The innovation centre is called HLX and it aims at facilitating corporates and startups to meet

Malaysia-based conglomerate Hong Leong Group announced that it has launched a new innovation centre named HLX. The conglomerate group stated that it seeks to boost the local tech startup ecosystem by creating an intersection point for every aspect in the tech startup community, as reported by KrAsia.

HLX is designed as a Southeast Asia-common practice of private-public partnership (PPP) between Hong Leong Group and the Malaysian Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), a government agency. It will be located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur.

HLX said it plans to become the hub where corporates can connect with the startup community to exchange ideas and accelerate innovation around technologies like artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and fintech.

HLX features a 250,000 square foot facility with co-working spaces, event facilities, talent development programs, an auditorium, restaurants and a gym.

Also Read: Kickstart Ventures to manage Ayala’s US$150M Corporate VC fund in Philippines

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The funding round followed a US$60 million Series A funding round that Deskera announced in 2018

Singapore-based cloud-based software provider Deskera has raised more than US$100 million in an extended Series A funding round from an entity linked to South Korean tech giant Naver, according to a report by Deal Street Asia.

The funding round followed an over US$60 million Series A round from a number of investors that include Jungle Ventures, Cisco Investments, Tembusu Partners, Susquehanna International Group and Innoven Capital in late 2018.

Citing anonymous sources linked to the development, the report said that the company’s valuation was close to US$500 million following the funding round.

Naver itself had confirmed in an email statement that the investment was made via the Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund. The company declined to give further details.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, April 17: Deskera works with ITE to equip students with tech skills

“… Naver and Deskera are in discussions with respect to collaboration in technology and cloud infrastructure such as hosting and other services,” Naver wrote in the statement.

Deskera CEO Shashank Dixit has declined to comment on the report.

The report also mentioned that Deskera has begun fundraising for its Series B funding round.

Founded in 2008, Deskera provided solutions that enable SMEs to track finances, manage customers as well as hire and manage employees.

It has raised a total of US$40 million to date.

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The strategic partnership will see the inclusion of up to 10,000 hours of MNC content in the iflix platform

Asian streaming platform iflix has announced an undisclosed investment and partnership with Indonesian media giant PT Media Nusantara Citra Tbk (MNC).

Following the partnership, MNC CEO David Fernando Audy was also appointed to the startup’s advisory board.

“Indonesia continues to be an incredibly important market for iflix and MNC’s influence and resources in the industry are a powerful advantage for us in the execution of our strategy as we continue to cement our leadership as a digital entertainment service in Indonesia,” said iflix Co-Founder and Group CEO Mark Britt in a press statement.

The strategic partnership will see the inclusion of up to 10,000 hours of MNC content in the iflix platform.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, iflix raises fresh funding and Grab aims for US$6.5B

The Indonesian media giant’s portfolio includes four national free-to-air TV stations which account for 46 per cent share of Indonesia’s ad-based television, in addition to 20 subscription-based channels, radio network, and print media.

e27 has reached out to iflix to find out more details about their plans with the partnership.

Following its recent exit from the African market with the sales of its business unit to Econet, iflix has been focussing heavily on Asian market.

In April, South Korean media company JTBC Content Hub made a strategic investment in the startup.

Japanese entertainment giant Yoshimoto Kogyo has also invested in the company, and set up a joint venture to promote Japanese content in the platform.

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Image Credit: iflix

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MX50 Fund invests in companies that have proven track record and are expected to rise in value at least 2-5X before IPO

MarketX, a one-stop platform for pre-IPO investments with operations in China, the US and Singapore, is launching a US$150 million fund to invest in pre-IPO technology companies, its Founder and CEO Cathryn Chen told e27.

Christened MX50, the fund is already in advanced talks with 30-odd family offices in Asia, and expects to make the final close by September-October this year.

She didn’t however share the names of the investors.

MX50 is a global diversified late-stage technology fund, which invests in market leading private companies in the US and Asia. According to Chen, this strategy offers significant upside potential and limited risks compared to traditional venture capital. “There are not a lot of late-stage pre-IPO secondary funds in the market. We believe we can leverage our platform business, which has been around for five years, to help investors take advantage of the in-transparent secondary pre-IPO market.”

She says the fund is fundamentally different from traditional VC funds. “We are not investing in early-stage companies, which comes with a lot of risk. Usually when you invest in 1,000 early-stage companies, only one will become a unicorn and most of the time you will lose all your money. On the other hand, MX50 invests in companies that have proven track record and are expected to rise in value at least 2-5X before IPO,” she explained.

Has the tech world done enough to check #MeToo? These speakers are discussing this topic at Echelon

The fund aims to invest in five to eight companies in total. The transaction size will vary between US$1 million and US$100 million.

More on MarketX’s platform business

MarketX is a pre-IPO investment platform catered to Family Offices around the world. Basically, it helps clients invest in top pre-IPO companies such as Uber, Airbnb, Tencent Music, Bytedance, and Grab. Chen says MarketX is already working with 200-plus family offices, funds, and high net-worth individuals, and has over 30 asset partners, with combined assets of over US$5 billion across the globe. In China alone, MarketX works with more than 300 entrepreneurs via its institutional partnerships.

“We aim to help Family Offices get access to opportunities previously not available to them directly. It’s a new asset class we are creating. We focus on secondaries in private stocks, which not a lot of VCs actively invest in,” Chen added.

So far, the MarketX platform has raised US$1.6 million in seed funding from prominent entrepreneurs and investors, such as Boquan He, Lie Jun Cai WenSheng and other top angels in China.

MarketX, with operations in different parts of the world including the US and China, recently soft-launched in Singapore. It has also applied for Monetary Authority of Singapore’s licence to operate in the city-state.

Explaining the rationale behind the Singapore launch, she said the city-state has garnered a lot of attention for being the new financial centre of Asia. “We want to position ourselves as the go to platform for pre-IPO investing for Family Offices and private funds. We have establishment in Silicon Valley and China already and would like to expand our footprint in Southeast Asia, and Singapore is our first stop in the region.”

Have you booked your ticket yet? Use the code ECHELONFUTURE to secure yours.

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Imagine using Facebook to check into an airline

The Wall Street Journal coined Facebook’s blockchain project as Project Libra, approaching allies such as Mastercard and Visa. MIT’s Christian Catalini is said to be working on Facebook’s cryptocurrency efforts.

We know that two of the top lieutenants of Mark Zuckerberg are indeed on the team — David Marcus and Kevin Weil. Facebook is hiring aggressively for blockchain roles.I’m excited about the long term cryptocurrency utility and adoption of blockchain technologies.

This is a speculation on the 10 on-chain possibilities that Facebook’s efforts could power for the global citizen. What’s your take?

1. Peer to peer payments

With a Facebook USD-backed cryptocurrency, users can pay each other for meals, rent and anything that’s needed. Venmo might get jealous.

2. Peer to peer verification of identity

It’s a global and connected world, communities and persons can mutually verify identities to ensure that bad players are weeded out. A verified identity will have a check mark across their name with the no. of verifications. Peers are incentivized to deal only with other peers with strong verified identities.

3. Voting and delegation

To keep communities moving forward, it will be nuts for us to make every single decision and vote on what’s possible in our communities, meetup groups, social clubs and organizations. Everyone in the communities should be able to delegate or vote directly for decisions to be made on proposals and drafts to their benefit.

4. Invoiced and pay for goods and services

Businesses can invoice and charge users for their products and services. They should also be able to pay their employees, file taxes and do all kinds of financial functions seamlessly.

5. Lending and working with credit

Businesses should be able to automatically extend lines of credit and have payment periods in working with other businesses. This will enable more efficient business operations.

6. Invest in securities

Regular citizens and accredited investors should be able to invest through smart contracts and be issued securities for the businesses they’ve invested in.

7. Access any e-service, game, app

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Using their identity, citizens can authenticate and login for e-services, games and applications. They can opt to have personalized experiences only upon authentication of their verified identity.

8. Sharing and retrieving data with 3rd party e-service, game, app

Should a game require photos of the user from another service, the user should be able to authenticate and grant permissions for one-time sharing or retrieval. Without authentication of verified identity, services will not be able to perform such actions.

9. Travel and immigration using their global identity

With their identity, they could use their mobile device and private keys to authenticate themselves at immigration or when they check in for their flights. Doing so enables them to pass through seamlessly through the expedited immigration counters. Public travel records are available for countries to access.

10. Assets and information inheritance

Everything accessible by the verified identity of the citizen would be up for inheritance programmed to the citizen’s preference. Assets, information, services, securities owned can be passed on easily.

There’re many possibilities for Facebook to experiment. There will be barriers to adoption. We’re definitely excited about how mass adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies will happen in the next few years.