Do Ventures, an early-stage VC firm in Vietnam, has announced an investment in VUIHOC, a primary school-focused online education platform.

The startup will utilise the funds to strengthen its technical capacity, upgrade product features, and improve the quality of learning materials.

Started two years ago by Do Ngoc Lam and Do Minh Thu, VUIHOC helps students cultivate their self-study from an early age. It covers all three core subjects for primary school students: math, Vietnamese, and English, based on the entire sets of textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education and Training.

The startup currently offers more than 150 courses, nearly 9,000 video lectures, and a repository of 240,000 quiz questions. Its teaching framework is built every week, closely following the textbook curriculum.

More than 100,000 parents across Vietnam have used the platform so far.

Also Read: Naver, Sea, Vertex invest in Vietnamese VC firm Do Ventures’s US$50M fund I

With VUIHOC, which means “fun learning” in Vietnamese, the founders want to create a delightful environment for students to build up learning passion at their earliest stages of life. Its educators design learning materials based on a deep dive into the psychology of each age group, ensuring that every student will find matching content at their preference.

Video lectures are vividly presented through eye-catching animations, gamified exercises to keep students engaged and enable them to assimilate knowledge quickly. Questions will be answered instantaneously by teaching assistants via the online chat tool.

VUIHOC also provides live classes to augment teacher-student interaction. Live classes take place weekly on the app under a team of expert teachers with online communication prowess.

Shortly, VUIHOC will broaden its learning courses to include high school students.

The platform organises monthly tests to track students’ learning progress and measure learning efficiency. Then, based on detailed analytics of each student’s level, the teachers at VUIHOC will suggest learning paths to help realise their potentials.

Student’s learning history is stored on an electronic school record system for parents to access daily and accompany their children on the studying journey.

“What set VUIHOC apart is their ability to develop an online educational product that won the attention of young-age students. In the company’s next phase of growth, Do Ventures will support in fostering the application of AI technologies, such as recommendation engine or adaptive learning, to enhance personalisation in education,” said Vy Le, General Partner of Do Ventures.

Do Ventures is a US$50-million VC firm. In September 2020, it announced the first close of its first fund from investors, including Naver, Sea Group, Vertex Holdings, and Woowa Brothers. The final close is expected this year.

According to Tracxn, there are 149 edutech startups in Vietnam as of June this year. The leaders are Topica, Point Avenue, Rockit Online, Prion, Ella Study, Rabiti, and Kyna.vn.

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The rate of digitalisation in Southeast Asia was fast-tracked after COVID-19 hit late in 2019 as governments in the region mandated lockdowns to curb the spread of the virus. This forced many office workers to quickly adapt to work from home arrangements and school-going children with online home-based learning.

In 2020, it was found that 40 million new users came online, and 95 per cent of consumers who formed new digital habits in 2020 due to the pandemic, have since fully integrated them into their daily routines.

As the pandemic wears on, it has become apparent that certain insurance packages, or health and wellness benefits may no longer be relevant due to the new ways of working with the workforce being more distant from office.

A recent Swiss Re COVID-19 Consumer Survey revealed that 68 per cent of respondents in Southeast Asia consider the availability of an end-to-end digitalised journey the next most important factor when choosing their new insurance policy after pricing.

This is a good opportunity and the right time for the insurance industry to accelerate their digital transformation in order to meet customer expectations.

Disruption in the insurance industry has been extremely limited, limited to consumer discovery, compare and purchase experience along with churning out faster and efficient policies.

Job bands, level based standard employee benefits and group benefits worked well 20 years back where the workforce was homogenous, however with a diverse workforce and newer ways of working such as work from home, the traditional one size fits all approach has lost its shine.

With the large younger workforce being added, this generation is expecting a personalised and customised experience which barely exists in the current benefits.

Holistic health and pre-emptive insurance

The definition of health and wellness has also shifted in the last decade. Twenty years back, “Mental Wellness” was not a common term used in corporates.

As people struggle to find work-life balance due to remote working, there has been a rise in discussions among employees on health and wellness – a topic that has come under the spotlight due to the pandemic.

With a significant shift with millennials joining the workforce along with the change in the external variables, the health and wellness definition is going beyond the standard group insurance and company organised health events.

Also read: How Manulife aims to make lives better and healthier in Asia through startup partnerships

For some employees, going to the gym or even listening to music is health and wellness, but for others, it might be hospital coverage and retirement planning.

The spectrum is vast and rapidly changing, and thus, the regular traditional group insurance is no longer excite, attract or engage the employees, thus defies the core reasons why Companies give health benefits to employees. Companies should offer benefits that are more relevant and are customised to suit the needs of the diverse workforce.

SMEs– A massive underserved segment

In Singapore, SMEs contributed to 43 per cent of the nation’s GDP in 2020, and employ about 70 per cent of its workforce. Despite being a key pillar of Singapore’s and every country’s economy, SMEs are an underserved by insurers due to high cost of acquisition due to high reliance on distribution channels, smaller premiums and manual processes, thus have low ROI and not profitable in the current construct.

What can insurers do differently to cater to this segment? With SMEs being increasingly multigenerational, represents 70 per cent of the markets’ workforce and becoming adopting more technology in their workflows, insurers have to focus on creating a digital experience where SMEs can come and give their requirements and the platform can provide optimal plan options based on the SMEs needs.

This should be an end-to-end digital journey for the SME, where they can search, sign up, adopt, onboard and employees can personalise their benefits and start using the company benefits as compared to waiting for an agent to call after filling up a lead generation form.

Some insurance industry players are happy with the 1.5 per cent conversion on leads, where SMEs have called into to check on group insurance, which is a complete disaster as they would miss out on the 98.5 per cent who had a need and went through the entire process.

The pandemic has not only disrupted many businesses globally but it has also demonstrated the value of insurance protection. SMEs are more likely to review their insurance policies during this pandemic for business continuity and protection.

As group insurance is being further commoditised, price wars between insurers and lower sales closure rate, together with a high productivity rate, insurers should take the opportunity to offer a simplified and personalised experience to entice SMEs to take up coverage, helping them to convert sales at a lower cost of acquisition and also enabling a direct relationship with the company and their employees.

Insurance companies which can offer SMEs the right and relevant services and products through online channels will have the competitive advantage.

Singapore serves as a good test bed for new innovation

Singapore is a small, highly controlled market with multiple insurance players. It also has one of the highest insurance adoption rates in the region with an average of 1.7 insurance coverage per person compared to Indonesia, where only 13 per cent of its population has access to insurance coverage.

Also read: Why Asia’s insurance industry is poised for collaborative disruption

The city-state has also nurtured a supportive tech startup ecosystem with a lot of support from the government, with grants from Enterprise Singapore and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which helps new, innovative startups to move at a faster and effective pace.

The region also always looks up to Singapore as a hub for innovation. Therefore, whatever new innovations that work well in Singapore will become extremely easy to replicate in other markets.

Future of the insurance industry

Generation Z, which forms part of the young and diverse workforce today are used to a customised and personalised experience. A survey commissioned by WP Engine revealed that 75 per cent of Gen Zs are more likely to buy a product if they can customise it.

The ability to personalise and customise insurance will be a critical aspect for insurers in future. The insurance target audience is getting more evolved and consumers are increasingly asking the question of whether an insurance coverage package meets their requirements, and what’s in it for them.

Even in terms of marketing efficiency, currently the cross sell and upsell are inefficient from a conversion perspective. There is significant opportunity for a platform which can analyse work life, health, fitness data and actively recommend the right products and services to the relevant users.

With the capability of offering a customised and relevant user experience, this will help create employee engagement, thus leading to enhanced stickiness and with enhanced relevant marketing, it will help create additional monetisation for the insurers.

Group insurance is just ripe for disruption. With the ability to tap into the SME segment with an end to end digital experience, providing a personalised, customised and holistic health and wellness experience to employees with enhanced marketing and analytics capabilities, it’s a great opportunity for insurers to maximise the impact and win the market.

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Indonesian e-commerce platform for modest fashion HIJUP today announced the launch of an IDR100 billion (US$6.9 million) fund.

Called HIJUP Growth Fund, it aims to invest around IDR2 billion (US$138,000) each in local modest fashion brands.

The fund offers three different schemes depending on the companies’ stages and needs:

• Implementation of outright sales scheme for earlier stage companies
• Provision of working capital under a Sharia-based business financing scheme for mid-stage companies
• Growth investment for later-stage companies.

In addition to funding, HIJUP Growth Fund will also provide mentorship for the fashion brands. The fund has already invested in Buttonscarves and Puru Kambera.

“The goal of this fund is not to dominate but to empower,” HIJUP CEO Diajeng Lestari said in a virtual press conference. “This is a solution to help [small businesses] survive and grow stronger … It is also a proof of our commitment to support modest fashion industry by becoming more than just a marketplace. We intend to become an ecosystem.”

Also Read: Slow fashion is back: How environmental sustainability becomes the hottest trend this season

The CEO also stated that Hijup does not intend to fully acquire the companies/brands it backs.

Started in 2011, HIJUP was founded to seize opportunities in the modest fashion segment in Indonesia, which has the largest Muslim population in the world. As of now, it works with up to 300 brands through its online mall.  

According to Sandiaga Uno, Minister of Tourism and Creative Economy, who was present at the press conference, fashion is the second-largest contributor to Indonesia’s creative economy sector. “This is strongly related to the industry’s ability to digitalise early on,” he explained.

There has been an ongoing trend of tech founders setting up funds to invest in fellow startups and/or small businesses in Southeast Asia. 

This trend can also be seen in Indonesia. 

In March, founders of online coffee shop chain Kopi Kenangan announced an angel fund to support local startups. Kenangan Fund is sector-agnostic and invests between US$10,000 and US$150,000 each. It has invested in logistics startup Dropezy, fintech platform Bukukas, podcast company Noice, and automotive firm Otoklix.

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Woman on woman bullying and violence is common around the world. From the playground in school to between the cubicles at work, this practice continues to prevent women from maximising their potentials.

People don’t normally talk about it because of fear of retribution, but we MUST talk about it. Not talking about sensitive issues such as bullying is one of the reasons why it remains prevalent; we are not encouraged to seek a solution for it.

Women already have a tough time in the workplace and are constantly passed over for promotions or investment because of their gender, so instead of women treating each other badly to cement their own position, they should be helping each other. But how can they do it? What is exactly the barrier that prevents us from stopping this practice?

Our guest today is Susan Blanchet, the CEO and founder of Origen Air. Having experienced bullying in the workplace, she is willing to discuss the experience with us.

If you don’t see the player above, click on a link below to listen directly!

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This article was first published on We Live To Build. For more discussions on bullying and other relevant topics for entrepreneurs, you may visit the site.

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For many global businesses, ransomware is front of mind, and for good reason. Following the most recent debilitating ransomware attack on Kaseya, the Miami-based unicorn, we are reminded of the risks, vulnerabilities and devastating effects that a targeted ransomware attack can have on not just the business directly attacked but their customers and supply chains as well.

It is no longer a question of if, but when another high profile ransomware attack will eventuate, and organisations in Asia should be on alert.

According to the CrowdStrike Global Security Attitude Survey, six in 10 organisations surveyed across the APAC region (63 per cent) suffered a ransomware attack in 2020.

Businesses must be prepared to face the coming storm, understand the prevailing trends of ransomware and bolster their defences comprehensively to safeguard their funds, data and customer trust

The uphill battle: How to fight against ransomware

When protecting an organisation against ransomware, too often we focus on reacting or recovering our systems from a catastrophic incident. Although extremely important, we forget the one simple goal we should all have– making sure that threat actors do not disrupt or impact our business, employees and customers in the first place.

When dealing with ransomware incidents, we find victims have access to security solutions, but these may well be reactive legacy solutions, only focusing on cleaning up the mess a cybercriminal has left behind – not preventing it!

Organisations today need to implement a prevention-first mindset to protect themselves. Due to the global pandemic and more people working from home, this prevention-first methodology needs to be thought about holistically.

Cybercriminals are harnessing flexible working as an opportunity to target organisations during their time of digital transformation because of the increased number of endpoints, as well as employees using their own devices at home.

For example, they are increasingly leveraging security gaps by replicating or stealing trusted network access to breach networks, undetected.

Also Read: Why Malaysia is quickly becoming a cybersecurity hub for the rest of the world

It’s paramount that organisations focus on a prevention-first mindset. Not only for endpoints but also cloud workloads, and more importantly, adopting a Zero Trust approach, meaning that all users and devices must be authenticated, authorised and continuously re-validated to gain access to data.  Having a security solution that is able to prevent first is the key first step in staying proactive in your defence.

Fight on the front lines, and turn the hunter into the hunted

Threat hunting teams are particularly instrumental in promoting a more proactive security posture. Threat hunting allows organisations to go where technology cannot; to identify the unknowns or the proverbial “needle in the haystack, in a haystack factory.”

Ransomware threats often go undetected for days – sometimes even weeks or months – as they prepare an environment for an attack. The massive ransomware attacks we see in the news are commonly a product of cyber criminals spending inordinate amounts of time preparing the environment for maximum impact.

Adequate time gives cybercriminals the best opportunity to apply as much pressure as possible and extract as much money as possible out of the victim, ultimately forcing their hand to do nothing but pay the ransom and other extortion fees.

However, threat hunting teams are designed to pinpoint threats in real-time to detect and engage cyber criminals in “hand-to-hand combat”, providing a front-line defence for organisations before it’s too late.

Even with full security implementations, it is one thing to detect a cybercriminal’s activity on the network, but it is another to do something about it. Threat hunting teams are a critical consideration to augment, or even sometimes replace, existing teams by turning detection into action against ransomware threats.

Don’t pay the ransom. Easy to say, hard to do

Any Asian (or international) organisation considering making a payment (to essentially a criminal group) during a ransomware incident must seek legal advice to ensure what they are about to do does not result in a criminal offence. Paying the ransom fuels a criminal industry and it does not guarantee access to encrypted data.

Additionally, organisations assisting victims in making ransomware payments to sanctioned cybercriminals also face the risk of violating various regulations, depending on what country they are in.

It is important to acknowledge that it is easy to say “don’t pay the ransom”, but it ultimately remains a very difficult situation for an organisation that can’t recover its data or a critical infrastructure provider that faces severe service disruption. They may feel forced into paying the ransom to get back to being operational.

These situations put victimised organisations between a rock and a hard place, as they either pay the ransom and be at risk of breaking government regulations, or not pay the ransom and risk going out of business. However, despite the immense pressure, paying a ransom can fuel the fire for cybercriminals to return with bigger threats.

Also Read: Practical tips to protect your business from cyber attacks

The evolution and proliferation of ransomware: Double extortion

CrowdStrike has recently observed cybercriminals adopting a “double extortion” model, in which cybercriminals will encrypt the target’s data and not only demand a ransom for its return but also leverage additional payment incentives to add pressure on the victim to pay the ransom.

Some cybercriminals will even use a more targeted approach and threaten to publicly release and/or auction the data unless the victim pays up.

This in turn fuels the ransomware ecosystem in a vicious cycle that only hurts the victimised organisation even more down the road. The exploitation of data also puts victimised organisations at risk of violating local or regional data privacy regulations, which can end up costing millions of dollars in addition to the original ransom.

Cybercriminals will continue to refine these approaches and experiment with different business models, including affiliate schemes designed to recruit more people to deploy attacks for a share of the profit, known as Ransomware as a Service (RaaS). With this and the double extortion model, the potential ramifications are far and wide.

As we progress through this year, organisations need to remain on high alert to be better prepared to weather the storm that is coming or run the risk of facing the consequences of a potentially devastating ransomware attack.

With the right knowledge, tools and preparation–as well as testing and role-playing exercises–organisations can effectively combat would-be attackers and give themselves the best chance of remaining unscathed in 2021.

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

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Intellect, a Singapore-based mental healthcare provider, announced today it has closed its US2.2 million pre-Series A round led by existing investor Insignia Ventures Partners, alongside new investors Y Combinator and XA Network.

The round also saw family offices and angels participation, including Rainforest CEO and co-founder JJ Chai, Prenetics & CircleDNA founder and CEO Danny Yeung, and Google Global HR Operations Director Gilberto Gaeta.

The new capital will be mainly used to scale the company geographically across Asia. A part of the funding will also go into the company’s product offering to serve any spectrum of care.

Launched in 2020, Intellect aims to make mental healthcare and wellbeing support accessible for everyone through its end-to-end, 24×7 mental healthcare system in a single app. It claims to have clocked over 2.5 million users and 20 enterprise clients globally, covering 12 countries and 11 languages.

“The big challenges in the region is that stigma is especially high towards traditional approaches to mental health and available services are outdated and not readily accessible to all,” said Intellect co-founder and CEO Theodoric Chew.

Also read: Medici, a health-tech firm founded by ex-Grab exec, gets seed funding to foray into insurance in Vietnam

“The main thing here is that it’s not meant to replace therapy, “Chew added in a talk with Insignia early this year. “Right from the get-go, it’s more of a lightweight tool to be a stop-gap for the masses that can’t access a live therapist or psychologist.”

The pandemic-induced demand for mental health services has surged in the last two years. As a result, new depressive and anxiety disorder diagnoses spiked 400 per cent in 2021, according to the World Health Organisation.

“In meeting this global need, Intellect has proven itself to be the leading company coming out of Asia,” said Yinglan Tan, founding managing partner at Insignia.

With an extensive network of local providers and mental health practitioners in the region, Intellect has served a broad range of clients, such as foodpanda, Shopback, and Carousell, Avery Dennison and Schroders, as well as government agencies.

The company is conducting over ten clinical studies collaborating with leading universities and institutions, namely the National University of Singapore, King’s College London, University of Queensland and the Singapore General Hospital.

Intellect is also in Y Combinator’s current batch.

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Image credit: Intellect

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SoBanHang, a Vietnamese bookkeeping app for small retailers, has secured a US$1.5 million seed round from FEBE Ventures, US-based VC firm Class 5, and individuals such as Business Insider founder Kevin P. Ryan.

With the new investment, the startup aims to help small retailers create online stores and manage orders to tap into a market of 16+ million nano- and micro-businesses in Vietnam. 

As per the press statement, the company develops according to the model of Shopify Lite & Digital Ledger for MSMEs. Techcrunch reported that SoBanHang also intends to expand its financial services to include working capital loans that can be disbursed without a digital wallet or bank account.

Launched three months ago, SoBanHang was the idea of Hai Long Bui, chief analytics and CTO at Landers Superstore (a Philippine supermarket chain) and former Lazada executive Hai Nam Bui.

The startup’s bookkeeping tool assists businesses in digitising their processes, especially family-owned businesses having less than five employees. It offers them an online storefront system to connect with customers smoothly and maintain relationships while preparing for other COVID-19 outbreaks. 

The firm claims to have signed up almost 20,000 merchants as of August. It has also seen an uptake in registration from food and convenience retailers during the pandemic. 

Also read: Omnilytics to acquire Malaysia’s Supahands for US$20M to enhance its retail tech stack capabilities

In the recent interview with TechCrunch, co-founder Hai Nam Bui said that most Vietnamese retailers are not used to the payment process with third-party logistics providers or digital wallets. “That was an aha moment when I realised that a lot of e-commerce platforms are still not touchable to about 90 per cent of retailers in Vietnam.”

According to SoBanHang’s research, many Vietnamese micro-sized businesses are local, serving consumers within a few kilometres of their location and offering their deliveries on foot. They used to do everything manually on paper since they didn’t have a point-of-sale system or a laptop. 

SoBanHang, therefore, shies away from complicated logistics or payment systems, which force merchants to employ high-cost third-party delivery applications. 

The co-founder believes that SoBanHang can help small businesses compete against larger firms like supermarkets and convenience stores when the lockdown measures are lifted.  

“The buyers and sellers are actually within walking distance. So when they connect with buyers, they can make that order transaction, and then retailers deliver the goods themselves and collect the money at the customer’s doorstep,” said Hai Nam Bui. 

In a chat with e27, Dave Anderson, managing general partner at the US-based Supply Chain Ventures, said that many small companies worldwide still rely on homegrown or excel spreadsheets to manage the supply chain part of their businesses.

“Making supply chain toolsets available inexpensively across the globe to small businesses will help these companies increase profits, compete with neighbouring shops, and generally improve the lives of millions of owners and their families,” Anderson added. “The democratisation of supply chain technology is a real and important trend, one that will help create a better world for many.”

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Ethis Global, the company that operates sharia-based crowdfunding platforms in Indonesia and Malaysia and social finance platform GlobalSadaqah, today announced the closure of its MYR6.8 million (US$1.7 million) Pre-Series A funding round from angel investors in the Islamic finance and fund management communities.

Notable names in this list included Malaysia-based Tan Sri Wan Zulkiflee (Chairman of Malaysia Airline, former president and CEO of Petronas) and Daud Vicary Abdullah (Trustee at RFI Foundation) as well as Dubai-based Khurram Hilal (Islamic banking lead at Standard Chartered).

In a press statement, Ethis Global said that the funds will be used to scale up operations in existing markets, acquire licenses and set up operations in new jurisdictions, and develop new technology.

For example, it plans to expand its offerings in Indonesia and Malaysia to include agriculture and Waqf issuers and projects in 2022.

Ethis Global also announced that these efforts will be part of its planned milestones leading up to their Series A funding round. It targets to raise US$10 million from institutional and strategic corporate investors.

Ethis Group Founder Umar Munshi named the partnership as “key to the company’s growth and success.”

Also Read: How Islamic finance can work with fintech to promote financial inclusion in Malaysia

“Ethis is on track to prove the commercial viability of our high-impact fintech model based on Islamic finance principles,” he said.

Headquartered in Malaysia, Ethis Global started out in 2014 as a private investment club in Singapore.

It is operating regulated platforms in Malaysia and Indonesia and has also secured regulatory approvals in Dubai and Qatar.

Ethis Indonesia has been operating since 2015, matching retail investors from more than 50 countries into impact-investment campaigns, initially focused on property development for social housing and more recently introducing SME supply-chain projects.

This Pre-Series A funding round followed the recent appointment of Amran Bin Mohd as the Chairman of the newly established Ethis Investment Management.

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Many people I talk to started a company to solve a problem they encountered and found no other solution. There are also cases where the solutions that they found didn’t do a good enough job to satisfy their needs, creating an urgency for a new, improved one.

Today’s guest Sam Starns is no different.

After regretting her own traditional wedding, she wished there was someone who could have advised her to find the strength within herself to fight for the wedding she really wanted. That led Starns to start her own company which specialises in advising, planning, and leading couples to experience a custom elopement style wedding with under 25 guests in the most beautiful parts of the world.

How exactly is her company different from the existing wedding organisers? How does it seize the opportunity in a highly competitive market?

Most importantly, when starting a company, why is it so important to find the Why factor? How can it make a difference for you and your company? If you have not found it yet, then what are the steps that you can take? What are Starns’s experience in the matter, and what kind of advice can she give you?

If you are starting a company and need that extra push that inspires you, make sure you don’t miss this episode!

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Starting a business comes with its own set of difficulties but maintaining a business is the larger challenge. When it comes to small and medium businesses, money management is one of the main challenges they are faced with worldwide. Some of the most recognisable brands in the region have shut their doors due to financial losses and bankruptcy, including the 162-year old Singapore department store, Robinsons, and souvenir chain, Naiise Iconic. According to a survey with 1,000 SME founders from Asia, businesses are most likely to fail because of an inability to manage costs or anticipate rising costs.

As per a recent UNESCAP report, many respondents in diagnostic studies of SME development perennially cite the common complaint that access to finance is inadequate. The study also highlights that financing constraints play an even more critical role later on, when operating SMEs are seeking to expand and develop, but lack access to sufficient long-term funding sources in particular.

Capital is crucial not only for a business to run but for it to thrive. Limited access to the right financial services and tools is one of the main areas where SMEs struggle. They are more often than not struggling to cover daily operational costs to somehow manage their essential expenses such as payrolls, and are therefore unable to pursue a path of exponential growth.

According to a 2020 report by Oracle NetSuite, more than half of the top 10 challenges faced by small businesses involve finance. From limited or inconsistent cash flow to inadequate capital, funding can make or break small businesses in one way or another.

Also read: Startup Thailand Marketplace: a gateway to new markets

This is not only a challenge uniquely faced by SMEs during a precarious time. Corroborating this report is an earlier study by Synergix Technology conducted in 2019 which concluded that “finance-related problems are an ongoing issue for all businesses worldwide including SMEs in Singapore. Regardless of the operational sector, enterprises will more likely fail to succeed if they are not able to maintain a sustainable financial condition.

This is where the right fintech tools and services can help small and medium businesses tackle the issue of money management and thrive in the competitive market. One such company that is making strides in this direction is Finaxar.

Finaxar is a financial service provider focused on providing SMEs access to working capital so that they can supercharge their business towards accelerating growth. “We streamline the E2E process of providing short-term working capital, enabling digital payments, and facilitating expense management from one centralised platform using the power of technology,” shared Dr Tan Sian Wee, Group CEO of Finaxar.

Solving money management challenges faced by SMEs

Founded in 2016 and serving primarily the Singapore market with its focus on changing the way small business financing is done using technology, Finaxar is a Singapore-based fintech firm that is solving working capital challenges faced by SMEs

Finaxar finances directly from their balance sheet to provide innovative data-driven credit and payment solutions. In July 2019, with the support of Enterprise Singapore, the firm cemented its Lending-as-a-Service^TM in a new cross-border partnership with Cathay Financial Holdings and Indovina Bank to improve access to SME financing in Vietnam — setting a milestone of its first overseas market beyond Singapore. In the firm’s vision to digitising SME finance, Finaxar grew its capabilities in 2020 with a “Buy-Now-Pay-Later” solution for businesses in the B2B sector — on top of their existing Finaxar Credit Line, which enables business payments through a single, integrated platform that aligns seamlessly with businesses’ cash flows to provide rapid liquidity to SMEs.

Flex by Finaxar, powered by Visa: A unified spend management solution

Last year, when many small and medium businesses were struggling to survive and capital was one of the top concerns across the industry, Finaxar announced the launch of Flex: A unified spend management solution jointly developed in partnership with Visa. With the aim of providing businesses with a platform to unify spend, payables and receivables, the solution was launched in line with Finaxar’s focus to transform SME finance through digitisation. With Flex by Finaxar, businesses now have access of up to S$100,000 in interest-free credit within 48 hours.

“Our initial journey as an SME lending company gave us the opportunity to speak with our SME customers, which allowed us to validate some severe gaps in accessing working capital in Southeast Asia. With the digital ecosystem landscape dramatically changing, we had the chance to innovate our core capabilities to support SMEs in a more purposeful and meaningful way, at the scale and speed that is beneficial to everyone.” shared Dr Tan.

He added, “We were able to leverage our ability to underwrite SMEs efficiently, providing them with short-term working capital to fuel their business, and enabling them to gain more transparency and control over their finances. As a financial services provider, we introduced Flex to ease the process of applying for working capital and facilitate the convenience of managing business payments using digital capabilities in a secure, efficient, and low-cost manner.”

Also read: RE:SOLVE — the biggest summit for digital-first customer experience

With changing consumer behaviour and a landslide shift towards online payments amidst the pandemic, digital payments have become the most preferred method in Singapore, and SMEs need to be ready for that. They need holistic and agile solutions for better money management. In line with that, the Flex solution comes as both a virtual and physical corporate card — a key feature made available only to businesses in Singapore and is part of Flex’s all-in-one spend management solution. Flex enables easy reconciliation and integration into existing accounting tools to help SMEs keep track of the payments that require reimbursement. 

Employers can empower employees to make payments via corporate cards without prior approvals. This can be done by setting customisable parameters such as monthly amounts loaded to the cards, controlling specific expenses (e.g. transportation, entertainment, bulk purchases) and more. All expenses will be captured by the Flex platform for easy reconciliation and seamless reimbursements, thus improving the efficiency of SMEs.

Flex by Finaxar provides a three-fold money management solution

Flex’s proprietary solution that covers working capital provision, instant card issuance and spend control management is the first of its kind in Singapore. With an interest-free, fee-free credit line of up to 35 days with adjustable billing periods, it eliminates friction points and hidden costs typically associated with traditional lending. 

“We facilitate cross border payments with zero FX markup, and domestic payments on Flex are free for our clients. It is simple to apply, fast to get a credit line and very affordable for small businesses. We continue to innovate our platform with SME customers’ need for better control of their expenses in mind,” added Dr Tan.

Also read: Revolutionising the food industry with Malaysia’s StixFresh

Flex’s all-in-one financial management platform enables SMEs to:

• Regulate their spending: Businesses can determine exactly where and when the money was spent by setting up request-approval workflows and customising spend limits.
• Manage their spending: With the issuance of physical and virtual Flex Visa corporate cards, businesses can capture and monitor invoices, initiate payments and reconcile their payments using their accounting software via a single platform.
• Track their transactions: Using real-time spend insights, businesses can obtain an up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive financial outlook — and easily integrate into any existing accounting software.

“We are not a technology company attempting to provide financial services. We are a true financial services company which leverages the depth of our team’s long backgrounds in finance. Today, we leverage the power of technology to better serve the SME community, aiding their ambitions to grow without limits,” concluded Dr Tan. 

Interested in improving your startup’s finance management and maximising business growth potential? Learn more about Flex by Finaxar at https://flexnow.co.

 

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

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