ShopBack bags US$80M Series F from Asia Partners to be IPO-ready
With this latest investment, the company has raised over US$230M in total to date; ShopBack has more than 35M users across 10 countries and powers US$3.5B in annual sales; It also facilitates 1M shopping journeys for 10K+ merchant partners every day.

Indonesia’s Deliveree nets US$70M in Gobi, SPIL-led round
The logistics startup operates in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines; Deliveree’s gross transaction value grew by 3.2x over the last 24 months, and it is on track to exceed US$100M by end of 2022.

Crypto broker Voyager Digital issues default notice to 3AC
This is on account of the fund’s failure to make required payments on a loan; The loan was for 15,250 bitcoin (approximately US$324M) and US$350M worth of USDC.

Sky Mavis to make Axie hack refunds this week
Once Sky Mavis reopens the software bridge breached in the attack, affected users will be eligible to withdraw one ether for each one they had in March; In April, the firm raised US$150M from Binance, Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm to pay back all affected users.

Snoop Dogg’s son, Gushcloud to launch Web3 fund
The fund will provide opportunities for Asian founders based outside America; Gushcloud International has also announced its move into Web3 by signing on Champ Medici, a Bored Ape NFT owned by Cordell Broadus, son of rapper Snoop Dogg.

Solana launches web3-focused smartphone Saga to improve crypto-mobile relationship
Saga aims to implement digital asset products and services, so users can easily transact with their cryptocurrency through the device, as opposed to a laptop browser.

Kakao-backed blockchain firm Klaytn partners with OpenSea to boost NFTs in Asia
The tie-up will include conference collaborations and ecosystem grants; Through these initiatives, the companies aim to “scale-up the NFT ecosystem, strengthen ties, and bring greater visibility to Asian NFT projects worldwide.

Harmony loses crypto worth US$100M after security breach
The attack adds to this year’s litany of exploits targeting bridges, which allow users to move tokens between blockchains, taking the total lost to more than US$1B in 2022 alone: In Feb, Wormhole bridge suffered a US$326M hack, and in April Ronin was exploited for US$625M.

SoftBank to fund smaller deals after nearly US$10.9B annual loss
This year, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 investments amounted to around US$100M to US$200M, which was disbursed over 50 funding rounds; SoftBank is currently invested in 475 companies, though some of its bets have yet to yield results.

Emissary Capital closes US$47.6M fund on Fundnel
Emissary is a Malaysia-based boutique investment firm focusing on ASEAN; The microfund aims to invest in potential unicorns following Carsome’s success, propel the startup ecosystem to create job opportunities and fuel the global economy.

VinaCapital Ventures buys stake in Web3 analytics firm M3TA
M3TA’s AI-powered platform helps guilds manage their members and scholars by processing data on digital assets and performance; The platform also includes learning and education features.

Temasek unit SeaTown leads Vietnam startup OnPoint’s US$50M Series B
OnPoint provides a one-stop solution that enables consumer brands to accelerate their online growth on multiple channels, including e-commerce marketplaces, social media platforms and brand-owned websites.

Indonesia’s consumer insights platform Populix nets US$7.7M Series A
Investors include Intudo Ventures, Acrew Capital, Altos Ventures, and Quest Ventures; Populix provides research and data collection for businesses and individuals to make more informed business decisions through quantitative and qualitative studies.

PagarBook to buy Indonesian staff management firm Vara for US$5.6M
PagarBook is an India-based payroll and staff management app; Both companies were participants in Sequoia Surge; Vara had raised US$4.8M in seed funding from Go Ventures and other investors.

East Ventures leads US$4.5M in Indonesia’s Fresh Factory
Fresh Factory runs a network of hyperlocal cold-chain fulfilment centres; It currently has more than 20 warehouses across Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Bali; The funds raised will go toward expanding warehouses to smaller cities in Java.

Indonesia’s Rlvnt Art Labs raises pre-seed led by ad agency Tech Ad.
Rlvnt Art Labs is an Indonesia-based NFT studio; It is set to launch its sci-fi and fantasy-inspired NFT collection this summer; The League of Guardians collection will consist of 9,999 randomly generated digital avatars.

New China supercomputer fast enough to match human brain
the Newest Generation Sunway has a speed of a billion operations per second an over 37M CPU cores – 4x as many as Frontier, a supercomputer built by the US Department of Energy.

SG fintech firm Moolahgo launches cross-border payments for Visa accounts
It allows the firm’s users to make money transfers to over 3B Visa cards globally; Moolahgo has partnered with payments solution provider Checkout.com to launch the cross-border payments service.

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It has been talked about time and time again, how the abrupt arrival of the pandemic has led to the upheaval of the daily processes and the mass exodus of workers from a typical workplace.

In fact, in Singapore alone, 63 per cent of businesses in Singapore have been affected negatively by the pandemic, with industry challenges further exacerbated by periodic industry barriers such as manpower shortage and dynamic changes in consumer behaviour.

While the market is slowly recovering and more are pivoting digitally, we still see businesses plagued with the same challenges, especially those that choose to stick to old business planning processes.

With this, NJ Group has seen success in acknowledging how critical it is for a business to prioritise continuity planning, seizing relevant opportunities and staying vigilant in times of uncertainty.

Prioritise business continuity planning

Future planning is essential for every business to ensure survival in times of economic instability. This could entail business risk management, product development, and product innovation. Across industries, a common theme we are seeing is that businesses are infusing technology and fad trends into products as an innovation point.

Whether it is creating crypto food tech or claiming ‘healthier’ meals with plant-based options, players are trying to innovate their products to appeal to a wider range of customers. We see some businesses finding success in this while some are due to face more turbulence in their paths.

The problem with the latter is that innovation is an expensive and time-consuming process, and a failed innovation during this volatile period can cause a company to retrogress.

NJ Group launched Eagle this year in March to address how to maintain service quality and experience in our restaurant chains. Eagle is a web-based AI platform that collects, monitors and manages customer feedback in the service industry with minimal manpower.

This not only tackles service quality issues but with the power of automation technology, Eagle addresses current and future manpower crunch cycles that often occur in the F&B service industry. Our team recognised the long-standing issue of manpower shortage and how that often directly impacts the level of service quality that patrons experience.

Also Read: How barePack and &Repeat aim to reduce waste by introducing the circular approach to food packaging

This is why we thought of creating a platform that takes authentic and real-time comments from customers and uses AI to generate suggestions on how to make business processes better in just six seconds.

Be in the right place, at the right time and seize opportunities

While future planning helps chart out the next steps, unforeseen events can happen and we all saw how the pandemic took everyone by surprise. Even so, mapping out business goals ahead of time can help soften the blow and land companies in favourable market positions that offer new business opportunities when old revenue streams cease.

When a company is conscious of the changing climate, it can be of favour and be confident in implementing long-term sustainable strategies, instead of pursuing short-term gains to stay innovative and stay relevant.

NJ Group’s successful business planning allowed us to enjoy some advantages during the pandemic. We were at the right place and at the right time, two of our restaurants that were strategically placed in hotels were presented with the opportunity to supply food for people who were quarantined in the hotels or were on stay-home-notices.

NJ Group was able to maintain topline services with minimal compromise on the bottom line. We even managed to achieve a 20 per cent increase in sales revenue in the past year, in Cali outlets in Park Avenue Rochester and Citadines Balestier.

Fortunately, we were able to leverage the downtime presented by the pandemic to identify real problems that were previously overlooked and craft appropriate solutions to resolve them. In this period, we reached milestones like launching our own table reservation system, food delivery, menu management solutions and automation technologies like Eagle for our restaurants.

Leverage and keep up with research and development (R&D)

With robust plans in order, stable and resilient companies should also look deeper into investing in R&D to further innovate or reinvent their products to fit the evolving needs and wants of the market, especially in the fast-growing F&B sector.

Also Read: The future of food tech lies in building digitally autonomous restaurants

R&D can be closely associated with digitalisation and innovation. Either way, R&D ensures that the company would stay alert to market developments and be ready to equip itself to pivot for the future. Companies can now also tap into resources offered by the Singapore government which supports the creation of new revenue streams through the recently launched Food Services Industry Transformation Map 2025 (ITM).

Backed up by Enterprise SG, the ITM drives more efforts on R&D, to cater to the changing consumer preference for convenience, health and wellness, and sustainability.

Besides promoting revenue growth, R&D possesses the power to provide businesses with infinite fallbacks in times of need. In 2017, NJ Group invested in R&D to create COBIE, the Friendly Food Butler.

Before the pandemic, COBIE served a combination of technology innovation and culinary satisfaction to guests at their tables or even in their hotel rooms as an automated room service provider. This was initially seen as a value-added service that improved restaurant operations in recent years. Our R&D has been key to our expedited growth, even with unexpected limitations such as safe distancing measures and quarantine notices in hotels.

And the tides are changing, the dynamic consumer behaviour is more exciting than ever, with new products becoming more groundbreaking, made with newer flavours and unimaginable combinations of ingredients.

We are seeing F&B businesses concentrating their efforts on catering to the sustainable crowd and becoming more inclusive of a wider range of dietary preferences as well.

While the F&B landscape is a challenging one to navigate, as business leaders, it is a responsibility we should take upon ourselves to strategically plan, and always remember to stay prudent to our roadmaps, be loyal to our business goals, and keep moving forward vigilantly.

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Taiwan Accelerator (TA), the team behind X-PITCH, is once again opening its doors to early-stage startups for X-PITCH 2022. Known as the X Games for startups, contestants go through a series of high-intensity pitch challenges (15-second, 60-second, and 3-minute pitches) to win awards and investments.

Last year, 3,680 startups from 42 countries and over 28,000 ecosystem stakeholders participated in X-PITCH 2021. It has become one of the largest startup contests in Asia. In the past, the events were held in skyscraper elevators and self-driving vehicles. This year, the competition will take place in MRT trains and the Metaverse.

“We try to do something new and exciting every year, bringing an unprecedented experience to all participants. In addition to the prizes, awards, and exposure, founders also benefit from activities like pitch training, fundraising workshops, market access webinars, investor matching, and more. Last year, 70 per cent of TOP150 startups said X-PITCH added value to their fundraising campaign and business development, this is the most important purpose of this event,” said K. Yu, Founder of Taiwan Accelerator (TA), the organiser of X-PITCH 2022.

e27 joins X-PITCH 2022 as the Investor Relations Partner

The TOP150 who will make it to the investor matching programme will receive extended e27 Pro memberships to access Connect — an e27 Pro feature that will be used to facilitate the investor matching between the TOP150 startups and X-PITCH 2022 investment partners.

This year, the investment partners will be able to use the e27 platform to connect directly with the 150 startups and facilitate communications regarding potential investments. 

After X-PITCH’s investor matching programme, the TOP150 startups will be able to continue their fundraising journey on their own and connect with more investors from e27’s 400+ active and verified investors in the region. 

Also read: 18 X-PITCH startups raised cross-border funding

Open for applications

Exclusive for early-stage tech startups, X-PITCH has discovered and accelerated many of tomorrow’s stars. Past contestants successfully raised millions of dollars through the event and connected with investors, corporates, government agencies, incubators, accelerators, professional firms, and media for collaboration. 

For startups interested to join X-PITCH 2022, you can send in your application by 31 August. Founders from Asia and worldwide are welcome to sign up through their website: xpitch.io.

The TECH FOR GOOD theme of X-PITCH 2022 highlights the challenges in the post-pandemic world as well as innovations that will make meaningful social impacts for the public good. Participating teams should focus on applications and services that accelerate digital transformation around five major categories backed by Web3, AI, 5G, edge computing, and next-gen technologies. Ten awards will be presented at the Grand Finale on 10 November. The top 3 teams will win up to US$1 million in investments in total.

X-PITCH 2022 is supervised by the National Development Council and Overseas Community Affairs Council; and co-organised by global partners including Kaohsiung City Government, Startup Island Taiwan, Agorize, Block71 Singapore, BSSC, DOST-PCIEERD, HKSTP, JETRO, and MDEC. The domestic semi-final venue is sponsored by Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation. 

Connect with TA

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

 

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Singapore VC Panthera Growth raises first half of US$250M Fund II
The fund plans to invest in growth-stage startups that have achieved product-market fit across India and SEA; Investments will be disbursed to about a dozen portfolio companies with an average cheque size of US$20M each.

Go-Ventures said to be closing US$200M Fund II in Q3
The fund is expected to see a mix of LPs, including sovereign wealth funds, family offices and insurance firms from across Europe, the US, China, South Africa, and APAC; Go-Ventures has about 25 firms in its portfolio.

Stripe, LinkedIn Co-Founders back Entrepreneur First’s US$158M Series C round
It will target a direct investment of US$100M over the next three years in hundreds of entrepreneurs; EF also said the aggregate value of companies created through its platform in Singapore has exceeded US$1B.

Malaysian proptech firm Speedhome to cut workforce
The number of affected staff was not disclosed; Speedhome has 99 employees; As per a spokesperson, the company was advised to “recalibrate” its business plan, citing “higher interest rates, economic uncertainty and funding environment.”

SG e-commerce roll-up firm Una Brands lays off less than 10% of staff
In SEA, the company has seen a “negligible” impact from the macro-environment due to “strong” growth from brands, especially those on the Shopee and Lazada marketplaces, says CEO Kiren Tanna.

Ascend Vietnam Ventures’s early-stage fund AVV Alpha exceeds US$50M target
AVV Alpha intends to invest up to US$2M each in 25 startups by 2023; it will then follow on with cheques of up to US$5M; In the past nine months, the VC firm has invested in ten startups, including Kilo, Virtual Internships, and Mandu.

‘Vietnam can be an excellent launchpad for regional, global startups’
Eddie Thai says the country has great tech talent, affordable startup costs, and a relatively accessible local market; The GDP is forecast to grow at least 5 per cent this year and 7 per cent next year.

Ankiti Bose resigns from Zilingo’s directorships
Bose claimed that Zilingo’s board of directors had failed to show any reports issued by Kroll or Deloitte, which were investigating her alleged misconduct, that would justify her termination as CEO.

Mapan closes US$15M Series A round to grow its ‘Arisan’ service in Indonesia
Lead backers are Patamar Capital and Astra Digital; Through Mapan’s Arisan product, lower-income groups can increase their buying power to purchase household goods such as cookware, electronics, and furniture.

HK’s FreeD raises US$15M to open Singapore office
Investors are Daiwa ACA APAC Growth, Musketeer Capital, and the SOSV Select Fund; FreeD will use the funding to expand its tech teams in HK, South Korea, and Canada and build its commerce teams in new markets.

Funding Societies acquires payments solution startup CardUp
CardUp is a payment solution that helps individuals and businesses make payments to suppliers and collect payments from customers digitally; CardUp’s payment services will complement Funding Societies’s lending products.

Philippine’s Edukasyon.ph secures bridge funding
Investors are KSR Ventures and Lorinet Foundation, and Bisk Ventures; Edukasyon.ph is an online platform that gives Filipino students access to resources for senior high school and university learning as well as scholarships, online courses, and internships.

Mastercard CMO backs yufin’s US$1M funding round
Other backers are Kathy Burdon (ex-Cadence Capital), 77 Capital, Boleh Ventures, and Zennon Kapron; yufin enables SMEs in the Philippines to accept digital payments, sell online on digital stores, order from B2B marketplaces and access better loans.

Seeds Capital backs SG greentech firm Zuno Carbon’s pre-seed round
Another investor is Blue InCube Ventures; Zuno aims to automate organisational carbon accounting and help companies measure greenhouse gas emissions and streamline compliance monitoring.

Meet the 10 Asia-focused DAOs looking to script history amid the crypto storm
The main advantages of a DAO are that every investor has voting rights and can contribute to the project.

Tencent, Ant, Baidu, others pledge to stop NFT secondary trading
While the Chinese government currently does not have any specific regulations on NFTs, it has banned crypto trading; Tencent and Ant Group have opened their online digital collectible marketplaces in recent months.

Three Arrows pulled up by MAS for false information
It is also accused of exceeding the assets under management threshold for a registered fund management company; When the firm obtained registered fund management company status in 2013, it was allowed to manage assets of no more than US$179.6M.

Taiwan to roll out digital currency for public use after trials
The digital currency will only be issued after properly educating the public about its benefits, setting up regulations, and putting up a legal framework.

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Eropa Stein is the Founder and CEO of Hyre, a hospitality platform that directly connects talented event staff with event organizers, eliminating the need for event staffing agencies altogether.

We talk about our experiences being mentored, as well as how we identify potential people we want to mentor, decide if they are teachable, and what the cross-section between what they need help with and what we can help with, and how to keep them honest and responsible and on track to success.

Talk to other entrepreneurs in this Discord server.

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The content was first published by We Live To Build.

Image Credit: fizkes

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When it comes to startup success, founders get the lion’s share of the credit. Investors come a close second. But a venture’s fate is determined by more than just founders and investors.

One crucial, often overlooked group are the various people who bring the two together. These people largely go unacknowledged because their presence goes against the mythology surrounding founders.

This prevailing myth is that of the relentless founder. The founder gets a brilliant idea, and then he stops at nothing to get the capital he needs to scale it up. He cold emails hundreds of investors, chases them at conferences and coffee shops, and even in the face of rejection after rejection, continues to pitch with unbridled enthusiasm.

This relentless founder does not even let decorum get in their way, seizing any opportunity to “elevator pitch” a prospective investor until he gets a signature on the dotted line.

While such myths make for great montage scenes in movies, reality seldom works this way. Rarely does the entrepreneur just independently and directly connect with an investor.

There are many professionals, who I genuinely believe are unsung heroes in tech, that facilitate these interactions in a wide variety of ways. They are, in short, connectors, to borrow some terminology from popular non-fiction author Malcolm Gladwell from his book The Tipping Point. 

Also Read: Finding the stars in the night: Launching Southeast Asia’s next generation of startup investors into innovation space

Highlighting these connectors is important. The tech ecosystem does not only need people who identify business or investment opportunities, we also need people who recognise opportunities at an even higher, more abstract level: They see how the right connection of entrepreneurs and investors can yield exponential results.

A diversity of connectors

These connectors span a wide variety of industries, and each archetype is as deserving of recognition as the next.

The first is event organisers, who create programming in which entrepreneurs and investors can meet. The formats of these events are wide, from a kind of free-for-all networking to a more structured, speed-dating format. 

The latter format is how Zopim founder Royston Tay, met legendary investor Tim Draper. While Tay admitted to just crashing the closed-door pitching session, the opportunity was still nonetheless generated by the event organiser gathering top-tier investors into a single point in space and time. 

Draper also did not invest at that point, but his early interest was pivotal in goading Tay and his team to build out the prototype for Zopim, which would eventually be bought by Zendesk. (As an aside, this example also underscores another important point: Investors can help entrepreneurs in more ways than just direct investment). 

Now that the world is reopening from the pandemic, we need event organisers to resume their role in crafting event concepts that are exciting enough to attract the very best investors, who will summon entrepreneurs in tow. While purely online events may occasionally work, Zoom fatigue is very much real and so on-site or hybrid events may be the best. 

Another category of connectors is what I like to call tech diplomats. They generate cross-border investment interest. Such is difficult because it requires intimate knowledge of the business opportunities in one nation and the investment appetite in another. 

One such example is Emil Banno, who represented the Philippines at the Japan Cryptocurrency Forum in 2018, and has raised over US$100 million of Japanese investment into the Philippines, across a mixture of primarily traditional and also some tech-enabled sectors.

Banno is now taking on the mantle for the Web3 industry in the Philippines, partnering with BLX to build out any tech-related investments on its blockchain. Such is key in building Japanese confidence in Philippine crypto, fintech, and other nascent Web3 verticals in the country. 

Tech diplomats like Banno are crucial. The tech ecosystem in the Asia Pacific can often be isolationist, where each country is viewed or treated as a market unto its own, rather than a part of a larger, interdependent economic region.

Also Read: ‘Climate tech: SEA needs more time to improve startup quality, attract capital’, says Earth Venture Capital’s Tien Nguyen

Such will require people who have the cultural expertise to bridge the gap between two cultures, and more importantly, understand what will attract investors from one market to back the entrepreneurs of another.

The final category of connector I’d like to cover is community organisers, specifically those at coworking spaces. While coworking spaces have more recently become associated as nothing more than cooly designed workspaces, this new understanding represents mission drift.

Co-working spaces were originally designed where people from diverse backgrounds and industries could, as the name implies, “co-work” with one another, and in so doing, create value. In the halcyon days of coworking, many coworkers reported closing business deals at their spaces or even fundraising for their ventures. 

There are some co-working spaces where this spirit still exists. One such example is Cerebro Labs in the Philippines, which in addition to being a coworking space, is also a tech and business incubator. Such formalises the organic investor-entrepreneur connections that could previously occur, and in so doing, gives entrepreneurs a physical hub in which to meet and learn from investors.

Co-working spaces in the Asia Pacific need to get back to these roots, whether through official programmes like Cerebro or more casual introductions between members who are entrepreneurs and members who are investors. Such elevates coworking into co-creation.  

Event organisers, tech diplomats, and coworking spaces are still just a small subset of the connectors who facilitate interaction between investors and entrepreneurs in the Asia Pacific.

It’s beneficial to not fill in all the blanks when it comes to discussing this topic, so others in the community can answer the million-dollar question: Who helped you meet your investors?

The response to this question will spur long overdue recognition, and in turn, accelerate even more connections.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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

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Intrepid Group, a Singapore-headquartered omnichannel e-commerce solutions company, has been acquired by Ascential plc (Ascential), a global provider of information, analytics and e-commerce optimisation. 

The deal is for an initial cash consideration of US$57 million, plus deferred consideration payable over four years. This is contingent on meeting certain financial targets, resulting in an estimated total consideration of between US$100 million and US$197 million.

The maximum total consideration payable for Intrepid Group is capped at US$250 million, Intrepid said in a press release.

The acquisition will provide a strategic entry point for Ascential into the high-growth Southeast Asian market. At the same time, it will provide Intrepid access to a broader network of resources and knowledge.

As per the agreement, Intrepid will become part of Ascential’s Digital Commerce division. The Singaporean company joins Edge by Ascential, Flywheel, Yimian, Duo Zhun, Intellibrand, OneSpace, Perpetua, Sellics, WhyteSpyder and 4KMiles to strengthen Ascential Digital Commerce’s presence in the region. 

Also Read: Intrepid attracts US$11M Series B, claims profitability in 2 markets

“Intrepid’s strong presence in Southeast Asia and proven expertise operating across the major marketplaces in this important region further enhances the capabilities and global reach of our Digital Commerce business,” said Duncan Painter, CEO of Ascential.

Founded by Co-Founders of Lazada, Intrepid Group offers both enterprise-grade SaaS and end-to-end e-commerce management to brands and SMEs to accelerate their growth on platforms such as Lazada and Shopee. The B2B company has offices in six markets: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It has over 480 staffers across e-commerce, digital marketing and tech experts.

A year ago, Intrepid Group secured US$11 million in an oversubscribed Series B funding, led by Mirabaud Asset Management through its Mirabaud Lifestyle Impact & Innovation fund.

In August 2020, Intrepid raised an undisclosed sum in pre-Series B financing, co-led by Thakral Sun SEA Capital (a VC firm backed by Sunway Group). Ten months earlier, it had received Series A funding led by Kairous Capital.

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Funding Societies (Modalku in Indonesia), a digital financing platform for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Southeast Asia, has acquired Singapore-based payments solution startup CardUp for an undisclosed amount. 

As per the deal, Funding Societies will acquire CardUp’s payments capabilities, such as card payments to non-card accepting recipients (domestic and cross-border), e-payments acceptance, invoice automation tools, and its licenses and integrations with third-party business software. 

CardUp’s payment services will complement Funding Societies’s lending products. This will enable SMEs to manage and pay expenses, receive payments, and borrow funds within a digital platform.

Funding Societies Co-Founder and Group CEO Kelvin Teo said, “Acquiring CardUp enables us to leapfrog and accelerate our market leadership in the regional fintech space, integrating payments capabilities, enhanced user experience and local licenses to our digital lending experience across key markets.”

Once the acquisition is finalised and approved by the regulators, Funding Societies will add CardUp Founder and CEO Nicki Ramsay to its management team to lead its payments business. All other CardUp employees across Asia will be retained. 

Also Read: Funding Societies enters neobanking space with investment in Indonesia’s Bank Index

CardUp will continue to operate its consumer and business services and maintain its relationships with card networks, issuers, and media partners. 

Launched in 2016, CardUp is a payment solution that helps individuals and businesses make payments to suppliers and collect payments from customers digitally. Businesses use CardUp for payments related to payroll, rent, corporate tax, vendor payments, receivables flows, and cross-border expenses. 

With a presence in Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, CardUp has served many companies in the B2B and C2B industries. 

Funding Societies provides digital financing services, where developing MSMEs can apply for up to SGD2 (US$1.5) million in working capital financing funded by institutional and retail investors through a digital market.

In addition to Singapore and Indonesia, Funding Societies also operates in Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. The company has facilitated more than SGD3 (US$2.2) billion in working capital through more than five million MSME loan transactions.

Also Read: Samsung backs Funding Societies to drive its vision of financial inclusion for SMEs in SEA

Funding Societies is backed by SoftBank Vision Fund, SoftBank Ventures Asia, Sequoia Capital India, Alpha JWC Ventures, SMBC Bank, Samsung Ventures, BRI Ventures, Endeavor, SGInnovate, Qualgro, and Golden Gate Ventures, amongst others.

In February this year, Funding Societies announced a US$294 million funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2.

SMEs are expected to push ASEAN’s digital finance market to US$60 billion by 2025. The region’s business payments sector will grow at a CAGR of 10 per cent over the next five years. 

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Humans, when put through challenges, emerge wiser. The pandemic is no exception. It has made us wiser and permanently changed some aspects of our lives and thought processes. One of the key takeaways for entrepreneurs is to reduce dependencies on humans and accelerate the adoption of technologies and automation.

Automation, for all the bad press that it gets like a job eliminator, in the long run, proves otherwise, pushing the human endeavour towards higher planes. The jury is still out on that, though.

Contrary to the common belief that deployment of technologies and automation would shave off the bottom line, well-thought-through investments in the right technologies and automation of processes, in the long run, would dramatically improve the profitability through error elimination, improved productivity and quality, enhanced decision-making capability, optimised inventory and many more.

Enter robotics

Robotics is a programmable machine or a software programme capable of carrying out complex operations automatically.

Also Read: Sesto Robotics nets US$5.7M to tap into the growing demand for autonomous mobile robots in Europe

It can take the form of a physical machine that can work in closed or open spaces; it can be pre-programmed for a task such as in assembly line manufacturing, or it can leverage machine learning and adapt to its task, or it can be a mere software programme that automates business processes, called robotic process automation (RPA).

 

Whether physical or digital, robots guarantee an increase in process efficiency, improve quality, lead to higher customer satisfaction and directly impact profitability on one hand while reducing deployable resources, collapsing completion timelines, and avoiding rework and associated costs on the other.

The differences are that physical robots are heavy on investment, good for 3D (dull, dirty and dangerous) jobs and where actions have to be conducted remotely.

A further look into such automation processes would help us understand the need for these technologies in certain environments, the ways of adopting them, and the resultant benefits.

Physical robots carry out 3D jobs or those termed almost impossible for human workers to undertake. Mainly because either boredom or fatigue sets in when humans perform repetitive, mundane tasks.

However, robots are more precise and versatile than human workers in such environments. This results in a lower failure rate, increase in production and profit margin commensurable to its speed.

Though no definite findings prove robots don’t make mistakes, these robots certainly make fewer errors compared to a human, saving on, in most cases, expensive rework (rework costs alone could be as high as five per cent in some instances).

Looking at the glass half full

While robotics is seen as “reducing” job opportunities, that “reduction” is more related to repetitive and mundane tasks. Looking at the glass half full, robotics shifts human effort to focus on more creative and better remunerative jobs. This also pushes society towards a knowledge economy.

Of course, there are challenges associated with change management, reskilling and upskilling, but it can spell a win-win for both workers and business owners if managed well. Besides, the competitive force drives innovation, and the choice is largely between shape-up or ship-out.

Automating manual work can also be looked upon as closing the labour gap and keeping humans away from hazardous assignments, thereby reducing consequent workplace liabilities. Automation brings with it certain predictability in scheduling, flexibility in workload management, and the ability to extend overtime; robots work anytime, anywhere, and without a break, if so warranted.

Robots lead to higher productivity, coupled with the emergence of remote diagnostics and, more recently,  self-diagnostics, reducing repairing expenses and loss-inducing production downtime.

Modern robots contribute to savings in energy costs (up to 20 per cent by certain estimates) and are capable of operating without any supervision and even under extreme weather conditions.

They are versatile; unlike human workers who take time and effort to master a skill, robots are versatile and carry out tasks set for them through programming, and in some cases, through self-learning. Certain companies are moving towards connecting robots to the cloud to accelerate self-learning.

The initial barriers to adoption

With so many advantages, the barrier to adoption is the initial investment which in many cases turns out to be prohibitive. Though it’s been proven beyond doubt that robots, in the long run, turn out to be cost-effective, it’s the availability of cheap labour to fulfil the current needs and the need for large capital investments that have kept the adoption rate of robots low in this country.

Also Read: Southeast Asia paves the way for new value in robotics

With the current labour shortage, there is deep thinking in the industry to find a more permanent solution to keep pace with growth objectives.

One of the solutions to overcome the barrier of big capital investment is through the design, development and production of robots locally in Malaysia. A conscious effort must be made to create an ecosystem for robotic companies to thrive in the country.

Empowering startups, setting up national competitions, creating sandboxes, encouraging students to take up robotic courses, and streamlining the supply chain, grants, and soft loans are some ways to exploit the benefits of robotics.

While physical robots benefit society by shifting the most difficult 3D jobs to machines, the software-based robotic process automation is capable of taking over mundane jobs from knowledge workers. Knowledge workers, who generally dislike tedious tasks like data consolidation, reconciliation, and report generation, could be moved to more challenging creative assignments.

In this scenario, RPA is much more effective, extending beyond the shop floor or production processes and into the offices of finance, marketing, sales, human resources (HR) and other departments across industries.

RPA is much more pervasive, not restricted to the shop floor or production processes. It benefits the office of finance, marketing, sales, HR and other departments of any industry segment for that matter.

With Automating Statement Reconciliation, for example, coupled with RPA and AI, businesses can use automation solutions to upload all the statements that they receive in the paper, PDF, excel or any other data formats onto their central processing system. These statements are then automatically reconciled against data from the accounts payable ledger, and outliers (in certain instances, fraud) are easily identified.

We can see an overwhelming need to improve the efficiency of the traditional reconciliation process, which is very time-consuming and prone to error. This applies equally to traditional manufacturing as well as financial institutions like banks.

Surprisingly, unlike physical robots, initial investments into such process automation technologies are significantly small. The returns could be seen almost instantaneously by choosing the right tools and manpower. Such success would give the confidence to invest more in technology and consider such investments as levers for higher profit.

Generally, it’s important to look at any technology spend as an investment for higher profits, better quality and greater customer satisfaction.

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A large-scale disruption is going to emerge in the field of the automotive industry, as it is currently witnessing many technology-driven trends in the area of transportation. Electrification is a key one among them and innovation and sustainability is undoubtedly the main driving factor shaping the growth of the global market for electric vehicles and EV charging station.

In a carbon-conscious world battling environmental pollution and global warming, along with the ever-increasing prices of oil and unavailability of oil sources, the gradual shift to EVs is inevitable. The prior the auto industry understands this and adjusts itself to this reality, the better it will be able to receive the benefits of electrification.

EV is not a modern-day invention. EV goes back to the 19th century. Exactly in the year 1842, the first-ever EV was produced in Scotland.

In the early 1900s, almost 40 per cent of the then-running vehicles were powered by electricity. As oil became readily available and cheaper the ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) started to rule.

It was with the emergence of Tesla as a major player and Elon Musk’s avowed mission “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”, that the global auto industry started to change rapidly.

The global interest in the adoption of the EV by the auto industry seemed to have opened with the wheels being set in motion by Tesla. An entire community has sprung up since, comprising auto manufacturers, battery manufacturers and components suppliers.

India has recently taken some small yet significant steps aimed at accelerating the adoption of Electric vehicles in India. The Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India has shortlisted 11 cities in the country for the introduction of electric vehicles (EVs) in their public transport systems under the FAME (Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of (Hybrid) and Electric Vehicles in India) scheme.

In order to increase the sales EV amongst the customers, the government announced providing an additional income tax deduction of ₹1.5 lakh (US$1,907.74) on the interest paid on the loans taken to purchase EVs.

These are some of the essential steps, but more needs to be done to reach a stage where EVs become a viable choice for many. Let’s examine what would be the next steps.

Continued government action needed

Incentives and subsidies by governments across the world have been key factors propelling the growth of EVs in the last couple of decades.

Also Read: How electric mobility startups are tackling climate change in Asia

China, currently the world’s largest EV market, has mandated a quota for EV production for all auto manufacturers. Before the 1990s, there were many attempts to commercialise electric bikes and scooters in China.

All those attempts failed. The electric bike market in China never really took off until the late 1990s. This was facilitated by favourable local regulatory practices in the form of motorcycle bans and loose enforcement of electric bike standards.

By this time, many Chinese cities started to ban motorcycles. Many cities suspended the issuance of new motorcycle licenses. These local motorcycle bans became the ultimate driver for the electric bike boom in China.

The alleged justifications for these bans include relieving traffic congestion, improving safety and reducing air pollution. The bans were imposed on all motorcycles, regardless of their power sources. However, electric bikes were categorised as non-motor vehicles and therefore exempted from the bans.

This loose enforcement of electric bike standards, however, is a result of the ineffectiveness of China’s local governments, rather than of conscious decisions to support electric transportation. Frankly speaking, the boom in China’s electric bike market was a policy accident rather than a policy success.

India should consider a carefully calibrated mix of fiscal and non-fiscal measures in this regard while being mindful of the current economic headwinds that the auto industry is facing.

Turbocharging the technology

EV adoption becomes easier when charging EVs is made easy and convenient.

“Range anxiety” needs to be addressed. The major threat to the adoption of EVs is the fact that most EVs today have a range of 150 to 175 km on a single charge, leading to a sense of constraint and anxiety, stemming from a fear of being stranded while on a drive, among owners.

Though it has improved, charging infrastructure in many parts of the world, including India, is still not where it needs to be. Utility companies, infrastructure providers and the Government have to work together in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) models to make large networks of charging stations available to the general public.

The development of new, EV technologies is set to make this segment more appealing to consumers. Batteries are the key and critical area of innovation, where EVs are concerned. Lithium-ion batteries are the ones commonly used today in EVs. They are not yet adequately available and their costs tend to be high due to the insufficient supply of the raw materials.

Also Read: Why global investors are eyeing China’s EV landscape (Part 1)

Numerous new innovations are at present being created to discover proficient options in contrast to the Li-ion battery. Solid-state batteries are one such alternative being explored. A few businesses in India have started working on these technologies.

The smart, sustainable mobility solution

Initial costs of EVs are higher than that of ICE cars, but in the long run, they cost their owners far less as they consume no fuel and are cheaper to maintain. This is possible because a battery-powered electric vehicle has fewer moving parts than a conventional ICE car, making servicing and maintenance much more cost-effective.

Not just in the personal vehicle segment, the adoption of EVs in public transport systems can significantly reduce carbon emissions, thereby slowing down global warming and its catastrophic effects on climate change.

To emerge as a leader in the global EV space, India should chart a plan to manufacture every sub-system required by EVs, including components, batteries, and charging infrastructure. This will also help generate new jobs in the auto sector in the long run.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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

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