Tesla in early talks for potential investment in Indonesia; The archipelago is a major producer of nickel, a preferred chemical feed in the production of cathode materials for nickel-bearing lithium-ion batteries, primarily for EVs; The country has been increasing its capacity by 46 per cent year-over-year to 550K tonnes of nickel. Reuters
Singapore’s Sea is world’s best performing stock. And it can do better; With gaming, e-commerce, and now digital payments in its suite of offerings, the future of Sea is in its own hands; It has US$3.5B of cash in the bank; Tencent owns 22.9% of its outstanding shares. Channel News Asia
Lanturn, a Singaporean tech-enabled corporate services provider, raises US$3M; Investors are East Ventures, CoCoon Ignite Ventures; Lanturn’s services include helping companies incorporate in Singapore and handling visa applications for new hires. TechCrunch
Ant Group’s mega-IPO: Five things to know about the fintech king; Aiming for a valuation of over US$250B, the company hopes to raise US$35B in a dual listing split equally between Hong Kong and Shanghai; Ant is a virtual financial services mall for everything from loans to mutual funds, insurance policies and travel bookings. Nikkei Asia Review
Malaysia’s Cradle Fund mulls equity investments as funding tap runs dry for early-stage startups; The agency was asked by the Mahathir Mohamad government to focus more on grants instead of equity to avoid duplicating the work of other state-backed VCs; Subsequently, its investment programme DEQ800 was wound up. DealStreetAsia
Thai Union invests in Singapore’s Alchemy Foodtech, VisVires New Protein from its US$30M fund; Alchemy develops novel active food ingredients that fight diabetes whereas VisVires is a fund that invests in companies entrepreneurs in the sustainable agri-food industry. e27
How theAsianparent aims to help reduce stillbirth rates in SEA; The firm has developed Project Sidekicks which helps mothers count fetal kicks in a gamified manner; Other ways to help prevent stillbirths is by having mothers to sleep on their side which theAsianparent encourages through social media campaigns such as #SleeponSide. e27
Bukalapak co-founders’ early-stage fund Init 6 invests in Indonesian edutech Codemi; The startup provides cloud-based learning management system for corporations; It has also appointed Achmad Zaky as Commissioner. e27
SBI Group, Sygnum launch early-stage fund to back digital asset firms in SEA; The primary focus is on financial market infra and enterprise solutions being developed for the emerging digital asset economy; The two firms intend to tokenise the fund structure in order to increase accessibility for investors and offer them the potential for greater liquidity post-investment. e27
Vietnamese podcast startup Waves has ceased ops and returned money to its investors; In Feb, the startup had raised US$1.2M seed funding, led by Insignia; Waves had 30+ original programmes and 50 programmes created with partners on the platform as of Feb; 500 Startups-backed Voiz FM is one of its competitors in the country. VietReader
Rajan Anandan to entrepreneurs: ‘Trim the fat and build a leaner organisation’; Building a company that is efficient and can provide maximum value to a customer will become the winner during this unprecedented time; The best companies are almost always able to raise funding, no matter what. e27
Malaysia’s Nikahsatu raises seed funding from 500 Startups; The platform provides digital wedding solutions, nuptial financing solutions, and curated one-stop wedding solutions for Malaysian and Singapore markets; It has so far attracted close to 3M visitors from across the region. Bernama
FROGS wants to become the first startup in SEA to fly passenger drones; The drone, which had a successful test run in Indonesia early this year, can carry up to two passengers, fly at 100 kmph and has a 30 minutes’ flight time; The startup also designs surveillance, cargo, sprayer and passenger drones. e27
Irish biometric authentication firm Daon opens in Singapore; It has appointed cybersecurity expert Trilochan Sehgal to lead its regional ops; The firm aims to capitalise on the demand for its biometric authentication and identity assurance solutions, amid the introduction of digital banking regimes in the region. Finews.Asia
How businesses can protect themselves from digital risks; In 2018 alone, WiFi connectivity downtime caused losses worth around US$51M for APAC-based enterprises; As per a survey, over 31% stated that outages have cost their business more than US$1.2M while a further 17% said such shutdowns hit revenues by more than US$6M. e27
Singapore’s Reality Detector (RD) raises US$370K from Draper Associates; RD is a deep-tech startup that delivers video-based deception detection software; Its purpose is to create a world where all people can access undistorted reality and accurately place their trust in others, restoring authenticity, realism and credibility in human interactions.
How can we build digital resilience?; Organisations should look to incorporate ‘security by design’ approach as a default mindset; They should integrate automation, machine learning and analytics to increase the efficiency of their security threat detection capability. Gov Insider
iVS launches in-stream video ads marketplace in SEA; It provides advertisers with a single point of access to in-stream video inventory across premium publishers in the region, whereas publishers get a platform with hosting, transcoding and streaming capabilities; In March 2019, iVS raised US$4.5M from Kickstart, SGInnovate, Monk’s Hill etc. e27
Bukalapak launches new fintech unit Buka Investasi Bersama (BII); It aims to turn 500,000 of its users into mutual funds investors by 2021; BII is an extension of the financial services Bukalapak has been providing since 2016; It already runs BukaReksa, which also provides mutual funds services. e27
3 Singapore startups on the list of 10 selected for Accenture’s fintech mentorship programme 2020; They are Symbo, Staple and UVAS; The programme is based on five themes: data & analytics, digital bank solutions, emerging tech, health insurance, and intelligent automation; The 2020 programme formally kicks off this week and culminates in December. e27
How these 6 Asian startups use the digital revolution for social good; The R Collective, Freedom Cups, Impact Terra, Lumitics, BukuWarung, iHandal Energy are impacting millions of people in Southeast Asia. e27
Malaysian government mulling review of existing fintech policies; This includes policies to address the tech gap between generations, SMEs’ readiness to adopt digital financial services, as well as developing the halal economy via the digital platforms. The Malaysia Reserve
Deliveroo partners with barePack to curb single-use packaging waste from food deliveries in S’pore; Customers can elect to use reusable containers for delivery and pick-up orders from over 50 restaurants; barePack’s boxes are made from food-grade silicone and come with BPA-free polypropylene lids, while cups are made from stainless steel. RetailNewsAsia
Revolut Singapore ties up with NTUC Income to offer lifestyle-based insurance; Bite-sized premiums of $0.30, $0.50 and $0.70 will be linked to daily lifestyle activities such as dining, taking public transport, spending using Revolut Visa debit card as well as clocking steps on Fitbit. Fintech News
Shopee, Lazada, Qoo10, Amazon are hiring in Singapore: Which is the best to work for?; Currently, Amazon is hiring for over 200 jobs based in Singapore; Lazada and Qoo10 are hiring actively, from data science to strategy to product management; Based on the overall e-commerce traffic in Singapore, the top five e-commerce players that emerged are Shopee, Lazada, Qoo10, Amazon, and EZBuy. Vulcan Post
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