Micro-mobility company Scooterson has bagged a US$74-million contract to build electric scooters in Singapore.

The company didn’t disclose the contractor’s name since it has signed a non-disclosure agreement with the firm. “I can reveal that it is an electric vehicle (EV) unicorn in the US,” Scooterson’s Co-Founder and CTO Deepansh Jain told e27.

Scooterson is setting up a manufacturing facility at JTC Launchpad, one of the hottest startup spaces in Singapore. “We plan to produce around 850 units monthly (over 10,000 units annually). We will go in full swing starting April-March 2023,” he shared.

The company chose Singapore to base its factory because it is an ideal hub for innovation and enterprise in Asia and globally. The island nation also occupies a unique position for hardware development with many key advantages.

“Because of Singapore’s strategic location and how it provides access to resources and industry knowledge, we’ve been able to focus on enhancing our R&D to create products in the island nation that can be marketed in countries like the US,” said Scooterson Founder and CEO Mihnea de Vries.

Also Read: Now, Scooterson’s AIR smart scooter can be moved from one place to another remotely

The mobility company will also strengthen its R&D department in Singapore to create streamlined components and reduce hurdles related to manufacturing and costs. “We plan to lower manufacturing costs by doing away with the margins being paid to the component suppliers, particularly costly components like batteries for its e-scooters,” added Vries.

The EV venture plans to hire 15 employees to strengthen its R&D department, which currently employs nine people. It plans to employ 20-25 more people in the manufacturing department in the next six to nine months.

Originally founded in 2016, Scooterson offers Rolley+, a semi-autonomous e-scooter that requires zero learning curve and can accelerate on its own. Its Smart Mode Acceleration feature works in tandem with the scooter’s sensors, phone sensors and prior ride data to optimise speed.

Unlike conventional scooters, Rolley+ doesn’t have a gear shifter or acceleration lever. It adjusts the speed and performance according to the rider’s body movements.

Rolley+ also boasts of a minimalist dashboard with an intuitive interface. Backed by AI technology, the e-scooter can adjust its torque settings to match its battery levels, allowing riders to enjoy peak performance without sacrificing power. The technology also makes the e-scooter energy-efficient and safe by analysing the rider’s riding patterns, profile, and surroundings.

The model uses components made of magnesium alloys and aerospace-grade aluminium alloys. It has a polymer chassis reinforced by Carbon/Kevlar and sports a lightweight composite body 3x lighter than conventional e-scooters. Its battery supports a 120km range.

The other model is AIR (short for Artificial Intelligence and Remote operations). This scooter is designed as a teleoperation and autonomous fleet-rebalancing solution for micro-mobility operators. This enables scooter-sharing companies to do fleet distribution for their customers remotely.

According to Jain, AIR is specifically designed to lower operational costs by reducing the staffers required to rebalance the fleets on the streets or deal with footpath obstruction and urban clutter. It will also curb the misuse by recording the errant user’s actions and restricting him/her access to the service in case of vandalism.

The Scooterson mobile app allows users to remotely lock/unlock their scooters, share their travel information and the scooters with family and friends, and send charging notifications when the battery is running low. Moreover, its anti-tapering alarm system and Find My Scooter function allow users to locate their scooters if they are stolen or lost.

Vries also shared that most of Scooterson’s sales are online, with most buyers coming from the US. As of now, the US is its biggest target market, and it plans to set up a brick-and-mortar store with a partner. “We are looking to enter other potential markets, including Europe and Asia, specifically the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan.”

In 2018, Scooterson bagged Red Dot Design Award for Rolley. A year later, the startup unveiled a new foldable lightweight smart e-scooter Elf, with plans to launch in Singapore in October. However, the plans hit a roadblock when the government restricted the use of personal mobility devices.

The startup is backed by Singapore-based ElevateVC.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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Cyberwar is the new, rapidly increasing mode of combat, as it knows no boundaries and can be detrimental to the foundation of a country’s defence and government.

A prime example of this can be seen within the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as before Russian troops even made their way into the opposing territory, Ukraine had already been hit by new malware that was designed to wipe data.

Many experts say that cyber war is already here, as opposing countries are using this technological weapon to weaken government power and hack into databases that are vital to the well-being and operation of their enemies. Microsoft even discovered malware in Ukrainian government systems that had the ability to be triggered remotely.

In February 2022, the FBI asked US companies to alert them to any increased cyber activity that was launched against Ukraine or the US. This was issued alongside a “shields up” alert that recommended that all organisations adopt a heightened cybersecurity posture.

All of these precautions can be attributed to the fact that Russia, Ukraine, and the US are currently the top three most targeted countries for cybercrime. The likely explanation for this, as experts say, is that Ukraine is likely being used as a live testing ground for Russia’s next generation of cyber weapons.

Why test on Ukraine? Because Ukraine’s infrastructure is similar to Western Europe and North America, but there are limited resources for counter-attacks, Russia can attack without much fear of reciprocation to prepare for much larger and well-equipped enemies.

Also Read: Why firms need a multi-layered approach to cybersecurity

These cyber-attacks have only grown in frequency over time, with notable events every year dating back to 2015 when suspected Russian hackers knocked out electricity for 230,000 customers in western Ukraine.

Fast forward to 2022, the US and the EU have tried to thwart the threat from Russia by providing support to bolster cyber defences in Ukraine, but it is unlikely that the attacks will stay within its borders. Despite Ukrainian efforts to counter-attack and cause chaos within Russia’s systems and databases, cyber warfare remains one of the largest threats to the most targeted countries.

Cyber attacks vs cyber war

Cyber war comes in many shapes and sizes, varying in different types of threats and different levels of severity. The connections between cyber and physical assets are growing, which brings greater risk to both network and physical infrastructure security.

In fact, in 2021, data breaches and cybersecurity attacks on average cost companies US$4.24 million per breach, which is a 10 per cent increase from the previous year. In addition, the pandemic has only heightened the potential for damage from these threats, as more information has been moved to the cloud, more people are working remotely and from less-secure home networks or personal devices, and more services, in general, are being provided in a digital space.

In terms of severity, cyber attacks differ from a cyber war in some key ways. Cyber-attacks are known to be less devastating, more isolated, and usually just testing new cyber weapons. They have the potential to shut down electrical grids, destroy technology, and self-destruct power infrastructure. Cyber war, on the other hand, could impact the scale of a natural disaster. A comparable disaster would be the 2021 Texas Freeze, which caused widespread damage, loss of electricity, food and water, caused massive disruption to everyday life and caused over 200 deaths.

Also Read: How can lean startups build a resilient cybersecurity posture

In general, people fear cyber war, as reports show that 93 per cent of Americans are afraid of such attacks against the US, but only 19 per cent are totally confident that the government can protect them against cyber warfare. Fortunately, countries like Japan, China, and the US are some of the leading countries in security for cyber attacks, coming in at 67 per cent, 63 per cent, and 70 per cent secure, respectively.

In addition, 75 per cent of cyber attacks target financial services, and 20 per cent target business networks, showing researchers where the defences need to be allocated. These types of attacks seek to make important resources like finances, cell service, running water, internet, food, utilities, and health records unavailable to users.

Despite these grievances, citizens globally are already taking measures to protect themselves from cybercrime, such as updating software, changing passwords, backing up computers, stashing cash reserves, and backing up emails offline.

The lines on the battlefield of cyber attacks are blurred and complex as this new generation of crime and warfare increases in frequency, forcing citizens of every nation to take action to protect themselves and their assets.

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Line Man Wongnai, an e-commerce platform for food delivery, grocery delivery, taxi, messenger, restaurant reviews, and restaurant solutions in Thailand, has raised US$265 million in a Series B investment round led by Singapore’s GIC and LINE Corporation.

BRV Capital Management, PTT Oil and Retail Business Public Company Limited (OR), Bualuang Ventures, and Taiwan Mobile also joined the round.

With this investment, Line Man Wongnai has achieved over US$1 billion to become Southeast Asia’s latest unicorn.

The funding will be used to expand new service categories, recruit tech talent, and improve tech infrastructure. The firm aims to employ more than 450 tech professionals by end-2022.

Line Man Wongnai was established in 2020 following the merger of Thailand’s leading on-demand assistant app Line Man and restaurant review platform Wongnai.

Also Read: Thai restaurant reviews platform Wongnai invests US$1M in restaurant PoS startup FoodStory

Line Man’s services include food delivery, grocery delivery, messenger, and taxi. It claims the number of orders made each month through the food delivery service grew by more than 15x between January 2020 and August 2022. Now, it operates in all 77 provinces in Thailand, offering delivery options to 700,000 restaurants.

On the other hand, Wongnai connects close to one million merchants to users nationwide through search and reviews. In addition, Wongnai’s point-of-sale solution has won over 50,000 merchants in the F&B industry.

Utilising a large base of customers, riders, and restaurants, Line Man Wongnai offers advertising and financial services, among others, to incrementally add value to the stakeholders in the ecosystem.

Yod Chinsupakul, CEO of Line Man Wongnai, said: “Food has been our passion since I co-founded Wongnai, and now, to connect millions of users with the biggest pool of restaurants we have is a dream come true. We are also proud to create over 100,000 rider jobs, most of whom earn more than twice the minimum wage.”

In Young Chung, CFO, Line Man Wongnai, added: “The announcement opens the next chapter for us to grow from a local Thai startup to a regional tech platform.”

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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Central and Southern Asia and Oceania (CSAO) is the third largest cryptocurrency market in our index this year, with citizens of CSAO countries receiving US$932 billion in cryptocurrency value from July 2021 to June 2022.

CSAO is also home to seven of the top twenty countries in this year’s index: Vietnam (1), the Philippines (2), India (4), Pakistan (6), Thailand (8), Nepal (16), and Indonesia (20).

Let’s analyse the main drivers of and barriers to grassroots cryptocurrency adoption in these countries. But first, let’s look at CSAO in aggregate.

India continues to lead CSAO in the unweighted crypto activity, receiving US$172 billion in cryptocurrency value from July 2021 through June of this year. Thailand, Vietnam, Australia and Singapore follow close behind, with each receiving more than US$100 billion. Less engaged with cryptocurrencies, however, are Central Asian countries like Uzbekistan and Oceanian island nations like the Maldives.

NFTs are perhaps the biggest on-ramp to cryptocurrency in CSAO today. 58 per cent of web traffic from CSAO IP addresses to cryptocurrency services in Q2 2022 was NFT related; another 21 per cent was to the websites of play-to-earn blockchain games.

Play-to-earn games and non-fungible tokens are intimately related. In most blockchain games today, the in-game items are NFTs, like Axie pets in Axie Infinity and Sneakers in STEPN, which can be resold on many different NFT marketplaces, like MagicEden and OpenSea. For countries with high web traffic to NFT marketplaces, especially Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines, a large portion of that NFT-related traffic may therefore come from players of blockchain games.

As the heatmap above shows, NFT-related websites account for a majority share of web traffic in almost every CSAO country, but most of these same countries have their second-highest share going to blockchain games and entertainment.

This is not necessarily surprising. CSAO is a hub for innovation in blockchain-based entertainment. Game-centric blockchain developers Polygon and Immutable X are headquartered in India and Australia, for example, and Axie Infinity and STEPN, the two largest play-to-earn games, are operated in Vietnam and Australia, respectively.

Also Read: A look into the Chainalysis 2022 geography of cryptocurrency report

Traffic to websites related to subjects like decentralised exchange contracts, however, has declined in recent quarters. This is likely connected to the bear market overall. Manan Vora, Senior Vice President of Operations and Strategy at Liminal, a Singapore-based wallet infrastructure provider, found this to be the case. “The UST crash played a big role in shaking the confidence of the crypto market. When a top ten coin goes to zero, it becomes very difficult to get people who have just entered the market to stay in the market. These are the users that you may lose forever.”

Now that we’ve looked at CSAO’s crypto markets at large let’s zoom in on the most active countries within the region.

Rapid adoption in Vietnam and the Philippines

For the second consecutive year, Vietnam ranked the highest in our cryptocurrency adoption index. The Philippines, meanwhile, made a giant leap, jumping from 15th to second. Both of these countries have similar growth drivers: play-to-earn (P2E) games and remittances.

The first of these, P2E games, we’ve already addressed in part above, but it’s worth noting the sheer scale of P2E penetration in these two countries in particular. An estimated 25 per cent of Filipinos and 23 per cent of Vietnamese citizens have played a play-to-earn game. At one point, players based in the Philippines made up 40 per cent of Axie Infinity’s player base. Meanwhile, Axie Infinity’s developer, Sky Mavis, is based in Vietnam.

Vietnam and the Philippines are also massive remittance markets, with remittance inflows accounting for five per cent and 9.6 per cent of their respective country-wide gross domestic products. In Manan Vora’s view, cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins, help bridge the gap in cases where parents don’t have access to traditional banking channels and money transfer services like Western Union charge high fees. “It makes a lot of sense. Why pay three per cent to a banking intermediary and wait two days for the funds to reach them when USDT/USDC can reach them within one minute, with almost zero fees?”

The same remittance thesis resonates for other CSAO countries as well. Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh each have US$20+ billion in remittance markets, and blockchain-based payment providers are beginning to disrupt traditional intermediaries. Some of these payment rails are even being built in coordination with government agencies, such as the Pakistani central bank’s work with Alipay. These transfers are generally made via stablecoins, so that the value being transferred is preserved in transit.

As the graph above shows, stablecoins and ETH/WETH are the top two most actively traded asset types in many CSAO countries, consistent with the remittance and NFT-centric adoption model.

Indian and Pakistani crypto regulations likely dampen activity, but not the pace of innovation

In our 2021 crypto adoption index, we found that Indian and Pakistani citizens were the second and third highest cryptocurrency adopters globally, respectively. In 2022, they’ve fallen to fourth and sixth. Recent regulatory developments may help explain why.

India

On April 1st, 2022, the Indian government implemented a 30 per cent tax on all crypto gains, with no ability for users to offset their losses. Then, on July 1st, the government also implemented a one per cent transaction deduction at source (TDS), meaning that crypto users must pay an additional one per cent fee on every transaction. “This led to a lot of brain drain,” said Vora, “first to Singapore, and now to Dubai because even if your business is market-making, it is now effectively being treated as a lottery business.”

Also Read: A new type of digital arts are on the rise. How is Web3 redefining content ownership?

Vikram Rangala, the Director of ZebPay, an Indian crypto exchange, helped us understand the government’s perspective on these new rules. For them, he explained, it’s about consumer protection.

“From the conversations I and my colleagues have had, people in the Indian government, including members of parliament, aren’t anti-crypto per se. Some are very pro-crypto. But they’re worried about their constituents trading a volatile asset without adequate information. A 25-year-old saving to get married or provide for his family might trade some meme coin and get wiped out. No public servant can be seen backing something so risky for most people. Rich people can survive such losses, but a house cleaner, farmer, or rickshaw driver cannot.”

And in Rangala’s view, crypto innovation in India has continued unabated.

“India has dozens of [crypto] projects working on establishing property rights, accessing tickets and membership passes, helping rural artisans monetise, even giving token holders a chance to go skydiving with a movie star in Dubai, and more.”

Pakistan

In January this year, Pakistan’s central bank and government recommended a ban on cryptocurrencies. Since then, the federal government has formed three subcommittees to deliberate the matter further and eventually propose their own crypto policies. It remains to be seen whether or not the policies implemented will be as restrictive as the proposed ban.

Other issues further complicate Pakistani crypto adoption. The country has been on the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) grey list since 2018, hurting its ability to get international financial aid and hardening the government’s negative attitude towards cryptocurrencies.

State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Governor Reza Baqir stated in February that the potential risks associated with cryptocurrencies “far outweigh the benefits” and named the “widening grey economy” and “capital flight” as key worries.

Given Pakistan’s current civil unrest, its former prime minister was recently charged under the country’s antiterrorism act yet remains one of Pakistan’s most popular leaders, Baqir’s concerns about crypto-based capital flight may prove prescient. Vikram Rangala suspects as much, “After watching Venezuela and Argentina, I think that anybody who’s in a country where things are not that stable, they’re starting to see cryptocurrency as a possibility.”

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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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Mycotech develops a new scientific process to grow mushroom mycelium-based products. It uses mushroom mycelium, the vegetative part of mushrooms, as a natural adhesive. It employs mycelium as a binding agent to create biomaterial composite (Biobo) and cultivate it to create strong, leather-like material (Mylea).

CEO Adi Reza Nugroho co-founded Mycotech with the mission to create the highest quality materials made from mycelium that meet the highest standard of the biotech industry. He also wants to make a real impact by reducing the use of animals in the fashion industry and delivering sustainable material that meets the uncompromising standards of the fashion industry.

Mycotech has shipped Mylea material samples to 16 countries following its original Kickstarter campaign. In collaboration with LVMH prize-winning designer Masayuki Ino from Japan, its products were showcased at Paris Fashion Week S/S 2021 and F/W 2022.

In March and April 2022, Mycotech brought one collaboration product with Hijack Sandals in Indonesia to the overseas market to launch the first mycelium leather sandals called “Mimic Mylea” exclusively in Japan. The launch marks its first step to start penetrating the East Asian market.

Also Read: This startup by an Indonesian farmer produces ‘leather’ used in shoes and wallets without killing a single animal

Currently, Mycotech operates a production facility with a capacity of 10,000 sq ft per year in Indonesia. Besides that, Mycotech brought six global brands, with one of the brands coming from Fashion for Good, for piloting to create prototypes, bring the products to the market, and make capsule collections.

In addition to focusing on Mylea, the company will also develop research and penetration for two other products made from mycelium for the long term. Biobo for creating remarkable structural patterns that rejuvenate residential, industrial, and public spaces, as well as composite research that allows exploring more about the many possibilities of mushrooms as the key to the future.

“Biomaterial innovations, such as mycelium leather, are instrumental to the industry’s transition towards more sustainably sourced materials and better practices. There has been an observable increase in demand for mycelium-based materials over the last decade. Fashion for Good believes Mycotech is rightly positioned to be a commercially viable solution in this space,” said Priyanka Khanna, Head of Global Expansion at Fashion for Good.

Peter Chia, CEO at Temasek Life Sciences Accelerator and Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, added, “Mycotech is at an inflexion point where transdisciplinary bioengineering research is poised for significant contributions toward sustainability.”

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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As an alternative fundraising tool, venture debt has gained traction in Southeast Asia. Singapore-based Genesis Alternative Ventures, which launched its second fund with a target of US$150 million in August, is one of the leading companies in this space. Japan’s Aozora Bank is one of Genesis’s investors.

Genesis was co-founded by Martin Tang, who has strong business development professional skills in corporate finance, working capital, venture debt, private equity, and financial modelling. Before founding Genesis in 2018, Tang was Vice President at DBS Bank and previously held the Associate role at Standard Chartered Bank. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Commerce from Curtin University.

Tang speaks at Echelon Asia 2022, to be held in Singapore from October 27-28.

In this conversation, Tang shares why offline events like Echelon are crucial for the region’s startup ecosystem.

Excerpts:

Offline events are making a comeback. Do you think they are relevant in the new post-COVID era? Why?

Offline events are coming because they are relevant and fill our innate need to connect with each other. We have all missed the spark of inspiration from seemingly causal conversations over lunch, waiting at lift lobbies or the water cooler.

How startup events like Echelon are important when the world is going through a tough investment climate. What do you expect from Echelon?

Events like these are even more important during tough times because there is strength in unity. There is an African proverb: “‘if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together’. When people get together, we can encourage each other to keep going and provide support.

I look forward to many meaningful conversations leading to collaborations during the event.

How does Genesis help its portfolio companies tackle the current crisis? Have you become more prudent and cautious when it comes to investing?

In addition to deploying capital to our portfolio companies, we constantly value add by making strategic introductions to expert networks, other founders and investors.

Also Read: ‘Economic crises become less important when investing with a longer-term mindset’: Qin En Looi

We are laser-focused on ensuring that companies have sustainable businesses with strong unit economics. Some CFOs are grateful to us for helping them enforce financial discipline. We continue to seek potential portfolio companies to add to our stable actively.

Many Japanese investors are now turning their focus on Southeast Asia. Is it because Japan’s potential has already been tapped, or does SEA present better opportunities?

Japanese investors have always been focused on Southeast Asia — in construction, infrastructure, automotive, etc. The potential in Southeast Asia is huge, and investing in the startup ecosystem here is an extension of their thesis.

How do Japan’s startups tide over the current crisis compared with their counterparts in Southeast Asia?

I believe it would be the same as any other startup in SEA: Cut costs, raise capital, preserve cash flow, and ensure strong unit economics to tide over this turbulent period.

Why sustainability and climate tech are important in Southeast Asia?

It is not just important for Southeast Asia but for everyone in general. While making a return is important for all businesses, doing it sustainably is equally important.

Also Read: Nothing can truly replace the offline element of community building: Yinglan Tan

The opportunity for climate tech in Southeast Asia is a large one, given our vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Most major cities here are coastal ones and, therefore, vulnerable to rising sea levels and climate change. So it has gone from merely being a buzzword to something in urgent need of action.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon. The event will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. 

We are looking for top-notch speakers for the 2022 edition to join our line-up of speakers, such as Steve Melhuish (Co-Founder, PropertyGuru), Yinglan Tan (Insignia Ventures Partners), Looi Qin En (Saison Capital), Aaron Tan (Carro), Aaron Sharma (Scaleup Malaysia), Carmen Yuen (Vertex Ventures), Shao-Ning Huang (AngelCentral), and Grace Sai (Unravel Carbon).

Learn more here. 

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Malaysia’s global drone services company Aerodyne Group has raised US$30 million as part of its latest bridging round led by Petronas Ventures, the corporate VC arm of energy major Petronas.

The round also included a follow-on investment by KWAP, initially invested in Aerodyne in 2020.

Also Read: Malaysia’s Petronas sets up US$350M VC fund to invest in tech startups around the world

Petronas is Aerodyne’s long-time client. A memorandum of collaboration (MoC) was signed on April 21, 2022, between Aerodyne Oil & Gas, a subsidiary of Aerodyne Group and Petronas’s technology commercialisation arm Petronas Technology Ventures. It explores opportunities for deployment and commercialisation of drone-based solutions, as well as enabling remote and autonomous operations through the expansion of robotics and digitalisation.

The drone company will use the capital to support its expansion into Europe, Africa, Latin America and South Asia. A portion of the funds will also be utilised to support its agriculture scaling efforts and bring the solution to Indonesia and India.

It will also invest strategically in technology acquisition and enter the advanced air mobility space. A large-scale commercialisation plan for the air mobility solution is underway. This solution includes using heavy lifter drones, which can replace the more costly traditional methods and is well-suited for oil & gas operations such as shore-to-platform and platform-to-platform deliveries. This also accelerates extensive logistic operations, such as delivering medical supplies in rural areas and potentially in urban air mobility, where it can provide fast and cost-effective transportation shortly.

According to Kamarul A Muhamed, Founder and Group CEO of Aerodyne, the firm has plans to raise US$100-200 million shortly to bring Aerodyne to the next stage of its growth.

Established in 2014, Aerodyne is a DT3 (drone-tech, data-tech and digital transformation) company. It uses Artificial Intelligence as an enabler for large-scale data operations, analytics and process optimisation. Its flagship precision agriculture solution is powered by in-house developed AI capabilities, with more than 300,000 secured effective hectarages for major industry players in Malaysia.

Also Read: Malaysian drones services firm Aerodyne adds Japanese investors to its cap table

The group employs over 1,000 drone professionals in the UAS (unmanned aerial vehicle) services sector. It claims to have managed more than 560,000 infrastructure assets with 458,058 flight operations and surveyed over 380,000 km of power infrastructure across 35 countries.

Early this year, the group acquired a principal stake in Malaysia-based AI and data analytics company Synapse Innovation for an undisclosed amount. Last year, it announced a strategic investment from a consortium of Japanese investors, comprising Real Tech Fund, Kobashi Holdings and ACSL.

Two years earlier, the group secured US$30 million in a Series B investment round, led by InterVest/Kejora Ventures, with participation from VentureTECH, Gobi Partners and 500 Global. This round was extended with an investment from North Summit Capital, Arc Ventures, and Leave a Nest in February 2020.

In December 2019, Aerodyne acquired a controlling stake in the services business of Measure UAS, an aerial intelligence company in the US.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

The post Petronas leads US$30M financing round of Malaysian industrial drone firm Aerodyne appeared first on e27.

Manila-headquartered CloudEats, which operates cloud kitchens across the Philippines and Vietnam, announced today it has raised US$7 million in a fresh funding round led by London-based VC firm Nordstar.

The ghost kitchen startup will use the new funds for regional expansion and the development of its brands Burger Beast, 24/7 Eats, and Sulit Chicken.

Resources will also be allocated to developing stronger content and expanding marketing efforts for CloudEats’s celebrity brands, such as Pia’s Kitchen with Pia Wurtzbach and Healthy Appetite with Rhian Ramos.

CloudEats is also doubling down on its smart kitchen technology, expanding its development team’s capabilities and onboarding crucial talent in brand and marketing.

CloudEats has become a major player in the region with its portfolio of persona-driven, innovative cloud restaurants and technology-powered cloud kitchens. It claims to have served over 2.5 million orders so far.

On the back of its successful Vietnam launch, the company is looking to open a third market in H1 2023.

Also Read: CloudEats raises US$5M in Series A for SEA expansion

“The massive growth of our Vietnam business over the last two quarters is highly encouraging. We are taking the best practices and key learnings to our next market launch,” said CloudEats Co-Founder Kimberly Yao.

His Co-Founder Iacopo Rovere said the firm has identified key focus areas in the next twelve months. They include a suite of integrated SaaS solutions for food service as well as intensifying brand building and marketing efforts for its hero and celebrity brands in the form of deeper partnerships with the food delivery platforms, creative offline executions, advanced product innovation, and exploration of new channels.

“As a global investor in the cloud kitchen space, we are capturing the white space in Southeast Asia’s food delivery market through our investment in CloudEats,” said Kimberley Ong, principal at Nordstar. “CloudEats generates the best brand and kitchen-level economics in the market. This is all due to the company’s sophisticated technology and operations backbone and the team’s unique data and partnership-driven approach to brand building.”

The firm has raised US$14 million since launching. In November last year, it announced a US$5 million Series A round led by Vulpes Investment Management of Singapore and Gobi Partners.

The US$15-billion food delivery market continues to explode in Southeast Asia and is expected to reach US$50 billion by 2030, according to a recent report by Frost & Sullivan. Euromonitor also projects the industry to be a US$1-trillion global opportunity by 2030.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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X-PITCH is one of the largest startup contests in Asia. Organised by Taiwan Accelerator (TA), the pitch competition is known as the X Games for Startups. Contestants go through 15-second, 60-second, and 3-minute pitches all the way to win awards and investments. In the past three events, the 60-second pitch has been held in TAIPEI 101 high-speed elevator and autonomous vehicle. This year, X-PITCH is the first in the world to use MRT train and Metaverse as the competition carrier.

This year’s theme is Tech for Good which highlights the challenges in the post-pandemic world and innovations that will make meaningful social impacts for the public good and sustainable development. Participating startups focus on applications and services that enable digital transformation around five categories, backed by AI, 5G, edge computing, VR/AR/XR, Web3, and next-gen technologies.

Also read: 18 X-PITCH startups raised crossborder funding

Semi-finalists represent diverse next-generation tech industries

Compared to 2021, the proportion of non-Asian teams has increased by five per cent, while the number of pre-seed startups decreased by five per cent. AI startups still account for half of the share, but next-generation tech rose sharply to 33 per cent from seven per cent last year. 

It is exciting to see more new technologies emerge and enter the market. The percentage of Web3 startups is twice that of 2021, proving the rapid development of this field. On the application side, Banking/Commerce saw a notable increase of 14 per cent, while Consumer Lifestyle declined by nine per cent. These data provide some insight into current trends in innovation and entrepreneurship.

More than just a pitch competition

In the following weeks, semi-finalists will go through a series of activities to help the startups progress in their X-PITCH journey. Together with its partners, the startups will go through fundraising workshops, investor matching programs, country access webinars, corporate access programs, and online exhibitions.

To kick off the activities, a fundraising workshop will be held on October 29, 2022, to help prepare the startups for the investor matching program that will be facilitated by e27 through its Pro Connect. 

The fundraising workshop on the 29th will cover the following topics:

• How to value your startup? This discussion will be led by Equidam, the official valuation partner for the competition.
• How to effectively reach out to investors?  For this topic, e27 will lead the discussion to provide not just insights but a technical demonstration for the investor matching that will happen on e27.

Investor Matching on e27’s Pro Connect

As the official investor relations partner, e27 will be facilitating the investor matching program through Pro Connect. Pro Connect is one of the e27 Pro membership plans that gives its members access to 400+ active and verified investors and tools to assist startups in discovering and connecting with the right investors for their fundraising goals.

For X-PITCH Investor Matching Program (XIMP), the startups will be given complimentary access to Pro Connect to access a list of X-PITCH’s investment partners. They will be able to connect directly with the investors, schedule meetings, and manage the deal status for each investor. 

After the investor matching program, the TOP150 startups will be able to continue their fundraising journey on their own and connect with more investors from e27’s 400+ active and verified investors in the region. 

The grand finale

Ten awards will be presented at the Grand Finale on 10 November. The top three teams will win up to US$1 million in investments in total. 

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At e27, we are kickstarting a new articles series to know startup professionals and their lives beyond working hours.

With an immense experience as a corporate venture specialist, ST Chua recently joined Ikano Insight as its Regional Business Director of SEA. His primary task is to lead the company’s growth in Southeast Asia, helping both corporates to grow startups on any customised advanced analytics needs.

Before this role, he was heading PETRONAS Dagangan’s digital transformation “SWAT team” TipTop. His achievements included streamlining maintenance processes to significantly reduce equipment downtime at retail fuel stations nationwide and introducing an internal super app for dealers across 1060 stations.

Chua has developed a multi-million-dollar international e-commerce business and is a co-founder of an FMCG distribution firm, a predictive analytics company and a fintech startup.

He enjoys mentoring startups and frequently speaks at technology-related events. He holds an MBA from INSEAD, France.

In this candid interview, Chua talks about his personal and professional life.

How would you explain what you do to a 5-year-old?

To 5-year-olds who like chocolates, I will say that I manage a team to help the company selling those chocolates, and I want to determine what type of chocolates he/she likes. I will also ask the kid how much to price those chocolates, what else to bundle with, and how to ensure a sufficient supply of chocolates, optimising the retail location where he or she is most likely to buy those chocolates. This is to ensure you are one happy kid eating those healthy chocolates.

What has been the biggest highlight/challenge of your career so far?

There have been many challenges throughout my career. I would go with the most recent when I was the General Manager and Head of TipTop at PETRONAS Dagangan Bhd, where I led a special “SWAT team” to look into digital transformation and automation.

The business has been running for 40+ years, with strongly defined processes, multiple stakeholders, and people staying there for a long time. Naturally, someone new coming to do the transformation with no prior background in the industry will be questioned and challenged. Trying to execute transformation at pace and scale in that environment is challenging. My team and I had to put tremendous focus on change management.

The second part of the challenge was introducing innovation or new technologies to a company with the largest retail network in the country with over 1000 sites. For example, to introduce IoTs or smart cameras, the business model needs to accommodate the additional cost of three zeros behind, which is a challenge when business margins are thin.

As a leader in PETRONAS, we are also responsible for upholding the trust put on us to manage the country’s resources (we call it Amanah in Malay) and ensuring that our investments create substantial value. So there’s always a trade-off between cool technologies vs practically, long-term investment vs short-term gains to balance.

Also Read: What Pierluigi Cau loves most about working at GitHub

Besides delivering our plan, the highlight was building a high-performing team with strong startup culture — always steadfast, agile and standing together despite the pressure and challenges.

How do you envision the next five years of your career?

I hope to continue pushing my career’s boundaries, busy solving complex problems or pain points. What excites me about Ikano Insight is that data and technology adoption is growing exponentially. This company is an expert in helping others be it large corporates, to scale-ups to make sense of data, transforming them into useful insights.

The other exciting thing about Ikano Insight is its ability to help companies meet upcoming ESG compliance since we have the know-how to track and monitor ESG using global standards that we utilise ourselves across the group. How many analytics companies in Southeast Asia can say they have a sustainability practice? There is so much to learn about ESG and sustainability, which is exciting.

Sometime down the road, I wouldn’t discount the possibility of setting up my own VC fund to help startups since I have experience setting funds up from scratch, scaling and exiting companies.

What are some of your favourite work tools?

I use Trello a lot as a Kanban board for myself (Trello should give me an award for being their biggest evangelist since 2012 when no one at that time knew about it in this part of the world). I also use Slack for communication with different teams and projects, Jira for product development, Miro for brainstorming, Google Calendar, Microsoft suite of products (Sharepoint, Word, Powerpoint and Excel), and last but not least, sticky notes.

What’s something about you or your job that would surprise us?

Ever since I joined Ikano Insight, I found five points that seem to surprise people about my job and the company:

• Ikano is not a Japanese company despite sounding like one. It is owned by the late IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad’s family from Sweden.
• Being the youngest entity in the Ikano Group, we are more like a startup than a corporate.
• We are not merely an internal data arm to serve the Ikano and IKEA companies but a standalone insight and advanced analytics company providing services internally and to external clients, be it corporates or scale-ups. So you will see my team and me out and about for business development.
• We are technology agnostic. We use what clients are comfortable with and perfectly fine to work on their existing technology stack.
• One of our largest focuses is sustainability. We use data and technology to monitor sustainability efforts and automate ESG reporting.

Do you prefer WFH or WFO, or hybrid?

As someone from the startup and venture capital world, I am used to working from anywhere with a laptop, so it does not make a difference to me. So instead of WFH, I would call it WFA (work from anywhere).

Also Read: What Samar Sen’s life looks like while heading Talos in APAC

To me, the world has progressed so much in adopting digital tools that enabled us to work entirely online for two years. Why revert? One has to be practical about it and think about how to maximise productive time, and if there is a need to have a face-to-face meeting, then do that to not lose the personal touch.

What would you tell your younger self?

Experience as much as possible, try new things, go to new places, and study different languages. It’s increasingly becoming a globalised world without borders, especially in the digital space and the ability to relate to surroundings, have empathy and communicate across cultures is crucial.

Can you describe yourself in three words?

Curious, simple, trustworthy.

What are you most likely to be doing if not working?

I have lots of dogs, so I would probably be walking them, bringing them hiking or socialising with other dogs to drain their energy, or else they would be up to mischief at home. Otherwise, you would find me in some café mentoring startups or brainstorming the next business idea with people of similar interest.

What are you currently reading/listening to/ watching?

I finished reading the book Touching the Void. It’s a real-life account of two climbers and their perilous journey up the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes when disaster struck. It is a story of extraordinary resilience and willpower to survive. A brilliant book that I would recommend reading.

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