With the successful culmination of X-PITCH 2021 — The X Games for startups, 18 startups from the TOP150 semi-finalists have announced the completion of their funding rounds.

Aside from the US$1 million investment prize that the top three startups have received in total, semi-finalists have also raised over US$17 million as of March 27, 2022. According to a survey, 70 per cent of TOP150 startups said X-PITCH added value to their fundraising campaign.

Organised by TA, X-PITCH brought together outstanding startups worldwide to highlight the concept of “Tech for Good” and digital transformation.

The TOP150 semi-finalists, who were selected from 3,680 startups in 42 countries pitched their applications and services that focused on enabling digital transformation around five major categories of the New Normal. The startups went through a competitive three levels of pitching (15 seconds, 60 seconds, and three minutes) where ten startups emerged as winners.

Building investor relations through Connect

The TOP150 startups have received e27 Pro memberships which enabled them to use Connect, a feature that allows founders to connect directly with investors on the platform.

Through Connect, X-PITCH has launched the investor matching programme where participating investors from X-PITCH used the platform to connect with the TOP150 startups and vice versa. Outside X-PITCH’s investment partners, e27 Pro also provided startups access to over 400 active and verified investors in the region.

Also Read: X-PITCH 2021 partners with e27 to assist startups in better cross border investment opportunities

Meet the 18 startups who successfully raised funding

• IronYun (US$7.2 million) – IronYun provides enterprise customers with a real-time AI vision analytics platform for the management of safety and physical security. 
• Business Canvas (US$2.5 million) – Business Canvas’ product Typed is a context-driven collaboration hub that redefines users’ document workflow.
• Dayta AI (US$1.8 million) – Dayta AI is a SaaS company with a vision to establish a SmartRetail and proptech ecosystem that entails Computer Vision and Business Intelligence.
• ALPHACIRCLE (US$1.6 million) – ‘ALPHACIRCLE’ is a VR solution company that aims to help creatives and video producers to deliver incredible VR experiences. 
• Mi Terro (US$1.5 million) – Mi Terro is an advanced material company that creates ocean degradable and home compostable biomaterials made from agricultural waste.
• ThoughtFull (US$1.1 million) – ThoughtFull is a purpose-led digital mental health company in Asia that leverages technology, behavioural science, and evidence-based frameworks to provide affordable and accessible mental wellness solutions to corporate and educational organisations as well as consumers.
• GreenPod Labs (US$531,000) – GreenPod Labs provide cost-effective post-harvest solutions to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables during storage and transport.
• Asia Mobiliti (US$300,000) – Asia Mobiliti is a mobility tech startup enabling intelligent transit and mobility solutions in the developing world.
• Riipay (US$253,000) – Riipay empowers the next generation of consumers by allowing them to make a purchase and pay in interest-free installments over a short period of time. 
• Talentcloud.ai (US$253,000) – TalentCloud.ai is an AI-powered enterprise-level human capital management software in the region. They aim to tackle bedrock issues in modern recruitment and help organizations build an A-team from day one. 
• Toii Games (US$200,000) – Toii Games creates virtual gaming experiences integrated with AR (Augmented Reality), Location-based Service (LBS), and Mobile Gaming.
• MinervaS (US$130,000) – MinervaS is the university spin-off that offers innovative solutions in the energy and automotive sectors for the reduction of CO2 and on-board energy management.
• Jalebi (US$120,000) – jalebi is an early-stage B2B food-tech startup unifying a food business’s content + data value chain, transforming rudimentary and inefficient processes in a surging US$8.1 trillion global industry.
• InfinitiesSoft (US$40,000) – InfinitiesSoft Solutions helps enterprises to overcome challenges and solve problems from virtualisation, containerisation, edge computing, and AI.
• MEDia (US$30,000) – Media is a new entire NFT ecosystem, which includes lots of services such as trading, voting, loan, fragmentation, and gamefi. It lets users enjoy one-stop service, and easily buy and sell artwork here.
• Pocketwo (US$15,000) – Pocketwo grows retail wealth by finding savings to invest.
• Mishkan (US$12,000) – Mishkan is building an omnichannel social CRM that can understand the languages of fans for the artist/influencer management industry.
• Bariflo Labs (US$9,800) – Bariflo Labs is developing a state-of-the-art technology-driven modular device that is capable of targeting different concerns in static water bodies and will operate in a plug-and-play mode.

Also Read: Meet and connect with the 10 winning startups of X-PITCH 2021 on the e27 platform

Connect with TA

Formerly the first seed accelerator in Taiwan, TA is a startup ecosystem connector and the organizer of X-PITCH. e27 Pro members can directly connect with TA by visiting their profile here and clicking Connect. 

To find out more information about X-PITCH visit their website here. Want to connect with these startups from X-PITCH? All you need to do is click their links in the list or hover to the upper right corner under the Companies Mentioned section.

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Image Credit: X-PITCH

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The challenge of feeling ‘ready’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overcoming these changes, and building a future-ready workforce

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

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

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

5 steps to building a resilient workforce

• Know your people:

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

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

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

• Provide emotional support: 

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

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

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

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

• Prioritise communication and open discourse around wellness issues:

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

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

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

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

• Stay protected from new or arising threats:

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

• Commitment at the senior management level:

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

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

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

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

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

Doing our part to live safely with COVID-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Helping early stage founders hit the ground running

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

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

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

Also Read: Demystifying NFTs and DeFi

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

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

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

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

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

Crypto as the centre of the revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Image Credit: LUNO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post The way of the DAO could be the future of work appeared first on e27.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The post Ecosystem Roundup: Zilingo reportedly suspends CEO, PayMaya parent rakes in US$210M, JULO raises US$80M appeared first on e27.

By the end of 2025, the global public relations (PR) industry will likely surpass US$129 billion. Yet, despite this tremendous growth potential in the sector, the PR industry in Southeast Asia is not doing as well as it should.

Based on my experience working with over 300 entrepreneurs in the region, the lack of PR and content marketing innovation prevents startups from thriving.

As the world evolves and adopts novel solutions and technologies, the industry remains rotted in its traditional methods and processes. And while clients and entrepreneurs want effectiveness and clarity when working with partners, PR messaging is not hitting the right notes, thereby hindering collaboration.

Meanwhile, startups in Southeast Asia still face many challenges in establishing themselves. They have to deal with complicated bureaucracy, poor infrastructure, and an underdeveloped regulatory environment.

They are also constantly searching for investors to provide capital to boost their growth and product developments.

Even though these factors are vital, communication can make or break businesses. Companies need to rethink the relationship between PR, content, and startups in order to succeed and promote economic growth.

The traditional way of doing PR and content

PR firms and startups in Southeast Asia still follow traditional public relations and content creation models. While these techniques were tried-and-tested successes in the past, the world has changed and become ever-more digitised, making it challenging for the old ways to be as effective.

Some of the issues associated with traditional PR and content creating include:

High costs

Traditional content and PR campaigns are often expensive compared to digital marketing campaigns. Going digital gives cost-effective and sometimes free promotional and messaging opportunities for building a brand and selling more products.

In effect, startups are hurting their cash flow by paying for overpriced solutions.

Poor measurement

The lack of innovation in the sector restricts companies from conducting thorough analytics to understand their audience, predict consumer behaviour, and reach their PR goals.

As a result, businesses are unsure how to measure their PR success or even define it.

Success results from tying PR goals to the startup’s goals. For example, if the brand is focused on inbound lead generation, increasing web traffic, or establishing itself as an authority in its industry, then it is essential to target PR efforts toward reaching those milestones.

Also Read: How startups should approach public relations

Thus, it is possible to say that the press release, if that’s the PR tool used, played a part in raising awareness about a product, leading to website visits and boosting sales.

Zero transparency

There is a lot of bloat in PR both in agencies and in-house departments, creating a scenario where uncertainty arises about what the PR firm is doing for the company.

PR and content experts may be doing an excellent job, but they may neglect to let the business owners understand the process and the end goal.

Thus lack of transparency can cause mistrust, preventing everyone from collaborating towards success.

Lack of understanding of cultural differences

Companies that expand to other Southeast Asian countries may find it challenging to operate and communicate with a regional audience.

In some cases, PR and content consultants may not know the cultural implications of how businesses work in a different country. As such, they cannot provide suitable solutions to the startup owners for their new markets.

How to solve the PR and content problem in Southeast Asia

So, how do we solve the PR and content problem affecting startups in Southeast Asia with the above issues in mind?

Focus on results-driven campaigns

First, define how PR fits into the marketing solutions. PR must embrace the changes and evolve because technology has become part of our lives. Today, there are more digital opportunities for spreading targeted messages than ever before.

Most marketers have already adopted technology, using social media campaigns, automation, and online content marketing, and PR and content professionals must follow suit to get the results they are seeking.

PR experts can now position effective messages in multiple channels, employing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques to appear in search results.

Also Read: Be credible and reliable: Key tips for startup communication in the new normal

By engaging online audiences and nurturing relationships, the sector’s professionals can boost the startup’s brand, enhancing sales opportunities. They should also remove the fluff in content to have clear, concise messages that resonate with the target audience.

Effective PR and content techniques training

Even though the PR industry’s history involves professionals learning on the job, employees require training on the significance of PR and content production and its impact on the company.

This need for continued professional development goes doubly for senior PR executives to prevent the entrenchment of bad habits at the core of the business.

Each department should also collaborate to guarantee uniformity and consistency in the brand messaging. Inconsistent communication affects branding and limits the impact of PR campaigns.

If teams are dispersed across Southeast Asia or globally, at least some of the messaging should be specific to the local area and the overall message regionally relevant.

Train business leaders 

Finally, train business leaders rather than PR or content consultants. It will help create a professional team of consultants who can customise or personalise solutions to meet the needs of the startups in various sectors.

The PR industry in ASEAN is growing and moving beyond the traditional approaches that have served it well historically. Digital transformation in Southeast Asia is driving companies to adopt technological solutions to address the challenges facing them in their respective industries.

Innovation in PR efforts and content management is crucial for startups to stand out in the competitive space.

While old techniques, such as posting stories in magazines, are still relevant in some situations, industry experts must use digital tools and media to brand startups and get their messages to the audiences quickly.

Information travels fast nowadays. Therefore, rapid, consistent messaging across all channels is essential while maintaining awareness of the communication differences between the countries in Southeast Asia.

Embracing innovation, focusing on results-driven campaigns, and training PR, content experts, and startup leaders will help achieve better PR results.

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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

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

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Fintech has evolved from its early roots of finding ways to easier move money to a robust, thriving ecosystem of platforms that offer services that range from simple payments to integrated banking solutions, and even niche solutions for specific needs.

With a market size projected to grow to over US$6 billion by the year 2030, there are vast opportunities in the fintech space. Let’s talk about six fast-growing startups that are making their way ahead of the pack.

Reevoy

Founded by IIT/IIM/ISB alumni Ankur Khetan, Ishan Dadhich, and Mohit Agarwal, Reevoy is an international digital sourcing and financing platform for the fashion and lifestyle B2B global trade industry with a US$300 billion opportunity.

Reevoy has clocked over US$30 million annualised gross merchandise volume (GMV) value and US$2.4 million annualised revenue run-rate as of March 2022, working with fifteen global brands and over 40 factories. They also have a strong pipeline of more than ten global brands and over 70 factories ready to get onboarded.

With that, the startup is on track to get to approximately US$100 million annualised GMV and US$7 million annualised revenue run rate by December 2022. It has factored US$20 million over 1,000 invoices with zero non-performing assets and has an outstanding book of approximately US$4 million. The company is on track to close a US$5 million debt line at a low cost to further accelerate its platform growth.

Its asset-light, working capital enabled, and export-focused model makes it scalable and defensible to capture the market as a clear leader.

Reevoy is backed 9Unicorns, Better Capital, and marquee angel investors including Kunal Shah, Anupam Mittal, Aman Gupta, Alok Bansal and Himanshu Aggarwal.

Also Read: Pocket power: 27 personal finance startups in SEA to help you manage money

OneStack

OneStack is building a plug-and-play platform to offer neobanking and fintech solutions as a service. Its objective is to make every rural and small bank a neobank by empowering and digitising all the long tail banks in the country.

It plans to onboard the banks to the National Payments Corporation of India, an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in the country, and offer all financial services to the banks to retain and acquire new customers.

OneStack is currently building services to start working with consumer internet companies by enabling embedded finance for large e-commerce companies.

Its technology enables any bank and consumer internet company to go live in as short as a few days, and offer neobanking and/or fintech services. OneStack helps its customers build backend product platforms and offer white labelled mobile applications for neobanking services. It aims to digitise over 95,000 cooperative banks and 380 million users that stay in non-metros.

The startup has already raised a seed round from 9Unicorns, AngelBay, Faad Network, and angel investors Kunal Shah and Abhishant Pant. They plan to raise US$4 million with Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns as key co-investors.

Crypso

Crypso is a vertical social network for Indian crypto users to build a social trading application.

Founded in October 2021 by Suraj Kalwani, Ravi Chirania, and Rakesh Raman, their goal is to make a billion Indians participate in the crypto and Web3 revolution.

With this platform, users get to see the portfolio and trading strategies of their peers and influencers, join community group chats around areas of their interest, share their portfolio with communities for feedback, and execute trades based on social signals.

The platform has raised US$3 million to build a public product that is expected to launch in May 2022. Currently, it is in closed beta and testing the product with a strong community of over 2,000 users on Telegram and Discord.

Crypso is focused on young Indians between the ages of 18 to 35, who are driven by economic incentives to earn huge returns on crypto investments. The platform provides one-click execution of trade signals from crypto experts, influencers, and traders.

Also Read: How this homegrown fintech is helping Singaporeans with alternate investing

Insurance Samadhan

Insurance Samadhan resolves insurance grievances like mis-selling and claim rejection for life, health, and general insurance.

The company has resolved more than 4,500 grievances in the last three-and-a-half years, with an app that assists policyholders in filing their claims, and maintains and services their insurance portfolio.

Insurance Samadhan founders Deepak Bhuvaneswari, Shilpa, and Shailesh –who are currently the CEO, COO, and Insurance Head, respectively– put together domain expertise of over 50 years. Their other team members Sanjay, their Legal head, comes with 25 years of legal expertise, and their CTO Ravi has 12 years of experience,

The startup has raised US$1 million in seed and pre-seed rounds, and it plans to raise US$10 million soon.

Glimpay

Glimpay simplifies banking for India’s 100 million creators, freelancers, influencers, solopreneurs and micro-businesses.

Compared to corporate employees, these segments of working professionals currently have no access to all aspects of finance in one place and use fragmented financial tools and services – a gap that Glimpay aims to bridge.

Most of these working professionals use traditional solutions to accept payments that jumble with other transactions, which often means minimised clarity in earnings and job expenses that make financial and tax planning difficult.

What Glimpay is creating is a seamless Earnings Management Platform to redefine credit for Independent Professionals in India.

They are looking to raise US$1.5 million for aggressive user acquisition, hiring a small team for product development, and building Applied Data Science solutions.

AlgoBulls

AlgoBulls is a platform created to provide automated, customised, and personalised stock market trading experiences.

Founded in 2019 by Pushpak Dagade, Jimmit Patel, and Suraj Bathija with an aim to provide democratisation of trading solutions for the retail audiences who otherwise could afford to access such high-end technology, AlgoBulls provides an end-to-end solution to its users with ready-to-use strategies and market knowledge in an automated form without any need of manual intervention.

The Mumbai-based startup is operational in over 15 cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai, and Jaipur in India.

The company intends to expand their client reach to 150 cities. It also plans to launch its product in the US within 2022.

To get to know these six exciting startups better, catch Demo Day 2 (DDay2) organised by Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns. You can access the showcase by registering here.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns
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Singapore-based medtech startup Us2.ai, which uses machine learning to automate the fight against heart disease, has raised US$15 million in a Series A round led by IHH Healthcare and Australian healthcare-focused fund Heal Partners.

Lifesciences-focused Pappas Capital and existing investors joined the round, including Sequoia India, EDBI, and Partech Ventures.

The firm will use the funds to drive its growth targets for clinical implementation in the US, Europe and Asia. In addition, US2.ai plans to expand its commercial activities with leading pharmaceutical companies, research labs, and imaging providers worldwide.

“Our focus has been to create a comprehensive solution beyond the existing industry standard of partial automation requiring manual intervention and providing limited measurements,” said James Hare, CEO and co-founder of Us2.ai. “Our software automatically processes full echocardiographic studies of 2D and Doppler images from any vendor in less than two minutes. It thus delivers complete echo reports, with fully explainable measurements, editable annotations and conclusions for every heart chamber.”

Also Read: New technology that’s challenging the status quo in medicine

Us2.ai’s software tools improve clinical decision making and cardiovascular research for clinical trials using echocardiography, the safest cardiac imaging modality. It connects institutions and imaging labs worldwide on a platform of ready-to-use automation tools for view classification, segmentation and federated learning across diverse, anonymous patient and disease cohorts.

Its product Us2.v1 has automated measurements that include 2D (cardiac volumes, all four chambers of the heart), M-mode (e.g. tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion), spectral Doppler (blood flow across all valves, both PW and CW measurements) and tissue Doppler. They have covered most standard measurements for adult transthoracic echocardiography recommended by the American Society of Echocardiography, European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging, and British Society of Echocardiography.

Fully automated Us2.v1 measurements were utterly interchangeable with expert human measurements and were completely reproducible for a given patient study.

Us2.ai has completed multiple projects with global pharmaceutical partners and a groundbreaking approval study at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital.

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With the Russia-Ukraine still going in full swing, roughly 4.6 million fled Ukraine. The war has predictably destroyed Ukraine’s economy as the government revenues have shrunken and goods trade has been severely disrupted. Many businesses have either closed or are running only in a minimal capacity. The World Bank has forecast that the Eastern European country’s economy will collapse by 45.1 per cent this year.

Although diplomatic and international-level talks are on, there seems to be no end to the conflict.

As Ukrainians continue to flee their war-torn country, many startups and multinational corporations came forward to lend a helping hand. Among them are two Singapore-based companies — Ahrefs and Xctuality.

Ahrefs, an SEO service startup founded by Ukrainian entrepreneur Dmitry Gerasimenko, has managed to raise US$1.3 million for humanitarian organisations in the country.

The firm, whose nearly 20 members have family and friends in Ukraine, raised the money by offering to extend customers’ subscriptions to the Ahref platform by twice the amount of their donation. It means for every US$100 donated, the customer will receive US$200 of subscription value in return.

The funds will be spent on food and medicine delivery, transportation, and temporary refugee homes.

Also Read: How Singaporean startup Xctuality helps creators, brands accelerate into metaverse

Xctuality, which helps creators, and brands accelerate into the metaverse, took a different route to help the displaced Ukrainians. The startup wrote a post on LinkedIn inviting applications for various tech jobs. The priority is given to war-affected Ukrainians, many of whom have fled to safety in neighbouring countries. However, the majority are still within Ukraine and doing their best to seek protection in less affected parts.

According to its Co-founder and CEO Warren Woon, the response to the posting has been good. Many of his friends and their contacts have shared the message, and Xctuality has been receiving inquiries and conducting interviews.

“I have many Ukrainian friends both within and outside of Ukraine. They are wonderful people with a long history and rich culture. Seeing war tearing their lives apart overnight was shocking and sad,” said Woon. “I knew immediately that I had to help somehow.”

“Xctuality is a fully remote company, comprising 25 members across six Asian countries. Hence, working with anyone anywhere in the world is fine as long as there is reliable internet. We look at the technical competency of our potential hires and their complementary fit into our company culture. We welcome all who are interested,” he shared.

He also mentioned that while some people’s bank accounts have been affected, the majority can still use their bank cards and receive deposits. “Alternatively, we can look at either crypto or paying out via more traditional remittance services,” Woon said on being asked about how to pay their salaries.

Warren added this initiative is more of a personal mission for him. “Prior to this war, Ukraine was home to many highly-skilled and experienced tech talents, and we should do what we can to help keep alive and nurture this talent pool.”

“We’ve learned about the history of World War II and seen movies about such plights in war movies. This is happening now in the 21st century, and we are living this historic event. How we react tothis and what we do about it may have an immeasurable impact for generations to come,” Woon concluded.

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