Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel-backed Bridgetown SPAC weighs up to US$10B Tokopedia deal; Deliberations are at a preliminary stage and Bridgetown could still look at other potential targets; Tokopedia is Indonesia’s second most valuable startup, just behind ride-hailing and delivery giant gojek. More here
Tokopedia engages Morgan Stanley and Citi as plans to go public accelerate; Though a sale to a SPAC represents a faster route to a US listing, its CEO William Tanuwijaya had previously expressed his desire for a dual listing to ensure local employees and Indonesians can own shares of the firm. More here
How to pick an investor in good or bad times; It’s not about simply choosing an investor — you are hiring your next boss; You don’t want an investor who is checked out, but too much focus isn’t good, either; And, you don’t want an investor who is completely agreeable since your best outcome will be driven by a constructively demanding advisor. More here
Samsung backs Funding Societies to drive its vision of financial inclusion for SMEs in SEA; As of November 2020, the fintech startup claims to have given out more than US$1.4B across 3.3M loans; Funding Societies and Samsung Ventures, along with Samsung Life Insurance, will create a strategic alliance to introduce prospective partnerships and collaborations. More here
Ant Group’s chairman breaks silence after halt in largest global IPO; Eric Jing Jing Alipay has been managing the aftermath of the failed listing plan during the past month, under the guidance of the regulators; He promised to make Ant Group more transparent and predictable to the public. More here
Singapore healthtech firm Speedoc raises US$5M Series A led by Vertex; It will use the money to develop its in-house Chronic Disease Home Management system, a home-based management solution for chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol; Speedoc sends doctors and nurses on house calls and provides medication delivery services. More here
Helicap partners with Credit Saison Group to provide US$10M debt financing to alternative lending platforms in SEA; The collaboration aims to create a significant impact, especially for low-income borrowers and micro-enterprises in Vietnam and Indonesia. More here
Singapore’s co-living startup Cove raises US$4.6M led by Keppel Land; It plans to expand into Vietnam and Philippines; Since its launch in 2018, Cove has expanded into Jakarta with a total of 550 rooms, and partnered with Indonesian real estate developer Lippo Group. More here
Sembrani Nusantara Fund leads Series A round for Indonesia’s D2C shoe brand Brodo; Brodo specialises in men’s fashion and merges the online and offline shopping experience with three brick-and-mortar shops in the archipelago; The startup has also developed a digital marketing platform for MSMEs, called BDD. More here
SaaS e-commerce marketing platform Epsilo raises US$2M from Surge; It will use the fresh funds to bolster its technological capabilities and further expand its footprint across Asia; It is present in 7 markets across APAC and works with over 200 brands; Its software supports more than 400 online shops. More here
Vietnamese proptech startup Homebase bags 7-figure pre-Series A round; Investors include VinaCapital, Class 5 Global, Pegasus Technology, 1982 Ventures, Antler; Homebase utilises technology to offer home buyers and investors across Vietnam and SEA customised financing options for their properties. More here
Decacorn Capital backs Estonian startup Fyma that can turn your CCTV cameras into smart sensors; Decacorn has previously invested in Chinese fintech startup Qupital, cleantech company GridIO, AI company BioCatch and data protection company Sixgill; The VC firm is also an investor in Snap. More here
App integration platform Appboxo raises US$1.1M seed funding; Investors are Founders Fund, 500 Startups, Plug and Play Ventures, Antler; Appboxo plans to add new miniapps in travel, e-commerce, finance and lifestyle industries to cover more use cases for integrations by super apps. More here
Kalpha raises six-figure funding to allow P2P exchange of knowledge, skills, experiences; Investors include Nest Tech and undisclosed angels; The company claims to have shown a positive trajectory having 70K+ app downloads, 2K+ listings and 2.5K completed sessions since its launch in Jan 2019. More here
Chris Angkasa replaces Jason Lee as Indonesian co-working startup CoHive’s new CEO; Angkasa founded Clapham Collective, one of the earliest co-working spaces in Medan; Since Clapham merged with CoHive in 2017, Angkasa has been on the company’s Board of Advisors. More here
Transformation tenet: The digital customer experience is key to ‘stickiness’; As both business and consumer reliance on technology continues to increase, being able to rapidly identify and prevent technical disruptions should form part of that plan; It will be key to maintaining customer satisfaction and ultimately driving results. More here
Edukasyon promotes CMO Grace David as CEO; She has replaced Henry Motte-Muñoz (Founder and CEO), who remains as a full-time Executive Chairman; Edukasyon.ph is a marketplace for students to search, compare and apply to higher education institutions and online courses; It is backed by Alternate Ventures, French Partners, Lorinet Foundation. More here
How can India leapfrog into the league of the most innovative countries within the next five years?; In India, it will be imperative to fund specific domains such as biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, biosecurity, digital health, and data science, where there are gaps in research capability and capacity. More here
3 reasons to rethink your payments strategy in 2021; Payments are a complex and high-touch function; There is a clear link between failed payments and negative impacts on customers, with payment failures resulting in churn 11 to 15% of the time; Every time a payment fails, you are asking a customer to re-evaluate their relationship with your brand. More here
Enabling technologies in agriculture: Outsized returns across the value chain?; AI is driving more effective and timely decisions; Computational biology is changing what we put in soils to improve yield; Automation is trying mechanisation to keep pace with the twin headwinds of a decreasing farm labor population and the increasing size and of farms. More here
Philippines’s Trade and Industry Department unveils digital mall for MSMEs; It allows MSMEs to offer their products while navigating their way to online selling and other e-commerce promotions; The newly launched online mall is a depository of some of the top products of some 223 businesses in the Philippines. More here
Singapore strong on digital adoption, less so on flexible work arrangements: WEF; Singapore is placed third on a list of top 10 economies with a robust digital legal framework (US is first, followed by Luxembourg). More here
Singapore lures workspace operators amid pandemic property slump; Singapore sees itself as a sweet spot for workspace operators amid a COVID-induced commercial real estate slump, as companies have cut down on office space and retreated to work-from-home arrangements to shield employees from the effects of the virus. More here
Zoom to open new R&D centre in Singapore; The centre will play a vital role as a source of innovation for the business, leveraging some of Singapore’s professionals; Zoom has seen a rise in shares of the company this year as demand for video conferencing surged due to COVID-19. More here
Singapore launches healthtech sandbox; Startups and SMEs will be able to test their innovations in the CHI Start-up Enterprise Link (CHISEL) sandbox; Firms will work with a healthcare institution to access real use cases for the trial, so that their solutions can be customised to the local context and population. More here
Reimagining anti-money laundering processes with blockchain technology; A recent study showed that Singapore, US and UK has the largest number of virtual asset service providers with weak KYC processes; Blockchain reduces exponentially the amount of manual data processing necessary for accurate and reliable KYC. More here
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