MetaverseGo, a Web3 mobile gaming platform that onboards new players via a mobile phone login, has raised US$4.2 million in seed capital led by New York-based VC fund Galaxy Interactive.

The round has also been joined by Delphi Digital, Dragonfly Capital, Mechanism Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC), Shima Capital, Com2uS, Akatsuki, Ascensive Assets, BitScale Capital, Yield Guild Games (YGG), BreederDAO, Mentha Partners and Emfarsis.

MetaverseGo will use the money for ​​software development, partnerships with telecommunication providers, and strategic hires.

Over the past year, Web3 gaming has seen remarkable adoption, with gaming DApps now driving 52 per cent of all blockchain activity. However, the long, complex, and risk-laden processes of onboarding new users to blockchain-based platforms remains a barrier for would-be players.

Also Read: Where is the future of NFTs and metaverse heading towards?

To accelerate adoption with mainstream markets and non-crypto natives, MetaverseGo provides access to Web3 games without the usual prerequisite of understanding how to use cryptocurrencies.

Established by Ash Mandhyan, Jake San Diego and JC Velasquez, MetaverseGo is a network and discovery platform for play-and-earn games and game assets.

Mandhyan (CEO) has more than 15 years of digital retail experience, having held leadership positions at Lazada Philippines (VP), Facebook and Bytedance. San Diego (CBO) has previously built The founder of Artphorce, a creative freelancing marketplace, and he also has more than 15 years of experience in the gaming industry, including roles at Level Up! and PlayPark Games, and most recently at Globe, the Philippines’ leading telecommunications company.

Velasquez (CTO) has 20 years of experience building software and 12 years building technology teams for high-growth startups. He is also the founder of Smartwave Studios, a Philippines-based mobile software consulting and engineering firm, and co-founder of Partyphile, a nightlife app in Asia, and Chatbot PH, a chatbot developer.

MetaverseGo enables users to discover and play a range of NFT games while earning MetaverseGo credits using only their mobile phone number and upon validation by a verification code. They can use these credits on mobile data, utility bills, and shopping vouchers.

Also Read: How the multi-metaverse can flourish by eradicating virtual boundaries

“Crypto has always been hard, and blockchain games are even harder since there are significant upfront costs to buy the NFTs needed to play. Play-to-earn only took off in 2021 after scholarships popularised the idea of renting those NFTs so that NFT ownership wasn’t a requirement to get started. Since then, we’ve seen rapid adoption worldwide, but as long as crypto onboarding is as arduous as it is today, that growth can only go so far. MetaverseGo is solving this by making Web3 games accessible via a technology everyone knows how to use — a mobile phone number,” said Mandhyan.

“Digital ownership not only deployed blockchain technology at scale, but it also unlocked new gaming audiences. However, significant friction exists at the initial stages of the user experience to tap into this growth in the interactive sector. MetaverseGo helps to democratise blockchain gaming with an accessible Web3 platform that simplifies the onboarding, discovery, learning, and payout processes needed to foster meaningful connections and realise commerce gains around quality content,” said Richard Kim, General Partner at Galaxy Interactive.

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There are many misconceptions when it comes to Forex (FX) Trading. The top three misconceptions we have seen would be that it is a product that has high risk, high returns, and is too complicated.

Risk affects all asset classes, not just FX, and the key lies in how a trader manages trading and the risk-reward ratio. You can run very conservative strategies or take on risky bets, regardless of the asset class.

Here we use a simple example of stock trading: if you buy ABC shares at US$100 today and the price is going down, it is up to you to exit the trade at either US$99 (one per cent loss) or US$95 (five per cent loss) or even say US$70.

Now at US$70, it is essentially a 30 per cent drawdown, is this considered risky? Will you cut your losses before that? Investors will need to consider how many losses they can tolerate against the potential returns to determine the risk-reward ratio they are comfortable with. 

Unfortunately, FX trading has been associated with many get-rich-quick schemes or gambling for quick profits. In reality, there are no ridiculously huge gains or lottery-like winnings. There may be an occasional lucky trade that makes a good amount of profit, but it is simply not sustainable and possible to constantly make such trades.

Trading FX is just like trading any other asset class and requires a great deal of analysis, patience, and a disciplined approach to risk management. 

Lastly, FX is often misconceived as being too complicated. Of course, the presumption here is mainly due to the lack of knowledge, and in general, we find that investors are not as familiar with FX as compared to the stock or bond markets. This is also because there are not many regulated retail products in FX out there that are available for subscription.

As players with experience and knowledge of the FX markets, it is definitely more intuitive and safer in our own view. Although many may find stock trading more approachable or commonplace, it presents its own set of challenges.

Besides monitoring macroeconomic news and the company’s financials, one needs to track corporate actions, press releases, management movements, company restructuring, etc. There are just too many factors to keep track of in stock trading, and this is not the case for FX.

As with all investments, investors need to do their own due diligence, and they have to understand what they are getting themselves into. The risk lies in not understanding what you are doing.

An evergreen asset class

For all the years that we have invested in currencies, we have been fortunate not to have a losing year. FX is an evergreen asset class, unlike other asset classes, which can be more cyclical. Equities, for example, tend to cycle through several years of bull or bear markets. On the contrary, FX is not that seasonal, making it possible to aim for and achieve positive returns every year.

Also Read: 6 skills that startup founders can learn from forex trading

For the past three years, we have seen a lot of major events, from the pandemic global lockdowns to the Russia-Ukraine war, but we have stayed resilient throughout. We know that we are doing something right when we get texts from our clients saying that we are the only green in their portfolio again during such market events.

We believe that currency strategies can have a place in everyone’s portfolio. Many investors in Singapore are heavily weighted in properties, equities and bonds. We have seen that adding FX has helped our clients provide liquidity to their portfolios; it has also helped them diversify their portfolio holdings and reduce concentration risk. Moreover, FX itself can serve as a source of reliable returns for long-term portfolio growth.

We get a lot of questions about our secret strategy or proprietary algorithm that has been able to deliver such returns. For anyone who has spent a good amount of time trading, they will tell you that there is neither a holy grail nor one indicator or strategy that would give you profits 100 per cent of the time.

In fact, consistently profitable traders will more likely tell you that losing and winning are all part and parcel of the journey. The key here is to keep to your risk limits closely.

What new traders should take note of

Most new traders lose their monies when they first try their hand at trading. The advice would be for new traders to trade on demo accounts for at least three to six months first. Once you are comfortable with your performance,  try to allocate a very tiny fraction of your portfolio into live trading and ensure that you keep to your trading plan at all times.

You are going to notice that trading on demo accounts and live accounts could result in very different outcomes. So just start small and think that you could probably lose everything to the markets. 

We also find that most people who are just starting out and exploring trading typically just want to have their funds invested and to let their money work harder for them. In this case, perhaps the more prudent way is to manage funds by professionals instead.

While there will be fees paid to the managers, do note that there is also a need to factor in the cost of your time and energy and the high probability of losing all your capital when you trade on your own.

If you cannot set aside time to monitor the markets, a good strategy is to engage the right expert in the field and let the professionals manage the investments for you. Lastly, maintain good communication with the managers, and you can trust your money to grow to suit your lifestyle and future plans.

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As someone who battled anxiety from an early age, Theodric Chew has long realised the importance of therapy. However, he has been aware of the innate stigma around mental health awareness that deters patients from seeking help. 

Chew, a techie at heart, wanted to change this scenario and decided to conflate his personal experience and knowledge of the tech industry to build a startup providing better mental health care for all. 

That was the beginning of Intellect.

“I saw firsthand the benefits of therapy and proper mental health care, including the gaps in struggles and problems in healthcare. In Asia, even in Singapore, people need care. But due to the stigma attached to mental illness, people don’t seek help. In turn, it causes an issue in how things are run,” added Chew.

“That’s why I started Intellect — to tackle a problem I faced and know that most people in the world also experience or can deeply relate to,” added he, who founded his first startup at 19 and has headed the marketing teams at several startups in the past.

Founded in Singapore in 2019, Intellect aims to make mental healthcare and wellbeing support accessible for everyone. It helps people access an end-to-end solution for all mental health-related needs, such as cognitive-behavioural therapy techniques, besides assisting companies in supporting their employees’ mental health.

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

It aims to not only create a self-care app or a marketplace for therapists but also focus on connecting the dots at all levels of mental health support that anyone may need. The objective is to provide people with the necessary tools to take control of their mental health.

Intellect serves over three million lives and covers 14 languages across 20+ countries. 

A Y Combinator alum, Intellect in July raised US$20 million in a Series A round led by HOF Capital and Tiger Global. Its other backers are K3 Ventures, JAFCO Asia, Singtel Innov8, PERSOL Holdings, and Insignia Ventures Partners.

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

Addressing the stigma

Mental health has been a peripheral issue in emerging markets for a long time, despite the severe impact not only on those directly affected but also on families and careers, as well as on social cohesion and economic development.

World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that globally, 264 million people suffer from depression, with many of these also suffering from anxiety symptoms. About 450 million people experience mental or neurological disorders worldwide.

The situation in Asia is no better. The state of mental health in the continent has been troubling for many years. Across Asia, a growing percentage of the adult population experiences a diagnosable mental illness in any given year: from four per cent (reported in Singapore) to 20 per cent (reported in Vietnam, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia). Vital factors such as low mental health literacy and lack of human and financial resources are the main causes for people to neglect seeking help when they need it most.

The pandemic has boosted the demand for mental health support in the last two years. According to the World Health Organisation, new depressive and anxiety disorder diagnoses spiked 400 per cent in 2021. However, over the past few years,  many entrepreneurs have identified this space as a high potential area for growth and have come up with various solutions.

Since the beginning, Intellect has prioritised providing individuals with the requisite information, awareness, and support they need. However, it has been challenging to communicate with people where they can find the tools and support they require for the issues they encounter in life. Therefore, mental health is a crucial issue that needs to be tackled in many Asian markets.

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

Also Read: YC-backed mental health startup Intellect bags US$10M Series A

Beyond the walls and borders

Chew shared that Intellect aims to become a part of everyone’s lives and ensure that proper mental health care is accessible to all, starting with other markets in Asia. As part of the regional expansion plans, it has just announced its official launch in Japan, which has a workforce that traditionally faced high levels of stress and mental health struggle. 

The launch comes with the strong backing of some of Japan’s largest VCs, including JAFCO Asia, Headline Asia, DG Daiwa Ventures, and some of the largest conglomerates, including PERSOL Holdings and MS&AD Ventures.

“Intellect’s entrance into Japan is timely and tailored to the local market’s needs. We hope to ignite a shift in mindset towards mental healthcare and wellbeing by sparking more conversations and efforts around this topic. We believe the combination of Intellect’s strong expertise, alongside our partnerships and backing from some of the largest Japanese conglomerates and investors, will provide a tailored experience for the Japanese population in a way that will make a big change,” concluded Chew.

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Avium, a Singapore-based startup building a network of studios by leveraging Web3 infrastructure, has secured US$2M in pre-seed capital led by Saison Capital. 

East Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Ricky Ow (ex-Warner Media), and Hepmil Media Group, among others, also joined.

Avium was founded by Ivan Yeo, Nathanael Lim, and Eugene Yap. 

Yeo previously founded EVOS Esports, a prominent e-sports organisation in Southeast Asia, with more than 100 million followers across its talent network. Lim is a blockchain lawyer for Huobi, Binance, Facebook and Razer. Yap is a former strategy consultant who has delivered projects for Morgan Stanley and Partners Group.

Avium builds an entertainment brand to greenlight original content by the Southeast Asian studios behind Marvel Comics, Valve, Netflix, Prime Video, and Tencent.

At the centre of Avium’s ecosystem is the Founders’ Pass collection, an NFT designed to incentivise the creatives and studios building Avium’s brand. Holding an Avium Founders Pass grants entrepreneurs, creators and artists access to the exclusive community building the Avium brand together with the founding team. Founders’ Pass holders are considered the founding members of Avium, with rights to build with studios and producers while leveraging on the brand. 

Also Read: Lazada ex-VP’s P2E mobile gaming platform MetaverseGo scores US$4.2M

The Web3 startup has also attracted a community of more than 10,000 highly engaged followers across its various social media platforms.

Avium has onboarded Caravan Studios and Circle Studios, two renowned regional art and animation companies. 

Caravan has developed entertainment IP for household brands, including Marvel Comics, Netflix, Prime Video, Lego, Legends of Runterra and Clash Royale. On the other hand, Circle Studios is the developer of Valve, Tencent, Dota and Mobile Legends.

The Avium ecosystem gathers stakeholders across the entire value chain required to create and produce entertainment in all forms of animated content. This includes the end-to-end process from the

1. Development of original studio entertainment (via creatives, digital artists, rendering teams, producers and more).
2. Creation of media and consumer products (via comics, animations and merchandising).
3. Distribution through media networks (brand distribution via content creators and e-sports channels).

“What catalysed Avium was the realisation that Southeast Asia’s studios deserve a better IP pathway to success. Globally, we already know their work via household gaming and media characters but have yet to give them an industry-recognised path to showcase the full spectrum of their brilliance,” said Co-Founder Yeo.

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Last week, Singapore-based Graas announced the acquisition of two companies –Shoptimize and SELLinALL– following a US$40 million Series A funding round led by Galaxy (Kejora-led SPV), Performa (multi-billion European Asset Manager-led SPV), Integra Partners, Yuj Ventures (Xander Group) and AJ Capital.

Dubbing itself as a “Growth-as-a-Service” solution, through these milestones, Graas aims to help brands ‘turbo-charge’ their e-commerce businesses. The company says it is currently working with 250 customers, with its platforms managing four million SKUs and 45 million data points every month –a number they expect to increase as it expands into the region.

“The growth and evolution of e-commerce in Southeast Asia (SEA) are far outpacing brands’ ability to effectively use the new tools and channels available to them – which ultimately puts pressure on their profit margins as they struggle to optimise their eCommerce operations,” writes Prem Bhatia, Co-founder of Graas, in an email interview.

“Consider a brand that has a modest e-commerce presence of 50 SKUs, selling across two countries. If they sold through three different channels, using three different advertising mediums, this translates to an approximate 9,000 decisions that need to be made and executed every month. The more variables added to this equation, the greater the complexity. In addition, data from these multiple sources are typically siloed, which makes meaningful analysis extremely labour intensive and hinders brands from being able to use this data to make effective decisions,” he continued.

Now that we have a general idea of what problem they aim to solve, what exactly is the work that they are doing? And what will their next steps be? In this interview, e27 discovers more details about the company –that we believe we will hear more of.

Also Read: In the age of e-commerce, complete and accurate data analytics is key

Seizing opportunities in the fastest growing e-commerce markets

Graas was founded by Prem Bhatia and Ashwin Puri, who had been involved in the martech field for some time. In addition to that, they are also serial entrepreneurs and investors. According to Bhatia, this allows them a “close view” of the markets, particularly the challenges faced by CMOs of top brands.

“India and SEA are the fastest growing regions for e-commerce in the world, with US$200 billion in GMV. Despite this growth, e-commerce accounts for less than 10 per cent of all regional retail. Unlike the US and the China markets, where there are strong dominant players in the ecosystem, these regions have become a battleground, with many players vying for market share,” he explains the background behind the company’s founding.

“As such, there is significant headroom to grow, and brands are hungry to evolve their e-commerce strategy. However, brands are finding it increasingly difficult to manage profitability as the e-commerce sector becomes more complex. Given the increase in some marketplaces, revenue shares with various platforms, advertising and customer acquisition costs (CAC) and fluctuating warehouse and last mile costs, margins are under threat,” he says.

This is why Graas has the vision to reduce this complexity through the use of a single dashboard, which is expected to brands reduce their time to market and create a streamlined, informed approach to marketing, inventory and content management.

“Our plug-and-play algorithmic solution gives brands the equivalent of an in-house data scientist. As a result, we are already seeing exponential increases in our clients’ growth via our solution, and that’s why we have defined a new category for Graas: ‘Growth-as-a-Service’. We believe this is a multi-billion dollar opportunity founded at the intersection of AI, e-commerce, adtech and fintech,” says Bhatia.

Also Read: How e-commerce merchants can capture growth in international markets

Earlier, he has explained the challenges that Graas aims to solve, but he further explains how they aim to do it in three ways:

1. Graas connects previously siloed business segments to reduce complexity and helps brands identify opportunities to scale their e-commerce business. This also creates a unified data pool.

2. It applies a proprietary AI engine we have developed to this data pool. This engine acts as an in-house data scientist, analysing vast amounts of information. It predicts trends and gives real-time insights and actionable recommendations that allow brands to stay ahead of the competition.

3. The solution turns insights into action by giving brands the tools to seamlessly execute data-driven recommendations that span: marketplace storefronts, brand.coms, social and conversational commerce, performance marketing, inventory management, warehousing and last mile logistics.

Apart from India, SEA is also a huge market for the company. It focuses on Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

What is on their agenda

There are several milestones that Graas has made following their Series A funding round, including the acquisitions of Indian D2C and data specialist Shoptimize and SEA marketplace specialist SELLinALL. You might recognise the latter as one of the companies on the Echelon Top100 list in 2015.

According to Bhatia, the acquisitions have allowed the company to integrate not only their technology but also the expertise and knowledge of its teams.

At the moment, Graas has over 350 employees across 11 offices in seven countries, and it is looking forward to continuing to expand.

Also Read: The long and winding road to e-commerce profitability

Apart from that, there are also several plans related to product innovation that Graas aims to achieve this year.

“Our goal is to use our AI engine to deliver actionable recommendations across advertising, storefront (content & promotions and inventory and supply chain. We’re the only AI engine that covers the entire e-commerce business, end-to-end,” he closes.

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Image Credit: Graas

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