What makes LNest Grant stand out is that unlike other grants, researchers are free to work on a broad variety of topics.

The first grant awardee in the United Kingdom, for example, is Ruiz Gonzalez Antonio Rafael, a PhD student researching the development of deep-learning diagnostics for depression based on non-invasive wearable potassium biosensors. The LNest Grant called for applications for “any research in Science,” and received applications with topics ranging from astrophysics, material science, and more.

Apart from that, Leave a Nest and their partners do not make any Intellectual Property (IP) claims on the research and the results, nor do they require researchers to be able to create new business as a result.

This really highlights the real purpose of the LNest Grant to help researchers kickstart their projects and build on their ideas. With the pressure of creating business or profit taken out of the equation, researchers can focus on pursuing avenues in their research that may not immediately lead to business but may create more opportunities for discovering world-changing solutions.

Also read: Malaysian tech companies take on the global stage at Expo 2020 Dubai

Even with grants provided in partnership with large corporations, creation of new business is not the main goal; rather, it is to provide a platform for companies to discover ideas they previously did not have access to, that they could work on with the researchers to potentially develop into a business at a later time.

Essentially, Leave a Nest and the companies they partner with for the grant are investing in and enabling researchers to fully focus on developing and accelerating research on their ideas: manufacturing knowledge and exploring potential world-changing ideas, without the pressure of immediate business application

Leave a Nest Global Challenge Grant

As Leave a Nest celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, they aim to stay true to their roots and keep contributing to the advancement of knowledge through academic research.

They believe that in a post-COVID-19 era, academic research would play a more important role in solving the issues the world is facing, as well as in designing the future of humanity.

Aligned with this, Leave a Nest is announcing the launch of the LNest Global Challenge Grant.

Also read: Keeping us cool is heating up the planet, but energy savings may change that

The LNest Global Challenge Grant is calling for grant proposals from young researchers who have ideas on or are working on research that can potentially contribute to solving issues that the world is facing today.

Any research from young scholars related, but not limited to, healthcare, environment, agriculture and food, nature, society, and education are welcome.

They will be selecting 5 young researchers from Singapore, who will each receive a grant of SGD 5,000 to aid in accelerating their research process.

Click here to apply.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Leave a Nest

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.

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Tencent-backed Mighty Jaxx makes first close of US$20M Series A+ round
Investors include East Ventures (Growth Fund), Mirana Ventures, Teja Ventures, KB Investment and Korea Investment Partners; The new tranche brings the designer toys and collectibles firm’s total capital raised to date to US$34.8M and valuation to over US$200M

Following Primagama acquisition, Zenius raises funding led by MDI Ventures
Other backers are Northstar Group, Alpha JWC, Openspace Ventures, and Beacon VC; Founded in 2014, Zenius said that it has helped 1.5M+ alumni to enter top private and public universities in Indonesia.

Heritas Capital said to lead US$20.5M Series B round of Vietnam’s Jio Health
Jio Health has already raised nearly US$18M out of the US$20M target from 12 investors; The firm provides services such as home visits and online pharmacy, and tele-consultancy; Jio had earlier raised US$5M Series A led by Monk’s Hill.

Filipino loyalty and e-commerce platform ZAP raises funding
The investor is True Digital Group, the digital arm of Thai telco True Corporation; ZAP will use the capital to become a one-stop-shop that captures every interaction between customers and merchants

Singapore firm launches VC arm with investments in 2 startups
TC Ventures launched by Transport Capital targets firms working on decarbonisation and digitalisation solutions; The two investees are maritime industry jobs marketplace Turtle (Germany) and Everimpact, which measures and monetises carbon emissions. (France).

EduSpaze announces fourth cohort of startups to ride the stronger edutech momentum
Nine early-stage edtech companies from Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, US and Canada have been selected for the fourth cohort from over 180 applicants across 43 countries; EduSpaze is managed by Spaze Ventures and supported by Enterprise Singapore.

Former Coinbase exec launches new Web3 firm
Spencer Yang’s new Singapore-based venture Gomu provides the gateway for wallets, apps, and services based on Web3; It is developing APIs and software development kits for developers and companies to offer NFT commerce, token swaps, liquidity pools, social, and other crypto functionalities to users.

Philippines must step up digital shift for better cash aid system: World Bank
The digital government-to-person payments should be ramped up, mainly by tapping other financial services providers like e-wallets, to speed up and ensure the efficient distribution of cash assistance during a crisis.

The pandemic cements digital’s valuable role in B2B commerce
The more sales channels a B2B company offered to enable purchases, the more likely the company was to have gained market share during the pandemic; That finding comes from management consulting firm McKinsey & Co’s December 2021 global B2B Pulse survey of nearly 3,400 decision-makers in 12 countries.

In the metaverse, responsible AI must be a priority
Because AI algorithms are built by people with biases, they can be created to follow the thought patterns and biases of their creators — which can then multiply; To create a flourishing and more equitable metaverse, dark AI patterns that can create and perpetuate bias need to be addressed.

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