Venture capital continues to flow into Southeast Asia, with startups securing significant funding across diverse sectors.
From AI-powered customer support platforms like Brainfish to innovative agritech solutions like Rize, these investments reflect the growing interest in tech-driven innovation.
Companies like Runchise are revolutionising restaurant management, while NSG BioLabs provide essential infrastructure for biotech startups. International job placement platforms like Gapai are also attracting attention.
With renewable energy startups like MetroElectro gaining traction, the funding landscape showcases the region’s potential for innovation and growth.
Let’s delve into the latest funding rounds and explore the dynamic startup ecosystem in the Asia-Pacific.
Brainfish (Singapore)
Brainfish is an AI-powered self-service customer support platform for businesses. It is an AI product expert that helps customers understand a product and helps businesses understand their customers. The Brainfish search function combines a company’s knowledge documents and contextual understanding of the user to deliver instant, real-time answers that are personalised to the specific customer scenario.
Capital raised: US$2.5 million
Round: Seed
Investors: Peak XV’s Surge, Macdoch Ventures, Black Sheep Capital, Justus Hammer (CEO MadPaws), angels.
Runchise (Indonesia)
Runchise is a restaurant management and culinary franchise startup. It is designed based on a comprehensive understanding of the business process and restaurant operation, creating a user-centric platform with an end-to-end ecosystem. With the online or cloud-based platform, Runchise ensures that all the information from the restaurant outlets is connected transparently, accurately, and consistently into one platform. The startup was founded in 2022 by Winoto and Ivana Widjaja (COO).
Capital raised: US$1 million
Round: Not specified
Investors: East Ventures, Genesia Ventures.
NSG BioLabs (Singapore)
NSG BioLabs is a provider of biotech co-working laboratories and office spaces in Singapore.
Started in 2019, NSG BioLabs develops solutions in the health, biomedical, agrifood, and industrial biotechnology sectors, working in precision medicine, nucleic acids, AI-enabled drug discovery, and synthetic biology. The co-working space firm provides biotech startups and multinational companies private and shared laboratory spaces, offices, equipment, privileged access to service providers and suppliers, and community engagement.
NSG BioLabs currently houses over 40 innovative companies in its co-working biotech laboratory in Singapore. The residents include several multi-billion-dollar multinationals and promising startups that have achieved key milestones.
Capital raised: US$14.5 million
Round: Not specified
Investors: Celadon Partners, ClavystBio.
Elevarm (Indonesia)
Elevarm is an integrated farming productivity platform. Launched in 2022, the Elevarm platform of interconnected horticultural services and products empowers farmers with affordable quality inputs for higher farming productivity, broader market reach, and safe and accessible financing. With a growing base of over 13,000 agricultural partners and 5,000 active farmers as customers, Elevarm claims to have grown its 2023 revenue up 7x from the previous year.
Capital raised: US$2.6 million
Round: Seed
Investors: Insignia Ventures Partners, 500 Global, eFishery founder and CEO Gibran Huzaifa.
Gapai (Indonesia)
Gapai provides international job placement services for overseas Indonesian workers. The platform connects prospective employees with suitable employers for fast and safe cross-border job placements. The company operates by screening candidates, conducting interviews, and providing upskilling opportunities for Indonesian workers to build a network of ready-to-work talents that can meet international labour demands.
Capital raised: US$1 million
Round: Seed
Investors: Wavemaker Partners and Antler.
MetroElectro (Australia)
MetroElectro is a climate tech startup in Australia. Founded by veteran digital business entrepreneur Lloyd Heinrich, MetroElectro is a renewable energy company focused on unlocking the potential of commercial and industrial (C&I) rooftops. The startup, built from a venture-studio model, has developed its solution by collaborating with industry experts, investors, and businesses in the C&I sector.
MetroElectro’s solution aims to transform overlooked swathes of rooftops in industrial parks, turning these difficult-to-address assets into efficient energy generation resources. The approach simplifies the complexities, eliminates onerous capital requirements on owners and their tenants, and mitigates risks associated with distributed solar power on commercial rooftops.
Capital raised: US$690,000
Round: pre-Seed
Investor: Wavemaker Impact.
Rize (Singapore)
Rize is an agritech platform aiming to make sustainable rice cultivation viable through innovative and data-driven practices. Rize is building a platform to identify and implement effective strategies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in rice cultivation and the right economic incentives across the value chain to drive the adoption of sustainable cultivation techniques.
Its technology stack captures vital agricultural data essential for implementing sustainable farming practices, making rice farmers more climate resilient, increasing their crop yields, lowering costs, and facilitating efficient access to finance. Rize aims to eliminate 100 metric tonnes of carbon emissions while improving farmer livelihoods.
Capital raised: US$14 million
Round: Series A
Investors: Breakthrough Energy Ventures, GenZero, Temasek, Wavemaker Impact.
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