Comparing yourself to others is dangerous in many ways, so in this episode we talk about:
If you don’t see the Apple player above, click on a link below to listen directly!
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This article was first published on We Live To Build.
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Gone were the days where deliveries took days to fulfil. Today, speed is of the essence with advancements in technology to streamline delivery processes.
Enter quick commerce (q-commerce), the third evolution of e-commerce.
Delivery giant foodpanda is one of the first in Southeast Asia to implement q-commerce, which aims to reduce delivery times to minutes, and the brains behind this is CTO Benjamin Mann.
In the first part of the interview with e27, Mann shares his experience in dealing with the multiple challenges thrown at his tech teams during the pandemic, how he sets them up to deal with them and the importance of balancing customer feedback and data.
Edited excerpts:
The evolution of q-commerce (Photo credits: Delivery Hero)
Food delivery platforms are incredibly tech-intensive and a lot goes on behind the scenes — from placing your order to receiving it. If you look at the volume of steps that need to be taken in perfect sequence for someone to get food delivered within 25 to 30 minutes on a global scale as we operate, it’s a beautiful and elegant puzzle.
What we did prior to the pandemic which we are doing more now is that we’re constantly running many A/B tests to aid us in adjusting our tech solutions to the constant micro-changes in user behaviour.
Also Read: Asia’s food delivery potential is set to unlock post-COVID-19. Here’s why
With the volatile situation of the pandemic, it often requires us to make micro-adjustments in a particular vertical, framework or country. So we run numerous tests and evaluate the metrics that come out of it.
We are also trying to see how we can take an idea which was successful in country A to implement in country B by conducting small controlled tests on the local population.
The pandemic has certainly thrown us numerous curveballs. For example, more customers are preferring contactless payments due to hygiene concerns triggered by the pandemic. Therefore, COVID-19 has certainly accelerated trends like that and we were forced to quickly adapt.
Other issues involved are the onboarding of merchants onto our platform virtually and ensuring this remained a smooth process for them. We have dedicated a whole team to work on making the process as seamless as possible by exploring how we can introduce certain features to reduce the steps required.
Our riders were also facing issues. Overnight, places were getting shut down and curfews were imposed. The remote working trend has resulted in certain areas having a higher demand now as they have become residential areas. On the other hand, office areas are seeing a drop in demand.
Food delivery is a complex business consisting of many moving parts that are often out of your control. For example, if it’s raining in Singapore or there is a parade somewhere in Thailand that blocks all the roads of the restaurant that you want to order, how does the rider make an on-time delivery in such circumstances?
Therefore, even before the pandemic, we had operated in a volatile and constantly changing environment. What the pandemic has done is that it has put some of these changes on steroids!
Also Read: It is all about survival of the most adaptable, says PatSnap’s Jeffrey Tiong
As a team, we are set out in a way that allows us to quickly move people from one focus area to another. From a technical point of view, what we needed to do is quickly adjust certain parts of our systems to deal with the increased demand.
For example, you would be seeing things like high spikes in demand right before the curfew starts because everyone wants their food delivered before riders can no longer go out. I often refer to such spikes as “micro-seasonality”, which had existed before the pandemic however they are greater now.
It required our engineering and product teams to rethink how can we scale up and down quickly to cope with the increase and fall in demand. It has also forced us to fundamentally rethink how we are building our architecture.
Fortunately, we didn’t have to overhaul our architecture overnight or do rewrites as we were fast to adapt to the changing demands as our teams operate in a relatively autonomous way and changes are responded to quickly.
Our engineering and product teams have the liberty to erase their road map and prioritise what they feel is more important. This way, we can stay agile and make small changes and adapt instead making delayed decisions that would have necessitated an overhaul of our systems.
At foodpanda, we are extremely obsessed with metrics. We have dozens of dashboards in real-time or near real-time where teams can see the impact of smallest changes to the customer behaviour of a certain segment.
Therefore, customers sharing their feedback manually through our channels means we are too late in identifying their concerns. Instead, we should observe these metrics and identify changes in customer behaviour and decide on how we should respond.
If the metrics are moving in the right direction, it signals that we are doing the right thing and should continue. However, if it’s moving in the wrong direction, that’s when we need to analyse the data, run tests within control groups to identify the root cause of the issue and resolve it.
Also Read: Treat your customers like humans, not data
We try to focus more on data instead of relying purely on customer feedback. Feedback remains important because it does come from areas where we don’t have the right metrics to measure them. This is the space where we would value feedback instead.
In areas where we have the right metrics, we want to know that something is negatively impacting the customer before they tell us.
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Image Credit: Foodpanda
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Info Edge Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund backed by India online classifieds company Info Edge, has raised US$50 million from Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings.
This brings the total corpus of Info Edge Ventures to US$100 million, according to a press release.
Also Read: Scalability lessons from Indian tech startups for enterprises in SEA
Launched in January 2020, Info Edge Ventures focuses on India-based early-stage tech startups with the potential to scale into a large and sustainable business.
Since its establishment, the fund has already invested in nine startups in e-commerce, digital media, fintech, edutech, healthtech, gaming and SaaS. These companies are DotPe, Bulbul, Qyuki, Fanclash, Truemeds, Rusk Media, FirstHive, Polymerize, and Udayy.
“With Info Edge and Temasek as limited partners (LPs), we have patient capital and a global network to back tech entrepreneurs who are building innovative businesses. We look forward to leveraging their decades of experience in building large technology companies that have fundamentally changed industries,” said Kitty Agarwal, Partner at Info Edge Ventures.
“This decade shall be an exciting time for startups as the pace of technology adoption increases dramatically in India,” added Amit Behl, Partner at Info Edge Ventures.
In addition to backing market leaders like Zomato and Policybazaar as the first institutional investor, the Info Edge Ventures team in its earlier avatar had also invested in category companies, including Shopkirana, Bijnis, Shipsy, Ustraa, Gramophone, and Adda247.
Also Read: How can India leapfrog into the league of the most innovative countries within the next five years?
This follows recent investments by Temasek in China foodtech fund Bits x Bites and EV Growth’s US$250 million Indonesian-focused fund last year.
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Image Credit: Unsplash
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gojek announced today that it has invested in Bank Jago, an Indonesia-listed tech-based bank, as part of a strategic partnership that aims to accelerate financial inclusion in Indonesia.
As per the deal, gojek will hold 22 per cent of Bank Jago. Other details of the transaction were not disclosed.
The deal however doesn’t alter the control of Jago, as Metamorfosis Ekosistem Indonesia and Wealth Track Technology (WTT) will continue to hold a combined 51 per cent in the tech giant.
“Our partnership with Jago marks the latest milestone in our drive to reduce daily friction for users and improve their lives through technology. It is a key part of our strategy and will underpin the growth and sustainability of our business in the long term. Jago’s tech-based banking solutions will supercharge gojek’s ecosystem offerings and facilitate access to banking services for the mass market, thereby supporting our common vision to accelerate financial inclusion in Indonesia,” said gojek co-CEO Andre Soelistyo.
Also Read: gojek, Warung Pintar investors buy a local bank. This is why we are excited
Founded in 1992, PT Bank Jago Tbk — previously known as PT Bank Artos Indonesia — is an innovative technology-based bank that delivers digital banking services for the SME, consumer and mass-market segments in Indonesia.
In 2019, Bank Jago made headlines when gojek investor Patrick Walujo invested in the bank through WTT. The investment has led to speculation that gojek was going to invest in Bank Jago, which was then denied by the company.
“We believe that this strategic collaboration between a tech-based bank like Bank Jago and a super app like gojek is the first of its kind in Indonesia and Southeast Asia and represents a new way to spur growth in digital economies. As a bank designed with an open API, we will go on to work with multiple digital ecosystems to reach a wider audience and drive our aspiration to enhance the finances of millions of people through digital financial solutions,” said Bank Jago’s President Director, Kharim Siregar.
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Image Credit: gojek
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Philippine Startup Week (PHSW20) has announced the winners of its second edition of the competition, which was held from November 23-27.
One of the country’s largest startup conferences, PHSW20 was jointly organised by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), Department of Science and Technology (DOST), Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), QBO Innovation Hub, and various private organisations and community partners.
Taking on the theme of “Filipino Startups Powering Up the New Normal”, the event showcased the nation’s thriving startups and focussed on stakeholders contributing to the growth of the local startup ecosystem.
Also Read: Why it is important for tech companies to expand outside metro cities in the Philippines
The five-day virtual conference was held via an online platform that aimed to allow attendees to learn, interact, network, and collaborate remotely.
PHSW20 featured three competitions: ‘ARISE Startup Pitch Competition’, ‘MICROSOFT: Emerge X Regional Pitching Competition’, and ‘Seedstars Manila Competition’.
Below is the list of the winners of each of the competitions:
A national pitching competition organised by StartUp Village, the event aims to fund, nurture, and support innovative and groundbreaking startups that possess promising ideas that are both bankable and sustainable.
ARISE also aims to help level the playing field by giving each startup a chance to be discovered and showcased to a group of potential investors, partners, and clients.
The pitching competition featured a mix of startups coming from all over the Philippines while also being a platform to display the brilliance and capabilities of Filipino startups.
The winners of this completion are:
MedHyve (first place): a startup which aims to provide an interconnected platform for medical communities across ASEAN to acquire their medical needs.
NextPay (second place): an all-digital banking suite for small businesses which allows them to receive payments, manage company money, and pay their employees and suppliers in batches, all in one platform, to any bank or e-wallet.
Zagana (third place): an online platform for fresh vegetables and fruits direct from local farmers.
During PHSW20, Microsoft hosted its Highway to a 100 Unicorns programme, with the aim to discover, nurture and engage with high potential technology startups from 16 countries in APAC, to help them achieve their scaling goals in a bid to enable them to become truly global enterprises in the future.
The programme included a competition called Emerge X, where Microsoft for Startups selected the top 5-10 startups from each of the 16 countries to be onboarded for a deep year long mentorship program.
The top startups from each country also got to pitch their solution at Philippines Startup Week. Their pitches were judged by a panel of prominent VCs and investors who identified the top-3 startups in the whole region.
Four startups from Vietnam, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Singapore won the inaugural Emerge X Regional Pitching Competition in Asia Pacific.
The winners are:
Abivin (Vietnam): an AI-powered platform that optimises supply chains across multiple sectors by solving the vehicle routing problem.
Lifetrack Medical Systems (Philippines and Singapore): a cloud-based platform that provides affordable access to medical imaging in emerging markets.
Agrithmics (Sri Lanka): a cloud-based solution that enriches the agri-industry by digitizing the farm to factory supply chain and connecting farmers and buyers.
Also Read: 3 startups thriving amidst COVID-19 lockdown in the Philippines
Milky Way AI (Singapore): An AI-powered smart retail solution leveraging image recognition technology to help retailers manage shelf inventory and maximise sales.
Seedstars World featured the best startups from the Philippines to pitch online in front of an investment panel and compete to be crowned the most promising seed-stage startup of Seedstars Manila 2020.
The winning startup’ won prizes, including an opportunity to be the part of the global Seedstars Family, access to the Seedstars Regional Competition at the end of the year, and to compete for a US$500,000 in equity investment.
MedHyve was adjudged the winner and is set to represent the Philippines during the regional round, competing against other startups from Asia to get into the finals.
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Image Credit: PHSW20
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We have come to the last (for now) batch of new investors to join e27 Pro Connect, and we’re excited for you to start connecting with them for fundraising opportunities, mentorship, or advice.
There were four more announcements before this (see them here, here, here, and here). Go and check out who these investors are and start connecting!
Access Ventures
Stages: Seed, Series A
Verticals: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Big Data, Finance, Platform, Virtual Reality
Investment range: Not specified
Straight from Access Ventures: Access Ventures is a venture capital firm focusing on early-stage tech companies in Vietnam, Indonesia, and South Korea. We provide strategic expertise and access to our unique network of executives and technology professionals.
Connect with them
Arthit Capital
Stages: Seed, Pre-Series A/Bridge, Series A, Series B
Verticals: Agritech, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Cleantech, Education, Food & Beverage, Healthtech, Internet of Things, Virtual Reality
Investment range: USD 100K to USD 1M
Straight from Arthit Capital: At Arthit Capital, we understand that private equity is a long-term play. Our values guide our interactions with our stakeholders: investors, portfolio companies, employees, vendors and our local communities. The investment objective is to provide superior, long-term capital growth on its investments by investing globally. We are sector agnostic with a focus to deploy strategies for growth as well as special situation investment.
Connect with them
Investigate VC
Stages: Series A
Verticals: All
Investment range: USD 50K to USD 500K
Straight from Investigate VC: As of July 2020 we have invested in 12 startups which we proudly call our portfolio companies. They all have the Network Orchestrator business model in common. A unique investment theme focusing on a particular business model – Network Orchestrators. Investigate’s investment theme makes us find the companies that are positioned to take the greatest advantage of the possibilities the world of connectivity and big data allows. We also help our investees to develop according to this business model.
Connect with them
Also read: MDEC spearheads alternative funding to help Malaysian startups thrive during the COVID-19 pandemic
Growth & Innovation Lab
Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, and above
Verticals: Enterprise Solution, Biotech, Blockchain, ICT, Education, Energy, Healthtech, Medtech, and various other
Investment range: USD 10K to USD 5M
Straight from Growth & Innovation Lab: G&I LAB is a model of innovative consultancy offering a comprehensive solution to entrepreneurs and companies in the early phase for access to strategic sources of capitalization. The fund provides an exclusive “local area lab” (idea’s fund supplier), looking for distinctive innovative & potentially profitable projects, due to a self-developed methodology that identifies & quantifies potential areas of growth & innovation.
Connect with them
PICUS Capital
Stages: Seed, Series A
Verticals: Architecture & Constructions, Cleantech, Energy, Healthtech, Human Resources, Real Estate, and various other
Investment range: Not specified
Straight from PICUS Capital: Enabling entrepreneurs to reimagine the way we live and work. Picus works together with promising technology companies challenging the status quo and shaping tomorrow. We follow a very long-term investment approach investing significant amounts throughout the lifecycle of the companies.
Connect with them
Ripples Asia Venture
Stages: Seed
Verticals: E-Commerce
Investment range: USD 50K to USD 200K
Straight from Ripples Asia Venture: Ripples is an independent B2B online marketplace focusing on home entertainment software, peripherals, gadgets, and toys.
Ripples’ web-based information system empowers buyers and sellers to communicate and transact efficiently in the gaming industry.
Connect with them
Tin Men Capital
Stages: Seed, Series A
Verticals: Enterprise Solution
Investment range: Not specified
Straight from Tin Men Capital: We are a family & friends office based in Bangkok, looking at early stage investments. We will invest, advise and connect promising startups, particularly those involved in Thailand & South East Asia.
Connect with them
WeHealth Digital Medicine
Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C, and above
Verticals: Healthtech, Medtech
Investment range: Not specified
Straight from WeHealth Digital Medicine: WeHealth Digital Medicine is the eHealth department of the Servier Group. In an open innovative approach, we identify the most promising start-ups in e-health to co-develop solutions. In this way, WeHealth Digital Medicine contributes to the creation of an ecosystem of partners to facilitate and accelerate the development, industrialization and distribution of innovations and to render them accessible to the greatest number.
Connect with them
XCEL NEXT VC
Stages: Angel/Pre-Seed, Seed, Pre-Series A/Bridge, Series A
Verticals: All
Investment range: Not specified
Straight from XCEL NEXT VC: XCEL NEXT is an accelerator venture fund based in Taiwan, focusing on pan-Asia digitalisation and digital transformation technologies and services in the New Normal. The X-Tech Fund will identify and invest in these technology-driven opportunities that have the “X-Factor” to tackle the challenges in the New Normal, and to make meaningful social impacts for the public good.
Connect with them
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Photo by Anna Shvets from Pexels
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Image taken from Unsplash
Singapore’s Decacorn Capital announced today it has joined the US$1.9 million seed round of Estonian Artificial Intelligence startup Fyma.
This marks the cross-border VC firm’s second investment in Europe this year.
Other investors who participated in the round include Estonia’s Change Ventures, Lemonade Stand, Superangel and UK based 7 Percent.
Fyma will use the fresh money for hiring as well as to fund its latest pilot programme that it says will help the company evaluate where it can make the biggest impact.
Also Read: Singapore’s cross-border VC firm Decacorn Capital enters Europe with an investment in Estonian startup GridIO
Started in 2019, Fyma aims to enable businesses and institutions to make better strategic planning decisions by turning conventional cameras into smart sensors. The company extracts and analyses valuable data from thousands of hours of footage, enabling businesses to understand and contextualise the patterns in which individuals (like shoppers) shop and objects (like vehicles and machinery) move.
Use cases include finding and correcting floor plan flaws in retail shops, reducing traffic in congested areas and optimising the work of private parking lots
Fyma’s solution is asset light. It does not require clients to install any proprietary hardware in the exisiting CCTV network. Its computer vision algorithms can make sense of footage recorded by both new and legacy outdoor and CCTV cameras.
What distinguishes Fyma from many other computer vision startups is its privacy-by-design approach, which anonymises facial recognition.
Some of its successful pilot projects include helping the Dubai Road and Transport Authority gather insights on the movement of pedestrians and other traffic participants and assisting the shopping centre in the Baltics understand how COVID-19 related restrictions impact footfall.
Debneel Mukherjee, Founder and Managing Partner at Decacorn Capital, said: “We liked Fyma’s founding team and their idea of democratising CCTV footage for commercial and business analytics by mining big data using AI and Computer Vision.”
Prior to this, Decacorn has joined Chinese fintech startup Qupital’s Series A+ round, which demonstrated its robust cross-border curation capabilities and ambitions of growing its global footprint.
Decacorn Capital’s other recent investments include Estonian energy tech startup GridIO, Israeli cybersecurity startup BioCatch, Perception Point and Sixgill.
The VC firm has also invested across geographies such as Israel, India, the US, China and Estonia, and is known as an investor in Snap that had exited through IPO.
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Image Credit: Nathy dog
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The nafas app
In 2018, Piotr Jakubowski noticed that the air quality in his birth city Jakarta had deteriorated over years. This prompted him to conduct a research to understand the gravity of the problem, and the findings were just astonishing.
“Air pollution causes about 8.8 million deaths a year, US$2.9 trillion in economic loss and 1.8 billion days of sick leave,” said Jakubowski, who previously held the role of CMO gojek. “This is a staggering loss of health and productivity.”
So, in 2019, Jakubowski reconnected with his school friend and founder of wearables startup Zulu, Nathan Roestandy, who also shared the same concern about impact of the deteriorating air quality in the archipelago and beyond.
“Together we decided to create an ecosystem and raise awareness, and nafas was born,” he said.
nafas — which means “breath” in Bahasa — was launched in September 2020 with the vision of bringing air quality data and knowledge to the people of Jabodetabek (the Jakarta metropolitan area).
The key component of the nafas ecosystem is a network of about 65 on-ground air quality sensors, which have been deployed in areas such as Jakarta, Tangerang, South Tangerang, Bekasi, Bogor and Depok.
The sensors were developed by Airly, an EU startup whose outdoor sensors were listed as one of the best by Airparif, a French organisation focused on air quality topics, in 2019.
The sensors — which have collected over 10 million data points over the last six months — send the data to the nafas mobile app which displays and updates air quality data every 20 minutes.
The app also allows users to save their most important locations in one place, so they can take a quick glance at the current status of air quality in their location before conducting any outdoor activity.
Users can also set alerts to receive air quality notifications.
It also has ‘Air Quality 101’, a learning material which is available in both English and Bahasa Indonesia.
nafas co-founder and Chief Growth Officer Piotr Jakubowski
According to Jakubowski, there are many popular myths around air pollution and air quality. These include misconceptions such as ‘I live in an area with a lot of trees, so I’m safe’, ‘the worst pollution is during peak traffic on the roads’, and ‘there are no cars where I live, so it can’t be polluted!’
“Air pollution is a problem you generally can’t see; it is an ‘invisible killer‘,” he warned. “By bringing outdoor air quality data to your neighbourhood, we ensure that you are aware that living in a green, residential part of the city doesn’t mean you are not affected.”
Of the top 10 capital cities in the world with the worst air pollution, eight are in Asia which have a combined population of over 100 million. This population breathes air that is 3-5x above the limits set by the World Health Organisation.
Jakarta is on this list, where lifetime exposure to the 2019 air quality levels corresponded to a predicted 4.8 years reduction in life expectancy, according to the Air Quality Life Index published by the University of Chicago.
(In 2010 alone, there was over US$4 billion in economic loss in the city due to the over 5.5 million cases of air pollution-related illnesses.)
Recently, Berkley Earth developed a scale comparing air pollution levels to the number of cigarettes smoked. According to this scale, just breathing outdoor air in Jakarta in August 2020 was the equivalent of smoking 84 cigarettes.
“Contrary to popular belief, our data show that the worst time for air quality in Greater Jakarta is between 4 am to 9 am,” he shared. “This is when many of the residents do their morning exercise.
“Since heavy exercise increases breathing volume, many people who thought they were getting healthy when exercising in the morning were actually putting themselves at risk by conducting outdoor activities when air pollution was high,” he warned.
nafas has also created a report, called ‘Does exercising in Jakarta’s air pollution impact our health?’. Based on the findings of the report, the startup has added a special feature on the app for athletes, which alerts them to reduce exercise when air quality levels increase risks of health issues.
“In highly polluted cities like Jakarta, prolonged exposure to bad outdoor air quality increases health risk. This is why we have added the ‘Trainer’ feature to the app,” he said.
“In Greater Jakarta, we are focusing on building communities of people who, by learning about the air quality problem, become advocates of our brand,” he remarked.
Also Read: This IoT device monitors air quality using laser tech that counts each individual air particle
The app (available on iOS and Android) is and will always be free for consumers, so more people understand the gravity of the problem.
On being asked about monetisation, Jakubowski revealed: “The possibilities for monetisation are rooted in data — there is simply no other source of on-ground air quality data at the density and size of nafas. Our mission is to grow nafas into the most robust and most respected air quality data source.”
Jakubowski, who headed the marketing department at gojek from January 2016 to August 2018, said that his more-than-two-years of experience at the tech giant has ingrained two things in his mind: the importance of prioritisation and the power of communities.
“For any business”, he opined, “it is incredibly important at the beginning to narrow down and really understand your core users; those who gain the highest value from your product/service and who have the highest potential of becoming evangelists. By focusing and prioritising on this beachhead, you have the opportunity to build an incredibly strong community that will be key to driving future growth.”
Bootstrapped until recently, nafas now has several angels backing it.
“Air pollution is not just a climate problem, it is an enormous health problem. We are glad to have conversations with VC firms that are looking to contribute in this global battle,” Jakubowski signed off.
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Image Credit: nafas
The post This app from gojek’s ex-CMO notifies you about the quality of air in your location every 20 minutes appeared first on e27.
Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel-backed Bridgetown SPAC weighs up to US$10B Tokopedia deal; Deliberations are at a preliminary stage and Bridgetown could still look at other potential targets; Tokopedia is Indonesia’s second most valuable startup, just behind ride-hailing and delivery giant gojek. More here
Tokopedia engages Morgan Stanley and Citi as plans to go public accelerate; Though a sale to a SPAC represents a faster route to a US listing, its CEO William Tanuwijaya had previously expressed his desire for a dual listing to ensure local employees and Indonesians can own shares of the firm. More here
How to pick an investor in good or bad times; It’s not about simply choosing an investor — you are hiring your next boss; You don’t want an investor who is checked out, but too much focus isn’t good, either; And, you don’t want an investor who is completely agreeable since your best outcome will be driven by a constructively demanding advisor. More here
Samsung backs Funding Societies to drive its vision of financial inclusion for SMEs in SEA; As of November 2020, the fintech startup claims to have given out more than US$1.4B across 3.3M loans; Funding Societies and Samsung Ventures, along with Samsung Life Insurance, will create a strategic alliance to introduce prospective partnerships and collaborations. More here
Ant Group’s chairman breaks silence after halt in largest global IPO; Eric Jing Jing Alipay has been managing the aftermath of the failed listing plan during the past month, under the guidance of the regulators; He promised to make Ant Group more transparent and predictable to the public. More here
Singapore healthtech firm Speedoc raises US$5M Series A led by Vertex; It will use the money to develop its in-house Chronic Disease Home Management system, a home-based management solution for chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol; Speedoc sends doctors and nurses on house calls and provides medication delivery services. More here
Helicap partners with Credit Saison Group to provide US$10M debt financing to alternative lending platforms in SEA; The collaboration aims to create a significant impact, especially for low-income borrowers and micro-enterprises in Vietnam and Indonesia. More here
Singapore’s co-living startup Cove raises US$4.6M led by Keppel Land; It plans to expand into Vietnam and Philippines; Since its launch in 2018, Cove has expanded into Jakarta with a total of 550 rooms, and partnered with Indonesian real estate developer Lippo Group. More here
Sembrani Nusantara Fund leads Series A round for Indonesia’s D2C shoe brand Brodo; Brodo specialises in men’s fashion and merges the online and offline shopping experience with three brick-and-mortar shops in the archipelago; The startup has also developed a digital marketing platform for MSMEs, called BDD. More here
SaaS e-commerce marketing platform Epsilo raises US$2M from Surge; It will use the fresh funds to bolster its technological capabilities and further expand its footprint across Asia; It is present in 7 markets across APAC and works with over 200 brands; Its software supports more than 400 online shops. More here
Vietnamese proptech startup Homebase bags 7-figure pre-Series A round; Investors include VinaCapital, Class 5 Global, Pegasus Technology, 1982 Ventures, Antler; Homebase utilises technology to offer home buyers and investors across Vietnam and SEA customised financing options for their properties. More here
Decacorn Capital backs Estonian startup Fyma that can turn your CCTV cameras into smart sensors; Decacorn has previously invested in Chinese fintech startup Qupital, cleantech company GridIO, AI company BioCatch and data protection company Sixgill; The VC firm is also an investor in Snap. More here
App integration platform Appboxo raises US$1.1M seed funding; Investors are Founders Fund, 500 Startups, Plug and Play Ventures, Antler; Appboxo plans to add new miniapps in travel, e-commerce, finance and lifestyle industries to cover more use cases for integrations by super apps. More here
Kalpha raises six-figure funding to allow P2P exchange of knowledge, skills, experiences; Investors include Nest Tech and undisclosed angels; The company claims to have shown a positive trajectory having 70K+ app downloads, 2K+ listings and 2.5K completed sessions since its launch in Jan 2019. More here
Chris Angkasa replaces Jason Lee as Indonesian co-working startup CoHive’s new CEO; Angkasa founded Clapham Collective, one of the earliest co-working spaces in Medan; Since Clapham merged with CoHive in 2017, Angkasa has been on the company’s Board of Advisors. More here
Transformation tenet: The digital customer experience is key to ‘stickiness’; As both business and consumer reliance on technology continues to increase, being able to rapidly identify and prevent technical disruptions should form part of that plan; It will be key to maintaining customer satisfaction and ultimately driving results. More here
Edukasyon promotes CMO Grace David as CEO; She has replaced Henry Motte-Muñoz (Founder and CEO), who remains as a full-time Executive Chairman; Edukasyon.ph is a marketplace for students to search, compare and apply to higher education institutions and online courses; It is backed by Alternate Ventures, French Partners, Lorinet Foundation. More here
How can India leapfrog into the league of the most innovative countries within the next five years?; In India, it will be imperative to fund specific domains such as biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, biosecurity, digital health, and data science, where there are gaps in research capability and capacity. More here
3 reasons to rethink your payments strategy in 2021; Payments are a complex and high-touch function; There is a clear link between failed payments and negative impacts on customers, with payment failures resulting in churn 11 to 15% of the time; Every time a payment fails, you are asking a customer to re-evaluate their relationship with your brand. More here
Enabling technologies in agriculture: Outsized returns across the value chain?; AI is driving more effective and timely decisions; Computational biology is changing what we put in soils to improve yield; Automation is trying mechanisation to keep pace with the twin headwinds of a decreasing farm labor population and the increasing size and of farms. More here
Philippines’s Trade and Industry Department unveils digital mall for MSMEs; It allows MSMEs to offer their products while navigating their way to online selling and other e-commerce promotions; The newly launched online mall is a depository of some of the top products of some 223 businesses in the Philippines. More here
Singapore strong on digital adoption, less so on flexible work arrangements: WEF; Singapore is placed third on a list of top 10 economies with a robust digital legal framework (US is first, followed by Luxembourg). More here
Singapore lures workspace operators amid pandemic property slump; Singapore sees itself as a sweet spot for workspace operators amid a COVID-induced commercial real estate slump, as companies have cut down on office space and retreated to work-from-home arrangements to shield employees from the effects of the virus. More here
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At the beginning of the year, what started as an epidemic quickly turned into a full-fledged global economic and health crisis. The ripple effects of COVID-19 can be seen clearly across the world and Malaysia is no exception. With over 66,000 confirmed coronavirus cases at the time of writing, the country has been in lockdown mode for a good part of the year and this has disrupted business and life in many ways. The Malaysian economy contracted by more than 17% in the second quarter of 2020 from a 0.7% growth in the first quarter.
From big businesses to startups and SMEs, every organisation has suffered some form of disruption amidst this crisis. As such, the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), took swift actions earlier this year and announced a partnership with seven crowdfunding operators to help entrepreneurs and startup founders through this challenging time.
The pandemic has affected different kinds of businesses differently — some could pivot and adapt, allowing them to flourish while others succumbed to losses and were forced to layoff staff or worse, shut down.
For many startups, there was one key thing that they needed to survive and scale — cash flow. Getting funding was key to not only their survivability, but also their growth plans. However, with the pandemic raging and business not being “normal”, it wasn’t surprising that getting funding would be a challenge for many.
Simon Ulrich, CEO at ReGov Technologies, a fast-growing Malaysia based AI & Enterprise Blockchain focused venture, shared, “Many VCs we spoke to are careful about investing in new opportunities at this moment. Instead, they have redeployed resources to support their existing portfolio.”
With typical VCs being less than receptive, and normal routes for fundraising posing strong challenges, many startups saw their fundraising avenues severely limited. Fortunately, this was where MDEC stepped up by promoting alternative financing to MSMEs in partnership with crowdfunding platforms as well as offering them some financial relief.
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“MDEC helped us connect with the equity crowdfunding platforms. In addition, by far the most impactful initiative was the co-investment scheme Malaysia Co-Investment Fund (MyCIF) and we cannot give enough credit to its organisers. Initiatives such as this are exactly what the startup ecosystem needs. It was perfectly timed and was executed with speed and minimal bureaucracy,” added ReGov Technologies’ Simon Ulrich.
ReGov Technologies was not the only one that benefited. Wilson Beh, co-founder of Policy Street, the largest ECF issuer in Malaysia with the largest ECF investment raised, shared, “MDEC has been promoting ECF and P2P funding platforms and I believe that the concerted effort put in by MDEC has led to an increase in public awareness towards ECF and P2P investment. We are utmost thankful to the government initiative of establishing the MyCIF.”
Yeong Ning, Founder and CEO of Pentaip, a Financial Artificial Intelligence (AI) company also shared the same sentiment. “The partnership with MDEC has proven beneficial to us in various ways. They not only provided us with practical guidance and advice on our pitching but also recommended us an affordable working place for our business networking. Most importantly, MDEC helped us to promote Pentaip to the public and potential investors including VCs during the fundraising campaign.”
With the right support and collaborations between MDEC and the crowdfunding platforms, many startups saw success despite the economic crisis brought about by the pandemic.
ReGov Technologies managed to expand on an international scale thanks to MDEC’s support through the ECF campaign. As a result, they managed to build and strengthen their customer base in Malaysia and expanded to Australia and the US.
“MDEC organised events where we could learn more about ECF and also explore if we were ready to utilise such platforms for fundraising. This allowed us to participate in activities intended to connect startups with investors,” Mr. Ulrich shared.
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Success wasn’t only seen by ReGov Technologies though, PolicyStreet was the first company to receive a RM1 million co-investment from MyCIF following the revision of the co-investment ratio in April this year. They plan on utilising the capital for strategic business development, licensing applications and technology development to exponentiate business growth.
That’s not all, after the investment round was concluded, Policy Street was invited by MDEC to be part of a national digital financial inclusion initiative, called the eBerkat programme, as official InsurTech partners.
As for Pentaip, they not only expanded as a team but also gained publicity during the fundraising journey. “The campaign helped us establish partnerships and allowed us to push our products to be market-ready. We managed to build partnerships in the areas of KYC/AML, Custody, Financial, Technology, and Infrastructure.”
ReGov Technologies is heading into 2021 on track to massively increase revenue and profitability further. Mr Ulrich said, “We are considering raising another round of funding with the aim of bringing in strong capital partners who can help us grow even faster as compared to an organic growth strategy.”
He also shared a word of caution and said that even though ECF was a highly recommended platform, one should not assume that it is easier to obtain investments on it compared to an angel or VC.
“The due diligence process is rigorous, and in our case, we were challenged by over a hundred investors that kept us on our “A” game throughout the fundraiser,” he said.
Mr Ulrich added, “I would like to encourage my fellow entrepreneurs to stay strong and be focused, in spite of the current situation. Sound business models will produce real traction and will demonstrate the very tenacity investors are looking for.”
In line with the experience this year, Policy Street continues to closely monitor unit economics to build a sustainable and impactful business. Pentaip also plans on focussing on growth and eventually scaling to a global level.
“The MDEC team has been relentlessly exploring alternative financing avenues and making these options known to businesses that are struggling to stay afloat during these trying times. I am pleased to see that our efforts have started to bear fruit. To date, our efforts have attracted more than 500 startups, totalling up to USD243 Million in funds requested. And as of September 2020, we have successfully raised close to 25% of this request,” said Gopi Ganesalingam, Vice President of MDEC’s Global Growth Acceleration Division.
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MDEC continues to support Malaysian startups and SMEs to help them write success stories even during trying times when most businesses are struggling to survive.
This effort is crucial in helping maintain a robust startup ecosystem for Malaysia despite the pandemic, and to ensure that the country continues in its journey to be the Heart of Digital ASEAN.
“Despite the challenges faced during a global pandemic, the Equity Crowdfunding (ECF) ecosystem has done well to support companies to raise their much-needed capital growth. This was possible with the support of business-friendly ECF policies and initiatives by the Government and its agencies. We’ve been working very closely with MDEC throughout the whole year of 2020 to identify investible companies for the investment community. The work that we do has resulted in various success in 2020, which we are more than happy to continue in 2021 and beyond,” shared Sam Shafie, CEO and Co-Founder of pitchIN.
Currently, seven startups supported under this program have gone live and pre-live for crowdfunding on the pitchIN platform. These include XTS Technologies, Bridzia, EduReviews, EVULX International, Maslaha Tech, Kravve, and Calms Technologies.
If you are a startup owner in Malaysia looking to grow and scale in the current climate, check out MDEC’s alternative funding initiative to realise your goals. You can also find out more about their other funding initiatives here.
Malaysia is poised to achieve its bold aspirations towards Malaysia 5.0 and becoming the ‘Heart of Digital ASEAN’. MDEC is driving this transformation by empowering Malaysians with digital skills, enabling digitally-powered businesses, and driving digital investments.
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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC)
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