Lightspeed enters Singapore to step up tech investment in SEA; The VC firm will deploy capital in the region from its global funds; In April, Lightspeed announced US$4B investments for its three global funds; In the region, the firm has already invested in Grab, Chilibeli, Ula, Shipper, NextBillion.ai. e27
gojek acquires payments platform WePay to expand its e-wallet business into Vietnam: Report; gojek Vietnam’s Manager Phung Tuan Duc has been appointed as CEO of WePay; WePay claims to have a partnership with 24 local banks, 1K merchants, 4 international card issuers. e27
Carousell inches closer to unicorn status with a US$80M investment round led by Naver; The deal, which also saw participation from Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Growth Fund and NH Investment, values Carousell at over US$900M; Total funding by the firm so far is US$260M+; Last year, it raises US$56M from OLX. e27
Patamar Capital launches US$50M Beacon Fund for female entrepreneurs in SEA’s emerging markets; Its initial focus will be on debt products, which tend to be a better fit for the moderate-growth, cash-flow positive businesses that the fund targets; The ticket sizes range from US$500K to US$2M; Beacon will use an evergreen structure. e27
Vietnam’s ride-hailing management platform for taxi firms EMDDI raises funding led by ThinkZone Ventures; It has has more than 30K taxis in 40+ provinces and cities; The startup is coordinating with 100 taxi companies to manage and coordinate about 3M rides. e27
On-demand care-giving startup Homage gets funding from Japan’s Infocom; Through a strategic alliance, the two firms aim to accelerate the elderly-care industry in Japan and APAC; The region is home to more than half of the world’s population above 60 years of age, and this figure is expected to reach 1.3B by 2050. e27
Pivoting beyond product: You need to look at your company/work culture, too; theAsianparent.com CEO Roshni Mahtani says while product pivots are the way for companies to find success during crisis , getting the team on board with new plans amidst a very palpable crisis requires shifts in culture. e27
Singapore’s indoor air quality sensor firm uHoo raises funding led by Wavemaker; PropertyGuru’s Steve Melhuish also invested in personal capacity; uHoo claims it’s seen almost 5x increase in units deployed in the last 12 months driven by string demand in N. America, Europe, Asia. e27
Why Intuit’s TradeGecko acquisition is a promise fulfilled by the SEA tech startup ecosystem; David Gowdey of Jungle Ventures says the deal adds a huge amount of credibility to founders in SEA that they can build a software that is globally best in class, and that will attract global buyers into it. e27
Indonesian digital news media platform Asumsi.co raises funding from East Ventures; It mainly focuses on politics, current affairs, pop culture; Asumsi.co aims to integrate tech into high-quality media content; The firm claims to have 10M viewers per month on social media, including YouTube (3.2M view rate). e27
Ex-Grabbers’ social commerce startup Evo raises seed funding; Evo helps influencers and live-streamers to optimise their back-office operations, allowing them to sell more products and scale more quickly; For merchant and brands looking to engage influencers, the solution will act as a marketing and sales channel. e27
How Pomelo tackles the problem of high product return with its O2O retail experience; Despite the prevalence of virtual fitting rooms, fashion e-tailers continue to struggle to provide an offline-like shopping experience; Customers expect not just great products but also great integrated experience spanning from the store to social media to the digital platforms. e27
What is the role of a Data Protection Officer (DPO) in a startup?; DPO is responsible to ensure organisations with websites and apps that collect data have reasonable security measures in place, such as conducting yearly penetration tests; if your biz operates in Singapore and you haven’t appointed a DPO yet, government may slap you with hefty penalties ranging from US$3,600 to US$14,600. e27
How Singapore is building AI for predictive healthcare; For successful AI development for healthcare, collaboration between clinicians and computer scientists is essential; If computer scientists handle the project alone, they’d make it fantastic in a technical way but it may not be relevant to the clinician; On the other hand, a project managed only by clinicians will be oversimplified. GovInsider
ST Engineering, NUS partner on US$9M programme for Singapore’s smart future; It will focus on two key research projects to lay the foundations for digital transformation and Industry 4.0; The first is Enterprise Digital Platform, an AI platform that will support all AI methodological areas to enable synthesis of disparate data sources and other systems. Singapore Business Review
The boomerang effect: How the pandemic has made New Zealand a tech talent favourite; Since March 14, more than 77K New Zealanders have returned home from abroad; Some of these people are choosing to run their own tech companies; NZ also has great infra, a thriving local tech community and fantastic lifestyle. e27
How to make your money last: Lessons in stretching your runway while running a startup; Cash reserves are an essential aspect of success, and managing them correctly will allow you the peace of mind to focus on more important things like running your business and sowing the seeds for enduring growth. e27
How to train a diverse and dispersed workforce during COVID-19 and beyond; A estimated 14% of the global workforce would need to acquire new skills or switch occupations by 2030 due to the continuing use of automation and AI; Companies are developing coronavirus-specific training programmes by leveraging the potential found in e-learning platforms. e27
Tech is key to the survival of the travel industry: Here’s why; Robotics startups will look at how to ease the pain of the travel industry through their products; IoT will help the travel industry by centralising control of services in-flight, passengers may soon be able to alter their seat temperature, adjust the air-con, or order refreshments by merely opening up an app. Tech Collective
Gobi, Sunway announce final 4 winners of its SuperSeed II Championship in Malaysia; They are MyCash, Speedhome, Lokein and StixFresh; Winners are in line for up to US$3.6M in funding; SuperSeed Fund II is aimed at startups in agritech, AI, Big Data, cloud services, e-commerce, fintech, IoT, circular economy as well as TaqwaTech. Digital News Asia
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The post Ecosystem Roundup: gojek acquires WePay; Carousell close to becoming unicorn; Patamar launches US$50M fund for SEA’s female founders appeared first on e27.