Singapore-based crowd influencer marketing & commerce platform Partipost today announced that it had secured an investment of over US$7 million.

The oversubscribed round is led by iGlobe Partners, with participation from Temasek’s Pavilion Capital, Taiwan Mobile, Cathay Venture, and Quest Ventures.

Following the funding round, iGlobe Partners partner Joyce Ng will join Partipost’s board as a director.

The company plans to use the funding to accelerate the development of its new product suite to support the increased business needs of its multi-market commercial clientele as mask mandates retire across the Asian markets.

It will also expand its business to Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong in the next 18 months.

This funding round followed a US$5 million funding round that the company announced in July 2021.

Also Read: How can influencer marketing help the travel industry in a post pandemic world

Jonathan Eg, Founder and CEO of Partipost, said, “Despite the macroeconomic challenges, we have been able to complete this fundraising round. A lot of the credit has to go not only to our investors but also to our team members across the region for their dedication, perseverance, and belief in the future of Partipost. We want to be a platform for all brands to use and all influencers to use, and we are definitely getting closer to that vision.”

The company had commissioned a report on the 2022 Southeast Asia influencer marketing. The report stated that On-Demand & Always-On capabilities are the “twin forces” that drive brand marketers to currently invest up to a third (33 per cent) of their marketing budget in influencer marketing.

“Early mover brands in the influencer marketing space are now reaping long-term dividends via building their social media presence through influencers … More importantly, they drive 24/7 sales conversions unencumbered by the limitations of traditional retail hours.  Brand marketers and affiliate sales organisations are expected to allocate more budget to partner influencers,” it said.

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The trade and supply chain industry will see an unprecedented adoption of blockchain-enabled solutions in the foreseeable future, according to Samir Neji, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of #dltledgers, a blockchain-powered cross-border trade digitisation startup.

We are already witnessing these solutions being deployed at scale in key areas such as trade flows between countries and use cases such as track and trace or import/export digitisation.

“Many businesses are rethinking and reinventing their operational workflows to move away from manual processes and multi-channel communication towards collaboration and authentication for greater transparency and traceability,” Neji said in an email interview with e27.

As legal recognition of electronic transactions becomes more widespread in many jurisdictions, the utilisation of smart contracts is also expected to accelerate. Leveraging smart contracts allows businesses to enhance operational resilience and agility with trade flow automation.

Also Read: #dltledgers lands US$7M Series A to grow its blockchain-based cross-border trade digitisation platform

“The consensus-driven smart contracts in a supply chain process more than halves the time spent on working on paper documentation. This allows effective coordination among those in the network and opens doors to broader access to financing and enabling faster product delivery,” he explained.

#dltledgers was founded in 2017 by serial technopreneur Neji. Its multi-enterprise supply chain business network (MESCBN) enables multi-party transactions across enterprises.

The platform helps corporates and banks to build on a connected supply chain. They can run end-to-end contract compliance and authenticate their commercial documents, subcontracts, logistics, reverse logistics, claims, financing and bank interactions. This enables them to automate multi-party transactions, streamline processes, and reduce costs.

The startup’s network participants include buyers, sellers, trading companies, banks and alternative lenders, carriers, logistics partners, insurers, ports, and various certifying bodies and government agencies.

Currently, #dltledgers works with 25 large enterprises and over 100 SMEs, including Mondalez, Tata Motors, ANZ bank, Wipro Consumer Goods, Shiseido, and Stockland.

Last month, #dltledgers secured US$8.5 million in a Series B funding from the family office of TATA Group and Centrum. The firm plans to extend the round to US$15 million and close it at the end of October.

“Our new investors understand the problem we are trying to solve and are bullish about it. These funds were looking for a scalable platform that can build large networks in MESCBN space and with an integrated capability to play across in fintech space. By investing in the MESCBN, these funds are also trying to diversify their investments,” he noted.

#dltledgers is already present in Southeast Asia, India, Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and the Middle East. The firm will now forge ahead with its expansion plans into the North American and Japanese markets.

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Here’s the full list of the speakers for the 2022 edition, which will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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Singapore-based FX and Crypto Options trading platform SynOption today announced that it had secured a US$4.7 million Pre-Series A funding round from Macquarie Group, Matrixport Ventures (the venture investing arm of Matrixport, the company behind Bit.com), Kristal Advisors and its existing angel investors.

In a statement, SynOption CEO Anchal Jain said, “We appreciate the confidence shown by investors in our ability to build options-focused products. The money raised is to build more product lines, including price distribution and risk management solutions. We are going live with our crypto analytics and aggregation solutions soon. We will keep the same ethos of empowering clients with the ability to understand options as well as trade them.”

Also Read: The race of Web3 and crypto infrastructure vs big tech

SynOption focuses on FX Options and Crypto Options Solutions for institutional clients. It holds a Recognized Market Operator (RMO) license from Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) since 2020 for provision of OTC derivatives. The platform provides institutional solutions for analytics, trade execution and post-trade analytics in FX Options.

The company is also looking forward to expanding its business to the US market.

COO SynOption Gurpreet Chhatwal commented on the expansion plan, “Being licensed by the MAS in Singapore to operate an FX Options venue, the firm is now looking towards getting a SEF exemption before opening the FXO platform to US participants. Our interaction with institutional participants has helped in growing our product understanding and need immensely. We are thankful to the first clients that have signed up to our price distribution and risk management solutions.”

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The Southeast Asia region is positioning itself as a go-to destination for blockchain startups. To date, there are more than 600 blockchain startups headquartered in the region, owing to the population’s relatively open-minded outlook towards Web3.

Why Web3 is becoming a magnet for builders

Blockchain technology, a core pillar of Web3, has been embraced by ambitious startups due to its fast-paced innovation and disruptive opportunities.

“In light of recent efforts to shut down and/or block certain applications and websites, developers are opting for a true Web3 decentralised digital infrastructure, as opposed to centralised providers. This provides the resilience that dApps or protocols need, which is impossible with the Web2 infrastructure riddled with centralised choke points. This trend will only continue to gain strength as entrepreneurs and developers realise the importance of building on decentralised technology,” says Kyle Rojas, Global Business Development and Partnerships at Edge & Node, the founding team behind The Graph.

Business-wise, digital solutions using blockchain smart contracts streamlines day-to-day processes, ensures greater transparency and saves cost. Smart contracts guarantee higher data immutability, allowing business partners to execute agreements while minimising human errors.

The not-so-smart side of smart contracts

Although smart contracts have undoubtedly brought innovation to Web3, their rigidity poses serious limitations. For instance, deployed smart contracts are difficult, if not nigh impossible to change in case of code errors. If an open-source smart contract is copied by others, it can be an arduous task to quickly notify everyone who copied the code.

Also Read: 3 steps to starting a business in Web3

The consequences are not cheap. In fact, over US$2 billion worth of assets has been hacked from decentralised finance (DeFi) alone this year, due to exploits found in publicly exposed source codes. The immutable aspect of smart contracts makes it a double-edged sword, if developers cannot easily patch known vulnerabilities.

Despite the setback, the Web3 industry is estimated to reach US$42 billion in market size by 2028. Advances in protocol layers, as well as NFTs, can be key drivers for industry growth. “Recent blockchain development trends in Asia include Zero-Knowledge (ZK) and infrastructure projects built on Move based programming languages, NFT infrastructure related to anti-fraud and dynamic NFTs, and gaming​​,” says Harrison Goldsmith, Investor Relations at Kernel Ventures.

Ushering Web2 talent into Web3

The launch of new blockchain-native programming languages are not unheard of. As the scaling limitation of smart contracts becomes more evident, developers around the world continue to seek alternative solutions. Take for instance the layer-1 blockchain protocol Aptos, which aims to utilize the Move language in a bid to “​​design a network that is more reliable and predictable for large clients interested in embracing the blockchain.”

Another approach is to get rid of smart contracts altogether. “Many real world applications require large throughput, which is a core limitation arising from serialised smart contracts. Unlike smart contracts, Smart Assets can be utilised alongside a high volume of concurrent requests to make blockchains useful in enterprise apps,” says Michael Holdmann, CEO and Founder of PraSaga.

PraSaga features a dynamically programmed distributed ledger solution that includes a global ID for every single object on the blockchain. The platform allows existing Web2 developers to build using a Python-based programming language and blockchain operating system.

Python is one of the most widely adopted coding languages in the world with 8.2 million developers and counting. “The best of Web2 industry practices can be brought into Web3 development platforms by tapping into millions of existing Python coders. This will encourage faster adoption of blockchain technology, while surpassing the complex demands of forward-looking businesses and coders,” comments Holdmann.

Also Read: Understanding the difference between Web3 and metaverse

Widening Web3 exploration for countless industries

Dynamic blockchain solutions can be useful to drastically reduce automotive recall times from weeks to days. Being able to quickly prove that a specific screw in a car engine has the incorrect metallurgical composition, may effectively translate to substantial cost reduction for all stakeholders. Similar concepts can be utilised by global supply chain manufacturers, or pharmaceutical distributors.

Although Web3 is still nascent, a stream of new blockchain tools are penetrating into the hands of developers, enhancing new opportunities for experimentation. To break past what was once speculation, the gold standards of Web2 and Web3 will likely converge to drive tangible innovation.

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The content was first published by The Human & Machine.

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Vietnam-based fintech company Fundiin today announced that it had raised US$5 million in Series A funding round co-led by Trihill Capital and ThinkZone Ventures.

Other investors participating in the funding round included 1982 Ventures, Genesia Ventures, JAFCO Asia, Zone Startups Ventures and Do Thu Ngan, Deputy CEO of Sacombank and former CFO and COO of JP Morgan Chase Vietnam.

The funding will be used to expand at a faster pace, invest in the development of new products, as well as attract top talents before expanding to Indonesia in the upcoming Series B round.

Fundiin CEO and Co-Founder Nguyen Anh Cuong said, “While credit card penetration rates in developed countries range from 50 per cent to more than 70 per cent, in Vietnam this rate is only five per cent. This shows that Vietnam is a high potential market for BNPL to develop, and BNPL is also an important solution to promote financial inclusion and prevent loan sharks, one of the most important missions in the national financial inclusion strategy.”

Also Read: Top 3 factors for recruiting offshore developers in Vietnam

“As this is a big problem to solve, Fundiin is very proud to receive the partnership and support from strong investors, especially from ThinkZone Ventures which counts many of Vietnam’s leading conglomerates as LPs, and from Trihill Capital for future expansion into Indonesia,” he continued.

Fundiin is a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) platform in Vietnam that aims to help retail partners and e-commerce sites increase sales by up to 30 per cent by offering consumers BNPL options as a payment method.

The platform currently has three zero-cost BNPL sub-products: Pay in three-monthly instalments, Pay in 30 days, and Recurring payments.

Fundiin has cooperated with more than 300 partners with more than 4,000 physical stores.

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