Traveloka considers SPAC option as it plans to go public; Eyeing a valuation of US$6B, Traveloka president Henry Hendrawan had previously stated that the company is considering the possibility of a dual listing in Indonesia and other country such as the US; East Ventures Managing Partner Willson Cuaca, who is an investor at Traveloka, stated that the company will be profitable by 2021. More here
ZA Tech forms insurtech joint venture with Indonesian e-wallet OVO; ZA Tech will provide know-how in insurance innovation and proprietary technology by offering well-defined platform-based solutions, which are built on the latest technology and capable of processing high volumes of data; The partnership aims to tap Indonesia’s largely underinsured population with only 1.7% out of the 265+ million being insured. More here
Digiasia Bios raising US$50M debt, eyes strategic investments; Co-Founder Alexander Rusli said that the company is open to divesting a minority stake to strategic partners as part of the equity fundraising plan; The company wants to use the funding to provide support to warung (mom-and-pop stores) in Indonesia. More here
Finantier secures funding from Y Combinator for its Open Finance platform; The company had previously raised a pre-seed round from investors including East Ventures, AC Ventures, and US-based Two Culture Capital; With this financing, Finantier seeks to expand its technology team and continue to grow its product offerings. More here
Cakap bags US$3M in Series A+ funding to expand its language learning platform in Indonesia; The investment was led by Heritas Capital with participation from Strategic Year Holdings and existing investors Investidea Ventures and Prasetia Dwidharma; The fresh funds will be used for talents acquisition, product development, and business expansion. More here
Navisteps snags US$1M in pre-seed funding to expand its corporate expense & travel management platform; The angel investors involved in the funding round included Yasuhide Fujii, Partner at KPMG Advisory (Myanmar), and Takuya Aiba, CEO and Founder of SpringLiner; The funding will be used to support market expansion in Asia and product development. More here
Fintech unicorn Pine Labs exceeds US$2B valuation after funding from Lone Pine Capital; While the terms of the deal remain undisclosed, sources believe it to be close to US$75-100 million; The company recently raised funding from payments giant Mastercard that brought it to unicorn status. More here
How foodpanda CTO approaches hiring and retaining the best tech talent; In this interview, Benjamin Mann shares how to cultivate an agile mindset and build a culture, use A/B testing effectively, work with customers’ feedback as well as his insights on notable trends in food delivery. More here
Tunas Farm raises pre-seed funding from Gayo Capital to launch its urban farming technology; Tunas Farm is currently preparing a production facility in Gading Serpong and an indoor display of vertical farming; They are also set to build a similar facility in other areas and to provide training for home-based hydroponic farming. More here
DRVR secures undisclosed funding from Smart Axiata’s Digital Innovation Fund to grow its fleet analytics platform; The company wants to expand its services into Cambodia and hire across the board; In 2018, it secured US$450K from an undisclosed group of investors and had earlier secured a small round of funding from an angel investor group in Hong Kong. More here
Skuad secures US$4M to ease remote team hiring through a single employment platform; Led by BEENEXT and Anthemis Group, other investors in the company included Alto Partners Multi-Family Office and Rohan Monga, CEO of Zenius Education. With the new funding, Skuad intends to develop its remote employment infrastructure and scale its growth team across multiple geographies. More here
11 Malaysian startups selected to join the Microsoft Emerge X Programme; The 11 startups include Alpha Red Services, Betacard, Leaderonomics Digital, Naluri Hidup, OrangeFIN Asia, SalesCandy, Setel, Softinn Solutions, Soft Solvers Solutions, Supplycart.my, and Talentcloud.ai; They will be participating in a year-long mentorship programme with Microsoft for Startups. More here
Cultured protein: A guide to every cell-based meat startup in the world right now; From a geographical standpoint, North America and Europe dominates the industry; There are 25 companies based in North America, 23 in Europe and only ten in Asia as well as an additional ten from other parts of the world. More here
Digitising Thailand’s food chain: National traceability system to focus on organic products first; The government of Thailand has ambitious plans to digitise the nation’s food and agricultural industry and is starting with a national tracebility system TraceThai; It will first focus on tracking organic foods, according to the Ministry of Commerce. More here
HKSTP launches biobank and biomedical informatics platform; These platforms are firsts for both commercial and academic biomedical tech research and development in Hong Kong and set to foster biotech co-creation and commercialisation; The initiatives are available for use by Park companies, as well as universities and research institutes. More here
Thailand leveraging smart health to be APAC’s new medical hub; Thailand’s National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) said that advancing the country’s healthcare infrastructure to become an APAC medical hub within five years will require significant technological development in telehealth, smart medical applications, and robotics; Leveraging smart health tech and robotics will also be dependent on the reliable availability of 5G connectivity in hospitals and medical centres. More here
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