IP intelligence company PatSnap lands US$300mn Series E, becomes unicorn; Lead investors are SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Tencent Investment; Founder and CEO Jeffrey Tiong said in an interview he wants to expand into Japan, where spending on research and development lags only the US and China. More here
Deep-dive
Talent attraction strategy focused only on incentives isn’t enough to drive candidates’ interest: Ninja Van; Imran Bustamam, Regional Head (HR) says flexible work hours, external training courses for staff development and pantry benefits are not enough; Employees today have much higher expectations when it comes to what a “good” employer should offer in terms of the employee. More here
‘Want VC funding? Your startup needs to be valued at least US$700mn in 10 years’: Jeffrey Paine; The founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures says about 40-50% of the 52 B2C firms in SEA with US$200mn+ valuation are overvalued, which will cause them some trouble in the next two-three years. More here
Commentary
Sea should stick to its core businesses, especially gaming; To grow its business and profitability, it might be a better idea for Sea to focus on developing another in-house game along the lines of its highly-successful Free Fire, along with continuing to steer its e-commerce and digital finance business to profitability. More here
Golden Gate-backed ALAMI acquires Sharia-compliant rural bank: Report; The deal will provide BPRS Cempaka Al-Amin with the fresh capital to comply with new rules set out by the Indonesian Financial Services Authority; In Jan, ALAMI raised US$20mn+ co-led by AC Ventures and Golden Gate. More here
Investible aims to raise US$38mn fund targeting early-stage startups in SEA, Australia; It has also appointed Rod Bristow, previously CEO of publicly-listed Clime Investment Management, as its new CEO; The fund’s inaugural fund has made over 32 investments, including Mosaic Solutions in the Philippines and Eden Farm in Indonesia. More here
Indonesia’s cross-border shipping solutions firm Andalin raises Series A from Sembrani Nusantara Fund; This is SNF’s third deal after its investments into Indonesian drink brand Haus! and local D2C shoe startup Brodo; Andalin claims it saw demand for its services spike in 2020, with shipment volume increasing by 5x and average revenue per client rising by 450% y-o-y. More here
ESB, Indonesia’s answer to Toast, bags US$3M in Beenext-led Series A round; ESB offers a cloud-based mobile ordering system that syncs up automatically with restaurants’ POS system, kitchen management system and ERP; Within six months of launching, ESB claims to have generated over 20 million annual orders for its customers. More here
‘Zombeast’ parent Storms to take its hyper-casual games to Indonesia, Africa with Series A financing; Investors are EDB New Ventures, Singtel’s founding investors — AIS (Thailand) and SK Telecom (S Korea); Storms is a joint venture between Singtel, SK Telecom and AIS that operates as a publisher for gamers and people who want to create games. More here
Bali, Batam climb up digital competitiveness index (DCI) in Indonesia as up-and-coming tech hubs: Report; In its latest Digital Competitiveness Index, East Ventures stated the country’s DCI increased from 27.9 in 2020 to 32 in 2021; This indicated a more even distribution of opportunities in provinces across the country, particular between top- and middle-tier provinces. More here
ShuttleOne launches Tezos-based lending, remittance platform for SMEs; The Singaporean fintech company uses blockchain to help informal workers remit money at a lower transfer fee and in a more transparent manner; It also helps SMEs connect with licensed money service providers and provides real-time settlement of cross-border money transfer services. More here
A look at Shopee’s key milestones as it rose to become SEA’s top e-commerce player; Besides purely shopping, Shopee also has various in-app entertainment options, such as live-streaming function ‘Shopee Live’, and interactive game show ‘Shopee Quiz’. According to Statista, Shopee saw approximately 14.1mn online visitors in Q4 2020; In 2017, Sea’s e-commerce registered a revenue of US$18mn; By 2019, it had ballooned nearly 50-fold to US$840mn. More here
Indonesian fintech API provider Brick bags seed funding; Investors include Better Tomorrow Ventures, PT Prasetia Dwidharma, 1982 Ventures, and Antler; The company will use the funds to launch new APIs for telcos, mobile wallets, e-commerce platforms and payment initiation products. More here
Singapore first to roll out AI programme for non-techies; A collaboration between Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and a multinational corporation and technology company launched AI programmes intended for the youth and the non-techies to further educate them on AI technology. More here
Baidu-backed iQIYI enters JV with G.H.Y Culture to boost SEA presence; iQIYI is a Chinese video-streaming giant whereas G.H.Y Culture & Media is an entertainment and content provider; iQIYI will tap on G.H.Y’s expertise in the production and promotion of dramas, films and concerts in APAC. More here
ADB Ventures debuts with investments in India’s Euler Motors, Smart Joules; Euler is an EV manufacturer and fleet operator focused on last-mile commercial logistics in India and SEA; Smart Joules provides energy efficiency-as-a-service for large hospitals and commercial buildings. More here
ComfortDelGro to invest US$37mn in clean energy tech over next 5 years; It also inked an MoU with the NUS to invest about US$7.4mn in a mobility-focused laboratory called the CDG-NUS Smart & Sustainable Mobility Living Lab; In addition, the company will also seek to set aside another US$29.7mn to replace its fleet of diesel buses with electric buses. More here
Amazon partners with Singapore’s Sunseap to export clean energy; The project is expected to generate 80K megawatt hours of clean energy annually, which is enough to power over 10K homes in the city-state; The project is set to be completed in 2022 and will supply renewable energy for the US giant’s offices, fulfilment centres, and AWS data centres. More here
Temasek leads US$50mn round of Chinese logistics startup Duckbill; It provides container trucking transportation services, international freight forwarding, and warehousing services by using big data and AI; The company claims to have served up to 6K firms to date and transported 700K containers by 2020. More here
Zilliqa’s ecosystem growth arm injects US$5mn to support 15 promising startups; This investment will be funnelled through two new initiatives in the ZILHive ecosystem — ZILHive Incubator and ZILHive Ventures; These two initiatives serve to supplement the US$5mn already previously committed to grants, accelerator, and education initiatives in 2018. More here
Branding lessons from a first-time startup employee caught up in a pandemic; With the global pandemic forcing almost every economy into lockdown, operational resiliency and brand communications became paramount; This was true both internally (for employees and inventors) and externally (for partners, customers and the wider market). More here
How no-code platforms are providing a boost to the real estate industry; No-code offers development platforms and tools to create new applications without the need for a single line of code; These platforms use a combination of drag and drop graphical interfaces and templates to enable non-IT professionals to create and optimise an application. More here
Story of my life: What I learned while building my SME financing startup; Across ASEAN, the SME bank loan-to-GDP ratio varies between four to 20%; Therefore, this has resulted in a multi-billion dollar funding gap for SMEs, which presents a huge lending opportunity in the region. More here
How the gig economy is empowering women in Vietnam; Undoubtedly, food delivery is one of the most popular gig jobs; As more people are forced to stay indoors, on-demand food delivery has become a lifeline for people to purchase necessities from their homes’ comfort; A spokesperson at Loship shares that the number of new female drivers signing up for its platform even more than double in the past year, particularly when COVID-19 took a heavy toll on Vietnamese women’s income. More here
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Image Credit: Sea
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