Day: April 16, 2022

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How technology is enabling a better workplace equity

Over the last two years, the pandemic has affected everyone from industries to workers alike. With many at their breaking point, spurring the “great resignation”, some have lost their jobs, continue to be overworked, and others chose to leave their roles to prioritise personal commitments.

During this time, technology has been a key driving force for businesses and employee productivity. It has allowed companies to stay afloat and enabled workers to continue to operate remotely. And as we emerge from the pandemic, I believe that businesses could set themselves up for even greater success if they address this salient issue: workplace equity.

A way forward is through technology. These tools can provide leaders with the opportunity to rebuild the workforce and reintegrate workers, regardless of gender, background, and/or socioeconomic status, so they feel empowered to contribute and drive growth fully.

The right tech tools can help employees thrive

A Lark study found that the top three most used collaboration features among Singapore’s PMEs are chat or messaging, video meetings, and emails. Furthermore, employees are continuously on the lookout for more and more ways in which teams can collaborate and communicate more seamlessly to achieve optimal levels of efficiency across workflows.

Being on the cusp of the shift to a more permanent hybrid working arrangement, leaders need to consider the type of technology adopted to ensure it enables workers to collaborate without overloading efficiency-enhancing digital tools that hinder workers’ productivity.

Also Read: How smart technology can improve the post-pandemic public life

Deploying a genuinely integrated digital collaboration platform, such as Lark, supports employees across these three major tasks and other work needs. This includes file sharing, cloud storage, task management, goals and performance review, contract lifecycle management, expense control, etc.

Adopting an all-in-one digital collaboration platform has many benefits and sets the stage for employees to thrive at work.

It would not only reduce the distractions of switching back and forth between multiple platforms but also eliminate the frustration of being unable to search for information amongst the trove of massive and fragmented data and empower workers across the organisation to collaborate and contribute more effectively.

Digital collaboration allows for greater inclusion

The pandemic has also underscored the need to create a more diverse and inclusive culture at work. At Lark, we sought to remove the communicative language barriers amongst distributed teams by allowing them to chat in their native languages and get their message across via machine learning-powered translation.

McKinsey’s research cites the struggles women alone have faced during the crisis. They have experienced a disproportionate share of job losses due to the industries they work in being hit severely, such as retail. Still, They are also afflicted by a compound mix of societal barriers.

However, these struggles are also present in other segments of the workforce, especially with employees who double hat as caregivers, single parents, etc. Having to juggle work with personal life demands throughout the day can take a toll on anyone.

Leaders need to take the helm in shaping a working environment that recognises every employee as an equal and valuable contributor to the business.

By equipping them with the right tools, hybrid arrangements can help alleviate the pressures imposed by the double burden upon working women, single parents, or even caregivers and empower them with the flexibility and opportunities to pursue a career and tend to their personal commitments the same time.

Employees that have these digital collaboration tools at their disposal should also consider taking advantage of them to maintain a solid work-life balance.

Also Read: 6 leadership lessons I learned after we raised our seed round

For example, businesses or employees who use Lark’s Collaborative Suite can set their working hours each day. If someone tries to book a meeting outside of those hours, they will immediately be notified that the employee cannot attend the meeting. This helps employees set, recognise and respect team boundaries in and outside of the workplace.

The way forward

How we work will never be how it used to be pre-pandemic. Work will continue to evolve, and as we move through the phases, businesses and their leaders must consider redefining work policies and strengthening the worker-employer relationship through digital collaboration tools.

The digital collaboration will continue to create opportunities for businesses and their respective employees. From driving more inclusivity within the workplace to allowing for borderless cooperation across regions and developing the ability for teams to communicate regardless of language with the use of machine learning technology, we can motivate teams to do better and contribute more every day.

As a leader myself, I believe bringing success to today’s work environment starts by imbuing a collaborative and open culture at work.

Going the distance to ensure teams are supported with the right setup allows us to chart a pathway towards achieving more significant equity in the workplace and fostering a more positive and enjoyable work environment.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic.

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Finding strength in adversity: How COVID-19 can shape a resilient workforce

As we enter the third year of the pandemic, we have become somewhat accustomed to large-scale, business disruptions and changes.

New COVID-19 variants, fresh outbreaks, ongoing information overload, fake news around the pandemic, and changing regulations and requirements to protect the health and safety of the community are constantly upturning the ‘new normal’ and our sense of order.

For example, as fresh outbreaks occur, businesses and authorities are relooking working arrangements, from reinstating on-site operations when community cases are low, and reverting to work from home arrangements when outbreaks persist.

This state of constant change and upheaval is often cited as a major factor for psychological stress, which then impacts mental health.

Added to larger uncertainties beyond COVID-19, such as climate change, fluctuations in the economy, and geopolitical tensions across the globe, there are many reasons for us to feel stressed, fatigued, or even anxious going into the new year.

In fact, the recently published International SOS Risk Outlook 2021 revealed that one-third of Asian organisations expect mental health to be a major disruptor of productivity in the new year.

Additionally, close to half of Asian organisations (47 per cent) are challenged with having the adequate resources to deal with COVID-19. This is particularly worrying, as businesses that don’t have the adequate resources to cope with the pandemic are going to struggle to empower and support their employees’ mental or physical wellbeing.

The challenge of feeling ‘ready’

It is interesting to note that even after two years of living through the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations still feel ill-equipped to cope with the challenges it brings, and report that they do not have adequate resources to support employees.

In conversations with clients, some common areas in which they struggle to support their employees include:

  • Knowing and understanding the workforce, and how they can be supported:

This results in managers or business leaders not having the confidence to approach these issues or furnish employees with the resources to weather these difficulties.

  • Identifying areas of business operations that need to be relooked with a COVID-19 perspective:

Many areas of business operations have changed because of the pandemic, from the everyday things like working in the office and allowing employees to access secure systems remotely, or more complex issues like managing the travelling workforce, organising international business trips, or large-scale conferences and events.

It is clear to many business leaders that these existing plans need to be relooked to account for new risks, but they are often unaware of where to start, or how to communicate these changes, which further adds to the anxiety, or frustration, of employees.

  • Anticipating future changes, and forward-planning for new risks:

Just as businesses need to make changes to current business operations, there are constant reminders from the authorities and health experts to stay mindful of the ever-changing nature of the pandemic and new threats that may arise.

Also Read: COVID-19 and the wave of business digitalisation

More so, as the pandemic wears on, other threats outside the medical perspective will arise, such as economic changes, civil unrest, and geopolitical tensions, all of which businesses need to prepare for. Without anticipating these changes, businesses will continue to feel inadequately equipped to support employees in the future.

Overcoming these changes, and building a future-ready workforce

Taking a step back, many of these issues stem from an inability to understand or know the workforce, and how to communicate and support them through the pandemic.

This has a ripple effect through the organisation, where businesses struggle to identify the right levers to pull when new issues arise, all whilst employees become more anxious and stressed about the changes around them.

To tackle these issues, International SOS has developed a few strategies to help organisations increase their focus on employee well-being, ensure open communication, and build a resilient workforce.

5 steps to building a resilient workforce

  • Know your people:

Carry out emotional health or resilience surveys with tools that have been scientifically validated and can uncover individual pain points. This will provide insights into how your workforce is coping overall and provide a better understanding of the programmes needed to address specific issues.

Identify those who are more emotionally vulnerable and hence require more attention and assistance. Create a safe space for all, so that employees can share openly about their emotional health challenges without fear of discrimination.

It is also important to recognise that apart from stress, employees might be struggling with prolonged anxiety, or even depression, and understand how to assist employees at risk of these conditions.

  • Provide emotional support: 

Emotional support like remote confidential counselling and telehealth assistance by a team of dedicated experts are critical tools that organisations should utilise to support their people.

These resources offer a confidential route for employees to discuss their emotional health issues away from their direct managers and teams and seem professional assistance if necessary.

Organisations should establish these channels through HR or independent expert support, and these resources should be communicated widely and consistently so that employees are aware of these pathways for support.

Other broader skill sets such as problem-solving, coping with stress, or encouraging awareness and learning on managing stress and mental wellbeing are good to develop as we move towards a state of endemicity.

  • Prioritise communication and open discourse around wellness issues:

Rampant misinformation or an infodemic will persist in 2022, and organisations that provide trusted information to employees will be able to combat feelings of distrust, paranoia, or anxiety.

Building an open environment and culture about overall wellbeing also helps destigmatise mental health concerns, and create a supportive workforce.

Communicate these channels widely and consistently so employees can seek support in a way that they are comfortable with. Drawing on professional expertise is also vital in ensuring that health care best practices are being applied, and responding to employees’ concerns and questions.

Partnering with experts like International SOS helps multinational organisations to monitor and support such programmes across multiple jurisdictions, or advise on threats to employee safety that lurk in the future.

  • Stay protected from new or arising threats:

With well-designed communications plans and processes, it is much easier to disseminate information about new travel or on-site policies, and channels for the workforce to reach out for assistance, and stay protected from new or arising threats.

  • Commitment at the senior management level:

Clearly with all the issues and threats that lie ahead, engaging the organisation to prioritise employee wellbeing is a massive task that will require commitment at the senior management level, especially in the C-suite.

We have noticed a trend of organisations creating a new role amongst top management to further engender change. The Chief Health Officer, or CHO, role helps organisations champion health issues, promote overall health and well-being in the organisation, and also ensure health regulatory and policy compliance at global, regional and local levels.

This role can also ensure that these priorities are reflected throughout the organisation, eradicate issues of stigmatisation about mental wellness, and promote a culture where employees’ wellbeing is a critical pillar of business operations.

Also Read: How can tech help with COVID-19 control and our return to normalcy?

While this used to be more common amongst large organisations, it’s also something that small organisations should look into to promote the overall well-being of the workforce.

Doing our part to live safely with COVID-19

There’s no doubt that managing employee well-being is a gargantuan task that often requires a mindset shift amongst both employees and business leaders. Nonetheless, our experience has shown that a common starting point should always be building understanding and openness from both perspectives.

From an employees’ perspective, it’s often difficult to open up to management about mental or physical health issues, out of fear of stigmatisation or discrimination.

From a boss’s perspective, we must remember that these are unprecedented situations, and many senior executives will not have dealt with a long-drawn pandemic and its ripple effects before.

As such, staying open with each other, and communicating honestly about the struggles and how you can best receive support will engender productive discussions and a clear path forward for the organisation to embrace employee wellbeing, building a culture that places mental health as a core pillar of business resilience, and in the long run, foster an environment that builds workforce resilience, and the agility to thrive in the face of future threats or challenges.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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How LUNO Expeditions aims to support early stage fintech, crypto entrepreneurs

The Luno building in Cape Town, South Africa

Earlier in March, Luno –a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digital Currency Group– introduced Luno Expeditions, its early stage investment arm that aims to support fintech and crypto/Web3 founders.

In a press statement, Luno Expeditions said that by building on DCG’s seven-year track record in early stage crypto investing, it will now spearhead all of DCG’s early sage investing (seed and pre-seed). Its dedicated team will scale up investments –targeting 200-300 per year– and expand the focus beyond crypto into the broader fintech space, globally.

The firm will be led by its CEO Jocelyn Cheng, who is known for her works with global startup founders over the last six years as Managing Director at the impact investment VC, Global Innovation Fund.

In this feature article, we will dig into the investment philosophy of Luno Expeditions and how they plan to seize opportunities in the highly promising fintech and crypto space.

Helping early stage founders hit the ground running

Before understanding the investment philosophy of Luno Expeditions, first of all, we need to understand the specific challenges that early stage fintech and crypto founders faced –that the firm intends to help tackle.

In an email interview with e27, Cheng identifies several of the challenges that they tend to face: hiring and scaling a team, effective engagement with regulators and identifying investors who share the same vision.

“Luno itself was once an early stage startup and understands the challenges on the journey to building a global company, so we’re equipped with the knowledge and experience to help startups navigate the challenges ahead,” she writes.

Also Read: Demystifying NFTs and DeFi

“Our ethos is to let founders focus on their companies without us interfering, and help when we’re asked. We aim to support founders by sharing our experience building a fintech business across five continents and many countries, with unique insights on both scaling global organisations and hyperlocalising them,” she continues. “In addition, we provide access to an unrivalled global network in financial services, fintech and crypto across everything from talent and investors to relationships with regulators and banks. We also invest with permanent capital, which means we can truly support founders over the long term.”

When it comes to supporting entrepreneurs, Luno Expeditions see a “real need” for more tailored support for fintech and crypto founders.

“By tapping into Luno’s market expertise, we can provide localised support to the businesses we invest in. We believe this will help accelerate the development of the broader fintech ecosystem in Asia and across the world,” Cheng says.

As an early stage investor, the firm is looking for ambitious founders who are looking to disrupt all or a specific segment of financial services, with the belief that this massive change will be driven by the rise of crypto.

“Our long-term hypothesis is that crypto is going to revolutionise our financial system and there are many companies working directly and indirectly towards that same goal, whether as pure crypto companies or fintech companies. There is still a lot of work to be done in building the infrastructure that crypto will rely on. Our goal is to be supportive of this broader ecosystem and invest in companies across the fintech, crypto and Web3 spaces that match long term thesis and can truly make a positive impact on people’s lives,” Cheng says.

Crypto as the centre of the revolution

When asked about the ongoing trends that Luno Expeditions wants to tap into, Cheng highlights the role of crypto as a driver of innovation, as she highlights in the discussion regarding investment philosophy. More importantly, as agreed by various players in the industry, she also notes how traditional investors have begun to look into crypto.

“We are seeing a strong intersection between some of the traditional fintechs and crypto; we expect this intersection to only increase over the next three to five years,” she says.

“For instance, many fintech companies are enablers for crypto – payment gateways, fraud and compliance companies, or challenger banks that heavily promote crypto adoption. There is still a lot of work to be done in building the financial infrastructure that crypto will rely on, and we plan on investing in businesses that support the broader financial ecosystem as well as crypto native companies.”

Also Read: NFTs provide new ways to handle IP management, empower content creators: Inmagine CEO Warren Leow

According to Cheng, there is also a greater openness towards diversity and inclusion that the firm wants to tap into.

“Additionally, we see a huge opportunity for increasing inclusivity in fintech. Women are often an under-targeted audience in this space, and Luno Expeditions wants to challenge this,” she points out.

“We have a diverse team in terms of gender, geography and experience – we want this diversity to reflect in the investments we make. In our portfolio, we have already invested in companies focused on making the financial ecosystem more accessible to women. For example, there is a business in Pakistan we have invested in called Oraan. Oraan is Pakistan’s first women-led alternative financial solutions platform to make money management simple for women. They use a human-centric philosophy to craft solutions that are socially and religiously accepted in order to ease access to financial services.”

By March, despite having been in stealth mode over the past months, Luno Expeditions stated that it has invested in over 20 leading crypto and fintech companies globally, including a crypto compliance solution in Israel, an NFT marketplace in the US, a bank dedicated to women in Pakistan, and a ground-breaking remittance solution in Tanzania.

As for Luno, the global crypto platform owned by Digital Currency Group, the platform recently announced that it has surpassed 10 million customers across over 40 countries, gaining an additional one million customers in just six months.

It said that since being founded in 2013, Luno has enabled over US$52 billion of crypto to be safely transacted and its customers have stored in excess of US$1 billion.

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Image Credit: LUNO

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The way of the DAO could be the future of work

There is a general view that 2020 was the year of DeFi, 2021 was the year of NFT, and 2022 will be the year of DAO (decentralised autonomous organisation). As the word “decentralised” suggests, DAO is expected to be the native corporate structure of the crypto economies.

What exactly is a DAO? It’s been called a “crypto co-op” and is often associated with crowdfunding. In fact, any loose form of organisation that is decentralised and autonomous can be called a DAO.

In the simplest format, a multi-signature wallet that manages community treasuries can be a DAO, and a chat group that manages community communications can be a DAO. Thus, Bitcoin and Ethereum are DAO of protocols, as are many of the recent DeFi protocols, NFT projects or web3 projects.

My experience with DAOs began a few years back, when I participated with one ETH in the fundraising round of the infamous “The DAO”, to experience what it would be like in the midst of the frenzy.

The DAO was formed in 2016 to operate as a “virtual” venture capital fund with no “managing” to lead it. Its decentralised nature would in theory award control and access to all investors. Unfortunately, The DAO met with an ignominious end after a hacker exploited a bug and drained The DAO of around US$70 million worth of ETH then.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also ruled after the incident that, “Tokens offered and sold by a “virtual” organisation known as “The DAO” were securities and therefore subject to the federal securities laws”, implying that such laws had been violated by The Dao and its investors as the offers had not been registered with the SEC.

But at the very least, it served as a playbook for new DAO creators.

I recently participated in another high profile project, ConstitutionDAO, with another one ETH just to relive the experience again.

ConstitutionDAO formed in November 2021 with a community of thousands who raised more than US$45 million in a week to bid on a rare copy of the US Constitution that was being auctioned by Sotheby’s. They didn’t win the auction. The group dissolved, and “was mired in controversy as it sought to return money to investors”, the New York Times reports.

So ConstitutionDAO kind of failed, but to me, it was successful in a way as it has shown how efficient a DAO could be in coordinating a large community and driving them towards a common goal.

Since the invention of “The DAO” in 2016, the ecosystem has come a long way and seems to gain real traction in recent years. At the time of this article, DAO analytics site, DeepDAO.io, shows that there are 4,800+ DAOs managing over US$12.6 billion treasuries, with over 1.8 million governance token holders growing nearly 10 per cent month-on-month growth.

Initially, drawing from my experience as a venture capitalist, I had many doubts about the ability of DAOs to support a community-led future of work, especially when I tested out “The DAO” in 2016.

I felt that the three main hurdles to mass adoption of DAOs centred on the acceptance of community culture, the efficiency of the decentralised decision-making process, and ease of coordination and incentivisation of a large pool of talent.

Also Read: The Shark Tank of Web3: How this DAO is bridging the funding gap for women founders

But many things have changed since. Today, we can observe the following positive trends: significant adoption of online community culture, rapid development of technology and models that enable both decentralised yet efficient decision-making process, efficient management tools to manage contribution and compensation of a large pool of talent.

Rise of the online community culture and the WallStreetBets generation

Generally, VCs endeavour to invest in strong founder(s) with a strong vision, which is useful in attracting talent and assembling an institution. It is important to build an efficient institution to compete with other similar institutions (competitor companies), and also to attract talent.

That is why, at first, I was not sure how a decentralised online community can ever be efficient enough to attract talent and organise itself to function effectively.

However, times are changing. The younger generations seem to favour community over the institution and many now adopt a mission-driven mindset.

They are more open about online collaboration than the older generations and are comfortable building trust with others whom they have never met before. Being technology-savvy, they know how to leverage tools to collaborate efficiently to compensate for the disadvantages of remote, informal communities.

One of the best-known cases is the story of WallStreetBets, the subreddit community that banded together to go up against Wall Street institutions. Many of the DAOs today is even bigger and more well-coordinated than WallStreetBets.

I would say that the adoption of the online community culture has reached a tipping point. What we observe is an ever-growing group of digital nomads and how this could fuel the mass adoption of DAOs.

Around the world, we see the younger generation being more open to the idea of working in startups as compared to their parents. This mindset naturally gives rise to the inclination to work in even more disruptive organisations such as DAOs.

The key is to build a community with a strong mission statement, and it will naturally organise itself. The mission and community culture bind the members together and motivate them to add value without the need for strong centralised leadership.

Decentralised yet efficient decision-making process is now a reality

I always advise startups to be clear with their decision structure, emphasising the importance of having a key decision-maker who calls the shots in tough situations.

Startups need to move fast and we want to avoid situations where participants shun responsibility, or worse, push the decision-making responsibility to others and waste precious time in the process.

Thus, my initial concerns relate to the speed and quality of the decentralised decision-making process. Having observed the decision-making process in DAOs for a few years now, I’m somehow convinced that a decentralised process could be highly efficient too, contrary to conventional belief, thanks to technology.

Governance tools such as Snapshot make community voting effortless, and community management tools such as Discord enables a transparent and efficient process of empowering the community members with relevant information.

One would argue that too many cooks spoil the broth. But in this case of DAOs, providing members of the community with access to key information and enabling them to present proposals, and challenge each others’ assumptions and perspectives in a democratic way actually give rise to a self-checking and governing mechanism of sorts.

Also Read: Web3 is going to redefine labour in Asia in a big way: Animoca Brands’s Yat Siu

The DAO decision process is still evolving rapidly as part of larger decentralised governance frameworks.

There are various innovations being explored, such as governance delegation from minority to community influencers to address lower participation rates from minority token holders, or the creation of sub-groups based on projects or functions so that decision-making is carried out at the proper level or by proper domain experts, or some combination of online and offline governance to leverage the best of both worlds.

‘Show me the incentive, I’ll show you the outcome.’

Charlie Munger, the vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, once said, “Show me the incentive, I’ll show you the outcome.”

Crypto projects are famous for having interests aligned among the community through token ownership. However, DAOs generally begin with a small group of core contributors and a large community of followers.

I used to wonder how the talent pool could be scaled up without having to offer full-time employment, which then gives rise to a more centralised organisation.

There are usually sufficient people willing to contribute, but the challenge lies in getting them to contribute in a decentralised way, receive fair compensation, and be held accountable.

DAOs resemble hiring and managing community-inspired freelancers on a large scale, which is very different from traditional startups hiring full-time employees who report to a manager.

The DAO has evolved quickly in building tools to make managing a large talent force in a way that is compatible with a decentralised society.

For example, Bounties are bite-sized tasks that members can take on to move up in the DAO and can be managed by Gitcoin (a platform where users get paid to work on open-source projects).

MolochDA also shows how grants can be systematically awarded to bring about benefits for the larger ecosystem.

SourceCred provides a way of paying contributors based on the value they add to a community and Govrn takes this a step further by pioneering a Movement Model to assign weight to different types of contributions depending on its priorities.

Contributions to DAOs can come from anywhere in the world, tools that qualify and quantify different types of contributions can be used to manage how talent can contribute and expect to be compensated.

In addition, DAOs also have reputation-building tools to motivate community members to take ownership and contribute more and more to the ecosystem.

Still, the DAO is just a tool. Ultimately, whether such an organisational structure could eventually become the future of work depends on whether the desire to collaborate and make decisions in a decentralised way can be a mainstay.

The evolution of the DAO designs merely facilitates the adoption of DAOs, which could well become a formidable force to compete with the conventional enterprises for talent.

This story first appeared in The Business Times’ Crypto Watch column. 

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer and do not reflect the views of Vertex Ventures.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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Ecosystem Roundup: Zilingo reportedly suspends CEO, PayMaya parent rakes in US$210M, JULO raises US$80M

Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose

Zilingo CEO Ankiti Bose

Voyager Innovations raises US$210M, turns unicorn
Investors include SIG Venture Capital, EDBI, First Pacific Company, PLDT, KKR, Tencent, and IFC; Voyager will continue to expand PayMaya’s offering with new products such as cryptocurrency, micro-investments, and insurance.

JULO raises US$80M from Credit Saison to further expand in Indonesia
JULO is one of the earliest in Indonesia to offer virtual credit card services; For Credit Saison, the investment is aimed to accelerate its expansion to the Indonesian market.

Zilingo reportedly suspends CEO amid probe into financials
Potential investors have reportedly launched an investigation into Zilingo’s financial practices, as the company’s auditor has questioned the firm’s accounting records;  The probe centres around the business’ transactions and revenue across its platform.

US2.ai secures US$15M Series A to automate fight against heart disease
Investors include IHH Healthcare, Heal Partners, Pappas Capital, Sequoia India, EDBI, and Partech Ventures; US2.ai will use the funds to drive its growth targets for clinical implementation in the US, Europe and Asia.

Indonesia’s Xendit set to acquire 2 local financial firms
The firms are Globalindo Multi Finance and Emas Persada Finance; Payment gateway startup Xendit entered the unicorn club after raising US$150M from Tiger Global, Accel, Amasia, and Goat Capital in September 2021.

Animoca Brands to buy French blockchain game studio Darewise Entertainment
It will speed up game development and combine high-budget game production with blockchain, NFTs, and P2E elements; Co-founded by 2 ex-Ubisoft employees, Darewise Entertainment’s first game, Life Beyond, is in development.

These two Singapore startups lending a helping hand to Ukrainians displaced by Russian invasion
Ahrefs has managed to raise US$1.3M for people in the war-torn country whereas Xctuality offers jobs to techies affected by the conflict.

GoTo commissioner invests US$4.87M in AnterAja
Following this, Garibaldi Thohir owns 10 per cent stake in the express delivery firm; AnterAja is a subsidiary of and a major contributor to Indonesian logistics player ASSA.

Alpha JWC backs US$2M seed round of Vietnam’s Aemi
Aemi is an online social commerce platform that works with retailers of beauty and wellness goods, directly connecting social commerce entrepreneurs to Southeast Asian brands.

Singapore’s The Esports Players League taps YGG SEA for NFT gaming
Through the partnership, ESPL looks to generate over 300K gamers in the crypto space; It plans to achieve this by organising tournaments involving metaverse and NFT games, including Sky Mavis’ Axie Infinity.

Fomo Pay becomes first DPT licensee to add crypto support
Starting with luxury retailers, businesses can now accept cryptocurrencies with the new service; The service will have support for a range of different cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and Ethereum, and stablecoins such as USD Coin and Tether.

ESG startup GoImpact raises Series A funding
Investors include Oriental Watch Group; The company provides case-based, experiential learning courses, which are crafted and delivered by experts, aiming to drive the sustainability agenda.

Line launches NFT marketplace in Japan
Called Line NFT, available tokens on the platform include comedy works and character videos; Users can then keep their digital assets using Line Bitmax Wallet and trade them with contacts through the messenger app itself.

How Indonesian e-commerce players are attracting lower-tier customers?
Startups such as Mitra Bukalapak and GrabKios are trying to digitise local mom-and-pop stores, or social commerce players such as Chilibeli, RateS, and KitaBeli that utilise agents in the area to market their products.

DIBIZ aims to digitalise palm oil trading, prevent ‘greenwashing’ using a blockchain-powered marketplace
Every quantity of product on DIBIZ has immutable data to authenticate sustainability, conforming to many global standards, specifically NDPE.

SG
Diamond Protocol banks US$500K in fresh funds led by Tokocrypto, IVC
It is a codeless, modular vault protocol that aims to bridge the gap between traditional and crypto-native investors by providing them with a platform where traders can deploy their investment strategies with on-chain liquidity.

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