With global inflation creating a tech market correction of 2021’s fundraising hype and even crypto boom, resulting in what continues to be a difficult funding environment for startups in Southeast Asia, the uncertainty may seem to bode only a long night for early-stage startup investing.

But it is precisely during these uncertain periods and “long nights” that winners become clearer, smarter cash begins to find untapped opportunities (as opposed to riding bandwagons), and enduring companies are able to take off, oftentimes thanks to competition falling by the wayside or their focus on a blue ocean.

For venture capitalists and other early-stage investors, this presents an opportune moment to back such promising ventures from day one and to secure a front-row seat to the development of the ‘next big things’. The growing list includes the metaverse, decentralised Web3, and the like.

Amidst the talent shifts with some tech companies laying off massively and others hiring aggressively with fresh funding, there’s momentum for the maturing talent pool of startup operators to find “star” tech companies to land on as demand for their expertise skyrockets on the back of this upward trend.

Yet, for operators and aspiring investors looking to find these stars amidst a seemingly darkening landscape successfully, they must first learn how to take off.

Navigating the many facets of venture capital is an art that spans numerous disciplines; discerning and capitalising on emerging market trends, identifying competent founders, forming interpersonal relationships and leveraging value-adds beyond mere capital are several of the many tools of the trade.

Adding to the complexity is the lack of concrete historical financial data in the early stages of a startup’s business cycle. As a result, early-stage investors often find themselves having to draw on their own unique experiences and intuition in assessing investment opportunities, which generally takes no less than a number of years in a related role, think fund manager, a C-suite executive or even a founder, to hone.

Also Read: Insignia Ventures backs seed round of ex-Tokopedia exec’s parenting app Tentang Anak

Especially for angel investments at pre-seed or seed rounds where startups have only just conceptualised a business idea or developed their minimum viable product, the tenacity, flexibility and conviction of founders in their vision are critical factors in the investor’s decision to back these ventures.

Naturally, this begs the question: how then can the perceivably high barriers to early-stage investing be lowered for interested parties, especially for those who might not possess the requisite experience or qualifications traditionally expected of investors? How best can venture capital education be democratised and made available to the masses while still cultivating a culture of smart, disciplined value investing?

Spearheading the VC education frontier

Enter Insignia Ventures Academy’s VC Accelerator, a 12-week immersive programme designed for aspiring venture capitalists and investors looking to back great companies in the Southeast Asia region.

Predicated on experiential learning, the programme makes the case that the venture capital practice thrives beyond the confines of the conventional classroom setting, and tailors its curriculum to incorporate real-world application to and interactions with the wider VC/startup ecosystem.

IVA was not an idea born overnight and it resulted from the confluence of various experiences and market observations over time. Tan Yinglan, the founding managing partner at Insignia Ventures, was educated in the US and became first Southeast Asia hire for Sequoia Capital. When he decided to venture off on his own and start Insignia Ventures in 2017, he recognised a lack of venture capital talent in the market.

And so, while the firm’s early team comprised individuals who did not necessarily boast extensive experience in the space, they had the potential to blossom into outstanding venture capitalists. The firm would train them from scratch, with Yinglan allocating time for the team to undergo training sessions and go through case studies to build their competencies, a very informal version of what IVA is today.

Over the next four to five years, the pool of startup talent in Southeast Asia matured. Just as Yinglan had seen in the West, operator talent would be pivotal in shaping the venture capital landscape of the region.

The market had grown since he founded Insignia in 2017, and he realised it would be advantageous to bring in people with operational backgrounds since they know what a well-run company looks like.

This coincided with an increasingly diverse pool of operators from across the globe looking to dive into startup investing in Southeast Asia, having seen the success of the region’s unicorns and with even more startups joining the unicorn club over the past year. Even Insignia Ventures itself saw more operators from varying backgrounds joining the ranks of its team.

Startup ecosystems in the US and Europe had met their wave of demand for startup investing and venture capital with programmes and fellowships to help professionals and startup operators shorten their learning curve, and Yinglan himself had been a part of the Kauffman Fellows, a prestigious VC and startup focused community.

Now that Southeast Asia was also seeing its own monumental influx of demand for venture capital, the opportunity was ripe to create an independent and institutionalized platform for VC education in the region.

Even with the existing VC courses and scout programmes in the region, there was still a clear gap to be bridged between the learning of fundamentals, and the actual track record and network that which great investor careers are built.

Such a platform needed to marry the instructive nature of a formal, institutional course with the on-the-ground experience typically afforded only to well-connected scouts. And this marriage had to be structured in a way that would be accessible to a diverse array of backgrounds, from big tech executives looking to become angel investors, to corporate professionals looking to start their own venture-backed companies.

Drawing from his learnings from more mature ecosystems vis-a-vis Southeast Asia’s momentum, the early days of Insignia Ventures, and his own experience as a venture capitalist, Yinglan eventually gathered a team to build this platform. And so, the seeds were sown for the part-time experiential venture capital accelerator programme, the first of its kind in Asia.

After several months of planning and coordination, the programme officially kickstarted in March 2021 with an inaugural cohort of 38 venture fellows from a variety of backgrounds, pioneering the platform for what Yinglan would often tout as the next generation of investors.

Close to a year later and with three graduate cohorts under its belt, the accelerator programme that was once a promising spark is fast becoming a blazing success.

Don’t miss out!

The programme boasts an exciting line-up of high-quality workshops and masterclasses designed around three core themes: understanding the foundations and workings of a VC, supporting the growth of portfolio companies, and building a brand and career in VC.

Also Read: Insignia Ventures, Visa join open finance platform Brankas’s US$20M Series B round

For many of these sessions, industry experts and mentors are invited to share their experience across a variety of topics in curated sessions ranging from ‘how to be an effective board member’ to ‘planning and strategising exit scenarios for portfolio companies.

Past guest speakers include Cathay Innovation investment director and exited founder Rajive Keshup, NYSE’s head of APAC capital markets Delano Musafer, SPH Ventures CEO Boon Ping Chua, former Sequoia partner Tim Lee, and many other seasoned investors, founders, and industry experts.

To complement the live sessions, resources including a venture capital handbook, in-house case studies, and a library of curated readings are also available for venture fellows to deepen their learning experience.

Through such asynchronous learning, venture fellows are able to better manage their time amidst their busy schedules. These materials were also developed to enable venture fellows to quickly get in the headspace of the experiential component of the programme (more on that below), and serve as a basis for discussion during live sessions.

Importantly, the program’s content is a “living organism”, as IVA’s Head of Content and Curriculum Paulo Joquino would put it, constantly updated to match the fast-changing nature of the startup and venture capital landscape, and given life through the ways venture fellows engage with it.

This means venture fellows are able to incorporate insights from the latest developments in the industry into their learning and gain perspective relevant to their current environment.

Put on your investor cap

The other major component of the programme involves venture fellows stepping into the shoes of a venture capitalist and experiencing the end-to-end investment process first-hand.

True to the mantra of ‘learning by doing’, venture fellows apply what they have learned and collaborate in teams to source promising startups, conduct preliminary due diligence to assess the viability of the investment, and consolidate their findings in a cohesive and coherent manner.

Each group of venture fellows is assigned a business vertical as their primary investment focus, and these verticals range from well-known sectors such as SaaS and proptech to emerging fields including blockchain and climate tech. The verticals for each cohort are selected on a rotating basis to expose venture fellows to new industries that they may be looking to explore and get into.

Along the way, the teams also have the opportunity to practice pitching to a panel of investors, who then provide valuable tips and feedback for the teams to refine and enhance their pitch.

The programme culminates in an Investor Demo Day where the teams pitch their respective startups to an investment committee, with a potential investment in the top selected startup being taken under consideration.

In return for their efforts during the programme, venture fellows are able to share in the financial upside of any investment company through a profit-sharing arrangement.

Find your tribe

Every cohort comprises a curated mix of individuals looking to break into venture capital, founders, startup operators, corporate executives, seasoned professionals, and even undergraduates/postgraduates.

To ensure the quality and diversity of venture fellows in each cohort, Programme Lead, Gail Lau connects with prospective participants to understand their personal goals and motivations, and to evaluate whether they will be a good fit for the programme.

“We are looking for people who are genuinely passionate about VC and ready to take that next step, and who are able to contribute new ideas and fresh perspectives,” Gail shares.

Geographically, venture fellows are spread out across the SEA region. This melting pot of cultures and experiences facilitates increased access to different market landscapes, insights and deal opportunities within the region.

Also Read: The heart and science of venture capitalism and why its more relevant than ever

Ex-Bukalapak VP of Engineering, Mohammed Alabsi shares his experience on the On Call with Insignia podcast as a venture fellow in the inaugural cohort, “I would say the best part of the programme for me was the people. I met amazing entrepreneurs as well as investors, and I learned so much working with them through the hands-on experience of sourcing, evaluating and pitching startups”.

Community building

Community building is a cornerstone of the programme. Throughout the 12 weeks, venture fellows are highly encouraged to go the extra mile and forge closer bonds with each other and with alumni members, either through the Slack channel/Whatsapp group chat set up or in their own time.

As a result, the past cohorts have seen valuable friendships and connections maintained post-programme, some of the alumni members have organised meetups, co-invested in angel rounds, and have also agreed to come on board as mentors for future cohorts to pass on their learnings!

As an HR professional who has had experience building teams in various companies, Gail feels heartened and inspired by the growing community.

“The compounding network effect that the programme is achieving organically is amazing and is proof that we’re headed in the right direction,” Gail shares.

The latter half of 2022 is also gearing up to be an exciting period for the community as post-programme plans to provide further value and support to the venture fellows and alumni are well underway.

“We’re exploring several initiatives to complement the existing VC programme, and we can’t wait to share these with the community,” Gail further shares.

All roads lead to Rome

On a broader level, the program’s vision can really be broken down into two main themes:

• Educating and nurturing the next generation of leaders, founders and investors
• Disrupting the traditional pathways to a career in VC and angel investing.

On the On Call with Insignia podcast, current full-time startup investor/advisor, Andy Hwang comments on the VC accelerator programme helping to develop his investment acumen, “[My experience has] allowed me to learn and maintain the same level of discipline now that I’m investing my own capital and I’m not presenting to an IC… it has helped me introduce rigour to the investment process.”

“While there’s still a lot to learn for us in terms of building this platform for nurturing Southeast Asia’s next generation of investors, what’s been clear from the cohorts we have run is that there is no clear or defined route to invest in startups.

“You can be a founder, tech giant operator, corporate leader, or MBA student, it’s less about where you come from and more about your motivation and readiness to take charge of the path you decide to tread, and the willingness to support and work closely with founders as their early-stage investors,” Paulo shares.

Applications for Cohort 4 of IVA’s 12-week immersive programme or VC Accelerator are now open: Apply here on LinkedIn. 

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Singapore-based ShopBack has raised US$80 million in a funding round led by Asia Partners, with participation from existing investor January Capital.

This round brings the total capital raised to over US$230 million, the company said in a press note.

The capital will be used to develop new and innovative products for users and merchant partners and deepen its presence across the Asia Pacific region.

The announcement comes on the heels of the launch of ShopBack Pay, which enables users in Singapore and Australia to check out “conveniently” at more than 3,000 merchant outlets.

Also Read: Makan For Hope: Lessons on launching into new markets with Shopback co-founder Henry Chan

Launched in 2014, ShopBack provides cashback to users across fashion, beauty, F&B, electronics, travel and food delivery. Currently, it operates in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Australia, besides Singapore. The company boasts of supporting over US$3.5 billion in annual sales for more than 8,000 online and in-store merchant partners, including Taobao, Expedia and Shopee.

ShopBack recently appointed San Oo (formerly with Slack Technologies) as CTO and Hamish Moline (former Chief Commercial Officer of ASX-listed Zip Co) MD, Financial Services.

In November 2021, ShopBack acquired the buy-now-pay-later company hoolah for an undisclosed amount as part of its foray into financial services. A year earlier, it bought South Korea’s largest online cashback platform Ebates Jorea from Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten, a backer of ShopBack’s US$45 million funding round in 2019.

“We want to help our users shop and save smarter, particularly in this inflationary economy with a recession looming. Each day, we send more than one million shopping journeys to over 10,000 partner merchants, where consumers can discover deals, compare products, get rewarded and pay for their purchases,” said Henry Chan, Co-Founder and CEO of ShopBack Group.

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RPG Commerce, a direct-to-consumer (D2C) social e-commerce company in Malaysia, has secured US$29 million in a Series B funding round led by East Ventures, with participation from UOB Venture Management, Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, and RHL Ventures.

The startup will use the funds to future-proof its technology and development processes. The capital will also be used to develop and expand RPG’s brand portfolio.

“With this round of funding, we aim to rapidly expand our talent pool across the entire organisation and enhance our technological capabilities. In addition, we will expand our suite of brands to disrupt the consumer landscape further,” said Melvin Chee, Co-Founder and CEO of RPG Commerce.

Also Read: RPG Commerce nets Series A to build D2C e-commerce brands globally, names ex-Uber GM as new COO

Incorporated in Singapore, RPG Commerce is a multi-brand D2C company that launches and operates a suite of e-commerce brands via a ‘shared backend infrastructure’ approach.

Unlike the recent wave of startups seeking to roll up small e-commerce brands purely via brand acquisitions and selling on other e-commerce platforms, RPG primarily launches and incubates its native brands in tandem with acquiring brands.

The firm says it can develop, test and launch a brand with a lot less capital and, at the same time, scale each brand quickly.

RPG owns over ten in-house international brands, including apparel and homeware brands Thousand Miles, Bottoms Lab, Montigo, and Cosmic Cookware.

Its ‘shared backend infrastructure’ enables other businesses and brands to leverage its technology framework through partnerships.

In June 2021, RPG Commerce secured an undisclosed amount in a Series A round of investment from Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and Joseph Phua, Co-Founder and Chairman of 17 Live.

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Biodiversity is intricately interconnected with functioning natural ecosystems, which are vital for society; we all depend on nature and the ecosystem services, including water, air, resources, and climate regulation.

The rise of “Nature-based Solutions”, biodiversity offset credits, and Nature Markets have provided avenues to monetise and channel funding towards conservation and restoration and promote the sustainable stewardship of natural capital.

However, to assess the effectiveness of current conservation and restoration efforts and fund quality projects, we need to measure biodiversity through more affordable, scalable, efficient, and accurate methods.

In the past few decades, researchers and practitioners have leveraged conservation technology and tools that enhance the monitoring and protection of wildlife, including established technologies like camera traps, acoustic sensors, tracking tags, and satellite imagery.

At the same time, newer technologies have been increasingly explored for their potential in advancing the field; a recent study led by WildLabs identified the top three emerging innovations with promising trajectories to be Artificial intelligence (machine learning and computer vision), Environmental DNA, and networked sensors.

The case for conservation technology solutions

We at Mana Impact and Silverstrand Capital perceive that there is room for technology, implemented through holistically-designed interventions, further to enable conservation and restoration in the following aspects:

Also Read: How the ‘Paris agreement’ for plastic is accelerating climate justice in SEA

• Measurement, reporting and verification
• Enforcement of protected areas through better monitoring
• Unlocking additional capital for biodiversity conservation

Enhancing measurement and evaluation

Conservation technology, such as solutions that measure and monitor biodiversity and ecosystems, has received relatively little funding than the environmental monitoring market (which focuses on health and pollution issues).

However, a key component of any biodiversity or nature conservation project is monitoring and evaluating the intervention to improve the effectiveness of the project.

A well-designed project involves a thorough baseline assessment of the ecosystem and biodiversity conditions in the area, measurable targets to track an improvement (or retention) in ecological integrity, and periodic evaluations to measure progress about the baseline conditions and project goals.

Monitoring positive impacts such as the return of a keystone or native species or unintended adverse consequences help inform how a project needs to adapt its approach.

Prevalent methods for biodiversity surveys involve on-the-ground data collection, such as line transects and point count surveys. Such manual methods can be labour- and time-intensive and are often more expensive in remote areas such as marine environments.

Technologies such as acoustic monitoring, camera traps, and drones allow for more data on wildlife to be captured and analysed and hence provide an avenue to scale up monitoring for larger areas through:

• Accessing remote and previously inaccessible areas via drones and sensors
• Improving the efficiency of analytical processes, e.g. sorting images via AI for species identification
• Enabling community-based monitoring and citizen science via mobiles apps where users can input data that are uploaded to cloud dashboards or open-source databases
• Alerting enforcement units to any illegal forest activities occurring through acoustic monitoring of forests or measuring and monitoring biodiversity
• Environmental DNA has emerged as a powerful tool to pick up on the presence of species in an area, both historical and present, based on trace amounts of samples

Enforcement and monitoring of protected areas

Tracking devices, camera traps, and other sensors can help enforce protected areas and track illegal wildlife activities through real-time monitoring and alerting rangers of any anomalies in the area.

The Spatial Monitoring and Reporting Tool (SMART) exemplifies using a technology platform coupled with conservation capacity-building activities to empower communities to manage conservation areas.

Unlocking additional finance for biodiversity conservation

Web3 generally refers to the next phase of the web characterised by decentralisation and distributed networks, particularly blockchain-based technology.

Blockchain has been promoted as a solution to enable transparency and traceability of restoration projects. In contrast, the sale of carbon or ecosystem tokens and NFTs (non-fungible tokens) have been adopted as business models to raise funds for wildlife conservation.

Conservation technology is not a panacea: Challenges and limitations

A key challenge lies in the accessibility of MRV technologies due to costs and affordability, especially for newer technologies that have yet to scale commercially. Technologies such as eDNA are still prohibitively expensive for most projects; they are mostly used in academic research and are less accessible to lower-income communities.

Also Read: As the demand for energy soars, climate tech is here to save the day

These tools can also be inaccessible due to technical expertise and capacity gaps. For example, GIS software often requires specialist knowledge to generate analytical information.

Biodiversity measurement techniques and methodologies are just as important as the tools used. Compared to well-established protocols for manual data collection for forests or coral reef surveys, there is currently no standard for analysing some of the data from emerging technologies, such as eDNA.

Moreover, we are just beginning to explore and understand some of the unintended impacts of conservation technologies on wildlife and nature. For instance, there are (inconclusive) studies on how drones can result in behavioural and physiological changes in animals and debates regarding the invasive nature of biologging devices.

On the crypto front, there have been criticisms regarding the environmental impact of blockchain-based tokens, given that blockchain technology is energy-intensive and contributes to carbon emissions that need to be accounted for.

Additionally, given the distributed network of data input and verification, there is currently no standard ensuring that robust measurement methodologies are used. Quality data about the conservation or restoration project is recorded onto each “block” when creating tokens or NFTs.

Thus, third-party verifiers, standard-setting organisations, and regulators still play a role in standardising the quality of credits in the market.

Holistic frameworks and project designs are vital

Conservation technology presents an exciting opportunity for revolutionising how we measure and evaluate projects by providing new data, expanding the spatial extent of existing data, or providing real-time information for prompt intervention.

However, biodiversity conservation will require more than tech fixes; ultimately, the agency lies with the people who design and deliver the intervention. Community engagement and capacity building are core to project design and implementation and, eventually, a project’s sustainability.

Rather than seeking to replace manual data collection, technologies can be used to enhance community-based monitoring in project areas that are also home to local communities and indigenous groups.

Nonetheless, the race against the ongoing sixth extinction event demands that we act fast and catalyse scalable solutions for conservation and regeneration. Silverstrand Capital’s Biodiversity Accelerator+ is anchored on the belief that solving the biodiversity crisis will require both the adoption of nature-based solutions and technological innovation.

The three-month accelerator programme will support founders through coaching on topics from biodiversity impact measurement to fundraising and marketing strategies. Learn more and apply by 24^th June 2022 here.

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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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Openspace, VIG co-lead digital investment platform Finhay’s US$25M Series B round

Finhay, a digital investment platform in Vietnam, has secured a US$25 million Series B round co-led by Openspace Ventures and VIG. Insignia Ventures Partners, TVS, Headline, TNBAura and IVC also participated.

The new capital will be used to invest in strategic business expansion, talent acquisition and technology development.

Finhay was founded in 2017 to provide Vietnamese consumers with convenient digital access to financial services. As of 2021, there were only four million securities-trading accounts in Vietnam having a population of around 98 million.

The firm claims it has amassed more than 2.7 million registered users so far. In 2021 alone, it gained 150 per cent more users, buoyed by the release of four new products: cash-wrapped accounts with CIMB, gold trading, a 12-month saving product and stock trading.

Also Read: Vietnam’s Finhay raises funding to help millennials make better financial decisions

“Many people are now looking for ways to start investing, often for the first time, and we are exploring different ways to enable them. It’s such an important inflexion point,” said Nghiem.

Finhay has already doubled its team size in the past year, with 50 new employees. It has also partnered with more than 50 of Vietnam’s most prestigious financial institutions, including domestic and international banks, investment funds and fintech businesses.

Clement Benoit, Y Combinator invest in Anfin’s US$4.8M pre-Series A round

Anfin, an online stock trading platform, has raised US$4.8 million in its pre-Series A funding round led by Clement Benoit (Founder of Stuart & Not so Dark) and Y Combinator.

The round also saw participation from Rebel VC, Kharis Capital, Newman Capital, First Chek Ventures, Micro Ventures, Springcamp, and AngelHub.

Anfin will use the money for product development, especially the social investment product that lets users host and join live audio rooms. Through the use of tech-enabled profiling and risk assessment, Anfin will enable credible investors a platform to share ideas, strategies, and trades.

Furthermore, Anfin will continue its partnership development to offer more financial asset classes from its current offering of over 300 stocks and nine ETFs, allowing users to trade and diversify their portfolios with a few simple clicks.

Also Read: Gojek, Google and Grab CEOs back Vietnam’s stock trading app Anfin’s US$1.2M round

The funds will also be used to bolster Anfin’s relationship with local investor communities. This includes improving the library of free educational content and working directly with universities on products that incentivise financial literacy.

Launched in October 2021, Anfin enables customers to engage in stock investment and provides a fast and convenient trading experience. Through its value-added technology and financial services, Anfin’s fractional share trading feature allows users to start investing from only 10,000 VND (US$0.43) while providing a simple way to build a balanced portfolio and invest in shares regardless of the share price.

Its app has seen a jump in activity during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the growing preference for mobile banking and online investments. Currently, counting more than 100,000 in funded accounts, deposits have reached up to US$5 million and US$10 million in total transaction value.

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Throughout the pandemic, there has been a lot of debate on the effectiveness of remote work. On the one hand, it provided the benefits offices couldn’t rival: thousands of dollars and countless hours saved, broader hiring reach, and higher productivity.

On the other hand, when it came to dealing with emergencies, coming up with creative ideas, or connecting with teammates human-to-human, something wasn’t quite there.

Solving new problems calls for new tools

That’s why 35% of remote workers quote lack of communication and isolation as key challenges in working remotely. The lack of tools is not the problem — the market for collaboration tools is expected to reach $40 billion in value by 2028.

The problem is — most of these platforms see collaboration only through the lens of efficiency — getting tasks done, tracking changes, and seeing the full view of projects.

They miss out on a less obvious but equally important factor — a human one. Without an environment for connecting, brainstorming, and sharing knowledge, sprouts of productivity start dying out and explosive growth gives way to burnout.

Sae Hyung Jung, the CEO of a Japanese tech startup, spotted this problem back in 2020. As a skilled engineer, he saw a solution in technology and created oVice — a platform that made sure productivity didn’t get in the way of fluid communication. The project gave remote teams a shared space to meet and connect naturally.

Also read: Looking back and moving forward: Leave a Nest at 20

Released in October 2020, oVice had an amazing response in Japan, its home country, South Korea, Vietnam, and worldwide.

By 2022, it’s used by over 2,200 companies worldwide connecting over 60,000 employees every day. After a while, VCs jumped on board — since the launch, the team raised over $18 million of venture capital from One Capital and Eight Road Ventures Japan.

Since its launch, the platform gradually matured. Layouts became more complex and stylish, the tech infrastructure evolved to host corporate events with record-breaking attendance.

As teams requested new features, a map view of the office, the ability to book meetings in advance, expanded teammate profiles, a user list, and other tools were added.

Now, it’s getting its biggest update to date — a full interface revamp. It’s about to launch on Product Hunt this weekend — here’s a closer look at the new features of the new design.

Sleek design for more productivity and efficiency

oVice is back with the style of menus, panels, and icons for a smoother, more intuitive experience.

The product team opted for minimalistic outline icons, a stylish white header, and a hamburger menu that gives teams more room for enjoying office layouts.

Also read: JTC bolsters Southeast Asian innovation through LaunchPad

The new design seamlessly blends in with all types of spaces — event venues, study rooms, and offices. Whether your team wants to go for a business layout or design a creative space on an island or a garden, buttons and controls won’t get in the way of a seamless experience.

All the features where you expect them

In the new interface,  all features are intuitively grouped to help leaders connect with teams in one click. A sleek central panel has features all office users need: microphone toggle, settings tab, and the mini-map that shows the full view of the office.

The sidebar in the top right corner has tools that help managers run the space:

• The user list shows space members and guests and gives team leaders a clear view of who’s in the office at the moment.
• “Away” status: employees usually use it to let the rest of the team know when they take breaks to let the rest of the team know.
• The meeting scheduler allows teammates to book a meeting room in advance to ensure availability.
• Chat helps teammates ask and answer quick questions without having to spam in Slack. All chat messages show up as a bubble over a user’s avatar. If a teammate mentions someone in the chat, the other person will get a notification.

The menu bar is stripped down and fully dedicated to office space management. Team leaders use it to access the Settings tab. Here, they can tweak access permissions, optimise rooms, add static objects, and introduce new plugins to the space.

Managing meetings with ease and flexibility

The new oVice UI has a few tweaks to make connecting with teammates in a virtual office smoother and more controlled. For one, users can keep the microphone on or off when entering meeting rooms — this way, they will not get in the way of discussions.

Also, managers can now see what meetings are happening in conference rooms for more situational awareness.

Effortless communication with the team

Getting to know your teammates is now easier than ever, with the expanded user settings. Approaching someone is also faster than it used to be — the minimap feature allows space users to teleport to any point of the space in one click.

If you click on a teammate’s profile, a pop-up with their job title and the “Chat” button will appear. Space administrators can force mute users as well in case they accidentally left their microphone on.

To see the new version of the platform and talk to the product team, visit the oVice tour space.

Change is constant but the fundamentals stay the same

The oVice team made sure that the interface update doesn’t get in the way of resource efficiency, reliability, and ease of use.

Like in the old version, remote and hybrid team leaders can boost workplace engagement and productivity by creating custom office spaces that help teams focus on productive work. Here, managers can create designated scrum areas, networking zones, areas for lunch breaks, and game rooms.

As always, oVice is faithful to its click-to-move navigation, which allows teams to quickly move across the space and reach each other instantly. You can choose a comfortable way to communicate: from one-click audio chatting to a video conference in a meeting room.

Also read: Top 5G Startups in 2022 Announced

oVice helps teams brainstorm more efficiently than they would at the office with simultaneous screen sharing and crispy audio quality which makes sure all voices are heard.

Having firsthand experienced the challenges of remote work, oVice founders turned them into exciting opportunities. They created an innovative platform that adapts and grows together with changing workplace trends.

The new interface on Product Hunt this weekend. To support the product team and be the first one to try out the interface, follow the oVice Upcoming Product page.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by oVice

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Hong Kong-based SleekFlow, a SaaS omnichannel social commerce platform backed by Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, has announced the completion of a US$8 million Series A funding round led by Tiger Global.

Transcend Capital and AEF Greater Bay Area Fund (managed by Gobi Partners GBA) also joined.

The fresh injection will empower SleekFlow’s strategic market penetration in Southeast Asia, specifically in Singapore and Malaysia. It also plans to expand to the UK, EU and other thriving social commerce markets.

The funds will also be invested in advanced product development, including detailed buyer journey tracking and analytics, which provide invaluable actionable insights for enterprises.

“People nowadays spend more than 80 per cent of their time on social platforms. It’s already a habit for us to discover products and even buy on social channels directly. The huge social commerce market potential is expected to rise to US$3.37 trillion by 2028.

Also Read: How do investors evaluate SaaS companies?

This round comes a year after it secured a 7-figure pre-Series A funding round last year from investors, including Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund.

Chibo Tang, Managing Partner of Gobi Partners GBA, said, “Despite the economic downturn, the social commerce market is going stronger than ever, reaching US$474 billion in 2021. Eight in ten US businesses anticipate selling on social media within the next three years, according to Statista. SleekFlow’s innovative solutions will help these global commerce businesses meet the evolving needs of customers who are turning to social channels to purchase more than ever before.”

SleekFlow began as an omnichannel social messaging platform integrating with Official WhatsApp Business API, Facebook messenger, etc., serving over 5,000 businesses globally. It later invested in more fintech products, including one-click checkout and campaign automation for Instagram shops, TikTok, and live-streaming.

The startup also aims to holistically enhance the social buying journey by upgrading the existing e-commerce integration, inventory management system, and booking system to establish an all-in-one social commerce platform.

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The pandemic has changed consumer habits and the global economic state. This has had a widespread impact on most sectors and businesses, which has ultimately impacted the way businesses reach their customers with marketing, including one of the most popular and effective means, influencer marketing. 

According to AnyMind Group’s State of Influence in Asia 2021 report, and with cross-border travel restricted for most regions over the past two years, influencers have taken to creating content around domestic travel.

Impact on the travel industry

The same report also highlighted that the two most popular influencer verticals in Asia are fashion and beauty influencers and arts and entertainment influencers. Apart from both sets of influencers frequently creating content around clothing and food, domestic travel also appears in the top five types of content. There was and still is demand for people to consume content around travel and new experiences. 

With restrictions on travel being eased across the world, consumers are resuming their travel plans again (both domestic and international travel). This inevitably causes a rise in demand for the purchase of flight tickets and accommodation, which helps fuel the travel industry and its stakeholders.

There are many ways for travel businesses to accelerate out of the blocks, from pushing promotions to users and collaborating with consumer brands to pull in more users to utilising influencer marketing to spread the word out fast.

What can travel businesses do with influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing has come a long way since before the pandemic. One of the pain points for marketers in the past, attribution for influencer marketing campaigns to business results, is no longer a challenge for the more advanced influencer marketing platforms. 

Diving deeper, consumer behaviour to reach a purchase decision has also shifted and is now driven more by online reviews and consumer experiences of a product. This presents the perfect opportunity for brands in the travel industry to work with influencers to create experience-based content that ignites aspirations, enabling these brands to reach both fans and new audiences. 

For example, destination and airline brands can partner up and work with influencers to create content around aspirational experiences, from the time an influencer steps out of their house and throughout their flight to content around the destination and activities they take part in the goal. 

Also Read: Business travel in the new normal: Strategies and tools for SME travel programme

In addition, other influencer-generated content can include promotional campaigns or content that shares travel tips. 

One example is how an online travel company in Indonesia worked to revive the domestic travel market by utilising the power of influencer marketing. The brand tapped into the homecoming season with two exceptionally-different campaigns to drive more usage of their platform through nano and micro-influencers on TikTok.

The influencer marketing campaigns were successfully joined by 100 influencers and drew in audiences with an average engagement rate of 4.84 per cent, with up to 312,000 views from TikTok users in Indonesia.

In addition, travel brands can work on cross-border influencer marketing campaigns that leverage overseas influencers to drive more interest and excitement to the brand. By working with overseas influencers, travel brands can tap into a wider customer base compared to just domestic audiences. 

The future of the travel industry and influencer marketing

According to Statista, the number of foreign tourist arrivals by air to Bali in April 2022 surged 647.844 per cent to 58,320, and those reaching Jakarta climbed 133.09 per cent to 36,000 compared to the previous year. Additionally, the number of arrivals by ship to Batam soared by 4,159 per cent to 8,140 foreign tourists. 

Tourism is being revived. 

It’s been more than two years since travel brands have had to look at capturing overseas mind share, and much has changed within just influencer marketing since the onset of the pandemic. 

With travel brands now having to increasingly compete to get a share of tourism dollars, influencer marketing presents brands with a perfect opportunity to capture this growing pie, as it transcends geographical borders and provides marketers with a more human approach to swaying destination and purchase decisions by consumers. 

Is your brand ready?

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Bali (Indonesia)-based Ekta, a company building infrastructure to connect blockchain with the physical world, has announced US$60 million financing from New York-based digital asset investment firm GEM Digital.

The money will be used to continue building its technical teams and resources and develop its NFT marketplace, NFT collections, and hybrid exchange.

Ekta was started by Berwin Tanco in 2021 as a response to the economic crisis caused by the global pandemic. The founding team saw an opportunity to decentralise real-world assets through blockchain technology and offer streamlined access to displaced communities, especially in Southeast Asia.

Also Read: NFTs: The future musicians were promised is finally here

The startup builds an ecosystem of platforms and products, including a self-developed NFT marketplace (Ekta NFT marketplace), a hybrid exchange (HYBEX), and NFTs backed by the real-world utility with the mission of improving lives and communities.

The NFT marketplace aims to connect real-world assets and value to the projects offered on its platform. For instance, Ekta Island. Based on an island near Bali, named Gili Gede and owned by the team, Ekta Island consists of 16 hectares of land, 46 hectares of the ocean in its bay, and one of 20 marina licenses issued in the archipelago.

Through NFTs, Ekta develops the island as the world’s first blockchain-fueled physical space, offering fractional investment and everyday people access.

As an endpoint node that rewards operators with crypto, Ekta Portal is another product through which it aims to bridge the real world with blockchain. By activating the device via an Ekta Portal NFT, operators can start earning from a daily rewards pool of 10,000 $EKTA. The rewards are divided by the number of active operators, meaning that the sooner you own one, the more you’ll earn. Owning an Ekta Portal NFT auto whitelists holders for all of Ekta’s NFT offerings, including Ekta Island and MetaTrees.

Also Read: Matrixport betting big on NFTs, blockchain gaming to expand its cryptocurrency financial services

MetaTrees is a blockchain game world where players can earn crypto while also playing an active role in preserving real-world natural resources. MetaTrees also incentivises reforestation initiatives on Ekta Island and in partnership with environmental organisations.

Ekta Founder and CEO Berwin Tanco said: “While 10 per cent of people on the internet hold crypto, we aim at onboarding the next 10 per cent by building true utility and value for them.”

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Helicap, a fintech private investment platform specialising in the alternative lending space in Southeast Asia, has raised US$5 million in a strategic funding round led by Temasek-backed Tikehau Capital and PhillipCapital.

The group CEO David Z Wang said: “Over the coming months, we will be expanding our suite of data-driven products and services to establish Helicap as the go-to private financing arranger in SEA. We will continue democratising access to private investments through a data-driven FinTech investment platform prioritising risk management.”

Helicap is a fintech-driven investment firm specialising in the alternative lending space in Southeast Asia and Australia. Since its founding, the group claims it has arranged US$150 million in volume in over 300 completed deals, working closely with leading alternative lending platforms and presenting investors with positive returns.

Also Read: Helicap partners with Credit Saison Group to provide US$10M debt financing to alternative lending platforms in SEA

To achieve this consistent performance, Helicap has developed a proprietary technology that can crunch millions of loan data points to evaluate the creditworthiness of more than 500 digital lenders and businesses across SEA and Oceania.

The firm’s flagship private debt fund recently raised US$10 million from a regional bank-backed asset management firm.

With the global economic landscape expected to face higher and broader inflation in 2022, and public markets witnessing a correction since the beginning of the year, private markets can present a portfolio diversification opportunity for investors. Private debt markets have shown a low correlation to public markets and can provide consistent risk-adjusted returns when applying robust risk management frameworks.

Early this year, Helicap provided a debt facility of US$15 million to ErudiFi, a startup offering tech-enabled education financing solutions in Southeast Asia.

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