Lazada rebrands its logistics units to Lazada Logistics

The story: Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Lazada announced that it has rebranded its logistics units Lazada eLogistics (LEL) and Lazada Express (LEX) to Lazada Logistics. According to the company, the new blue colour palette of Lazada Logistics reflects efficiency and reliability.

Lazada Logistics also introduced multi-channel logistics (MCL) services, which provide a single stock fulfilment solution to help e-commerce enablers and brands fulfil across all e-commerce channels seamlessly. This will apply to customers ordering on the Lazada platform and other e-commerce channels.

About the business units: LEL managed the fulfilment and logistics with third-party logistics (3PL) providers, whereas LEX handled the parcel delivery to customers.

About the company: Founded in 2012, Lazada Group operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It aims to serve 300 million shoppers by 2030. Since 2016, Lazada is the Southeast Asia flagship platform of the Alibaba Group.

Digital wealth management platform Syfe announces key hires in Singapore

The people:

Samantha Horton has been appointed as the Vice President, Head of Business Development. Horton started her career in Morgan Stanley doing equity research, covering the ASEAN financial sector. She joined Syfe after 11 years at a multi-billion dollar sovereign wealth backed hedge fund, Broad Peak Investment Advisers, where she was Managing Director and co-head of data analytics.

Jack Prickett joined Syfe as Head of New Business. Prickett was previously regional head of securities operations at UBS in Asia. During his 15 years at the bank working in London, Hong Kong and Singapore, Jack built a 150 people team from ground-up.

Brice Derouet was appointed as Head of Finance. Derouet oversees all financial operations, including planning, reporting and compliance. Before joining Syfe, he led the finance team at the co-living operator Hmlet.

Laurens Koppelaar has taken up the role of Head of Partnerships at Syfe. Koppelaar is also responsible for the strategic development of the “Syfe for Work” offering, which comprises holistic financial well-being solutions for corporates. Before joining Syfe earlier this year, he led the international growth across Southeast Asia as CEO of the insurtech company Symbo.

Also Read: RaRa Delivery rakes in US$3.25M to provide instant delivery for e-commerce in Indonesia

Prosperna raises US$555,000 in seed funding round

Investors: Led by Foxmont Capital Partners, other key investors in the funding round included Johnsen Global Business Ventures.

Plans: Part of the US$555,000 funding will be invested in expanding their range of features and growing and supporting their customer base.

About the company: Prosperna is a Philippine-based online store builder with a mission to empower 100,000 MSMEs with simple and affordable e-commerce software.

Tooliqa Innovations raises US$1.5 million in pre-seed funding

Investors: Aditya Raj (co-founder of MarketCube), Dipak Singh (co-founder of MarketCube), and Deepak Bansal. It also included angel investors such as Dilip Singh, Raj Gupta, Sooraj Malik, and Anant Jain.

Plans: The Gurgaon-based company will use the funds to expand research & development, create systems for product development, and build infrastructure for manufacturing.

About the company: Founded in 2021, Tooli.qa focusses on deep learning, computer vision, and 3D. It aims to make 3D and computer vision accessible to all industries and as many domains as possible.

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Image Credit: Lazada

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Medici, a Vietnamese health-tech company, has secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by early-stage investor Insignia Ventures.

With the new investment, the startup aims to foray into the insurance industry. It allows the startup to act as a middleman between insurance firms and the general public, which will receive suggestions and guidance from the broker to make the right financial decisions. 

In July, Medici received a 50-year insurance broker license from the government. Under this license, it intends to distribute a broad range of health and life insurance products. 

Besides, it also supports customers with claims management and co-develops insurance products, leveraging the data and insights collected through existing services.

Medici has partnered with companies such as FWD, Bao Viet Insurance, PTI, PVI, VBI, and Bao Minh Insurance to co-launch insurance products.

“The introduction of insurance products and services brings us a step closer to becoming a full-stack platform that serves the healthcare needs of Vietnamese people through their families, neighbourhood communities, and even companies,” said Duc Anh Ngo, CEO and founder of Medici.

Also read: Bolstering healthtech: Thailand’s bid to become Asia’s medical hub

Medici was founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneur Ngo, a Fulbright MBA alumnus and former Grab executive, as a telemedicine service for mobile consultation with doctors in their network. 

In the current form, it acts as an online marketplace that enables access and promotes transparency around drug and supplement purchases. Medici’s healthcare services ecosystem includes telemedicine, health screenings, and a marketplace for drugs and supplements. Its network also includes in-house doctor influencers in Vietnam. 

Medici has also partnered with over 50 hospitals and clinics across the country, enabling it to provide health screenings for its users. The company has also expanded operations to 30+ provinces and cities in Vietnam, with 100,000 e-health profiles on its platform. 

This medical network will be critical in the rollout of the startup’s insurance products and services as doctors, clinics, and hospitals can then assist customers in policy consulting and claims management.

It has also rolled out its services through more than 100 corporate partners, such as Shopee, Garena, and delivery company Giaohangtietkiem.

“Healthtech in an emerging market like Vietnam is a tough challenge,” said Yinglan Tan, founding managing partner of Insignia Ventures. “We believe Medici is in the right position to become the go-to digital platform for insurance and healthcare services in Vietnam.”

The firm claims to have 100 per cent quarter-on-quarter topline growth and 20 per cent monthly user growth.

According to World Bank, the Vietnam insurance market has low insurance penetration rates (premiums/GDP) at 2.4 per cent in 2018. Meanwhile, the insurance penetration rate in the Asia Pacific region is 5.9 per cent, as per a report from Ernst & Young.

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Image credit: Medici

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Omnilytics, Singapore-based fashion analytics and insights provider, has agreed to acquire Malaysian data labelling platform Supahands for US$20 million. 

This deal is part of the Singaporean firm’s ongoing strategic acquisition drive to expand its product offerings and enhance its retail tech stack capabilities.

Under this agreement, Supahands CEO will join Omnilytics’s board as chief strategy officer to accelerate Omnilytics’s growth plan for 2022.

“The Supahands deal will help us fill a critical gap in our existing tech capabilities as we take one step closer to becoming retail’s most important data stack,” said Kendrick Wong, CEO and co-founder of Omnilytics.

Founded in 2014, Omnilytics’s proprietary solution, Product Match, enables brands and retailers to compare the same or similar stock-keeping units (SKUs) across multiple platforms and competitors. It improves fashion retailers’ agility through real-time data and competitor analysis by assortment, price, discount, category, colour, size, options, and strategy.

Omnilytics’s clientele includes Zalora, Australia’s fashion and sportswear online retailer The ICONIC, Uniqlo parent company Fast Retailing, and Adidas. 

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

Supahands was started in 2014 to label images, text, speech, and video accurately, enabling clients to launch and scale high-performing Artificial Intelligence applications for their business. 

“Accelerating the adoption of AI is at the heart of our business at Supahands. We have witnessed the tangible benefits that AI and Machine Learning can bring to our clients as they strengthen the different pillars of their business from analytics to deployment,” said Mark Koh, CEO and co-founder of Supahands.

Supahands counts online consumer marketplace Carousell, SaaS customer experience management platform Sprinklr, and retail solutions provider Badger Technologies among its global clients. 

The startup is backed by Patamar Capital, Cradle Seed Ventures, Axiata Digital Innovation Fund, and 500 Startups. It received an undisclosed sum of the Series A funding in 2019. 

AI adoption has become a global trend in the fashion market. Brands such as Alibaba, Nike, Dior and Tommy Hilfiger have developed different AI-powered services to leverage their customer experience. 

According to a study by Juniper Research, the global spending on AI technologies by the fashion and retail industry is expected to reach US$7.3 billion each year by 2022. The Southeast Asia fashion market has also jumped the bandwagon, with well-known brands such as Pomelo employing AI to offer this June’s demand forecasting service. 

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Image credit: Omnilytics

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Is Akulaku the next unicorn of Southeast Asia?

For Akulaku, a digital consumer finance platform in Indonesia, COVID-19 was a boon. Thanks to the pandemic, the ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) company’s revenue and userbase witnessed massive growth.

Revenue for H1 2021 jumped 153 per cent to US$274 million from the same period last year, while the userbase rose 111 per cent to 23 million. Total GMV for the 6-month period grew 86 per cent to US$1.9 billion, and Akulaku expects this number to reach US$5.1 billion by the year-end.

Akulaku has is also a heavily-funded company. To date, it has amassed US$218 million over four equity rounds from investors such as Ant Group, Sequoia India, Qiming Venture Partners, and Arbor Ventures. As per a DealStreetAsia report, the fintech venture is currently in talks to raise US$100 million afresh in a pre-IPO round. It could value the company at over US$1 billion, turning it into a unicorn.

In March, Akulaku’s Bank Neo Commerce (BNC) launched its digital banking app, Neo+. At the end of June, Neo+ claims to have acquired over 2.2 million new customer accounts. In addition, the number of downloads grew 2.5 million in the first three months of launch; monthly active users increased to around 2 million from less than 1,000 at the beginning of April.

Also Read: Debunking BNPL myths: Is it going to be the primary mode of payment?

In this email interview, CEO William Li speaks about Akulaku’s growth amidst the ongoing global crisis, valuation and public listing plans. 

In 2019, Akulaku raised US$100M at a US$450M valuation. What is the company’s current valuation? Are you already a unicorn?

At this stage, we cannot comment on our current valuation. We are more focused on operational numbers, ensuring payments are made on time and building a stellar global team.

We have seen strong demand for our financial products since 2019, mainly through COVID-19. So we consider our valuation to have grown substantially in the past few years.

As per a news report, you are in talks for US$250M pre-IPO funding. Can you share the details with us? Also, when do you look to close this round?

We don’t share information on potential capital market deals until we sign them. We are constantly exploring funding opportunities given our explosive growth. We’ll share details once they become available.

How is your IPO plan coming along? How close are you to launch an IPO? Given the SPAC frenzy in the region, do you rethink launching a public listing via the SPAC merger?

We are not currently undertaking an IPO, as we hope to expand both our geographic reach and scope of services before considering that step. It is certainty planned down the line, but we are more focused on operational priorities right now.

We’ll consider both options once we are ready to launch a public listing.

In April last year, Akulaku was suspended from Mintos, a global online marketplace for loans. Can you tell us what led to the situation?

The COVID-19 pandemic came as a shock and brought uncertainty around its economic impact on Southeast Asia. Therefore we delayed repayment and reached a series of restructuring agreements with Mintos.

Given the robust recovery of businesses in Akulaku’s core markets and a solid operating performance in the last several quarters, Akulaku accelerated the repayment schedule in 2021 and has repaid all obligations six months before the scheduled repayments.

In the H1 financial results, the revenue for the period grew 153 per cent to US$600M from the previous year. The user base also rose 111 per cent. What triggered this growth?

This tremendous growth illustrates Akulaku’s resiliency and ingenuity and signals the increased demand for digital banking solutions.

Akulaku brings together the key strengths of fintech from more established markets, traditional financial institutions, and high-growth internet companies to our position as a regional platform with enormous potential markets in multiple countries.

Our high user engagement, full licenses, and extensive risk management capabilities make us the unique solution to the financial needs of people in the region.

How has been the overall BNPL sector in Indonesia growing? How do you compare the pre-covid and post-covid periods?

COVID-19 hit the entire region hard. Alongside many other companies, we had to readjust and evaluate in that initial period of uncertainty.

We are emerging out of the pandemic in a solid position to build for the future. We’re now committed to helping the entire region rebuild stronger in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Because of customers’ uncertain income flows during COVID-19, we found customers increasingly becoming aware of and interested in BNPL offerings, which provided them more financial flexibility in uncertain times. This acted as a natural marketing tool for us. The more customers became aware, the more demand increased.

Also Read: Turochas Fuad’s BNPL startup Pace receives debt financing, inks partnership with Valiram

The BNPL sector market size and penetration in Asia will be US$134 billion in 2023, which is only 4 per cent of the total e-commerce sales; it has excellent potential vs 35 per cent of e-commerce sales in Europe. Post-COVID-10, more people are shopping online and adopting BNPL services naturally.

Indonesia has a massive unbanked and underbanked population. How do you tap into this segment with your products?

Akulaku exists to help meet the daily financial needs of underserved customers in emerging markets through consumer financing, digital investment, digital banking, and insurance brokerage services. We are a pioneer in this industry, which means we educate our customers and build the industry as we grow.

Banks and financial institutions tend to focus on serving middle to upper-class individuals, leaving a large market segment underserved. We serve the large, fast-growing, underpenetrated Southeast Asia market. We believe that our success can be enhanced by educating first-time consumers on financial literacy topics such as banking, wealth management, and insurance, making them informed and knowledgeable customers.

Can you talk about your digital banking app?

Our technology ecosystem is laying the foundation to leapfrog previous generations’ traditional brick-and-mortar banking services straight to digital finance, which will fuel the region’s economic recovery. The momentous results from Neo+ in its first quarter is just the next step as we seek to make financial services accessible to all people in Southeast Asia.

Combining Akulaku’s innovative technology and risk underwriting capabilities with Bank Neo Commerce’s solid financial and regulatory foundation has positioned the company to lead the digital banking market in Indonesia and the region.

As the transition from cash currency to digital banking accelerates globally, Akulaku remains focused on providing inclusive financial services that are accessible and beneficial to everyone. This commitment is made manifest to Neo+ customers with easy access to the app and a customer experience that is continuously improved by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

It is the #1 daily most downloaded digital bank app in Indonesia and bagged 5.2 million total customers within four months of operation.

Given the massive growth in the fintech sector in Indonesia in recent years, do you plan to acquire new companies?

We are a fully licensed fintech company in Southeast Asian markets in banking, digital credit, and insurance. Our most active M&As were back in 2018 and 2019 when Akulaku was the first fintech company to acquire traditional banks and insurance companies.

As we build out additional financial products and services, we look at niche companies to invest in or acquire. We also have plans to expand into different countries and regions with our cutting edge financial technologies, which may result in us looking at local acquisition targets.

There are over 60M MSMEs in Indonesia. How do you plan to leverage this massive market? Do you have plans to foray into this fast-growing sector with new products and services?

Akulaku, our virtual credit card and e-commerce platform, combines direct sales and marketplace sales models, which plays a strategic role in providing use cases for credit consumption and offers short term loans and cash instalments.

BNC will also play a significant role in giving MSMEs access to banking services such as online accounts, digital payments, pay role services, cash management, etc.

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Image Credit: Akulaku

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Taiwan’s crypto-fiat fintech company XREX closed US$17M pre-Series A

Investors: CDIB Capital Group (lead), SBI Investment, Global Founders Capital, ThreeD Capital, E.Sun Venture Capital, Systex Corporation, Metaplanet Holdings, AppWorks, Black Marble, New Economy Ventures, and Seraph Group.

Plans: To expand its fiat currency portfolio, acquire additional licenses, and forge partnerships with more financial institutions and digital wallets. To roll out a user Reputation Index next year to bolster safety, transparency and accountability while encouraging social networking.

About XREX: Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Taipei, XREX fosters global financial inclusion by leveraging blockchain technology in solving the dollar liquidity shortage issues of cross-border merchants and SMEs in emerging markets. It claims to pioneer tools such as BitCheck and MyXchange to help these organisations reduce forex loss, gain access to US dollars and seamlessly cross over from informal to formal economy.

Also Read: Startup Villages helps entrepreneurs move to Italian villages and make the most of their ‘EUR1 house’ schemes

In the last eight months, XREX successfully detected and prevented fraud rings from Russia and Nigeria from using the platform. The company boasts itself as “one of the safest crypto-fiat currency platforms in the world.”

In 2019, XREX closed a US$7 million seed round led by Taiwan-based incubator cum accelerator AppWorks, which also joined this pre-Series A round this year. Other existing investors of XREX include Skype’s late-cofounder Toivo Annus, WI Harper, BitoEx, and the Taiwan government’s National Development Fund.

Revenue-based financing and growth platform Choco Up bags US$120K funding

Investor: Malaysia-headquartered social e-commerce platform Poptron.

Plans: Choco-Up’s funding, part of a larger funding round by Poptron, will support Poptron in their expansion plans in Singapore and other countries in the region at a peak time for the e-commerce industry.

Poptron will also become a channel partner of Choco Up, enabling the small and micro merchants on the platform to gain access to Choco Up’s data-driven financing platform and receive the immediate and accessible financing these brands – which may not otherwise be able to receive necessary capital – need to grow.

About Choco Up: Founded in 2018, Choco Up offers flexible non-dilutive funding solutions and business analytics across eight countries and 10 sectors. With offices in Hong Kong and Singapore, Choco Up leverages data analytics and vast integration to automate growth fund deployment and risk management, providing fast-growing companies with rapid capital deployment to fuel their growth.

About Poptron: It connects socially conscious consumers in Malaysia with ethical, sustainable and socially responsible brands on its platform, which currently hosts over 100 microbrands with more than 2,000 different types of product listings.

Frontiers Lab Asia launches cross-border training programme in gender lens investing

The story: Frontiers Lab, an incubator for solutions to complex, persistent challenges in entrepreneurial ecosystems, has launched “Beyond 2021: Investing across borders and innovation”, a training programme in South and Southeast Asia to connect global angels to women-led ventures and cross-border investing.

The programme focuses on regional entrepreneur support organisations (ESOs) and intermediaries, and the challenges that they face in supporting small and growing businesses (SGBs).

The objective: This series to be held on September 8-9 provides educational workshops on investing, gender lens investing (GLI), and cross-border investing to demystify the GLI opportunity. It is open for application from angel investors across South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Local hosts include ANGIN, Indonesia’s angel investors network; Villgro, a Philippine early-stage impact incubator; KisStartup, a Vietnam-based ecosystem builder; Invest2lnnovate, Pakistan’s female-led venture capital fund; and Spring Activator, a Canada-based incubator-cum-accelerator.

The non-profit project aims to increase access to capital for female-led early-stage startups, as well as create financial equality and independence within the investment community.

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Image Credit: XREX

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Starting a business or venturing out as an entrepreneur can be an overwhelming endeavour. How are you going to get your business and brand in front of your target audience?

How are you going to find your ideal clients? Where do you even begin with your marketing efforts? Building your network and allowing it to compliment your marketing efforts gives any startup an advantage.

In a world where we have transitioned to Google Ads, SEO and Social Media Marketing it’s important to remember just how powerful your networking efforts are when paired together with your other marketing initiatives.

Networking is all about establishing, growing and nurturing long term beneficial relationships with people. You will notice some of the most successful individuals are often the most connected. Developing these healthy connections can lead to progression and opportunities.

It’s also important to remember that your network isn’t just business individuals or people in a similar field as your own, you should also consider friends and family as part of that network as well.

Spending the time to build your network comes down to one thing, leverage. While having a large network is a good thing, ensuring that it’s a quality network with the intrinsic value you can call upon to help in certain instances is something to keep in mind.

Collecting a pile of business cards isn’t necessarily the best strategy for building your network. Having a common interest, understanding goals and developing a good foundation in the connection is much more effective.

Also Read: Dealing with fundraising problems? These three startups may have the answer

Building credibility by networking

When you begin to build your network online, as well as in-person, your resources begin to grow. Supplying this growing network with reliable data, ideas and knowledge will help increase your reputation as well as make you more visible to others.

Opportunities and referrals

These may be the most obvious points as to why building and maintaining your network is so important. It’s also a huge reason why most startups participate in networking, they want to gain access to quality referrals and business opportunities.

While you may not know how opportunities or referrals will materialise, obtaining them through your network ensures they are high quality and easier to convert as opposed to solely relying on digital marketing efforts.

New thoughts and perspectives

Networking involves interactions with businesses and people from a wide variety of diverse contexts which can create a huge advantage in thought processes and perspectives. Some of these advantages are:

• Break old habits: Inviting in fresh perspectives from your network can allow you to mix things up and force you to take some risks. Some ideas may not work out, while others have the potential for big payoffs.
• Benefit from experience: Even after working for many years in one field your expertise will be limited given there is only so much one person can do. Tapping into your network of people allows you to gain the perspective of individuals who have worked for a variety of different companies or different industries and may be able to provide actionable and solution-based advice that they have personally seen be effective in the past.
• Reach new audiences: If you are finding yourself or your business exhausting current target audiences or not getting the return on investment you are looking for with your marketing efforts, reaching out and tapping into your network can reinvigorate or show you the things you need to re-evaluate and change.

Building a business and accumulating clients can take a lot of time and effort so it’s good to have a solid network of business associates and friends that you can draw energy from when needed.

Taking time to foster and nurture these relationships can empower your success with your start-up or entrepreneurial journey and allow you to cultivate the career and business you’re aiming to build.

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Dekoruma, an online platform offering home furnishing and interior design services in Indonesia, announced today it has raised US$15 million as part of its ongoing Series C financing round.

Key investors in this round include Nexter Ventures by Thailand’s SCG Cement-Building Materials and South Korea’s KTB Network. Existing backers GDN, OCBC NISP Ventura and Foundamental also co-invested.

This round comes over a year after it bagged an undisclosed amount in pre-Series C from InterVest Star SEA Growth Fund and existing investors. According to its co-founder and CEO Dimas Harry Priawan, Dekoruma is currently in talks with investors to add more capital to the current round.

It will use the fresh financing to expand its Dekoruma Experience Centre, an O2O concept, beyond Jakarta. The experience centre — developed at the end of 2019 — reduces acquisition costs and increases online purchases within its vicinity, according to the startup.

The company will also develop new products and services, and integrate its project management system (PMS) NOMA to grab more designers.

Dekoruma also wants to see itself in around eight cities in the archipelago by the end-2022

Also Read: Dekoruma raises Series B funding, aims to expand in the market

“The product and ecosystem that we have built have eliminated inefficiencies that plague the industry. It translates to more affordable products and hyper-transparent services that our customers and partners delight in. We will scale up by expanding our business beyond Jakarta and partnering with more partners and property developers,” said Priawan.

Started as a furniture marketplace in 2016, Dekoruma currently offers an ecosystem connecting home furnishing merchants, interior designers, contractors and property developers. In addition, it recently added property brokerage to B2C customers.

To date, Dekoruma claims to have served more than a million customers, partnering with more than 5,000 designers and contractors and almost all tier 1 and tier 2 property developers in Indonesia.

Dekoruma’s revenue has tripled, and all business units have been operating at CM3 (contribution margin 3) positive for the past 18 months. With a multi-years of runway, the startup expects to become EBITDA-positive by the end-2022.

“Our focus now is to grow our business and hit EBITDA-positive by the end of 2022. Then, we will gear up for an IPO sometime in the end of 2023,” added Priawan.

Also Read: The future of interior design is here

Ever since the COVID-19 pandemic struck at the beginning of last year, Dekoruma claims almost all of its customers have virtually had discussions with interior designers through NOMA.

The home and living industry is about US$10 billion in Indonesia.

Like in other parts of the world, people in the archipelago are still placed under lock-down and staying home. As a result, the demand for home and living has grown significantly.

“Due to the pandemic, we have seen many traditional retailers close their shops, and many interior/contractor projects face supply-chain related disruptions,” Priawan told e27. “This situation has put Dekoruma in a prime position as we are the only company that can digitise the entire home furnishing and buying experience.”

He also said Dekoruma is becoming the third-largest company in Indonesia after Informa (Kawan Lama Group) and IKEA. “We expect the demand to go up further both in the residential and commercial sectors since most offices, F&B outlets and hotels will eventually have to focus on creating safe and pandemic-free spaces,” he concluded.
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Image Credit: Dokoruma

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We are thrilled to announce that we are working with Female Entrepreneurs Worldwide (FEW) to provide startups with access to e27 Pro.

Female Entrepreneurs Worldwide (FEW) is the largest business platform for female founders and business executives in Asia. FEW’s mission is to empower women with essential skills and networks to help their business growth and personal development.

FEW focuses on the following aspects: Tech Platform, FEW Incubator and ESG.

• Tech Platform – Members can search business and lifestyle programs and book direct consultations with industry experts who can offer timely advice and expertise to help their business.
• FEW Incubator – Each year FEW Incubator offers cash grants to selected female founders of high-growth technology companies and helps them build a sustainable, scalable and profitable business.
• ESG – FEW also works closely with multinational companies and government bodies to build ESG programs and market their initiatives to a female demographic.

As part of their incubation program, FEW has organised a demo day happening on August 25, 2021, 6 to 9 PM SGT, to highlight 13 selected women-led tech companies across various verticals including edutech, healthcare, fashion-tech, AI and Big data. Investors, business angels and venture capitalists will have an exclusive inside view of these Asia’s women-led tech startups, who are developing cutting-edge innovations and solutions for the new needs of different industries. The programme is sponsored by Apollo Mobility Group, Iptiq and InvestHK.

To join the demo day, click here.

Also Read: Levelling the playing field: How to build a home for women in tech

Opportunities to build your investor network through e27 Pro

Over the past couple of months, we have served over 3,000 connections between startups and investors through e27 Pro’s Connect feature.

In this new normal, there is a distinctive lack of ability for different parts of the Southeast Asia tech ecosystem to reach out to each other.

We used to have thousands of offline activities happening monthly, connecting various local and regional ecosystems, connecting startups, corporates, governments, and investors. Even our very own Echelon Asia Summit used to bring in more than 10,000 people over two days to achieve these meaningful, often serendipitous, connections.

This is a real pain, especially if you are new to the ecosystem and do not have existing networks that can introduce you to new ones. Online webinars and conferences seem to alleviate this issue temporarily, but we find that the startup ecosystem requires more.

e27’s mission has always been to empower entrepreneurs with the tools to build and grow their companies. With e27 Pro, we’re going back to our roots and helping startups with their fundraising by providing a platform that allows not only discovery but a tool to begin conversations with investors and update them on their progress.

With over 300 verified active investors on the platform, e27 Pro members have in their reach the ability to find, connect, and engage with investors that are right for them (not a Pro member yet? Start here).

Get the chance to connect with FEW

FEW is onboard e27 Pro, and members can reach out directly to them via Connect.

Any e27 Pro member can simply visit FEW’s profile and click the Connect button to get the ball rolling.

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Vietnamese startup Marathon Education has secured US$1.5 million in seed funding from a clutch of investors, including Forge Ventures (a VC firm launched in partnership with Alto Partners Multi-Family Office in Singapore), Venturra, and iSeed SEA. 

Individuals including Marcel van Miert, chairman of Vietnam Australia International School, and Walter de Oude, founder of Singapore Life, also joined the round.

With the new investment, Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered Marathon intends to serve students taking the National Curriculum by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training across grades 6-12.

It also aims to leverage analytics and technology to identify areas where students are weak and recommend the necessary lessons.

The startup is also developing a platform for tutors to reach students across the country, focusing on academics, especially with COVID-19 forcing all offline classes to shut down.

“COVID-19 has also ushered in a new paradigm shift where consumers have shifted to studying online. Marathon’s approach takes advantage of these converging factors and enables the mass market to access top tutors, which previously would not have been possible,” said Wing Vasiksiri, managing partner at iSeed SEA.

Co-founded in 2021 by Duc Pham (CEO), a former investor at the US-based private equity fund TPG Global, and his brother-in-law Tran Viet Tung (COO), Marathon Education targets Vietnam’s fragmented, under-served after-school tutoring market. 

Incorporated in Singapore, Marathon leverages a live large-class hybrid model to ensure students get access to top-quality education from “top one per cent teachers” and personalised attention from curated teaching assistants during and after classes, even when they are home.

“Marathon wants to democratise access to quality tutors for students across Vietnam,” said Pham.

 “It is estimated that offline after-school tutoring penetration in Vietnam is ~50 per cent. However, given most quality tutors are based in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city, students in tier-2 and tier-3 cities do not get access to tutors of the same quality as their peers in metropolitans,” he added.

According to a Bain & Company analysis, Vietnamese parents also view education as the primary means towards a successful career. The average Vietnamese family spends approximately ~20 per cent of disposable income on education, compared to 6 – 15 per cent in other Southeast Asian peers.

Marathon is in a” stringent” process of selecting experienced tutors through multiple rounds of interviews on a referral basis. It is also in the final stage of bringing on board a CTO. 

While it counts offline players in the tutoring industry as its competitors, Pham said it does not compete with existing edutech players such as Topica, Kienguru, Everest, NPX Point Avenue, and Clevai.

“Our shareholder base also counts early investors in Zenius, Ruangguru, Topica, who can help us de-risk growth from areas that have killed other edtech players,” he added.

Also read: Keisuke Honda-backed edutech startup Manabie secures US$3M more to bring Japan’s high-quality education to Vietnam

Pham claims that Marathon allows tutors belonging to the “top one per cent in their respective subjects” to gain more income than their current jobs, as well as focus on their teaching strength while delegating away operations.

Unlike other booming sectors in the region, such as ride-hailing and food delivery, education is nuanced to the local context due to differences in language, culture, and curriculum. Therefore, Pham looks at the speed of execution and pivot quickly as the competitive advantage in this burgeoning market. 

“Our business model at launch does not rely on spending significant capital expenditure on building out a massively differentiated tech stack from competitors,” he said. “This contrasts the approach that some competitors have taken in spending significant cash on R&D to build up a content library without talking to users and understanding market needs, or converting content libraries that have worked elsewhere in the world and hoping that sticks in Vietnam.”

Also read: Flying Cape nets US$1.5M to scale its edutech platform in Southeast Asia, China

Many Vietnamese edutech companies have raised capital in H1 2021. They include educational services provider Equest (US$100 million investment from KKR), AI-powered language app Elsa (US$15 million Series B led by Vietnam Investments Group), and Educa Corporation (US$2 million Series A from Alibaba-backed eWTP). 

By the end of 2023, the Vietnamese e-learning market is expected to be worth over US$3 billion, according to Ken Research, with the increase in the number of foreign players entering the Vietnam e-learning market. 

The impact of the crackdown in neighbouring China

Vietnam’s close neighbour China recently banned firms in the tutoring sector from making profits, saying that this industry “led to money-burning wars and excessive advertising”. According to the Chinese government, it runs against the nature of education as welfare and harms the traditional education ecosystem.

The most significant driver for the crackdown was the predatory advertising whereby ads content focusing on “guilt-tripping” parents and students to urge them to attend tutoring otherwise lead to negative career implications.

“My immediate reaction is that advertising should never be done in this way,” Pham noted. “I think China is 10-15 years ahead of Southeast Asia in terms of edutech development, and therefore we now have all the precedents in front of us to avoid these pitfalls.”

Pham still believes in the benefits of shifting tutoring from offline to online, as in-school K-12 education offerings may over-deliver for some students who learn faster than others and under-deliver for some who learn a particular subject in different ways. 

Moreover, it reduces the burden of spending hours commuting between different offline tutoring classes, which otherwise could be used for sports or entertainment.

“I view K-12 after-school tutoring as modular, and only necessary to supplement areas where students need help, and should not be a ‘blanket’ offering across all subjects,” he added. 

Drawing on his experience working with established education players at TPG Global, Pham has built his conviction in understanding what Vietnamese and Southeast Asian parents look for when choosing education products.

“By having a bird’s eye view of the evolution of edutech players in the region, I will bet my money on Marathon being the next SEA unicorn,” stated Pham.

The post Ex-TPG exec’s startup Marathon Education raises US$1.5M to change the after-school tutoring market in Vietnam appeared first on e27.

Sometime in 2008, Italy started a revolution by offering properties in villages for EUR1 to encourage people to move to rural areas. These properties range from tiny houses to larger villas. The reason is simple: dwindling or ageing population.

Cut to now, almost 7,600 Italian villages are offering this scheme.

Dr Tausif Malik, a passionate entrepreneur based in the US, sensed an opportunity. “Why not conflate the ideas of entrepreneurship and the EUR1 scheme to support entrepreneurship globally?” he thought to himself.

This led him to launch Startup Villages, a village startup ecosystem to promote villages in Italy and Japan as ideal destinations for startups and sustainable development.

Last week, e27 spoke to Malik for more details of this project.

Below are the edited excerpts:

What is Startup Villages? How and when did the idea occur to you?

Startup Villages is the world’s first village startup ecosystem to promote villages in Italy and Japan as ideal destinations for startups and sustainable development. The project is promoted by myself through my company TMA Worldwide.

The idea occurred to me in 2008 in Chicago. It was summer when I read a CNN news report that Italian villages launched an initiative to sell properties at EUR 1 as an incentive to repopulate the dying Italian villages.

Approximately 7,600 Italian villages started offering the same scheme to invite new residents. As a result, many people bought and refurbished the homes they purchased in these Italian villages, but most were holidays homes, which didn’t trigger economic activity.

Hence, I started toying with creating an economic system and blending my knowledge of reverse migration with the Italian villages, and thus, I started documenting the concept of Startup Villages.

Also Read: Sustainability: the new business reality

The idea of reverse migration idea was germinated in 2018. I established a crypto mining training programme (Bitcoin training programme) based on his theory of reverse migration.

Under this programme, we planned to train young people of Indian villages and offer crypto mining rigs. The aim was to create a sustainable economic environment in India’s villages and make the country the most prominent crypto mining hub globally. But the programme had to be shelved for some policy reasons.

Can you explain how the Startup Village project works?

We are creating a platform and ecosystem to connect the villages of Italy and Japan initially. These two countries have the developed infrastructure, and they are already offering houses for EUR 1. We will move to other global locations later.

We are already in talks with over a dozen villages in Italy.

In the first phase, we tested the idea with two municipalities and submitted the proposal. In the second, we will conduct an online awareness programme for Italian Mayors, investors, startups, and the media. The plan is to launch the signup campaign in September and run a webinar every week.

In the third phase, we will sign in municipalities and do one-on-one training for them. Later, we will conduct a web conference in January 2021.

In the last phase, we will do an in-person Startup Villages conference in Italy and Japan.

The Startup Villages ecosystem will comprise the following:

• Events and meet-ups
• Communities
• Incubation and acceleration
• R&D
• Investors
• Startups

What incentives does SV provide to startups/entrepreneurs who are in moving to these villages? How many startups do you expect to join you in this project? Do you invite startups from across the world?

Italy is already offering incentives to digital nomads and whoever is interested in working remotely.

Japan is already offering cash incentives to tech companies establish in rural japan.

We are inviting startups from across the globe. The advantage is startups relocating to Italy will get access to the European Union market.

How many do you expect to come and join the Startup Villages project from the Asia Pacific?

We estimate that many APAC startups could take advantage of the Italian government’s incentives, EU market, and EU Investors.

In Japan, startups can benefit from the government’s cash incentives, the Shibuya district startup ecosystem, and the J- Startup government initiative.

As we are in phase, we can only give an estimated number of startups after some time.

What kind of startups do you target? Any specific segment/vertical? Can even an idea-stage startup join the project? How long can a startup work in these villages?

In Italy, we target startups in food, dairy, agriculture, automotive & electric vehicles, and fintech.

In Japan, we look for companies in the fintech, future technologies, drones, AI, food, and automotive & EVs sectors.

Startups of any stage can join us in this programme.

Also Read: Chototel gets you a room for US$2 a night in Dubai and Mumbai

The duration depends on the startups and how long they want to stay. But if they take any government benefit and incentives and then they have to adhere to government guidelines.

Can you shed some light on your working partnership with the respective governments of these villages/countries?

As mentioned, we are in the outreach phase, and we have submitted to two Italian villages and conducting an awareness program for onboarding.

How does the Startup Villages project boost the rural economy of these countries?

Startup Villages would be a game-changer to promote reverse migration and generate economic activity in rural Italy and globally.

Below are the advantages for the villages:

• Creates a new brand image for villages
• First-time villages to promote as a startup hub
• Startups get investments
• Startups generate economic activity
• Creates employment
• Attracts news residents and organisations
• Incentives the rural youth to stay back at home
• Generates revenues & taxes
• Develops positive media and public relations

How will startup founders cope with the expenses related to their stay and operations, especially if the startups don’t have any viable business model yet?

Entrepreneurs are hustlers; when they see an opportunity, they will grab it. Most of the successful startups are bootstrapped and don’t seek funding until they are viable.

We can’t comment on these cases. But, if startups need help, we can advise them and educated them. Then, after that, it’s up to them how they can leverage it to their advantage.

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Image Credit: Startup Villages

The post Startup Villages helps entrepreneurs move to Italian villages and make the most of their ‘EUR1 house’ schemes appeared first on e27.