Atma, a community-powered social job platform in Indonesia, has announced US$5 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed round of funding led by AC Ventures with participation from Global Founders Capital.

The founders and executives of GoTo Group, Advance Intelligence Group, Ula, Lummo, Kopi Kenangan, Sampoerna Strategic, MMS Group and Xiaomi also joined.

The startup plans to use the money to enhance its product, execute a go-to-market strategy, and expand the team.

Atma was founded in 2022 by Edy Tan (ex-Chief of Driver at Gojek), Chris Gunawan (Co-Founder of RestoDepot and Product Executive at Vara), Susan Suhargo (ex-Strategic Initiatives at Tencent and Regional Marketing at Gojek), Tim Young (ex-investor at Atlas Asset Management and Fixed Income Trader at HSBC; and Monica Oudang (Chairperson of YABB – GoTo Foundation).

Also Read: Why cross-skilling is critical for jobs of the future (Part 2)

The venture focuses on solving pain points within the lower and middle-income job segment and intends to build an end-to-end ecosystem that includes a job marketplace, an upskilling institute and a community-based support system.

According to Atma, the current job marketplace in Indonesia has pervasive inefficiency. Companies experience several weeks of lead time from the moment they post an open position until it receives any qualified candidates. Poor recruitment processes from generating leads, screening CVs, and conducting interviews result in candidates having extremely negative experiences or no responses.

The same job search and candidate search experiences have not benefited from effective innovation. Atma sees a massive opportunity for product solutions at scale to redefine the existing job search and candidate search experiences.

“Job seekers in the lower and middle-income segment describe their job search experience as emotionally traumatising, while companies often describe their candidate search experience as a random walk. In Atma, we are building a product to redefine these experiences by overhauling existing dated systems with a first-principle approach. Simplicity, interactivity, sociability, personalisation, and gamification will be the core elements of our product,” said Atma CEO Edy Tan.

“Over 100 million active workers in the lower to intermediate level income bracket face significant inefficiencies in searching for the right job that matches their skillsets and preferences. Atma is going to help workers find the right jobs more easily and provide them with career advancement opportunities by taking additional certifications or training. They also help employers screen for applicants with more relevant qualifications. Atma will redefine the job-seeking experience and help candidates increase their potential,” said Michael Soerijadji, Founder and Managing Partner of AC Ventures.

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You’ve decided to live and work in Taiwan and begin mapping out your path to launching a business in Taiwan. But before you go any further, here are some things to think about.

Knowing if your business is a good match for Taiwan

As a hardware manufacturing hub, Taiwan is an obvious choice for multinationals like Apple, Google, and HP looking for partners and suppliers.

But zero-to-one companies may have a harder time identifying the best ways to leverage Taiwan’s capabilities. Since Taiwan’s strengths lie mostly in tech manufacturing, an SME that produces physical products, say, electric bicycles or 3D printers would have the greatest chance of success.

On the other hand, enterprises that are consumer-facing or predicated on a scale, e.g. selling a new elixir (kombucha or handcrafted beer) to Taiwan may need to rethink their plans or businesses that hope to use Taiwan as a stepping-stone to China may encounter more challenges.

Acquiring a government grant in Taiwan

Taiwan has done a great job advertising government support for start-ups. We have encountered many entrepreneurs upon their face visit to Taiwan inquiring about government grants for their startups.

It is important to understand that government grants are awarded not to individuals but to companies registered in Taiwan, so if you’re a foreign entrepreneur with a foreign company, then you need to establish a Taiwanese entity to qualify for a government grant.

Branch offices and representative offices are not eligible for grants. And while foreign workers with Taiwanese residency (ARC) are allowed to receive such subsidies, remote workers located outside Taiwan aren’t eligible. We cover this in greater detail on the process of applying for a government grant in Taiwan here.

Understanding accounting practices in Taiwan

It’s easy to assume that accounting practices are the same at home and abroad, but some aspects of Taiwan’s accounting procedures may come as a surprise.

Also Read: How remote work has changed the salary scale in Taiwan

Take business expenses as an example. In the US, business accounting operates within an “innocent-until-proven-guilty” framework, which means you can write off a business expense on your tax return with a receipt, even if it is written on a paper napkin.

But Taiwan’s business accounting framework is the opposite: you’re guilty until proven innocent. So to claim a business expense, you need to receive a Fa-Piao (發票) or a Uniform Invoice, but in order for it to be an expense deduction, you need to give the vendor your tax ID number, which needs to be typed or written on the official receipt you obtain from them.

Elsewhere, particularly in the context of start-ups, this accounting framework means that a payment you’ve made to a company registered outside Taiwan for a SaaS subscription or to a freelancer in Chiang Mai won’t be recognised by the Taiwanese government as a valid business expense. These are only two examples of how accounting practices in Taiwan can be completely different from other places.

Navigating the regulatory environment in Taiwan

Startups today are built for a digital, cross-border world, but managing cross-country jurisdictions can be a real huge headache from an administrative standpoint. Taiwan may be a liberal and open country, but when it comes to business practices it’s still relatively conservative.

Also Read: 5G tech? All eyes on Taiwan

The government in Taiwan oversees much of daily business. Taiwanese labour law, for example, takes precedence over any agreement that may be signed between a company and its employees, so employers and employees can’t enter into any private agreements as they would be able to, say, in the US.

And since the Taiwanese government plays a big role in business, foreign business owners will likely find themselves having to talk to multiple agencies to get answers to their business questions. This is where a service like 11th Fleet can help simplify the process.

11th Fleet’s outsourced CFO/COO solution can help avoid many missteps for entrepreneurs and companies that are new to Taiwan. Most importantly, 11th Fleet can help stave off trouble by helping its clients anticipate any problems that may arise along the way, saving its clients valuable time and money by avoiding detours.

Overcoming the language barrier in Taiwan

Taiwan is closer to Japan and South Korea in terms of English fluency than it is to Singapore or Hong Kong, where English is spoken as an official language.

Although the Taiwanese government is committed to making the country bilingual by 2030, business in Taiwan is still largely conducted in Mandarin, and business contracts and documents are written in Chinese.

This means foreign investors who aren’t fluent in the local language must take the extra step to have their official documents and contracts translated when registering their businesses in Taiwan.

Moreover, when you are ready for business, you should have someone on your team who can help you navigate the language and cultural barriers.

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A recent study by Accenture and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) showed that consumers want more courses of action that enable a circular economy by ensuring longer shelf life and reuse of products in a bid to tackle the impact of climate change. This includes better packaging design and recycling of waste. In fact, over 30 per cent of consumers ranked sustainable ingredients and packaging as top factors in choosing sustainable disposal options in everyday shopping.

This demand is understandable considering the fact that the environmental impact of food packaging is enormous. While modern food packaging provides a way to make food safe, reliable, shelf-stable and clean, unfortunately, most of them are designed to be single-use. This means they are typically thrown away rather than reused or recycled, especially in places with substandard waste management.

This is why barePack and &Repeat are calling for more collective efforts to sustain the planet.

To put an end to single-use packaging in the restaurant business, these two players have come together to offer a more complete and unique circular economy solution for the food industry in Europe and Asia. &Repeat is an app that financially rewards people when they recycle their food packaging while barePack is a reuse network in Southeast Asia and France.

In Singapore, barePack and &Repeat function as a reuse ecosystem where people can order their food as usual. However, instead of receiving it in single-use containers, they will receive their meal in beautiful reusable boxes. After their meal, the user can drop off the containers anywhere in the network, at any partner restaurant.

Also Read: Why GoImpact believes that education is the key to promoting ESG investment

Recently &Repeat has completed the acquisition of barePack as part of their effort to rapidly scale towards greener choices.

In an exclusive interview with e27, &Repeat CEO and Co-Founder Tor Espen shares about the acquisition of the company. “With the acquisition comes the ambition for an even bigger impact. We want to move the industry and society toward more sustainable practices and behaviours, whether it is recycling or reuse. To support this transformation we are aligning the two brands and barePack will probably become &Repeat in the long run when we merge the two user journeys (recycling and reuse).”

He further says, “More than 9,000 single-use packagings are thrown away every second. We all know it causes water pollution in Asia and everywhere in the world. We need to reduce drastically the number of single-use items and we decided to launch &Repeat in order to create an ecosystem where restaurants and users go together to battle these challenges.”

As part of their mission, the two companies have been allocating resources to train and educate the clients of their partner restaurants on the matters of waste reduction, recycling and reuse.

&Repeat and barePack are now operating in Singapore, Sweden and France with more than 70,000 users on board, aiming to make a change and apply zero waste concepts to their everyday life. Besides they are also preparing the launch the service in at least one other European country by the end of 2022.

Espen further elaborates, “We are already the leader in circular packaging solutions for food in Europe and Asia, but we picture &Repeat to be a much broader movement with a significant impact on waste reduction. We need to onboard the people who already are making a change in their daily life and those who are not there yet.”

Also Read: How consumers are prioritising sustainability beyond the single lens of eco-friendly products

Looking back at their important milestones and future plans, Espen says, “The acquisition of barePack, reaching 50,000 users and launching to new countries is pretty amazing milestones and it’s only the beginning!”

&Repeat itself raised EUR3 million in 2021 and is preparing new fundraising for 2022 to support its goals promote the circular economy in the market it is operating.

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If COVID-19 has taught the world one thing, it is that the only certainty in life is that nothing is certain. As the pandemic gripped the planet for almost two years, workers used the global slowdown and shifting dynamics to take stock of their careers, assessing what, with all this newfound unpredictability, they really wanted from their jobs.

It has become starkly apparent that mundane, repetitive tasks, “working like a machine”, in other words, are no longer of interest to employees. In many cases, this has resulted in the Great Resignation, impacting companies of all sizes across the world. Today’s workers yearn for roles that have purpose and meaning, which stimulates and makes them pleased to come to the office each day.

Businesses that solve this challenge can benefit significantly. Happy workers don’t just bring improved well-being and reduce staff turnover; they boost the business’s bottom line. In fact, according to researchers at the University of Oxford, workers were found to be 13 per cent more productive when happy.

Forward-thinking businesses need to invest in technology and digital tools to make their staff empowered, productive and successful at work. And the name of the secret sauce? Intelligent Automation.

Using AI-powered automation will improve an employee’s satisfaction in the workplace by automating repetitive, low-value tasks. It frees up employees to focus on other, more appealing and engaging undertakings that draw on their core competencies and human creativity.

And by making it easier to optimise employees’ working hours and focus on higher-value tasks, companies save time and money. But increased productivity isn’t the only gain. The technology can deliver broader operational efficiencies, faster and more data-driven business decisions, and smooth the way to successful scaling.

Let’s look into how Intelligent Automation can elevate core business processes.

Streamlining expense management and human resources functions

As we’ve discussed, Intelligent Automation can play a critical role in helping employees find meaning in their work by removing the humdrum aspect of their daily tasks, raising their satisfaction in the workplace and making them less likely to leave.

Areas within the workplace primed for AI-powered solutions include expense management, the second most controllable budget in a company after wages, and human resources. These are departments where data capture and analysis, accuracy, and the need for repetition are implicit.

Also Read: These Artificial Intelligence startups are proving to be industry game-changers

Manual data input and tracking are incredibly fiddly and prone to simple human errors from incorrect keystrokes or placing numbers in the wrong field on a spreadsheet, especially when vast troves of information are involved.

The automation of expense management prevents mistakes in the compilation and computing of data and dismisses the need for time-consuming manual intervention to rectify computational errors.

Intelligent Automation can also track expenses to identify anomalies in expenses and flag potential fraud, either intentional or unintentional, or abuse of company policies that control and monitor expenses.

As an environmental plus, Intelligent Automation can streamline expenses by forgoing paperwork and its manual submission, by taking photos of receipts that can be directly loaded onto an app for immediate reimbursement, for instance, improving efficiency and cutting time and cost for employees and employers.

Ultimately, when expense management processes flow smoothly, business managers gain accurate insights into their organisation’s financial health, helping them identify cost-saving opportunities and potential risks.

Intelligent Automation brings similarly far-reaching benefits to human resources. The data collected by AI can be instrumental in analysis, prediction, and diagnosis that let human resources teams make better decisions, from recruitment of new hires all the way through an employee’s life cycle.

For instance, onboarding is a critical yet time-consuming step where an inefficient, poorly organised process can impact the long-term retention of fresh talent. New recruits often have many questions that can be answered more quickly and accurately by an AI-powered human resources solution than a human worker doing the task manually.

Human resources can integrate Intelligent Automation to harness multiple data points on an employee to proactively see if they are due for a salary increase based on performance and market rates.

It can also determine if staff have attained the necessary skills for a promotion, are on track to meet that month’s targets, or are likely to seek employment elsewhere due to unhappiness in the workplace.

Conventional methods of discovering these by HR are far from scientific, and riddled with gaps in information, often resulting in ill-informed or contentious outcomes.

The beauty of AI-powered automation is that what might take months of flawed investigation and deduction can be done in minutes and with a result that is clear, objective, accurate, and grounded in facts. And nobody can argue with that.

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Resolution Ventures makes first close of US$20M fintech fund, targets early stage startups
Aiming to invest in 25 companies, Resolution Ventures seeks startups that are building solutions with local and international applications; The fund is backed by an international community of fintech-interested institutions, family offices, experienced finance executives, and successful entrepreneurs.

Why GoImpact believes that education is the key to promoting ESG investment
Investing in climate tech has become increasingly popular; GoImpact believes in the importance of making informed decisions. The company raised a Series A funding round that brought its valuation to US$22 million.

LottieFiles raises US$37M in Series B funding to launch new solutions for global users
LottieFiles builds a JSON animation file format that enables designers to ship animations on any platform as easily as shipping static assets. In February last year, LottieFiles announced the acquisition of India-based design asset marketplace Iconscout.

Searching for gold in the silver economy: A venture capital perspective
A huge pot of gold can be found in the silver economy globally and in Asia, this article by Michelle Ng of Quest Ventures aims to identify the key opportunities for venture capitals.

Axie Infinity hack reminds us about the vulnerabilities in crypto markets: Advance.AI’s Ravi Madavaram
Businesses should conduct KYB and KYT verifications on top of eKYC to prevent crypto hacks and fraud, he says in an interview with e27. Such incidents will affect users’ trust and confidence in P2E games, but recovery is possible if businesses invest in security measures and are transparent about these to their users.

Female entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia raised over 17 per cent of all private funding in 2021
Despite the encouraging growth in funding, some efforts to funnel more money into female-run companies through Gender Lens Investing (GLI) projects are being met with “pinkwashing” accusations. This negativity is causing reluctance from some venture capitalists (VCs) to back female entrepreneurs, according to the report.

Tech giants expand support for ‘a passwordless world’
Apple, Google and Microsoft plan to implement capabilities that will allow users to sign in to websites and applications without a password. As noted in a joint press release, password-only authentication can create security issues that span industries – leading to account takeovers, data breaches and disrupted services.

Unusual Ventures just closed a US$485M fund by promising hands-on (full-time) help
Unusual invests in only 12 or so companies each year, writing initial checks of between US$2 million and US$10 million initially at the seed or pre-seed stage where the firm can be the first institutional money a startup raises. One “opportunistic” investment it made was a check into the security operations company Artic Wolf Networks, which has filed confidentially for an IPO.

MoneyMatch an equity partner in KAF Investment-led digital bank consortium, targets US$10M Series B raise
Consortium aims to target underserved MSME segments neglected by incumbents. It is ramping up investments in tech, upgraded financial infrastructure and business development.

‘Bored Ape’ unicorn raises US$320M by selling virtual land in its metaverse
The virtual real estate buying frenzy over the weekend reportedly was so intense that it crashed the Ethereum network and sent fees on the blockchain system soaring.
The land sale offered buyers the chance to buy a plot in the Otherside metaverse for around $5,800, plus transaction fees.

Insurtech startup Turtlemint bags US$120M as valuation tops US$900M
Insurtech startup Turtlemint has raised US$120 million led by Amansa Capital, Jungle Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners, the company said on Friday. The online platform for buying insurance has closed the current financing round at a US$900-950 million valuation, said a person in the know.

Blockchain game Apeiron raises US$10M in Hashed-led funding round
Developed by Foonie Magus, the game has now raised over US$17 million at the close of their seed round for the new play-and-earn NFT god game Apeiron. The company received US$3 million from pre-seed investment, US$10 million from seed investment, and US$4.5 million from NFT sales, putting them at over US$17.5 million in total.

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Thanks to the growing acceptance of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies in the mainstream, professional investors are now fully cognisant of the upsides of investing in crypto.

Meanwhile, institutional-grade investment products such as the Fintonia Bitcoin Physical Fund have made cryptocurrency safer and more efficient than ever before. We’re seeing an unprecedented number of professional investors buying into the crypto space.

Apart from investing in crypto tokens directly or through a fund, there is another way for investors to profit within the fast-moving cryptocurrency ecosystem. We’re talking about finding yield, or passive income, through crypto.

Yield farming in the crypto ecosystem

Given that cryptocurrency is a notoriously volatile field, how is it possible to generate a stable income?

Collectively known as yield farming, the below strategies focus on generating consistent yield from your crypto holdings.

• Lending: If you’re on a crypto exchange, you can lend your holdings to other users. This method is similar to how traditional fiat banking works. Others borrow your Bitcoin to make transactions, and, as the lender, you earn interest from them.
• Staking: It is possible to stake your crypto holdings on a blockchain and get rewarded when ledger transactions are confirmed. However, this only applies to proof-of-stake blockchains like Ethereum, Solana and Cardano, not proof-of-work ones like Bitcoin.
• DeFi protocols: Some decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols allow users to swap pairs of cryptocurrencies. If you can provide these token pairs, you can earn a cut of the fees.

However, all three methods have risks. Being laCryptoes and DeFi protocols could be largely unregulated and average investors susceptible to scams, hacking, and theft.

While professional investors can practice yield farming methods, we believe the possibility of major security breaches is a risk too high for many professional investors to make them worthwhile.

Also Read: 13 years on since the birth of Bitcoin, it’s now blockchain’s time to shine

On top of that, investing on unregulated platforms leaves you open to a slew of additional risks and hidden costs, especially if you’re managing larger amounts of cryptocurrency.

A safer solution for professional investors

Generating consistent income from cryptocurrency is a top priority for professional investors, but the crypto ecosystem’s lack of security and safety is a significant obstacle.

Given the difficulties in moving fiat currency in and out of the cryptocurrency ecosystem, the 1,000+ exchanges and overall cryptocurrency market inefficiencies, there is the opportunity to provide collateralised loans at higher risk-adjusted rates to ecosystem players who are profiting from these market inefficiencies.

That’s why Fintonia Group created the Fintonia Secured Yield Fund, an over-collateralised traditional private credit fund, as a solution to help professional investors solve this issue.

There is a great opportunity for professional investors (via the Fintonia Secured Yield Fund) to lend fiat money to cryptocurrency players, such as miners and crypto hedge funds, and earn interest from these borrowers.

At the same time, the borrowers’ Bitcoin is held as collateral so that the risk of default is kept minimal, and margin calls are made when the cryptocurrency price drops to pre-determined levels.

Essentially, fiat loans secured by borrowers’ Bitcoin holdings allow investors to generate an attractive, stable income at low risk amid a volatile cryptocurrency environment.

The crypto ecosystem’s need for fiat

Savvy investors would have noticed that this opportunity is like a bond or bank deposit, where investors earn interest from borrowers. But the difference is in who’s borrowing and why.

In the case of traditional financial products, borrowers use the funds to run businesses or purchase consumer goods like houses or cars.

Meanwhile, cryptocurrency ecosystem players like Bitcoin traders, miners, and corporates are willing to pay much higher interest on fiat loans than traditional borrowers.

We’ll explain why:

• Arbitrage traders: Arbitrage traders and hedge funds profit hugely off the inefficient crypto market by taking advantage of price differences across exchanges and assets. However, they need a large amount of fiat to settle their trades. As a result, they’re willing to pay high interest on fiat loans.
• Crypto miners: Considering that each completed hash on the blockchain can generate a reward in the six figures, Bitcoin mining remains a lucrative industry. But miners need immense working capital to keep their operations running and would instead borrow fiat than sell their Bitcoin to pay operating expenses. Bitcoin returns have averaged 100 per cent+ IRR over the last decade. Mining expenses such as electricity bills and hardware purchases are largely settled in fiat.
• Corporates: More and more companies are holding Bitcoin in their portfolios, but they may still need cash for their requirements (e.g. purchasing property, cars or equipment). We come in to supply fiat, secured by their Bitcoin holdings.

In summary, cryptocurrency ecosystem players are making significant profits, but fiat is still needed to grease the wheels. At the same time, some players lack access to traditional borrowing options such as banks, which further strengthens the demand for fiat.

The Fintonia Secured Yield Fund allows investors to find much higher yields than that of traditional investment products.

Collateralised loans using Bitcoin: a star in today’s low-yield environment

Consistently high risk-adjusted returns of between six per cent and 18 per cent per annum through collateralised loans secured against cryptocurrencies stand out in today’s low-yield environment. Today, it can generate four to ten times as much annual income as a mainstream corporate bond.

Historically, high returns went hand-in-hand with high risk, but collateralised private loans secured against Bitcoin provide a much higher risk-adjusted return given the cryptocurrency market inefficiencies.

Also Read: How to find a good investment with new crypto tokens

In addition, Bitcoin is a great form of collateral as it is highly liquid, easy to value, transfer and verify and is seen as a store of value. The volatility of Bitcoin can be managed by setting an appropriate loan to value (“LTV”) ratio (typically 50 per cent LTV) and margin call ratios (typically at 70 per cent, 80 per cent and 85 per cent).

Typically for every fiat dollar borrowed, collateral twice as much of the value of the loan is deposited in the form of the borrower’s Bitcoin. Should the value of their Bitcoin fall below a safe ratio due to price fluctuations, the borrower is obliged to top up within hours. Otherwise, the Bitcoin collateral can be automatically liquidated to repay the loan.

Bitcoin collateral is deposited with a licenced, insured custodian, and typically held securely in an offline cold wallet.

As a MAS-regulated fund manager that complies with Singapore’s strict practices, Fintonia Group uses best-in-class risk management techniques in our institutional-grade funds.

These funds, designed especially for professional investors, help manage the security, legal, and financial risks around cryptocurrency investing. That’s how we can deliver high but consistent yields within the fast-growing crypto ecosystem, all without compromising the integrity of your investment.

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Malaysia-based integrated automotive e-commerce platform Carsome announced that it has acquired digital automotive content platforms WapCar and AutoFun from Tang Internet Limited and its subsidiaries.

Following the completion of the acquisition, Carsome aims to set up WapCar AutoFun Sdn Bhd (WapCar) as a fully-owned subsidiary of the group in Malaysia.

In a press statement, Carsome Co-founder and Group CEO Eric Cheng said that the partnership will enable Carsome to capture and serve customers from their early stage of car exploration and bring a more engaging and fun experience to the car transaction and ownership journey.

“We are thrilled to announce the partnership with WapCar and a team with seasoned expertise in the content space. We believe our collaboration through content, technology and data will augment our ability to bring trust, transparency and choice to customers together,” he stated.

This acquisition is the latest that the company has announced in recent months, following its acquisition of the various automotive businesses in Southeast Asia. Prior to this, it acquired a majority stake in CarTimes Automobile in Singapore and completed the acquisition of listing and content automotive platform iCar Asia.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Carsome said to have filed for US IPO; a US$10M fund for women-led Indonesian startups

Prior to the acquisition, WapCar had established its first flagship brands WapCar and AutoFun in 2019. It provides a full range of content which covers car exploration, transaction, and ownership experiences that aim to assist customers and car enthusiasts in their journey. The platform produces, manages, and distributes both Professionally Generated Content (PGC) and User Generated Content (UGC).

In 2021, the platform said that it has distributed on average more than 1,400 article write-ups and 100 videos on a monthly basis across YouTube and TikTok channels, which attract millions of customers across the region. As of last quarter of 2021, WapCar had become one of most visited auto content platforms with over 6 million average Monthly Active Users (MAU).

It operates a number of automotive content websites and social media channels across Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Vietnam.

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Image Credit: Carsome

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Singapore-based venture capital firm Resolution Ventures announced that it has made the first close of its US$20 million Southeast Asia-focused fintech fund Resolution Fintech Fund I.

Aiming to invest in around 25 companies, the firm seeks fintech startups that are building solutions that have local, regional, and international applications. It will invest in the pre-seed and seed stages of the company’s journey.

The fund is backed by an international community of fintech-interested institutions, family offices, experienced finance executives, and successful entrepreneurs.

“Resolution builds atop the top quartile track record of Managing Partner Sam Gibb and Blauwpark Investments, a proprietary fintech fund managed by family office Blauwpark Partners. The Fund benefits from the experience of its partners and Blauwpark Partner’s network across the Fintech sector. Early stage fintech companies and their founders benefit not just from capital and guidance, but also the relationships and infrastructure of an institutional asset management firm,” the firm wrote in a press statement.

In an email to e27, Gibb explains that the firm is looking for humble and teachable founders that are going after a large problem that addresses financial inclusion and mobility in the region.

Also Read: Understanding the traction metrics that investors are looking for in an early stage startup

He also wrote that the firm is open to investing in companies that are working in the Web3 space.

“… There are a lot of applications for Web3 rails to be able to better facilitate the financial infrastructure. We’re very interested in speaking to any companies that are building solutions that have a fintech front-end and Web3 back-end to leverage emerging technologies,” Gibb said.

“The incumbent banking system is built on decades-old technology and is largely a rubber band ball of archaic solutions tied together. There are better alternatives available and we’re keen to partner with the companies that are exploring the leading edge of innovation that could increase financial inclusion and mobility in the region,” he continued.

From this fund, the firm has made investments in Pakistan’s Oraan (a female-led Rotating Savings and Credit Association platform that aims to contribute to greater financial inclusion among women), Stemly (a working capital and inventory management platform that aims to optimise inventory levels and improving working capital management), Dropee (an e-invoicing and ordering platform for FMCG goods that aims to enable easy credit for retailers, connecting micro and SME businesses to distributors and wholesalers), and Vietnam’s Gimo (an earned wage access platform that recently completed YCombinator, aiming to disrupt the predatory market for pay-day loans and improving financial access).

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Ready to meet new startups to invest in? We have more than hundreds of startups ready to connect with potential investors on our platform. Create or claim your Investor profile today and turn on e27 Connect to receive requests and fundraising information from them.

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COVID-19 sent the world into various levels of social lockdowns and pushed many healthcare systems to their breaking point. Yet the pandemic created new opportunities in telehealth/telemedicine, an area already growing pre-pandemic.

For Southeast Asia, telehealth’s emergence may have been a pandemic-induced blessing.

Telehealth is no longer just about video and phone consultations with doctors. It’s expanding into areas such as screening, coaching, and remote monitoring. Some emerging players are also accommodating multiple nations and languages, an impressive potentially lucrative feat.

Southeast Asia’s digital-forward countries are offering case examples to which the world should be paying attention.

What is telehealth/telemedicine?

Telehealth is the delivery of healthcare services using information and communication technology (ICT), where patients and providers do not meet in person.

Telehealth broadly covers a wide variety of healthcare services such as telemedicine, mobile health, telenursing, and telepharmacy. It let medical professionals provide diagnosis, treatment, and prevention via a PC or mobile device.

It’s an especially potent tool for managing a highly contagious virus like COVID-19, as patients and medical providers can communicate at safe distances. Especially in the earlier stages when every doctor, nurse, and staff member was under continual duress, telehealth helped reduce infections among indispensable personnel.

How COVID-19 advanced telehealth in Southeast Asia

The pandemic pushed people toward “digital self-care,” using mobile messaging apps, chatbots, call centres, helpdesks, and websites to fulfil health-related needs at a safe distance. In Southeast Asia, with its young population and widespread mobile penetration, this wasn’t so alien.

“Social distancing” became a standard and telehealth was an ideal fit. Telehealth allows people to receive medical care without venturing into congested healthcare facilities. And it can reach people in remote areas where health services are limited.

When COVID-19 hit, some Southeast Asian governments worked with the private sector to promote telehealth use.

The Indonesian government, for instance, partnered with digital health platform Alodokter on free teleconsultation for COVID-19 patients. Telehealth platforms were also used for self-assessments, tracking, and contact tracing.

Also Read: Meet the 6 Indonesian healthtech startups of SEHAT Impact Accelerator

Telehealth use in Southeast Asia has varied depending on factors such as policy and governmental involvement. One study found that no Southeast Asian countries have specific laws on telemedicine.

Medical councils in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam tend to still focus more on healthcare professionals rather than telemedicine services and platforms. In Indonesia and Vietnam, only registered health facilities can offer telehealth services.

Another study found that during the first few months of the pandemic’s initial hit, the number of telehealth platform users grew four times. It reported that 94 per cent of Southeast Asian respondents intend to continue using digital services post-COVID-19.

Commercial interest in telehealth has certainly risen. While many Southeast Asian countries have below the global average number of physicians per (apart from Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore), demand will continue to rise.

A McKinsey report estimated that telemedicine and remote monitoring would account for US$37.1 billion of the projected US$100.4 billion Asian digital health market by 2025.

Key players in telehealth/telemedicine

HonestDocs (Indonesia and Thailand)

HonestDocs, with Indonesian and Thai platforms, targets two of ASEAN’s most future-forward populations. Users can chat with a pharmacist for free or post a question on the Q&A forum to get replies from licensed medical practitioners for as low as 200 baht (about US$6). The HonestDocs app also links to HDmall, with 12,000+ health, dental, beauty, and even pet services.

Doctor Anywhere (Singapore)

Doctor Anywhere offers a platform with 500+ general practitioner clinics, 15+ diagnostic centres, 300+ specialist clinics, and 100+ dental, traditional Chinese medicine, and physio clinics. Video consultation with a general practitioner on the platform costs SGD$20 (US$15).

Doctor Anywhere’s home-based supervised self-swab COVID-19 antigen rapid tests via video consultation were especially useful for travellers using the Vaccinated Travel Lane. As the need for such tests declines, this robust platform can easily refocus or replace the service.

Alodokter  (Indonesia)

Alodokter had more than 32 million visitors since Indonesia’s first confirmed COVID-19 case in March 2020, based on a report. It now has the most registered hospitals with the largest coverage of provinces in Indonesia. The platform’s directory of doctors includes their personal details.

Alodokter offers Aloproteksi, which gives users unlimited 24-hour chat with specialist doctors for as low as 39,000 rupiahs (US$2.75) per month.

DoctorOnCall (Malaysia)

The Ministry of Health of Malaysia partnered with DoctorOnCall to provide free access to consultations on COVID-19. In multicultural Malaysia, the platform is available in English, Malay, and Chinese.

It provides consultation across 50 specialities and doctor consultation is priced at 19.99 ringgit (US$4.75) per consultation. The platform also offers cashback for every purchase and referral, a common B2C tactic familiar to mobile users.

VieVie Healthcare (Vietnam)

The VieVie telehealth platform treats more routine medical conditions such as colds, allergies, pregnancy care, and skincare. It offers free doctor consultations via chat or phone, but accessing certain doctors requires payment or a premium upgrade. Users can receive a quick response from a licensed doctor within 10 minutes.

Also Read: What telemedicine and Health Tech holds across SEA amidst COVID-19

Challenges for telehealth moving forward in Southeast Asia

A WHO report shows the challenges to telehealth adoption, mainly categorized into four groups.

Policy

A standardised framework and repayment policies are still needed to regulate telehealth platforms. Recent policy changes during COVID-19 have reduced barriers to telehealth, but data privacy and personal information are still major concerns for users. Countries like Thailand and Malaysia have general data protection legislation that protects personal data.

A uniform repayment scheme is also needed to facilitate insurers to reimburse telehealth services fairly within and across countries. Countries including Malaysia and Thailand provide free telehealth services. Singapore has a national insurance scheme that includes telehealth rebates and subsidies.

Organisation

The lack of trained staff, sustainable funding, insufficient technical infrastructure, and technological barriers are problems that need addressing. During COVID-19, Southeast Asian governments worked with the private sector to promote digital health services that addressed the pandemic. The Ministry of Health of Malaysia, for instance, worked with DoctorOnCall to provide free consultations.

Technology

Telehealth is centred on ICT, making technology an ongoing focus. Dispersed archipelago countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines pose geographical challenges for installing ICT infrastructure.

The lack of ICT infrastructure in most Southeast Asian countries can be overcome by using existing resources and free mobile health apps with affordable consultation fees. Public hospitals in Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Vietnam, and Thailand have in some cases provided free telehealth services.

Individuals

Scepticism still exists on telehealth’s true usefulness. A study in Indonesia showed that Indonesian users were more likely to use telehealth if thought the technology was easy to use. For some users, cultural and language differences are a challenge. However, some platforms, such as DoctorOnCall, meet the challenge with multiple languages.

Southeast Asia is a global example of telehealth

Southeast Asia’s unique combination of a dynamic, young, future-forward population and broad multicultural diversity push it to innovate technologically and cross-culturally. Its telehealth advances offer some potentially compelling best practices for the rest of the world.

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Helene Li, CEO & Co-Founder, GoImpact

In April, GoImpact announced that it has raised a Series A funding round that brought its valuation to US$22 million. Tripling its last funding round, this investment included investors such as Oriental Watch Holdings Limited and a leading Hong Kong-based private investor.

For the Singapore-based company, this investment will enable them to further expand its global footprint, as said by co-founder Andy Ann in a press statement. “The funds we raised will allow an expansion of the team in Hong Kong and around the world. In the future, GoImpact will continue to seek partnerships with leading institutions and organisations to further our influence on a global scale.”

GoImpact is a platform that aims to drive the sustainability agenda forward through three key pillars: education (GoLearn), structured advocacy (GoNetwork), and a deal flow platform for sustainable investments (GoInvest). It was founded in 2020 by finance industry veterans Helene Li and Clarence T’ao as well as serial entrepreneur Andy Ann to bridge the gap between knowledge and investment opportunities through these three activities.

Investing in companies that aim to tackle the challenges brought by climate change has become increasingly popular nowadays, and GoImpact believes in the importance of making informed decisions  –the reason why education is the starting point of its user journey.

Its GoLearn platform offers lessons that are structured to align with the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in five key areas. Within the last two years, it has established an education network consisting of top ESG and industry experts, prominent higher-education institutions, industry bodies, financial institutions, large corporations, and governmental agencies across the Asia Pacific and the Middle East. It has also participated in and co-hosted industry seminars to drive ESG adoption.

Also Read: COVID-19, the environment, and the tech ecosystem: what opportunity is available out there for us?

To understand more about what GoImpact offers, e27 speaks to CEO & co-founder Helene Li about the company, its mission, and their big plans for the future. Here is an edited excerpt of the interview.

Having had years of experience in the sustainable finance and ESG space, what inspired you to start this platform?

I was a management consultant turned banker. Throughout my banking career, whether with JP Morgan or with BNP Paribas, I have witnessed firsthand the momentum of sustainable finance, and how the capital owners … are actually demanding more and more of their assets be looped into this area, to create a better change, and to be better aligned with their own set of values.

About two years ago, just before COVID-19, we founded GoImpact with a very specific aim: to mainstream the agenda, and to fast-track the acceleration and mainstreaming of the agenda. So it doesn’t get buried in all kinds of talks about philanthropy or NGO activities, [because] it is a mainstream business and finance agenda. Both my co-founders and I are very much in the mainstream finance industry; we have seen firsthand how the momentum has shifted, and in some ways, the gaps.

So, the problem that we are trying to solve is to clear the roadblocks to mainstream and accelerate the agenda. And I think education is at the heart of these roadblocks. Because if you are less informed, or ill-informed about something, you are not likely to invest very much into that. So, having a good basic, fundamental understanding of what sustainable finance is all about, and what it can do for the companies, is important.

Like, here in Singapore, the SG Green Plan 2030 is very much something that Singapore corporations are subscribing to, and all the ministries are aligning to drive that. And it’s an important agenda. But do people have a thorough understanding of all that, and what it means to them as a citizen, as a company, as an investor? Maybe not. Maybe there are still gaps to be resolved. And that’s exactly the areas that we are playing at.

How does the pandemic impact the public’s interest in ESG investing?

Very much so. The silver linings of the pandemic are that it serves two things. First, as a disruptor, it exposes all the problems and cracks that we have in the system, be it in the supply chain, our over-reliance on certain ways to generate energy or food supply.

The second thing is that it is also an accelerator. It has put sustainability and sustainable finance on the front and centre stage.

If you are already investing in this sector, chances are you will try to weigh in more with your assets in the way you would construct your portfolio. So, yes, it has been an accelerator and a disruptor.

Also Read: How consumers are prioritising sustainability beyond the single lens of eco-friendly products

So what are the advantages of learning about sustainable finance through GoLearn compared to other sources?

I think it’s very important to note that we are playing very hard at a specific area that moves the needle significantly. So we don’t play at, for example, undergrad programmes or secondary school programmes, because we want to equip and educate the executives. People who are in a position to make decisions for the company, who are in a position to make investment decisions.

What we really want is to translate many of the talks into action. That’s far easier said than done … because we want to move the needle and play at executive education, all our programmes are very much expert-led and case-based. Executives learn through use cases. What has been done? What are some of the examples that are relevant and relatable to their specific industries?

In Singapore, we partner with the Singapore Management University which is the main institution that drives green finance learning in the country. SG FC –the Singapore Green Finance Centre– which is funded by MAS is being housed there. Our programmes at SMU have met with a lot of success. We were fully booked until the first half of 2023.

Who are your target audiences? And what is your user acquisition strategy?

We do a complete B2B2C. We partner with platforms such as the SMU Gear which has already a captive audience looking for programmes like that.

One of our major aims is to accelerate the agenda; we are all running against time to drive towards net-zero or to make the world a slightly more sustainable place. Not just for our generation, but for the next generation to come.

This is why being able to drive the business model faster, for us, is more important than just optimising on the profit. I see that very much as our business model. And that has paid off very well. It has also attracted the eyes of a lot of investors.

So, what will be the company’s big agenda for this year?

This year … we aim to deepen and consolidate [our existing partnership] while also trying to move towards a more asynchronous delivery [of learning]. This will actually be the real accelerator.

In terms of our mission, and in terms of the growth of the company, the way we see it is that … our solution is meeting a very good timing. It’s a very practical and comprehensive … because if you look at it, sustainability and sustainable finance are actually very broad. It is not just about carbon. It is not just about water. It is much broader than that.

I think the breadth as well as the depth of our offering really echoes and hits a sweet spot in the market. And we have been enjoying the results of that. We intend to consolidate that and move towards the asynchronous to grow even faster and to deliver a better return for our A round investors … as we are poised to ticket forward to another round maybe later in the year.

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Image Credit: GoImpact

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