Indonesia-based Social Bella, which runs a string of internet properties in the beauty commerce space, including e-commerce marketplace Sociolla, has announced its first international entry into Vietnam.

The news comes shortly after company raised US$58 million in Series E funding round from Temasek, Pavilion Capital and Jungle Ventures in July.

Also Read: Indonesia’s beauty-tech startup Social Bella raises US$58M Series E from Temasek, Pavilion, Jungle Ventures

Social Bella said it will expand into the new market through its e-commerce unit Sociolla.

“Vietnam shares many similarities with Indonesia. We believe that it is the right market for our first international expansion plan,” Co-founder Christopher Madiam said.

Launched in 2015, Social Bella has evolved from being beauty e-commerce to a complete ecosystem that seeks to unlock Indonesia’s growing beauty and personal care market. The company claims that it has created several business units and is estimated to serve around 30 million users in 2020.

One of its major goals is to empower customers to use local brands. ESQA, a vegan cosmetics brand in Indonesia, is one of the local brands that joined Social Bella to expand their market to Vietnam.

“Many Indonesian beauty brands are innovative and they have excellent quality while maintaining affordable price points. The objective will not only be to open distribution access but it will also provide end-to-end supports to ensure proper launch there. To this end, we work closely with our partners to develop a holistic growth plan for Vietnam,” CEO of Social Bella, John Rasjid informed.

Also Read:  How Indonesian beauty e-commerce startup Social Bella finds a balance between commerce, content, community

According to a report by Cosmetics Design Asia, Vietnam’s beauty and personal care market remains resilient despite the pandemic. The beauty sector in Vietnam specifically saw approximately 80 per cent growth incremental beauty spend coming from online channels.

“Even during COVID-19 pandemic, we can maintain our commitment to serving our consumers in a relevant way while remaining competitive. This year, Social Bella steps out to serve customers in our neighbouring country, while supporting more beauty brands,” Rasjid said.

Last year, Social Bella completed its ecosystem as an integrated beauty-tech and end-to-end brand distributor in Indonesia by launching a flagship omnichannel store in Lippo Mall Puri.

At present, Social Bella owns six physical stores across Indonesia.

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Image Credit: Social Bella

 

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Persistence, a Singapore-based startup focussing on powering institutional Decentralised Finance and Open Finance (DeFi/OpFi) adoption, has secured US$3.7 million in an investment round, led by Arrington XRP Capital, a blockchain VC firm headed by TechCrunch and CrunchBase founder Michael Arrington.

The round was joined by LuneX Ventures, the crypto arm of Golden Gate Ventures, IOSG Ventures (China), Spark Digital Capital, Woodstock Fund (India), Incrypt (crypto arm of First Principles VC).

Also Read: How bright is the future of cryptocurrency?

Singapore- and Hong Kong-based Genesis Block HK, NGC Ventures, Alameda Research, South Korea-based Terraform Labs, as well as prominent blockchain industry personalities Richard Ma (Founder of Quantstamp) and Danish Chaudhry (Head of Bitcoin.com Exchange) also participated.

Started in 2019 by Tushar Aggarwal (CEO), an early member of the LuneX team, Persistence was established to expand the scope of DeFi/OpFi by providing the tools for institutional adoption. This is achieved by tokenising real-world assets (such as invoices) and putting them on the blockchain.

These assets can then be used by companies as collateral for acquiring loans and can be traded on decentralised marketplaces in their tokenised form.

“We’ve laid the technical groundwork for a new era of blockchain-powered real-world value creation and we have built a strong network of strategic partners. It is time to push ahead full-force on our mission to bring institutions and real-world assets to DeFi to help the industry to reach its full potential,” said Aggarwal.

The first use case of Persistence is Comdex, an end-to-end physical commodity trading and trade financing platform that has processed US$41 million in transaction volume.

Bills of lading and resulting invoices can be tokenised on the Comdex platform using Persistence technology. This provides multiple benefits in terms of creation of an audit trail for an industry that still uses paper-based documentation, faster cross-border settlements and easier access to trade finance opportunities for SME/ME commodity traders.

Also Read: How bright is the future of cryptocurrency?

Arrington said: “A core goal of Arrington XRP Capital is to assist blockchain innovators to create value in the real-world. The merging of blockchain and fintech is beginning to usher in a new era of open finance which is poised to transform global finance mechanisms. Persistence is shaping up to be a major building block in this financial revolution and we’re proud to be supporting their journey.”

According to Persistence, blockchain wields the ability to solve the inefficiencies in cross-border payments and business financing, which in turn opens the floodgates to allow a torrent of new capital into the crypto ecosystem, enabling DeFi to emerge from its crypto-focused cocoon and thrive.
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ChomCHOB, a point exchange platform in Thailand, has raised THB50 million (US$1.6 million) in funding from venture capital firm InVent in a Series A funding round, according to a press statement.

The fresh funding will be used for product enhancement, platform growth, hiring and marketing.

The company has stated that it aims to become the number one point exchange platform in Southeast Asia by 2025.

ChomCHOB is an application that collects points from credit and debit cards. Users have the option to convert all of their credit and debit card points into ChomChob reward points, which allows them to purchase different kinds of products and services.

Currently, the platform has over 500,000 merchants and claims to have about two million user downloads. Some of its top partners include global fast-food chain McDonald’s.

Also Read: ShopBack’s new feature allows users to get cashback deals at dining spots

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The new generation of students is born digital. Consciously or not, new-age parents have been actively building their children’s digital cognitive ability by passing iPads to calm down crying babies.

This new trend of parenting had been ongoing for several years now and the pandemic wave had forced even more students onto the edutech bandwagon.

The key challenge of digital education would be to engage and gain the attention of the students. Even during Zoom education, the students can be passively looking past the Zoom screen to a Netflix film on the television screen behind them as they put themselves on mute.

While educators have to battle with the drawbacks of edutech, they are also able to benefit from the real-time marking of scripts, cost-free upload of new curriculum and data analytics on measuring learning outcomes for students.

While edutech might be optional pre-COVID-19, it is now the mandatory toolkits of educators.

The only question is whether educators would take a haphazard approach towards edutech or to take a systematic approach to plan educational outcomes for their students.

Edutech is a major body of specialisation but we can appreciate it better from the areas of technology, teaching approach and social media interaction.

Also Read: Why edutech is becoming an investor favourite this season

Technology

The true and tested backbone of any edutech system would be their Learning Management System (LMS). LMS would be formally defined as software used to deliver, track and manage training and educational outcomes. Reputable LMS would include Google Classroom, Schoology, Blackboard Learn, Canvas and Moodle.

It is the centralised platform where parents, students and teacher come together to ensure that learning outcomes are delivered. There are certain LMS which are more suited to different categories of education.

For instance, Google Classrooms and Schoology are designed for K-12 or the equivalent of pre-tertiary education in Singapore.

Literacy and numeracy skills are the two main types of skills for pre-tertiary education. Numeracy skills are more challenging as negative maths experience at a tender age can affect them going as young adults.

Numeracy skills are noted as important for entrepreneurs by 3E Accounting to be able to seize opportunities faster than the competition. Google Classroom allows teachers to design interactive sessions and play-based learning to create a positive learning experience for young minds.

Also Read: How the Coronavirus is teaching edutech startups a much-needed lesson

Blackboard Learn and Canvas are preferred by tertiary education institutes. Blackboard Learn is used by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Polytechnic, Nanyang Polytechnic and PSB Academy as seen in a simple Google search above.

Canvas is being used by Singapore University of Social Science and Yale-NUS which can be seen on their websites.

Blended learning

When we talk about LMS, we are largely talking about online learning. Even though online learning has its own advantages, schools still retain physical learning as a significant part of the learning journey.

Blended learning is a methodology that combines both online and physical instructor-led training to suit the different learning needs and style of students.

As millennials enter the workforce, blended learning has become more important as it reflects the workplace environment today. Workers have to toggle between working on Zoom as they work from home and working in a physical environment. This work arrangement will be here to stay after the pandemic.

Blended learning is nimbler than traditional classroom learning with its combined online and offline approaches. Instructors can use the built-in reporting features on LMS for deeper, data-driven insights as well as transparent communication process in a face-to-face setting. The interactive environment will also make learning a fun experience.

Social media learning

Do you still remember the earlier point of the key challenge for digital education? That would be the need to induce interaction among students. Social media would be one of the key enablers of such interactions.

Also Read: Why edutech is becoming an investor favourite this season

Georgetown University noted that 96 per cent of students have at least one social media account. While they use it mainly for entertainment purpose, instructors can also guide them towards more useful purposes.

Facebook would be the perfect medium to start social media-based education as both the instructors and students are familiar with it. Schools can start with a Facebook Page to broadcast alerts and updates.

Facebook is also good for video live streaming to broadcast lessons. Twitter can be used as a class message board while Instagram is good for class photo essays.

Schools can also design their own social media strategy to achieve desired outcomes for their students in a systematic manner. Given that there are an array of social media tools out there, there are numerous methods to get the work done.

New world order

Education had been turned on its head by this pandemic. While these technology trends had been gaining traction over the past decade, COVID-19 had forced it upon the mainstream including traditional educators.

They would have resisted the trend of technology successfully if not for the force of COVID as various studies had indicated.

Nonetheless, whether you are using edutech on a volunteer or forced basis, it would be wise to integrate these three basic elements into your educational plan. It would be self-sabotage to over-implement on one area to the neglect of others as the results would be sub-optimal.

If you are on the other end of the spectrum, parents or students, do check if your educators are providing a comprehensive edutech experience.

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There is a popular Burmese saying, “ရော့ပတ္တမြား၊ ရော့နဂါး” (literal translation: here is ruby, here is dragon), which describes the valued method of exchanging cash and goods upfront between two parties, to ensure that both are not left shortchanged.

In Myanmar, this ‘Cash is King’ mindset and preference for face-to-face transactions are deeply entrenched in people’s everyday lives. Even in e-commerce, cash-on-delivery (COD) is the preferred payment method, constituting 85 per cent of all payments. Some retailers may have gone digital, but payments remain traditional – the delivery man has simply taken on the role of the cashier.

The COVID-19 outbreak has challenged this mindset as physical contact is now seen as undesirable –and more businesses and customers are seeing the potential of digital payments.

How do we go digital?

Many players have addressed the topic of transforming Myanmar into a digital society. On a macro-level, stakeholders have emphasised the importance of technology and infrastructure, while others have urged for greater governmental support.

There are more initiatives that can be implemented, such as switching to a computerised ID verification system or credit register to easily detect and prevent fraud or promoting interoperability between banks.

Nonetheless, the time seems ripe for Myanmar to take the leap. Infrastructure is in place and expanding – Myanmar’s mobile phone connectivity is over 95 per cent and almost three-quarters of Myanmar’s working population owns a mobile phone.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also compelled the Myanmar government to show strong support for digital payments as it reduces physical contact between people.

Also Read: ThitsaWorks gets funding from BOD Tech to offer digitisation solutions to Myanmar’s banks, MFIs

What’s holding us back?

The simple answer is cultural habits. Culture takes time to evolve. On a micro-level, it’s not easy to switch from paying in cash over the counter physically at a store (offline payments), to logging on to the website or app of the store and paying via mobile wallets or cards (online payment).

This explains why hybrid models such as COD, which allow shoppers to browse online and then pay the delivery man in cash in exchange for their purchase, have remained popular amongst the Myanmar people.

Our younger generation, who are growing up with technology, may have no issues adopting digital payments right off the bat. But the older generation, who have emerged from a closed-off society for over half a century and suffered through the banking crisis in 2003, naturally have their reservations.

And it shows – 40 million or 70-75 per cent of our local population still do not have a bank account. Face-to-face transactions provide that complete assurance and Myanmar people are not ready to give that up just yet.

Keep moving forward

As Martin Luther King has said, “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”

What we can do is not entirely remove the option of face-to-face transactions but gently nudge society towards a world of digital payments. Payment models such as COD encourage Myanmar people to go online to shop as a start.

Also Read: Why Clik believes that Cambodia is the best place to pilot a new fintech infrastructure

Change can also be encouraged by equipping the main agents of face-to-face transactions: the cashiers and the delivery men. Retail and delivery businesses can offer customers a variety of payment options such as cards, wallets and cash through partnerships with payment aggregators.

Since May, for example, a significant number of modern retail stores now accept payments from multiple wallets. Customers simply present a dynamic and limited-time QR code to the cashier during their checkout eliminating the need to use cash.

Payment aggregators bridge the gap by offering a quick digital payment solution while retaining the face-to-face medium.

Over time, as people experience technology and its benefits, making the switch to digital payments will become more natural. They will start seeing how digital payments can transform their daily lives, even without a bank account.

Our people will not have to queue half a day in front of the electricity office under the sun just to pay their electric bills when they can pay anytime and from anywhere via their mobile phones.

Of course, digital payment acceptance between merchant and customer is just one aspect of a digital ecosystem. There are other connections that can be digitalised, like the one between the merchant and its suppliers (payouts) or between customers (transfers and remittance).

At the core of it all, we need to understand the rationale behind people’s payment habits and offer a pragmatic transition to digital payments. Achieving a truly digital society involves plenty of steps and a concerted effort by every player.

Together, step by step, we are edging closer.

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As a venture capital (VC) firm, Rocketship VC was founded by a team with a strong history of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley.

Prior to founding the firm, Partners Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan had co-founded Junglee and Kosmix –both companies were acquired by Amazon and Walmart, respectively. The two of them were also credited as the co-inventor of the concept that underlies the Amazon Mechanical Turk, which played a key role in the development of Machine Learning and Deep Learning.

This background story alone might be enough to get people to turn their heads towards the company. But Rocketship also has a unique approach to investment that sets it apart from its peers.

Six years since it was founded, Rocketship has invested in 44 companies across India, Southeast Asia (SEA), Latin America, Europe and North America. In August, it announced the closing of its second global fund at US$11 million from the likes of Vulcan Capital, Adams Street Partners and family office of Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon. Following an earlier US$40 million fund, this fund was intended for early stage startups in India and Southeast Asia.

To understand more about the company and its plan for Southeast Asia, e27 speaks to Rocketship VC Partner Madhu Shalini Iyer in this interview.

Data, data, data

Iyer begins by explaining how Rocketship uses data science models to figure out the companies that they want to invest in.

“We are a global investor ‘by chance’. We just started to invest based on what we are seeing with our data,” she says.

Also Read: Indian O2O startup Fynd brings latest in-store fashion online; raises US$500K from Rocketship

She continued by explaining how Rocketship’s team works with its database of startups which it claims to be the biggest in the world. “We curated and created an algorithm on top of it,  and we see companies that we find interesting. We started in 2014 when we begin to see activities outside of the Valley. So we talked to these founders and began to invest globally over Zoom calls –before the pandemic happens.”

She gives an example of how the firm discovered and invested in Khatabook, an India-based startup that helps small businesses digitise their financial transactions. With the use of their data, Rocketship was able to identify the potential of the startup even before the VC firms on the ground was able to.

“Spotting a company before it becomes [popular], before everybody else recognises it, is hard. It is something that we see our data giving an advantage over and over again,” Iyer stresses.

Iyer also explains how she had had other VC firms coming up to her and asking how Rocketship is doing their investment in a time of pandemic like this, where it is almost impossible to travel and visit founders at their offices. Again, their heavy emphasis on the use of data saves the day: It enables them to weigh in the potential of a startup without having to conduct extensive travels.

Prior to joining Rocketship, Iyer was the Chief Data Officer at Indonesia-based unicorn gojek. In addition to that, she also sat at the company’s board and had expanded the company’s presence to Singapore.

This was not Iyer’s only foray into the world of data. She was part of the founding team of Intuit’s Quickbooks Lending Platform where she helped grow the platform to US$300 million and holds three patents in the areas of user data augmented algorithms for financial inclusion.

Southeast Asia, the next frontier

With a focus on early stage companies, Rocketship is aiming for the Indian and Southeast Asian startup ecosystem with its new fund. When asked about any specific countries that the firm is aiming for, Iyer says that it has no preference over a particular country and will go where the data lead.

“What we look for in potential companies is a strong model, a good thesis about what they are building. Just being very product-focussed … a direction that is interesting for us as it shows up on our screen,” she elaborates.

Also Read: Why SOSV’s William Bao Bean thinks the pandemic is good for early stage startups

As a VC that is based in Silicon Valley, there are advantages that Rocketship can offer to its portfolio companies.

“One of the advantages that we have is, obviously, the connection to all major VC funds here,” Iyer points out. “The other thing is our data. There are not too many VCs that have a data science background in the capacity that we do, and we can really help founders with that.”

“The fact that we have all built and grown our own businesses is also a huge added value,” she continues.

During the pandemic, many investors have shifted their attention towards verticals that are gaining popularity at the moment, due to its ability to facilitate digital transformation in every aspect of life. As the data suggested, Rocketship is looking at opportunities in both B2B and B2C fronts.

“We are also looking at cloud-based collaboration … and it was kind of spiking, coming up on our screen more than other things. So we have been particularly interested in that,” Iyer says.

Closing the discussion with e27, Iyer says that she is “very excited” by the quality of the founders that she has seen in SEA.

“We are very excited to lean in and talk to people and figure out if you can make investments there. So, we are very actively looking at the region and hopefully, you will be seeing much more of us there,” Iyer says.

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Image Credit: Rocketship VC

 

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Retailo provides a mobile app for retailers to buy items for their stores at wholesale prices from the comfort of their homes

Retailo, an online B2B marketplace based out of Pakistan, has secured US$2.3 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Shorooq Partners, a seed-stage VC fund based in the Middle East.

500 Durians (the Southeast Asian unit of 500 Startups) and 92-Ventures also joined the round.

Founded by Talha Ansari, Mohammad Nowkhaiz and Wahaj Ahmed, Retailo provides a mobile app for retailers to buy items for their stores at wholesale prices from the comfort of their homes. The platform provides SMEs (including retailers) with a curated list of suppliers through which they can order a variety of products.

Also Read: September update: New Notifications, New Contributor Programme, Quarterly Pro Plans and more

The company’s mission is to enable the 10 million SMEs concentrated in the MENAP region by empowering them with technology and real-time data to improve supply chains. This represents around US$500 billion of annual spending and thus a huge growth opportunity for Retailo.

“We strongly believe in creating impact in the lives of people by giving them opportunities to improve their earning potential. The MENAP region has a significant opportunity to increase its economic prosperity by unlocking the productivity delta that exists between the region and global benchmarks. MENAP is home to 700 million individuals and 10 million SMEs, and its unorganised retail sector presents the perfect opportunity to increase the efficiency of supply chain by utilising technology and real-time data,” the founders said in a joint statement.

B2B e-commerce is a proven and exciting thesis with several successful unicorns globally. The space is currently in its hyper-growth phase and several players in it have raised significant capital from reputed investors globally.

Retailo’s co-founders have a track record of working with companies such as Careem, Rocket Internet, Daraz, foodpanda and Shopistan.

Also Read: Can Foodpanda really return to Vietnam?

Talha was previously the CEO at foodpanda and has previously worked as Senior Director Operations in Careem. Nowkhaiz was Careem’s Head of Strategy for the MENAP region and spearheaded the super app strategy post-Uber acquisition in May 2019. Wahaj is an ex-McKinsey consultant who has earlier worked as GM at Careem.

Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Startups said: “While they operate one of the fastest-scaling business models in the world, their success means millions of SMEs and rural populations are more productive and have more stability and food security. Technology can impact the next billion, and we’re already seeing it here with what Retailo had been doing.”

Retailo has earlier raised funding from strategic angels in the MENA region’s top startups and leading management consulting firms.

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Image Credit: Retailo.

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Singapore-based logistics tech startup Tramés today announced that it has raised an undisclosed seed funding round led by Kamet Capital Partners.

In a press statement, the company said that the funding will be used to build the team and further develop its product to better serve the SME market.

Founded in 2019 and headquartered in Singapore, Tramés is an end-to-end supply chain orchestration technology company, which aims to create a streamlined and unified workflow for shippers and their logistics partners.

It aims to help clients by convening stakeholders and other partners onto a collaborative, digital platform, thus reducing physical paperwork and the number of manual touchpoints in any supply chain.

Its platform included features such as a blockchain-enabled document repository to facilitate collaborative drafting and confirmation of shipping documentation.

“In one industry report, it is said that one cross-border shipment goes to about 20 different individual stakeholders across multiple organisations and have 200 different touchpoints and updates being made to this particular shipment. This is a very highly manual process,” Tramés CEO Kevin Lim explained to e27 in an interview.

Also Read: In brief: Singapore’s blockchain accelerator Tribe goes virtual for batch 3

“This results in high shipping administrative costs, usually accounting up to about 20 per cent of total freight costs,” he continues.

When asked about what differentiates Tramés from other startups that are offering similar services, Lim said that the answer lies in the company’s enterprise-centric approach. This means that it is able to cater to the needs of enterprises who tend to have a more complex supply chain.

“We are able to create this end-to-end visibility across inbound and outbound processes,” Lim said.

The company started out after the team learned about the challenges that MNCs face in their supply chain and the opportunities that have not been tapped before. It started out by working with a coal-mining company.

Since its inception, Tramés has successfully established a partnership with a Fortune 500 global multinational corporation (MNC) in the energy management and automation sector, to orchestrate their international supply chains.

Logistics tech is one of the verticals that, according to many experts, experiences a surge of demand during the COVID-19 pandemic as companies are looking for ways to digitalise their operations.

“The good news is that there is no one specific type of technology or one specific type of business model that will be successful,” said Marc Dragon, Managing Director of Reefknot Investments, in a recent interview with e27 when being asked about the opportunities available for logistics tech startups.

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Image Credit: Tramés

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The COVID-19 emergency has forced individuals to rethink their approach to financial securities. The uncertainties caused has driven people to plan for their financial needs differently and more efficiently than they have done in the past.

According to a report released by Standard & Poor’s and the World Bank, only a quarter of Southeast Asians are financially literate –a situation that carries “significant costs.”

“Consumers who fail to understand the concept of interest compounding spend more on transaction fees, run up bigger debts and incur higher interest rates on loans. They also end up borrowing more and saving less money,” it explains.

Cheryl Wang, a former financial advisor, was moved by these reasons. Apart from that, one of the best advice that she had ever received was to increase one’s income and invest in career during the twenties and early thirties. However, she noticed that few people were taking the right steps towards it.

In July, Wang then decided to build PlannerBee to solve a challenge that Wang was herself facing as a financial advisor.

“I was dreaming up this app for years, from thousands of conversations I’ve had in the past ten years as a financial advisor. Handling a roster of more than 6,000 clients has allowed me to meet a huge variety of people, and examine so many different types of needs,” she explains.

“When I start out planning with a client, I always do a pretty lengthy and in-depth assessment of their finances. I kind of wished an app as Planner Bee existed, and one day I decided I’ll try to launch something like this myself,” she continues.

PlannerBee allows individuals to track their expenses and figure out if their investments and savings are in line with their goals with their smart goal-tracking capabilities. The app has been created keeping simplicity and ease of use in mind.

Also Read: Fintech company Achiko wants to help tackle COVID-19 with its new healthtech projects

Users can simply download the app on the iOS platform and sync their bank accounts and insurers, after which the platform securely encrypts the data on the cloud and Amazon data centres. Each user is then able to customise his budget plans according to their needs.

“What sets us apart from other close competitors is that we are focused on covering multiple countries, multiple banks, insurers and investment providers,” Wang tells e27.

Partnership with SaltEdge

Most recently, PlannerBee partnered with Canadian fintech company SaltEdge to sync the data of users seamlessly with numerous banks.

Some of the banks PlannerBee has been able to connect with via SaltEdge include HSBC, DBS, Standard Chartered, Maybank, and OCBC Bank. The app has also been recognised by the Singapore Fintech Association.

“The ability to sync seamlessly with multiple banks, and safely pull all of that information into one place lies at the heart of effective financial planning. In my ten years of managing close to a thousand clients, taking the first step to assess all your cash and assets remains the biggest obstacle for most people in properly managing their finances,” she adds.

Planner Bee relies on Salt Edge’s platform which claims to be both “secure and compliant with the top banks’ requirements in over 70 countries.”

As of now, the app has 2,000 downloads after just three months since its launch. For the future, PlannerBee plans to keep on growing its team with the target to secure one million users across Asia in the next seven years.

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Image Credit: Cherie Wang

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