Last week, Singaporean ride-hailing company Ryde announced that it would launch an NFT (non-fungible tokens) project in Asia targeting its community. Ryde, the first ride-hailing company in Singapore to accept crypto payments, wants to deploy NFTs to generate more real-world value, especially for the rapidly growing market segment of Singaporeans who hold crypto. The NFTs will unlock exclusive in-app rewards and benefits for owners.

The Sea Group-backed Ryde, which boasts over 200,000 monthly active users, also announced expanding its crypto payment model by adding over 70 currencies and ten different blockchain networks.

On Thursday, e27 spoke to its Founder and CEO, Terence Zou, to learn more about its NFT project and the crypto payments model.

Below is the edited version of the interview:

What is RydePal, and why is the firm venturing into NFTs?

RydePals, Asia’s first ride-hailing NFT, is aimed at members of our Ryde+ subscription plan. Each RydePal will be built using generative art, a combination of different design elements such as gender and age, colour, and accessories, representing the diversity of our users in the Ryde community.

To be eligible for the chance to receive a RydePal NFT, the first 3,350 people must hold an active Ryde+ subscription by 31 May 2022. The RydePal NFTs have real-world utility as they give NFT holders access to exclusive reward tiers in the Ryde app.

Also Read: Ryde plans for IPO on SGX, aims to capture 30 per cent of Singapore’s ride-sharing market

Outside of this token sale, RydePal NFTs can only be earned through an in-app activity like accumulating rides or staking RydeCoins in the Ryde wallet. The RydePals can also be traded on secondary NFT exchanges like OpenSea.

NFTs are great tools for building loyalty among communities. While designing RydePals, we spent a lot of time thinking about how other NFT project communities and game developers keep their communities engaged and reward desirable in-app activities.

NFTs also offer greater operational efficiencies in administering a membership programme than traditional systems. It does not rely on Ryde as a central authority to maintain a ledger of its members, and they are free to trade the NFTs as they see fit. All benefits and rights accrue to users whose wallets hold the NFTs.

Few NFTs today have real-world utility. With this project, we hope to deploy NFTs in a way that generates more real-world value, especially for the rapidly growing market segment of Singaporeans who hold crypto assets.

Can you tell us how RydePals works?

The table below outlines our NFT allocation breakdown according to the type of NFT offerings (standard versus rare), the platform where it may be purchased (via a Ryde+ subscription or through public minting), and the assigned price point or value per piece.

For the ‘Reserved Stock’ section, a quantity of 500 will be reserved for our top drivers who have excellent ratings and reviews. The NFTs will be airdropped to the first 500 drivers to meet the stipulated criteria: complete 400 trips in any three months between April and June 2022.

What are NFTs important in the ride-hailing vertical?

Our mission at Ryde has always been to “make every ride a better one”. Offering better prices is not the only or most sustainable way for us to give people reasons to choose to ride with us. Our driver-partners must be compensated fairly too.

NFTs are just one way that we try to give users another reason to choose Ryde. We believe that our “ride-to-earn” model of breeding new NFTs and gamifying rewards can turn each ride into something rather fun and exciting.

While Singapore is a fast-growing crypto market, NFTs are yet to take off in a big way. How do you plan to create awareness about NFTs among your subscribers and driver-partners?

NFTs have varied use cases across different industries that have yet to be fully explored. This provides us with an excellent opportunity to take the innovation lead.

RydePals will be the first major issuance of NFTs by a large, consumer-facing company in Singapore. We hope to generate greater awareness about NFTs among a more diverse base of Singaporeans.

As for our subscribers and driver-partners, we will provide detailed instructions on how they can set up a crypto wallet to hold the RydePals, and how to trade them on NFT marketplaces.

Ryde introduced crypto payments in 2020. How has been the response so far? What have been some of the challenges it has faced?

We started accepting crypto payments through Bitcoin in 2020. Since then, we have seen our users choose to top up their wallets with BTC.

Also Read: Collecting pixels: NFTs and the future of collectibles

Existing crypto payment gateways have limitations. One barrier to enterprise adoption of crypto payments is their pseudonymous nature and code-heavy formats; they are problematic for various bookkeeping, audit and other compliance reasons.

We have chosen to work with Request Finance, an enterprise crypto invoicing web app, to make it easy to accept crypto payments and bill our users in crypto. Request Finance has great enterprise-grade features like a single dashboard to manage all our crypto invoices. It also helps us see real-time payment confirmations, schedule recurring invoices, accurate mark-to-market prices at invoice payment, and integrate with accounting software like Quickbooks/Xero.

These basic features are currently lacking in the crypto payments space.

Do you expect your move to encourage more organisations in Southeast Asia to introduce NFTs?

RydePals will be the first major issuance of NFTs by a large, consumer-facing company in Singapore. We hope to generate greater awareness about NFTs among a more diverse base of Singaporean consumers and get more companies to seriously consider how NFTs can be of real value.

But as business leaders, we do our very best to avoid doing things for their own sake and must be mindful not to encourage irresponsible speculation. Technologies like NFTs are neither inherently good nor bad. At Ryde, we were deliberate about using NFTs in a commercially sensible and socially responsible manner.

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Have you seen Web3? Web3 may be one of the most commonly heard tech buzzwords you have come across in 2022. It typically refers to the dream of building a decentralised internet that will disrupt big tech corporations.

Hence, both Web3 and decentralisation concepts are often mentioned together. But buzzwords often lead investors to jump onto the bandwagon, and sometimes with both eyes closed.

In this column, I would like to help demystify the Web3 concept and highlight the key concepts for investors.

To me, Web3 is an exciting thesis but really still a work-in-progress, mainly an experiment for now. Web3 ventures fall into the riskiest of profiles. No one knows exactly what Web3 looks like, but it certainly generates a lot of excitement.

And you may recall that, in late December 2021, Web3 drew a new round of rapid-fire, beginning with the Bitcoin-loving ex-CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, unloading on Twitter, “You don’t own Web3. The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralised entity with a different label. Know what you’re getting into.”

Serious discussions between his followers and many Web3 proponents ensued. Predictably, Elon Musk also crashed the party, “Has anyone seen Web3? I can’t find it.”

To which Jack replied, “It’s somewhere between a and z”, clearly a jab at A16Z, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz which has pumped over US$3 billion into Web3 investments.

Those who have been following Jack know that he is a strong supporter of Bitcoin, having recently put wheels in motion for a decentralised Bitcoin exchange tbDEX. He also initiated the BlueSky project at Twitter to “free” Twitter from the inside. He’s a believer. So why would he launch an attack on Web3?

First of all, what exactly is Web3?

Web3 (technically Web 3.0) is a term coined by Ethereum co-founder Gavin Wood back in 2014. It is generally used to describe the next generation of the internet where users, instead of big tech or governments, own and control their own data.

The Web3 world resists censorship and is imbued with a solid open and collaborative culture. It is governed by the community through specific consensus mechanisms called governance tokens (more on this later), which are already in existence in today’s crypto communities.

Web3 is already here, though facets of it are not as decentralised as its true believers would want. It is where digital assets like NFTs live, where virtual real estate can be bought and sold, where (in theory) finance is decentralised, and where no one authority or institution makes the rules or dominates the ecosystem.

Such a vision certainly sounds very alluring as it indeed addresses many of the pain points of the current internet. I’m excited by the possibilities that the vision presents, birthing new innovations and encouraging rapid iteration on top of a new infrastructure, which is open in terms of both technology and community culture!

The challenge with Web3 is that it can’t be clearly defined, yet. And with interest exploding, people are jumping on the bandwagon and associating any remotely related stories (Metaverse play, anyone?) to cash in on the viral movement. A discerning investor would learn to see through the smokescreen and not jump on any old Web3 investments.

Also Read: Women of Web3: Top women contributors tell us all we need to know about Web3

Circling back to Jack, who clearly embraces a decentralised internet, but stands against those whose efforts hinder the formation of the new free world.

Jack’s stance is that Bitcoin is the most and perhaps the only truly decentralised system. Bitcoin holders do not have any claim to voting rights in the Bitcoin community, there is no governance token with Bitcoin.

What does decentralisation mean for investors, governance and power?

Yet even Bitcoin went through a few alarming episodes of over-concentration in power over its lifetime.

In December 2021, it emerged that the top one per cent of Bitcoin holders (the biggest 10,000 Bitcoin accounts) hold 5 million Bitcoins, which at today’s rate tally up to over US$200 billion.

As The Wall Street Journal reported, “The top Bitcoin holders control a greater share of the cryptocurrency than the most affluent American households control in dollars, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

“With an estimated 114 million people globally holding the cryptocurrency, according to crypto.com, that means that approximately 0.01 per cent of Bitcoin holders control 27 per cent of the 19 million Bitcoin in circulation.”

It is also important to realise that there is a trade-off between decentralisation and the ability to quickly build and iterate the functional features of the Web3 project at the initial stage. Sort of like the trade-off between democracy and state control when it comes to “getting things done”.

Many believe that this is all fine and trust that decentralisation may be achieved in the future.

This comes down to the governance token, which is a bit of blockchain tied to a specific cryptocurrency or decentralised finance (DeFi) project, which gives the holder “membership” in that community. Think of it in terms of a shareholder’s right to vote in matters related to the management of the company, in this case, the crypto or DeFi project.

On the positive side, the governance token acts to incentivise active community participation. But on the flip side, the existence of the token is not by itself a guarantee of legitimacy, and could well turn out to be an exit path for fake Web3 projects or Ponzi schemes.

Nor is it a guarantee that the system will get to its Holy Grail of true decentralisation.

In general, Web3 projects that issue governance tokens are seen as legitimate because there is a consensus mechanism to vote on developments.

What investors need to pay attention to is that Web3 governance tokens generally come with a specific income incentive (e.g. a fee that is collected from users, and can be distributed to token holders, or an incentive distributed through other mechanisms), and an element of control in the voting rights.

However due to institutions, large investors (such as venture capitalists) and very wealthy individuals accumulating investments in DeFi ventures, capitalists have also accumulated rights, ownership, and by extension, power. This is at the heart of Jack’s Twitter tantrum.

I agree with Jack that institutions might always find ways to gain control or exert a stronger influence.

Jack himself has experienced that firsthand in Twitter despite it being a US$40 billion company when activist investor Elliot Management accumulated a significant stake to exert pressure on the company’s direction.

A similar game has played out in the crypto world when in late 2019, Justin Sun, founder of crypto platform Tron, mounted what was effectively a hostile takeover of the Steemit blockchain project.

Less than half a year ago in December 2021, the EOS community voted to “fire” Block.one, the company that originally designed the EOS network, over claims that it is no longer acting in the network’s best interests.

The community also pushed to halt the issuance of EOS tokens over the next six to seven years, which would also halt the vesting of tokens to Block.one founder Brock Pierce.

Clearly, decentralisation won’t be an easy thing to achieve.

It’s all about the power of community

Instead of evaluating whether a Web3 project is truly decentralised when investing, investors should examine whether the community is deeply engaged and shares the decentralisation vision.

The silver lining behind these two negative examples at Steemit and EOS is the “power” of community, which does not usually exist in the Web2 world. Decentralisation, while a challenging goal, is the mission statement that unites the community of any Web3 project and is an integral part of the culture’s DNA.

Hence, it is ultimately the community that will determine the potential and sustainability of the project in the long run.

Blockchain by design keeps the database permissionless and infrastructure open. What empowers the community is the governance token. But note that it is nothing but a technological mechanism to facilitate the Web3 community’s operations. It is the community that ultimately decides on the project’s direction.

Also Read: How blockchain is giving a bigger boost to musicians than streaming startups

Whenever the power becomes centralised in the hands of a few and starts to shift the project away from its original mission, with the token, the community is empowered to fight back or “fork” away and build a spinoff. The community keeps the power in check.

It is worth noting that at the beginning, the community may agree to prioritise functionality over decentralisation.

Hence, many current Web3 projects are still experimental and indeed not very decentralised. Personally, as a tech investor, I find it somewhat acceptable despite the higher risk.

Know what you’re getting into

Still, Jack is not totally against VCs. He did tweet before, somewhat incoherently, “I’m anti-centralised, VC-owned, single point of failure, and corporate-controlled lies”, and “I’m telling you I’ve learned from the issues taking on VCs creates. Block *had* help from VCs yes. But ones that know their place.”

Not all money is the same. Each VC has its investment strategy and reputation, e.g. some choose to “spread and pray”, some are “vulture capitalists”, and some “know their place” in providing valuable support to help founders to achieve the great vision.

While traditionally a VC’s job is to identify and support promising founders, in the Web3 thesis, VCs will need to take the culture and strength of the community as one of the most critical investment rationale, if not the most critical one. For founders, community, and investors, it will be important to choose to follow VCs that are really in sync with your mission statement.

Jack is right. “Know what you’re getting into.” Web3 is an exciting thesis but can be controversial. The only thing we know for sure is, that the internet we know will be very different in the coming years.

This is a revised version of my article which first appeared in The Business Times’ Crypto Watch column. I publish the Crypto Watch column in The Business Times every second Monday of the month. Bookmark this link to read the new articles.

The writer is a general partner at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India. Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this column are that of the writer. The facts and opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of Vertex Ventures.

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Filipino buy-now-pay-later and consumer finance app BillEase has closed a US$20 million debt facility from emerging market credit provider Lendable.

The new funding adds to BillEase’s recent US$11 million Series B equity raised from investors, including BurdaPrincipal Investments, MDI Ventures, and KB Investment.

Georg Steiger, CEO and Co-Founder of First Digital Finance Corporation (FDFC), the operator of BillEase, said: “With Lendable’s support, we will be able to continue the strong growth in customer onboarding and expand our loan portfolio. We share the same focus on creating financing solutions that serve the emerging consumer segment as the Lendable team.”

Launched in 2017, BillEase provides merchants with instalment solutions to boost their conversion rate and average order values by enabling customised instalment payment products at checkout.

Today BillEase has more than 700 merchant partners — from airline tickets (Philippine Airlines) to flip flops (Havaianas), speakers (Harman Kardon) to ice boxes (Coleman/Focus Global).

Also Read: This e-credit card allows Filipinos to buy big-ticket items online with easy instalments

For consumers, BillEase serves as an alternative to credit/debit cards and e-wallets when shopping online. They are given a credit limit that can be used at any of BillEase’s merchant partners, such as gadgets retailer Kimstore or Philippine Airlines. Unlike traditional debit cards and e-wallets, customers do not have to top up before purchasing online or offline.

In addition to BNPL, the BillEase app also offers personal loans, e-wallet top-ups and popular wallets like GCash, PayMaya, Coins.ph, GrabPay, and ShopeePay, mobile loads and gaming credits.

BillEase claimed its Q1 2022 volumes were up almost 5x compared to last year’s same period, and the company already achieved profitability in 2021.

The Philippines has recently attracted increased interest from investors, especially in the fintech space, and this is primarily due to the potential impact fintech startups have on the lives of the emerging middle-class population.

“The Philippines represents a huge and untapped opportunity for fintech. The population is young, tech-savvy and largely underbanked. Several regulatory initiatives are coming together to significantly improve market infrastructure – instant retail payment networks, National ID, national credit bureau, digital banking licenses, just to name a few. The adoption of digital transactions also just got a massive push through the extended lockdowns. We are starting to see the shape of things to come but we are barely scratching the surface. This will be one of the most exciting fintech markets globally over the next five years.” Steiger added.

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Indonesia-based foodtech startup Hangry today announced that it has raised US$22 million in equity and debt funding, totalling the number that they have raised to US$35 million with its Series A equity funding round last year.

According to a press statement, the equity funding portion was led by new investor Journey Capital Partners, with participation from Orzon Ventures, Sassoon Investment Corporation (SassCorp), and other existing investors including Alpha JWC Ventures.

The debt portion was participated by both Genesis Alternative Ventures and Innoven Capital.

Hangry plans to use the funding to support its business strategy expansion plan by acquiring other F&B brands, building its own brands and maximising nationwide expansion. The company also announced that it is aiming to expand regionally starting from 2024.

“Aside from expanding more outlets nationally and acquiring other culinary winning brands, the strategy will include building more brands that are distinctive yet able to serve a wide range of customer targets,” the company explained.

As a cloud kitchen and multi-brand concept foodtech startup, Hangry had its first opening in November 2019. Following its launch, it has launched multiple F&B brands that include Moon Chicken by Hangry (Korean-inspired fried chicken), San Gyu by Hangry (authentic Japanese cuisine), and Ayam Koplo by Hangry (a new take on various traditional chicken delicacies). Food items from these brands are sold for US$1-6 per portion.

Also Read: Everything from soup to nuts: Meet the 27 ghost kitchen startups in Southeast Asia

It has followed the launch of its original brands by acquiring other culinary brands, including Accha, an Indian food brand operating in Greater Jakarta Area and West Java.

Co-Founder and CEO Abraham Viktor stressed the importance of acquiring F&B in their expansion strategy.

“Adding brands is always in the pipeline as Hangry’s concept has always been a multi-brand and multi-channel company. Whether it is building a new brand or acquiring another brand, for sure we will manage the brands that are the winner of the category and globally ready,” Viktor said.

“This is the next level of our journey. Our new investors have their own strengths to support us to accelerate the business, for instance Journey Capital Partners with their excellency in business strategy and operational aspects, Orzon Ventures with their strong experience in F&B business in ASEAN region with their popular casual restaurant in Thailand, and Sassoon Investment Corporation (SassCorp) with their F&B chain of the prominent coffee shop in Singapore in which it will be important in supporting our growth. Then, it’s natural for us to continue and strengthen our partnership with Alpha JWC Ventures. After all, achieving greatness needs good teamwork,” he further explained.

Hangry said that from 2019 to date, it has opened more than 70 outlets and grew more than 23 times in revenue. The company also said that it has recorded ten million portions of products sold from 2019 to 2021 and currently, sold more than one million portions of products per month from its four in-house brands.

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Image Credit: Hangry

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Tech investment firm Journey Capital Partners today announced the launch of its debut venture capital (VC) fund which targets Series A startups in Southeast Asia (SEA), with a focus on Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.

In a press statement, the firm said that it has a “strong” investor base in Thailand and aims to facilitate cross-border expansions of Indonesian and Singapore startups to Thailand.

In Indonesia, its partners included “leading conglomerates with a large footprint in the technology sector to support its portfolio companies.” Meanwhile, in its home country Thailand, its list of partners included VFX, animation and VR studio Yggdrazil Group, who will give strategic support to portfolio companies within the media, gaming and entertainment industry.

“Journey Capital Partners is proud to have partners in Indonesia and Thailand which can provide strategic advantages to our portfolio companies. We aim to bridge these relationships with our portfolio companies through our strong operational capabilities. We will also focus on supporting tech companies with proven product-market fit and business models on supply-side challenges spanning business operations, supply chain, business intelligence to fundraising and acquisitions. Execution for us is a priority,” said Weng Kin Choo, Managing Partner (Investments) of JCP.

Also Read: How Thailand’s Ricult uses deep tech to improve the lives of smallholder farmers

Earlier today, e27 covered a funding announcement by Indonesian foodtech startup Hangry, which raised a US$22 million in funding led by Journey Capital Partners. The startup stated that it is planning to start expanding to the SEA region in 2024 with this new funding.

Prior to the launch of Journey Capital Partners, Weng Kin Choo was the Vice President and key member of Provident Growth since its inception, overseeing growth-stage technology investments in Southeast Asia.

The team also consists of Lloyd Lin, Managing Partner (Strategy and Operations), formerly the Regional Vice President of Strategy & Ops at Pomelo Fashion. He joined the firm a year before their Series A funding round in 2015.

Managing Partner (Investments and Technology) Ashok Palaniappan was previously the founder/CEO of nobos, a technology company that sold a suite of SaaS tooling to large-scale hospitality businesses in the US and SEA. Previously, he worked as a public/private equity investor at a New York-based hedge fund and started his career at Morgan Stanley.

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Image Credit: Journey Capital Partners

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