The cleantech company said the plan would be to use the funding to create smart hotels across Southeast Asia

Singapore-based smart energy management company SensorFlow has announced that it has secured US$2.7 million Series A funding from private investor Pierre Lorinet. Joining the round is Playfair Capital, Cocoon Capital, Entrepreneur First, 2be.lu Investments, Aurum Land, and Insitu Asia Holdings.

Also Read: ViSenze raises US$20M Series C funding round co-led by Gobi Partners, Sonae IM

The company said that it will use the funding to focus on accelerating regional growth to Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Philippines, which will bring the company closer to its goal of 800,000 smart hotel rooms by 2022. Its mission is to support hotels across Asia with the efficiency of smart energy technology.

It also seeks to use the funding for an operation to meet the need of their hotel chain customers in Singapore, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.

“This investment has put us in an even stronger position for market expansion to help more hotels within the region reach their sustainability goals. We also have our eyes set on entering Sri Lanka, India, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia within the next two years,” said Co-founder and CEO of SensorFlow Saikrishnan Ranganathan.

SensorFlow offers a solution that solves three key challenges that used to prevent hoteliers from implementing effective, integrated energy management solutions. They are the large upfront costs for hardware followed by the inconvenience of a long installation period as well as the lack of integration options with existing systems.

SensorFlow records that energy consumption accounts for more than 60 percent of utility costs for the hotel business. The problems that hoteliers often face include the challenge of reducing energy use is high costs and disruptions when implementing new energy solutions.

“With SensorFlow, the solution provided can be installed in a matter of minutes and seamlessly integrates into existing infrastructure. Using wireless sensors, SensorFlow collects real-time data and artificial intelligence (AI) to automate decision-making without cost subscription model – catering to hotels that are unable or unwilling to tap into larger capital expenditure budgets,” explained Ranganathan.

SensorFlow’s track records include deploying property-wide solutions for The Uncharted Co’s 5footway.inn in Singapore and completing trials in three Alila Hotels & Resorts properties in Bali, managed to drive a 30 percent reduction in energy costs.

SensorFlow is on track with the findings from International Energy Agency, which stated that Southeast Asia’s energy demand is expected to grow by nearly 60 percent by 2040. With the building sector accounting for approximately 25 percent of Asia’s overall energy consumption, solutions provided by SensorFlow is expected to create more sustainable energy consumption.

Also Read: Singapore a honeypot for cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, data shows

The funding brings the total funds raised by SensorFlow to date to US$3.5 million. Last year’s initial seed funding was led by Cocoon Capital and followed by SG Innovate and SparkLabs under the Entrepreneur First accelerator programme.
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Image Credit: SensorFlow

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Also, Sony welcomes any ideas to finance, and Entrepreneur First closes US$115M for this year’s investment plan

Gobi Partners leads Series C funding for AI startup ViSenze [e27]

ViSenze, an AI company focussing on visual commerce technology serving retailers, brands, and media companies, announced a US$20M Series C funding it has received from Gobi Partners and Sonae IM. The latter is a Europe-based corporate venture investor specialising in retail, telco tech, and cybersecurity.

Other participants in the funding round include new investors Tembusu ICT Fund, 31Ventures Global Innovation Fund, and Jonathan Coon’s Impossible Ventures.

In a press statement, ViSenze said that it will use the funding to provide advanced, vertically-focused visual commerce technology to retailers, brands, and media companies. It’s also looking at enhancing its current platform solutions partnership with major smartphone manufacturers to enable visual shopping on native camera lenses.

Also Read: SensorFlow secures US$2.7M Series A funding from Pierre Lorinet

“Visuals have incredible power and influence over buying decisions, therefore having visual search capabilities within mobile devices delivers a modern, smarter way to ensure discovery by consumers,” said ViSenze Co-Founder and CEO Oliver Tan.

Prior to this funding round, the company that launched into operation in 2012 raised US$10.5 million in Series B funding round in 2016. It has raised a total of US$34.5 million with the latest funding round. ViSenze is run by over 80 employees with offices in Singapore, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, South Korea, and Japan.

Talent investor Entrepreneur First closes the first US$115M worth of global fund [Press Release]

Entrepreneur First (EF), a worldwide talent investor, announced today an investment worth US$115 million led by top institutional investors across the US, Europe and Asia. Some prominent entrepreneurs also took part in the fundraising, such as Taavet Hinrikus, founder of TransferWise, Alex Chesterman, founder of Zoopla, and EF alumnus Rob Bishop, who co-founded Magic Pony Technology which has been acquired by Twitter.

EF said that it will use the new fund to invest in over 2,200 individuals across the globe, who are joining cohorts in Bangalore, Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Singapore, and Paris.

EF’s bespoke program has been known for time and money with the aim to help individuals in finding co-founders and building high-growth technology companies from scratch. To date, EF has helped more than 1200 individuals to build over 200 technology companies, collectively worth USD 1.5 billion.

A lesser known fact about the investments EF has poured is that a quarter of Singapore’s seed capital in 2018 that went into Singapore companies came out of EF’s program.

Logistics tech startup Haulio launches a connectivity app for efficient tracking [Press Release]

Singapore-based logistics-tech startup Haulio just revealed the mobile-focused app called Haulio Connectivity System (HCS), that connects container haulage companies and drivers today, February 20, at their official launch. The app is said to be the industry’s first.

The app works by bridging clients and drivers across a single interface for enhanced data standardisation, efficiency in communication, and collaboration. The users can overall access visibility of drivers and trips, track job progress and fulfillment more easily, as well as reduce manual paperwork while the drivers can access an overview of their performance, trip incentives, and behaviour via their HCS dashboard.

In the event, there was also MoU signing between the company and Yang Kee Logistics to collaborate on integrating Haulio’s resource pooling and matching platform, HCP, with the Logistics Integrated Transport Ecosystem (LITE), which is a S$1.8 million (US$ ) project led by Yang Kee Logistics and supported by Enterprise Singapore,

The launch event was attended by Dr Lam Pin Min, Senior Minister of State for Transport and Health, and supported by PSA International (PSA), Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Workforce Singapore (WSG).

Sony Corp. welcomes any idea to support in its internal startup program [Bloomberg Tech]

Tokyo-based behemoth behind tech products like PlayStation, Sony, announced that it will open up an internal accelerator program to external entrepreneurs, backing them with money, marketing support, and more, as reported by Bloomberg. It will do so in a partnership with Tokyo University under which students can turn ideas into businesses.

Depending on the opportunity, Sony may invest, strike an alliance, provide office space, support the startups with its own marketing and sales expertise, or even acquire the businesses.

The initiative, now known as Sony Startup Accelerator Program, was started in 2014 and has seen some successful graduates such as smartwatches line wena, the digital smell dispenser Aromastic, and self-flying drone startup AeroSense.

“We’ll offer the know-how and the environment of our enterprise. Through these things, we want to realize the vision of creators,” said Shinji Odashima, head of Sony’s accelerator program. Sony welcomes application through its website to anyone.

Singapore-based social media platform Bigo to invest over US$100M for India expansion [Entrepreneur]

Bigo, Singapore-based social media platform, has announced an investment of over US$100 million to focus its expansion into India. It will also take steps to expand in the Middle East and the US, following the US$272 million Series D funding from Nasdaq-listed YY Inc it received in June last year, as reported by Entrepreneur.

It’s believed that Bigo will become the first Singaporean company to do so in India, possibly creating over 1,000 jobs and opportunities for cross-country learning for both Singaporeans and Indians.

Also Read: Singapore a honeypot for cryptocurrency and blockchain projects, data shows

“We have set our sights on expanding into India as the first region of three. India will act as a complementary center to Singapore’s Research and Development center,” said Jason Hu, CTO for Bigo Technology.

The company is known for its live-streaming product is BIGO LIVE, which has over 200 million registered users in more than 100 regions.
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We are now experiencing the dawn of a new era for funding blockchain startups via a more stable, regulated vehicle known as the Security Token

Capital raising is a method whereby a company raises funds through means of equity and debt.

The objectives of raising capital can be to inject it back into the business for further growth, paying the shareholders, and so on. The amount of capital to be raised is then decided accordingly.

All businesses ranging from startups to large enterprises are capable of raising capital through different means.

Before getting into how Blockchain can enable capital raising, let us first cover the Traditional Methods of Capital Raising and its limitations which can be tackled by blockchain technology.

We’ll also be looking at the basics of Blockchain, it’s applications and the current scene in the market.

Traditional capital-raising methods

1. IPO
Initial Public Offering is the very first sale of stock issued by a company to the public.

Prior to an IPO, the company is considered private, with a relatively small number of shareholders made up primarily of early investors (founders) and professional investors (such as venture capitalists or angel investors).

When a private company goes public, it faces a loss of control and changes in its organizational structure.

2. Short-term loans
These are generally made for a period of 1 year and have higher interests than Long-Term loans.

3. Long-term loans
These are generally made for a period of 5 to 10 years.

4. Bonds and debentures
A bond is typically a loan that is secured by a specific physical asset. A debenture is secured only by the issuer’s promise to pay the interest and loan principal.

All these methods require a credit history record of the borrower which might be a problem for new start-ups or people with no previous credit history.

Blockchain enabled capital-raising methods

Describing blockchain
Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology (DLT) which can be either public or private.

It is decentralized and all the information is digitized thus eliminating the need for manual documentation. This saves on labour costs as well as material cost.

In other words, blockchain is a chain of blocks in which information is stored within each block chronologically.

Furthermore, the records are updated near real-time and immutable.

To be more specific, this DLT is append-only ledger and remains unchanged over time. Changes to the existing block are created as a new block instead and linked to the old block.

The reason for this is that the blocks are cryptographically sealed in the chain thus creating True Digital Ownership due to the qualities of it being irreversible and auditable.

Auditability is possible by all parties with access to the system due to the transparency of records.

How it works:
Blockchain operates on a consensus mechanism (i.e. a protocol ensuring all nodes are synchronized with each other and transactions are approved as legitimate).

These consensus mechanisms are essential for Blockchain to operate smoothly.

• CPU Mining — Using a normal computer’s CPU to validate transactions in a proof of work consensus protocol.
• GPU Mining — This is not dissimilar to CPU mining, however, in this case, a graphics card is used. Graphics cards are more powerful whilst relatively using less electricity.
• Cloud Mining — Some miners rent out their processing power to other miners for an allotted period of time.

The two most popular mechanisms are:

Proof of work
This concept uses a process known as Mining and the nodes are known as Miners.

Mining requires massive computational power and in order to create a block, they will have to solve complex mathematical puzzles.

However, the drawback of this consensus mechanism is the massive resources it requires. To the graph available at digiconomist.net, estimates the amount of energy Bitcoin has consumed over the past 2 years.

Digiconomist estimates that just over the last year, Bitcoin consumed roughly 73.12 TWh, with an estimated cost of US$3,656,073,069. This figure is constantly updating and available under the label Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index.

Proof of stake
The basic assumption here is that “those who own most coins in a network have a vested interested in keeping the network maintained and the value of its coins high.”

Process:

1. Users can stake their tokens in order to be eligible to produce a block. (called a validator)
2. Those with most tokens have the highest chance to produce the block.
3. The validator receives the reward of transaction fees for each transaction made on their block.

Capital raising through blockchain

There are two main ways to raise capital through blockchain.

A) Initial Coin Offerings (ICO)
ICO is a fundraising mechanism through which investors are offered some units of a new cryptocurrency or crypto-token in exchange against cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum.

There is a difference between cryptocurrency and token.

A cryptocurrency coin, like Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum etc. is independent of a platform. They can be used as a form of currency outside their native environment.

A token represents an asset or utility that a company has and they usually give it away to their investors during a public sale called ICO (Initial Coin Offering). OmiseGO, Golem etc. are examples of tokens which exist on a particular platform. (blockgeeks.com)

Crypto-tokens are special kind of virtual currency tokens that reside on their own blockchains and represent an asset or utility.

Initial Coin Offering is similar to the IPO mentioned above in the Traditional Capital Raising Methods.

Here is a typical step for an ICO:

Step 1: Pre-Announcement (on platforms as Bitcoin Forum, Reddit)
Step 2: Offer
Step 3: PR Campaign (through platforms as Twitter, Medium, Telegram)
Step 4: Crowdsale
Step 5: Trading on Exchanges.

Before the ICO, the company needs to prepare a whitepaper. A whitepaper is a persuasive, authoritative, in-depth report on a specific topic that presents a problem and provides a solution. (HubSpot)

Here’s an example of a successful ICO deal in the energy sector in February 2018.

WePower, a blockchain-based green energy trading platform, raised US$40 million during its ICO.

During its presale, WePower raised US$30 million — US$11 million of which came from a public presale round in October of 2017 and US19 million from strategic investors and funds. (Business Wire)

WePower platform connects energy buyers to the green energy producers and allows for purchasing energy upfront at below the market prices. It uses energy tokenization to simplify, standardize and globalize the current existing energy investment ecosystem.

How their ICO was structured:
WePower token model (WPR) was a reward based crowdfunding campaign where contributors will receive WPR tokens in return for their donations.

Soft cap: US$5 million
Exchange rate for token sale until the soft cap: 1 ETH – 4600 WPR
Exchange rate for token sale above the soft cap: 1ETH – 4000 WPR
Minimum investment amount: US$200 in ETH

This example of WePower demonstrates how it created its own crypto-token, WPR and valued it to be 1 ETH worth 4,600 WPR (until soft cap) tokenized energy through its platform.

• One energy token will represent 1 kWh of green energy that would be generated at a certain time in the future.
• Created value for renewable energy providers as they can pre-sell their production in the global market and gain the required capital to increase the project profitability.
• Created value for investors as they can enjoy the benefit of better investment terms and access the green energy projects across the globe in a standardized manner. (icotokenews.com, WePower)

The drawback of the ICO is that investors receive tokens that are essentially useless until the project makes good on what it has promised.

Uprising and downfall of ICOs
With 2017’s dramatic crypto price boom, there was a corresponding boom in ICOs.

The fund raised in ICO significantly increased in 2017.

All companies had to do was, present a whitepaper containing their business plan, and crypto-investors or speculators invested based on this. Their business could be completely fictitious too as with most ICO scams but due to lack of regulation, investors had to do their own due-diligence and were not protected.

Below is a figure on the total funds raised from January 2016 to November 2017.

An incredibly thorough research document of Bloomberg, published in July 2018, reports that around 78 per cent of ICOs were identified scams prior to trading.

The report further highlights that 70 per cent of ICO funding (by US$ volume) to that date went to higher quality projects, although over 80 per cent of projects (by the number of shares) were identified as scams.

The ICO market is facing a decline due to large amounts of scam. There are a few cases of proper ICO’s between the fourth quarter in 2017 and the second quarter in 2018, five companies raised more than US$200 million dollars in an ICO.

These include 1) EOS, 2) Telegram, 3) TaTaTu, 4) Dragon, and 5) Huobi.

It is important to note here that these projects were all high-profile. EOS’s ICO lasted for nearly a full year and Telegrams ICO was only for accredited investors.

So, these high-profile projects are considered as outliers and here’s a graph created by LongHash to reflect on the actual situation of ICO’s after removing the outliers.

To conclude this section about ICO’s, the ICO trend is decreasing as seen in the figure above.

Due to the lack of proper regulations, it has been banned in a few countries like China, Morocco, Bangladesh and is highly regulated in other countries.

Many governments are changing their regulations on ICO’s to protect the ordinary investor.

There are other safer and more accepted ways to raise capital in 2019 such as the security token offerings.

B) Security Token Offerings
Earlier we talked about the difference between cryptocurrency and tokens.

There are two types of tokens as defined by the US SEC and FINMA.

Firstly, Utility tokens derive their value by providing a product or service to the user which gives them the right to use the network. The primary intent for ownership of utility tokens is usage and not profit.

They are important because, in a democratic ecosystem, it’s crucial for people who cannot easily buy or trade in securities to be able to access the company’s services and platform. (cryptobriefing.com)

Also Read: Rock it out in tech startup fashion at the Echelon Roadshow 2019 Bangkok

Security tokens derive their value from an external, tradable asset and are subject to federal regulations. However, STOs can be structured under a few ‘exemptions’ from registration offered by the US Securities Act.

Considering the issuance of the token is exempted from needing to be registered with the SEC, then in order to qualify for this exemption, the STO needs to be performed with full compliance of US securities laws. These exemptions are as follows:

Regulation D
Regulation D is a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulation governing private placement exemptions. It allows smaller companies to raise capital through the sale of equity or debt securities without having to register their securities with the SEC.

Regulation A+
Regulation A is an exemption from registration requirements — instituted by the Securities Act — that apply to public offerings of securities that do not exceed US$5 million in any one-year period.

Companies utilizing the Regulation A exemption must still file offering statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, the companies utilizing the exemption are given distinct advantages over companies that must fully register.

The issuer of a Regulation A offering must give buyers documentation with the issue, similar to the prospectus of a registered offering.

Regulation S
This regulation implies that STO’s must “lock” tokens for a year before trading can commence.

The SEC has written “Equity securities placed offshore by domestic issuers under Regulation S will be classified as “restricted securities” within the meaning of Rule 144 so that resales without registration or an exemption from registration will be restricted for a one-year period.”

According to the Node Blockchains Inc. study, STOs hold a better potential for fundraising, as the tokens investors receive actually represent stakes in the company and its assets.

Security Token Offering is financial security issued in the form of a digital asset; which typically represent ownership rights in an underlying company and/or its assets. (investinblockchain.com)

STO is distinctly different from ICOs, which were ‘Utility Tokens’ or digital tokens that provided access to a project’s future product/service but no representative ownership claims to an asset or equity.

Few benefits of Security tokens are:

• They’re backed by assets, profits, or cash flows, and thus have an intrinsic value.
• STOs are fully compliant with regulatory frameworks, allowing investors from all over the world to participate without violating respective securities laws.
• They allow companies to create whitelists and blacklists, which make it easier to comply with know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money-laundering (AML) reporting requirements.

Timeline of an STO

Components of an STO

(1) Blockchain protocols (eg. Polymath)
Security Tokens are constructed on existing protocols with Ethereum being the most popular in the space currently. However, more protocols are entering the space.

(2) Smart contracts
They are programming languages set by the blockchain protocol. Ideally, they are supposed to have a utility and therefore a value which is why they are named utility tokens.

(3) Issuance platforms (eg. Polymath, Swarm)
Issuance platforms enable issuers to tokenize and issue their assets, making them available for sale.

These platforms offer tokenization features for a wide range of assets including real estate, debt, equity, and art. These are responsible for having compliant, regulated smart contracts for the token issuance.

Also Read: Is Echelon Roadshow 2019 Manila the startup scene’s own ‘Thrilla in Manila’?

(4) Exchanges/trading (eg. Templum)
They enable traders to buy and sell security tokens. These platforms can service both primary and secondary markets.

(5) Legal and compliance (eg. Securitize)
These offer services for security token issuers to stay consistent with current regulations. These include investor verification, know-your-customer rules, cap-table management, and fraud management.

Also follow the core regulations mentioned above — Reg D, Reg A+, and Reg S.

STO LANDSCAPE

Investments and trading take the lead with the greatest number of STO so far, contributing to over 20 per cent of total STOs. (Inwara)

Dual-token structure: utility tokens and security tokens
MintHealth, a crypto health solution.

About the company: MintHealth is a global, decentralized health platform that aligns healthcare stakeholders around the shared goal of patient empowerment and improved clinical outcomes, at lower costs.

In March 2018, MintHealth announced its funding strategy of issuing both a security and a utility token. MintHealth Vidamints (VIDA) will operate as the rewards and incentive system on the MintHealth platform where Patients will earn VIDA as a reward for completing healthy activities.

This utility token will not be used for raising capital.

The MintHealth Security Token (MHST) will be the first security token issued in healthcare representing equity ownership for token owners and will be configured using the Polymath platform. The legal and compliance will be embedded into the token itself using Polymath’s Security Token Standard Protocol, ST-20.

For secondary market trading, MHST will be listed on OpenFinance Network (OFN), a trading platform for tokenized securities.

Benefits to holders of MHST:
i) a 10 per cent royalty percentage of revenues generated through the sale of VIDA by MintHealth.
ii) equity ownership in MintHealth.

Conclusion

Raising capital through ICOs was popular in 2017 and peaked in early 2018 but as with any successful market, many new parties wanted to get involved and taste the success for themselves.

This welcomed many new ICO projects along with scams and soon the SEC and governments of involved countries started to take notice.

The role of the government is to protect financial investors, who were being trapped in ICO scams due to being unable to verify whether the project is legitimate or not.

Soon enough by the end of 2018, many countries such as China, Ecuador, Morocco had banned ICOs and many such as Japan and Malaysia are updating their regulations on ICOs. (bitcoinmarketjournal.com)

The reasons for the shutdown on ICO can be summed up as lack of investor legal protections, scam risks, technology risks (hackers, exchange shutdowns), lack of investor rights, liquidity risks and market manipulation risks.

We are now experiencing the dawn of a new era for funding blockchain startups via a more stable, regulated vehicle known as the Security Token.

Security Tokens are more reliable as their real value is in blockchain-based digital securities.

STOs will be legal and regulated for people to invest in them with a genuine expectation of returns.

Returns that aren’t influenced by the Bitcoin’s market price, but instead rely on the positive cash flow of a business, thus creating a healthy digital economic ecosystem.

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BlackBox Labs is an open innovation lab that enables enterprise commercial models powered by technology — with the ultimate goal of assembling a unified trade economy. We educate, consult and provide development services to support public and private organizations, corporates, investors and startups in their quest to invent, apply and disrupt new business models.

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In addition to the Jobs007 app, Singapore startup IoTalents also offers profiling technologies, algorithmic matching and talent mapping

When Kek Sei Wee and Eric Sng ran an IT company in Singapore a few years ago, they struggled to find suitable tech talents for a particular project. They knew there were many talented professionals in the market (both traditional employees and gig workers, with good technical skills acquired through experience and personal learning, but might lack the necessary certifications). But the duo didn’t know how to go about and discover these candidates.

They sat together and brainstormed, and came up with a solution. “We quickly realised we had complementary skills and similar ambitions to build a recruitment app for the Singapore market. This is how IoTalents took birth,” Sei Wee tells e27.

Started in 2015 by Sei Wee, Eric Sng, and Dr Michelle Chong, IoTalents is a recruitment and HR-tech startup. It is an online community and platform for hirers and IT workforce (employees, contract workers and virtual talents) to intelligently connect and transact.

IoTalents recently launched a referral-based jobs app Jobs007, through which talents are incentivised to refer their network to great jobs, and get rewarded with cash. Hirers are then able to leverage on these existing professional networks to select and hire curated referred talents.

“We deliver niche candidates in a prompt and professional fashion. We do so through a precise combination of data science and human judgement,” Sei Wee explains. “Apart from using our recruiter’s network, marketing, public relations, events and media efforts, we also rely on community building and referral-based mechanisms, like Jobs007, to grow our database and candidate pool.”

In addition to the app, IoTalents is also building profiling technologies, algorithmic matching and talent mapping. Such technologies are used in-house to augment its recruitment services, as well as the matching abilities of Jobs007.

“Our team is also passionate about the trend on the contingent workforce model (the gig economy) and believes that the exploding shared economy of global IT talents will reshape the workforce of the future,” Sei Wee adds.

Revenue model

IoTalents generates revenues through three offerings — marketplace, HR concierge, and technology.

The marketplace allows hirers to post job openings and project assignments of quality tech professionals. Through this, they can hire the right talents for their in-house roles or outsourced projects.

Also Read: This Singaporean app wants to make job hunting like Tinder

The HR Concierge, on the other hand, provides value-added staffing and search services to clients. This, claims the founders, helps clients source for the best technology talents across a wide range of technologies, covering both permanent placements and contract placements. The clients range from startups to large enterprise level firms in the tech sector in Singapore. It charges clients a placement fee upon successful placement of a job candidate.

“Our proprietary talent analytics technology, Talenlytics, aims to solve the biggest frustrations and challenges in recruitment today. Objective data are used to match candidates to jobs, increasing the statistical odds of matching the right job to the right talent with the appropriate values and skill-set. Talenlytics’s matching prowess is powered by our use of data science and Artificial Intelligence,” he boasts.

While IoTalents primarily focuses on IT and tech professionals, it also covers other PMET job roles, says Sei Wee.

Massive opportunities

The recruitment market size for “staffing” is estimated at about S$1.4 billion (US$1 billion) in the city-state. Leading companies are HRnet, Kelly Services, Adecco, Energy Resourcing Singapore, and Air Energi Group.

“Flexible staffing arrangements using temporary and contractual workers are becoming increasingly popular in Singapore. Moreover, this trend is only likely to grow as employers are struggling to find the skilled individuals they need in the face of tight labour markets and the government’s policies on hiring foreigners,” he states.

With Singapore the primary focus market, IoTalents also has plans to expand into other regional markets in Southeast Asia, starting with Indonesia.

Convincing a big challenge

According to the founders, in the initial period, convincing and educating customers on adopting newer, alternative methods, technologies and market access (freelance talent pool) for their talent acquisition/hiring needs was a major challenge for the company. Many are still more comfortable with the traditional way of doing things.

Also Read: Blockchain-powered recruiting startup SpringRole not only weeds out fake profiles, but also rewards users

“The biggest challenge still remains to be educating mindsets of our products/service buyers, and also the very tight labour market in Singapore. For the recruitment space, it is important to have methods to gain market access to talents, before we can even talk about intelligent matching and assessments. No matter how good your matching technologies are, it will be for naught if there is no candidate pool. This is why we launched Jobs007,” he discloses.

Bootstrapped so far, IoTalents last year closed a pre-Series A round of funding from a group of angel investors. The startup is currently in talks to raise more money for the next phase of growth.

Sei Wee admits that the journey has been tough. It has never been easy from the get go, and like any other startup, IoTalents has also been through its share of ups and downs. “But we are very proud. We have created an environment that works. Our team has great spirits, a strong mindset, and self-belief which we strongly believe will get us there.”

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SeedPlus leads the funding round for BlockPunk, which aims to make anime merchandise more accessible to fans

Singapore-based anime tech startup BlockPunk today announced a S$1.3 million (US$957,000) seed funding round led by seed-stage venture firm SeedPlus.

The round was joined by SGInnovate, Hustle Fund, Entrepreneur First and Japanese printing giant Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd with whom the startup has a strategic partnership.

In a press statement, the startup said that the funds will be used to expand its engineering team and develop product.

BlockPunk is a platform that enables creators to turn their digital artwork into “scarce” collectible merchandise.

The platform uses blockchain to create proof of authenticity and a new source of income for creators.

Also Read: This blockchain startup empowers creators to fund, merchandise and stream their content directly to fans

It was founded with the mission to make anime merchandises more accessible to global fans.

“Anime merchandise supply is broken. Fans want to consume merchandise globally as soon as the anime is streamed online but merchandise is rarely available due to fragmentation and supply chain issues. Unlicensed products have become the norm to match this demand. Our solution allows any creator to instantly create official collectible merchandise that is available worldwide,” said BlockPunk co-founder Julian Lai-Hung.

“With our strategic partnership with Dai Nippon Printing, a US$14 billion revenue world leader in printing technologies, we will extend our technology to physical merchandise in addition to digital,” he continued.

Co-Founders Julian Lai-Hung was the former head of anime at Netflix while Jatin Shah has a Yale PhD in computer science and was a product manager at LinkedIn.

By far, content creators such as Ishimori Pro (Cyborg009), Kazuto Nakazawa (Kill Bill, B the Beginning) and Zunda Horizon (Tohoku Zunko) are already live in the platform with more in the pipeline.

Also Read: Singapore’s video-based social media platform Bigo raises US$272M led by China’s YY

SeedPlus Managing Partner Michael Smith said that the firm is interested in investing in BlockPunk as it enables “new level of transparency” as well as “efficiency in protecting creator and owner IP rights.”

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Image Credit: BlockPunk

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Undeterred by a slow start, startups in the land of smiles are growing rapidly and increasingly attractive

According to the Global Entrepreneurship Index 2018 (GEI), Thailand is ranked 71st out of 137 countries (65th in 2017) and 15th out of 28 countries in the Asia-Pacific region (12th in 2017).

The GEI measures both the quality of entrepreneurship and the extent and depth of the supporting entrepreneurial ecosystem.

It identifies 14 components that are essential to the health of the entrepreneurial ecosystems:

1. Opportunity Perception
2. Startup Skills
3. Risk Acceptance
4. Networking
5. Cultural Support
6. Opportunity Perception
7. Technology Absorption
8. Human Capital
9. Competition
10. Product Innovation
11. Process Innovation
12. High Growth
13. Internationalization
14. Risk Capital

In 2018, Thailand scored a 27 per cent on GEI, while the United States leads with 84 per cent, Australia has 75 per cent with Singapore at 53 per cent, Malaysia 33 per cent, Vietnam 23 per cent and Cambodia 18 per cent.

Thailand scores best on Human Capital and Product Innovation and is weak on Internationalization and Technology Absorption.

Having relatively strong entrepreneurial people in the ecosystem, Thailand can move up the GEI ranking by improving the quality of the institutions that support entrepreneurship, which is exactly what is happening at the moment.

Entrepreneurship has been high on the government’s agenda, and there have been numerous initiatives to improve the startup ecosystem.

The latest can be seen at the National Innovation Agency (NIA), as it is overhauling its financial support program for startups to accelerate their progress, facilitating access to THB 44 billion (USD 1408450692) in funding from various sources and targeting one to two unicorns in five years.

This strategy aims to build 3,000 innovation-based startups in the next 10 years and the program will train and network with master’s and doctorate students to help build deep tech entrepreneurs.

There is not one single solution to creating a startup ecosystem.

Ecosystems are formed by people, various startups at different stages, and different organizations with different roles and in different locations (be it physical or virtual), all working together as a system to create new startups.

This system is dynamic and evolves with the external and internal factors of each location, entrepreneurial culture and resources available.

At the heart of any startup ecosystem are the ideas, research and innovations.

Also Read: (Exclusive) NEXEA invests in Malaysian startups ParkIt, Plush Services, RunningMan

Talented individuals called entrepreneurs will turn these into startups and take it through various stages, from getting mentored in incubation programs to being funded by investors.

The journey turns ideas into businesses and teams into organizations.

Throughout this journey, many supporting organizations and services are involved.

Higher education institutions are the first supporting organization in this journey. Innovations are often born, and talents usually identified within the university compound.

Once the startup is formed, advisory and mentoring organizations are involved along with incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces.

With the scaling stage comes the investor networks, venture capital companies, crowdfunding portals and other forms of funding providers (loans, grants, etc.). Big companies usually come in at later stages as they help create successful growth companies from the startups.

However, the term successful startup can have different meanings for different people.

Some may think of a successful startup as business unicorns like Facebook or Airbnb, while others have a different definition of what being successful means, like being your own boss or making a positive impact on the world.

One thing for sure though, a successful startup is a company that is sustainable, at least in profit terms.

Large Thai companies have also recently become very active in the startup ecosystem.

Beacon Venture Capital, the corporate venture capital arm of Kasikornbank (KBank), has invested US$50 million in Grab for GrabPay service and US$6.5 million in Jitta, a Bangkok based “wealth-tech” startup.

Siam Cement Group (SCG) has embraced open innovation by creating SPRINT accelerator programs that help mentor Thai innovators.

And, the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), together with Sasin School of Management, has put together the Sasin Startup Incubator by SET where facilitators are trained, and budding entrepreneurs are put through intensive boot-camps and mentorship programs.

“However, the growth of startups is very limited because they don’t have a global or Southeast Asian perspective, they lack deep technology, and they often cannot access investors nor the market”, said Mr Pun-Arj Chairatana, Executive Director of the NIA.

But that too is about to change.

Also Read: Taking a sabbatical: slowing down to go faster

SCG has again teamed up with Sasin to hold the SCG Bangkok Business Challenge @ Sasin 2019 where teams from top universities around the world bring their innovations with global applications to compete for investments in this three-day event, held at Sasin from February 21 – 23.

Startup ecosystems often take time to develop and mature.

They also require a significant commitment of resources and support from a broad range of organizations and people.

Despite a somewhat sluggish start, Thailand’s startup ecosystem is now rapidly moving beyond the early stages of development and is attracting attention around the region and throughout the world.

There are even indications that with continued support, Thailand has the potential to become a major entrepreneurial hub in Asia.

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Investors are bullish on the industry, but some important factors act as counterweights

The worst kept secret in Singapore ahead of yesterday’s Budget 2019 announcement was the plan to focus heavily on healthcare — specifically support for the Merdeka Generation, a term used to describe the people who lived through the island’s independence.

To highlight the priority, after a brief announcement of a bicentennial fund, Singapore Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat jumped into various initiatives aimed at helping the elderly better afford healthcare in their later years.

With aggressive government focus, it is reasonable to expect a bumper year for the medtech industry.

The difference between now and 2015, when people were pointing to the healthcare sector as a giant startup opportunity, are underlying statistics that suggest the medtech sector is gaining momentum.

According to e27 data, 13 health-tech companies raised funding in 2018, the fourth-highest amount of deals in the country.

If we consider the government priority, plus the natural momentum of the industry, it beg’s the question if medtech is set to enjoy a hype cycle similar to e-commerce years ago, fintech after that and, more recently, blockchain.

After speaking to investors and startups, the answer is, “yes, but…”

According to Albert Shyy, a Principal at Burda Principal Investments, most of the VCs he speaks with have put medtech on their watchlist because of the potential for mobile phones to disrupt the value chain.

However, there is a ‘but’.

“I think the main forces that could work against it are that healthcare may have a slower ramp-up due to higher regulatory concerns, so I am not sure if the acceleration will be as steep as e-commerce/fintech were (especially in moving from seed to Series A and beyond),” he said in an email.

When fintech was exploding in 2016, it was very common to walk into finance-industry events and listen to smart people argue vociferously for deregulation. In healthtech, nobody really makes that argument.

If deregulation in finance results in a few people getting burned financially, that is bad, but at the end of the day it is just money. If deregulation in medicine results in deaths, that is an entirely different conversation.

This is coupled with the fact that medtech companies are typically more expensive to run than an e-wallet, so startups are at further risk of running out of cash while their product navigates bureaucracy.

That being said, governments across the world are opening options for experimentation in medtech. Singapore has a medicine-focussed sandbox and the US Food and Drug Administration has launched a programme to help startups get approval from insurance companies.

But this being said, investors are still bullish on the industry’s future. No, it may not “pop” like blockchain, but it is widely anticipated to grow, and one reason is advancements in artificial intelligence.

According to Will Klippgen, a Managing Partner at Cocoon Capital, the growth of artificial intelligence has made starting a medtech company cheaper. This has helped entrepreneurs sidestep hospitals to get the MVP off the ground.

“More machine learning talent is available, both in Singapore and across the world along with better algorithms as well as better tools for scaling up AI software,” he said.

Today, the Cocoon announced a US$1 million investment into See-Mode, a startup that uses AI to help predict strokes.

Also Read: (Exclusive) NEXEA invests in Malaysian startups ParkIt, Plush Services, RunningMan

The most important part of any business is its customers. It is easy to complain about regulations, or the ability to get financing, but it is irrelevant if nobody is buying the product.

For WhiteCoat, a company that allows people to perform check-ups via their phone and order medicine-for-delivery, a lot of the traditional barriers are starting to fall.

“I think Singaporeans are well educated and mobile phone penetration rate is high. Therefore they get a lot of information online. But they need a professional to help them. For older groups, [our product] is a big bonus because doctor consultations are a logistics exercise,” said Dr. Yii Heng Seng, the Chairman WhiteCoat Global. 

People trust doing business on their phones and for some in Singapore the convenience of performing checkups at home outweighs the benefits of trekking to the doctor for a face-to-face consultation.

Dr. Yii acknowledged that WhiteCoat is entering uncharted territory without guidelines or protocols.

This means, and these are my words not his, it will be more useful to look at consumer adoption in a year or two.

Also Read: Shake up your tech startup by joining Echelon Roadshow 2019 Phnom Penh

There are a couple of other weights dragging down explosive growth in medtech. They are as follows:

Southeast Asia is not a medtech hub: There are two Southeast Asian countries that see significant innovation in medtech, Thailand and Singapore. After that, there is not a lot of interest in the industry. According to an Indonesian investor, the region’s largest country will not be seeing a medtech boom in the near future.

Data hacks are a real problem:  If we focus on Singapore, two of the biggest controversies in the past year have involved personal medical data being hacked or leaked. Over the summer, the National University Hospital was hacked in an incident that affected 1.5 million people. Currently, the government is dealing with the fallout from a leak that revealed the HIV-positive status of over 14,000 people.

These incidents have severely harmed public trust in online security and the willingness to pass over sensitive information to the medtech industry.

After Singapore Budget 2019, it is clear that medtech will be a major theme for the remainder of the year. It may not experience a hype-cycle at the same level of blockchain, but the industry should experience solid and stable growth over the next 12 months.

So is medtech ready to explode?

Yes, but…

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Photo by John Jackson on Unsplash

 

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The announcement also kickstarts the pre-incubation period for 36 local online media in Indonesia

kumparan, an online media startup based in Surabaya, announced today that it has commenced the pre-incubation stage of 36 selected local online media across Indonesia. All 36 local online media will be available to access on kumparan’s platform starting today, Tuesday, February 19.

Also Read: Marketing tech startup SilverPush secures US$5M Series B funding

The launch itself has been a part of a long-standing program by Kumparan called 1001 Start Up Media Online that aims to help setting up and maintaining online media across the country.

kumparan said that it received over 1700 proposals from online media across Indonesia in 2018. 25 of the proposals were selected and these online media were brought to Jakarta last month to get training in journalism, content management, social media, commercial strategy, and company management alongside other 11 online media that have joined kumparan prior to the program.

Training was handled by kumparan’s internal team in partnership with Google News Initiative and with Ipang Wahid and Putu Aditya from Aliansi Jurnalis Indonesia (AJI) or Indonesian Journalists Alliance.

The official statement from kumparan said that the company also invest in the selected media in a form of seed funding, working asset, and mentorship.

“Our vision is to build Indonesia through helping digital business grows in other cities across Indonesia,” said kumparan’s Editor in Chief Arifin Asydhad.

Also Read: (Exclusive) NEXEA invests in Malaysian startups ParkIt, Plush Services, RunningMan

Not only supporting local online media and its business but the program also strategically will help kumparan to put forward local contents from the area where the selected online media are based, considering all 36 media are based in each and every 34 provinces of Indonesia.
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Big names, small origins

With the heightened negativity associated with cryptocurrencies, many would assume that blockchain, the accompanying technology is dead.

But on the contrary, blockchain as a technology is very much alive and applicable as a deep tech layer that would significantly impact the way we operate.

In fact, a number of blockchain projects exist right here in Singapore.

So what are these blockchain projects about?

TRIVE’s team that runs Tribe, Singapore’s first government-backed blockchain accelerator, investigates and tell us more.

Automotive – MVL

The automotive industry faces multi-faceted issues.

Examples are cab drivers with discourteous service, unreliable service by mechanic shops, a lack of consistency and transparency on used-cars by dealers, and accidents caused by reckless driving.

Current solutions are unable to address these individual issues effectively, let alone solving them as a whole.

To further compound the issue, the lack of transparency often leads to an increase in prices customer has to pay for.

MVL Chain was born based on these issues. It is a vehicle data collecting ecosystem based on blockchain technology which aims to resolve these issues.

It is an ecosystem that connects all services, like the car dealer shops, mechanic shops and car rental companies, touchpoints that your car engages in its lifetime.

These participants will insert core data related to driving, traffic accidents, repairs and other car-related transactions into the blockchain.

With this ecosystem, records of all activities relating to a particular vehicle for the entire duration of its lifetime can be maintained.

It can also be ensured that such records are kept free from corruption. Only the owner will have the authority over his or her data stored on the decentralized blockchain.

Previously, a limited number of centralized services monopolized data, but now the power of who owns the information is distributed evenly to the people.

Various participants in the vehicle market can continue to add trustworthy data and be connected in one ecosystem.

User Data – Indorse

In order to generate revenue, social networks sell user-generated content and information to providers, advertisers and recruiters.

This leads to a loss of user privacy.

Furthermore, users do not get any revenue-sharing for the information they produce.

Indorse seeks to address this issue and wants to use the blockchain’s decentralised network to allow people to regain control of their data.

Plus, the nature of the distributed ledger means Indorse users would enjoy significantly more privacy within the ecosystem than the current model for social networks.

The startup is a skills-based professional network platform using new models of tokenization and decentralisation to change the shape of professional social networking — letting the users own and earn from their data.

The solution replaces the current way social networks operate.

It is a decentralised one that places ownership of information back in the hands of the members.

They have control of their own profile with themselves and they get to choose how their data is used by the Social network.

It also allows members an easy way to earn rewards for the activities that benefit them.

With participation in the network, members can earn Indorse Rewards for sharing more about themselves and for endorsing the claims of others.

Indorse is co-founded by David Moskowitz and Gaurang Torvekar, known figures in the Blockchain Industry Association.

Food – Whatshalal

Always wondering whether food consumed is Halal in origin, or to discover new sources of Halal eateries?

This is a major pain point in the world’s Muslim population, especially when travelling to overseas destinations where Halal food is hard to find and not certified.

To address this, WhatsHalal aims to be the definitive guide and provider of unquestionably Halal Thoyiban food to the Muslim community.

The creation of a Halal ecosystem seeks to reduce, even eliminate, doubt of the “Halal-ness” of the food you consume, in fast-changing times where information may not be substantially available or easily sourced.

The startup wants to strengthen the Halal integrity of certificates by ensuring each stage in the life cycle of a food item or product can be established with certainty the conditions that the item was produced.

Integrating Halal traceability in the food chain is greatly improved by Blockchain technology.

This ensures that the movements of an ingredient or product can be tracked even as it changes hands.

Enterprise customers who wish to go Halal simply need to initiate the application on the blockchain platform and several smart contracts will determine the assurance process, working in collaboration with consultants, labs and certification bodies.

Locally, consumers can order products from Halal-certified merchants and send orders on demand.

The consumer app is also touted to verify the Halal validity of products by scanning its barcode, perfect for travelling in non-Muslim countries.

Gaming – Enjin

Gaming is one large worldwide community and Singapore-based Enjin validates that.

It is one of the largest gaming community platforms that support over 250,000 gaming communities and around 20 million registered gamers.

Internet users, gamers and developers demand fast and effective user interfaces that not only appeal to the human eye but also make operations efficient.

This is coupled with the need for a trustworthy platform that keeps their data and intellectual property safe.

As an all-in-one website platform, Enjin can help build websites, forums, voice servers, donation stores among others. It applies blockchain technology on some of its products.

EnjinX is a web-based universal blockchain explorer, built with a focus on user experience, speed and ease of use.

Efinity is Enjin’s solution to the scaling problems in the Ethereum blockchain. It supports various Ethereum tokens and provides end-to-end e-commerce solutions.

Also Read: Singapore-based anime startup BlockPunk raises US$957K seed funding round

The Enjin team comprises of technology and crypto coin enthusiasts with Maxim Blagov and Witek Radomski as the founders of the company. They bring decades of experience in the field of gaming technology, game development and security.

Digital currency backed by gold – Digix

Much of the criticism levelled against cryptocurrencies is due to their price volatility.

It is critical that a digital currency is stable, especially when used as a transactional medium.

Digix makes a digital currency possible to buy gold in an efficient manner via cryptocurrency by providing investors with a tokenized version of gold so you don’t have to physically own or store it.

The company proudly gets 99.99 per cent of its gold from LBMA-approved refiners, with zero per cent from fractional reserves, delivering confidence.

With Digix, investors can take advantage of the stability and value of gold as well as the ease of using cryptocurrency, much similar to that of a fiat currency.

Digix differs itself from other existing investment options by issuing the allocated bullion immediately from a point of digital purpose.

This makes client ownership the priority, instead of the company as a whole. Gold bullion is traditionally challenging to use and trade. Digix overcomes the liquidity by converting gold to a digital currency.

Tokenization of assets – Rate3

The Initial Coin Offering space is a little dicey, to say the least.

There is a real deficit of accountability in the space because of a lack of regulation for utility tokens.

In the same breath, traditional financial transactions are expensive because of all the fees associated with the middlemen like bankers.

Rate3 aims to address the lack of credibility of tokens and overcoming the weaknesses of traditional financial transactions.

It is an end-to-end protocol for tokenization of assets (or security tokens) across both the Stellar and Ethereum networks and a protocol to create and manage a unified cross-chain identity.

Also Read: AI, big data company AiSensum receives seed funding from 500 Startups

Rate3 wants to be the bridge between enterprises today and the tokenized world.

They believe that assets can be tokenized in a legally-compliant, interoperable and scalable way, so they will become widely liquid, usable, tradable and accepted for as cases as possible.

Scalable database service for dApps – Bluzelle

The rapid growth of blockchain technologies is transforming the way data is exchanged via the use of decentralized applications, or dApps for short.

These dApps continuously exchange massive amounts of data that must be stored and managed. However, the current blockchain platforms in existence like Ethereum are unable to store and manage this data due to lack of space.

To fulfil the need for data storage and management, Bluzelle has created a decentralized, on-demand, scalable database service for dApps.

Without a decentralized database like Bluzelle in place, dApps would not be able to run efficiently and scale to massive use.

At its core, Bluzelle’s ecosystem connects consumers wishing to rent out database space to providers with additional computing resources to offer this storage.

Using this data storage, dApp and application developers alike can optimize their products by accessing reliable data when necessary and storing their data on a secure platform.

Providers can, in turn, be compensated for providing this storage.

Bluzelle has the potential to play a pivotal role in the blockchain infrastructure landscape. The company’s decentralized database services have the potential to fulfil a significant need for the advancement of blockchain technologies in enterprise use-cases.

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This is part of the “VC on Blockchain” series, where I dwell into the blockchain industry. Ethical disclaimer: Tribe Accelerator is a unit of TRIVE, which is a Singapore government-backed blockchain accelerator. Applications for the first cohort are open.

Image Credits: leungchopan

e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

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Moovaz champions the digital nomad lifestyle providing easier transition by handling all headache-inducing moving process

San Fransisco-based venture firm Hustle Fund has just financed the Singapore-based moving-logistics startup Moovaz for an undisclosed amount.

The funding will be used mainly for building a product team and for setting up the company’s go-to-market in Melbourne, Australian, which will be done in Q3 this year around August, said Lee Junxian, Co-founder and CEO of Moovaz.

Junxian added that, considering what Moovaz does in logistics is really niched, the company’s choice of Australia as their next go-to market is essentially a corridor to the rest of the world.

Also Read: Having the right team is the single biggest determinant of your success: 123RF Co-founder Stephanie Sitt

Moovaz primarily targets digital nomads, with the belief in location-independent working lifestyles for everyone. To champion the lifestyle, Moovaz’s service allows people to more easily relocate to-and-from Singapore, partnering with the destination country’s local logistics players.

“Moovaz works with our network of contractors and partners, the result of being in the moving industry for eight years. So let’s say you’re moving to Paris from Singapore. You only need to tell us the origin and the destination. What will happen next is that our contractors will come help you pack your stuff, followed by a container that would have been arranged to pick up your stuff, then a freight-forwarding partner of ours will take care of your stuff to get it safely to Paris, where our French partners will take care of the moving-in, all the way to the unpacking,” explained Lee to e27.

Lee mentioned how stressful the moving process can be, and Moovaz offers to take care of all the needs via several options of service that customers can choose from.

“Our main goal is to tackle lot of waiting and unpleasantness when managing travel visas, accommodations and bank accounts. Global citizens don’t want to deal with that. It’s down to the entire seamless experience of moving for our customers and partners,” said Lee.

True to Lee’s words, Moovaz’s services range from next-day sorting at higher prices. Cheaper options range from seven or 21 days.

“We are solving all things moving-related, like choosing the best rates of freight forwarder and warehouses in specific areas in your destination city,” Lee added.

Over the eight-years-long operation in offline moving industry, Moovaaz has assisted 12,000 moves in every major city in the world. Once an offline business, Moovaz just went online a year ago and has since facilitated a little under a thousand move with their new digital platform.

“Moving is an extremely fragmented industry which has often neglected customer experience and been slow to adopt technology, and Moovaz is doing it in a way that builds relationships with digital nomads from the start of their move into a new geography,” said Shiyan Koh, Hustle Fund’s Managing Partner who’s based in Singapore.

Also Read: Blockchain gaming platform PlayGame secures funding from TRON

Hustle Fund is a venture fund investing in early-stage startups in the US, Canada, and Southeast Asia. The fund was co-founded by two ex-500 Startups partners, Eric Bahn and Elizabeth Yin, and are backed by Shanda, a global investment firm focussed on the online gaming industry, messaging, and communications company like LINE, Korean search engine Naver, and others.

Previously, Moovaz raises seed funding from MOJO Partners in June 2018.
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Image Credit: Moovaz

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