Felix Lee and James Baduor, co-founders of ADPList
Mentorship platform ADPList bags US$1.3M from Sequoia’s Surge
Co-investors: Angels including ex-Gojek executive Crystal Widjaja; JJ Chai, CEO of Rainforest; Quek Siu Rui, co-founder and CEO of Carousell; Ting Feng Toh, co-founder of GetGo; and Zopim founders.
The plan: ADPList will strengthen its platform to assist professionals and students to access global mentors.
What is ADPList?
ADPList, short for Amazing Design People List, was started during the height of the pandemic in 2020 with a mission to democratise mentorship. It caters to the creator economy by giving people easy access to a global network of mentors through booked virtual meetings directly on the platform.
In 2021, it was incorporated in Singapore by two creators-turned-entrepreneurs Felix Lee and James Baduor. Prior to ADPList, Lee was a co-founder of Packdat, a trip-planning platform acquired by Passpod in 2018.
Besides one-on-one mentoring, the platform also offers small group mentoring, town hall-style talks and other formats. The site claims to have organically grown to over 20,500 mentees, 2,500 mentors, and over 5,000 booked sessions per month. Among them, ADPList counts executives from Spotify, Apple, Twitter, LinkedIn, Nike, Netflix, Twitch, Coinbase and many more, among their mentors.
ADPList was among the 23 startups selected for Surge’s fifth cohort in June 2021.
Bukalapak, Vesta announce tie-up to secure consumer transactions in Indonesia
The story: The archipelago’s e-commerce giant Bukalapak has announced its collaboration with Vesta, an end-to-end transaction guarantee platform to deliver “unparalleled security” to Bukalapak and its customers.
Plan: The tie-up aims to maximise approvals of legitimate credit card transactions, and thwart would-be fraudsters, bolstering consumer confidence in e-commerce and streamlining the online shopping experience of Bukalapak’s customers.
What is Vesta?
Capitalising on its 25 years of transactional data history, the US-based real-time decisioning platform employs analytics and authentication technology to increase approvals of legitimate sales for its customers while eliminating chargebacks and other forms of digital fraud.
According to DBS Insight Asia, Indonesian consumers are reluctant to shop online mainly due to increasing e-commerce fraud.
“Through this partnership, Vesta will focus on increasing approvals and stopping e-commerce fraud, so Bukalapak can focus on what they do so well; providing their customers with an exceptional online shopping experience,” said Shabab Muhaddes, GM for Asia Pacific. “Sophisticated companies like Bukalapak know they can scale faster by implementing an end-to-end transaction guarantee platform.”
Also Read: Bukalapak raises US$1.5B on the first day of its IDX debut, shares jump 25 per cent
Meet top five startups of Malaysia’s Sunway iLabs Super Accelerator programme
The story: Sunway Innovation Labs (Sunway iLabs), an investment arm of Malaysia’s largest conglomerate Sunway Group, has announced the top five startups from its pre-accelerator phase of the 2021 Sunway iLabs Super Accelerator programme.
The selected startups showed great growth potential and align with Sunway business divisions and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals.
The five companies are:
- Loop Foods: An agrifoodtech startup, operating as a multi-brand F&B, develops unique access to real and healthy food, including Spargo Eats, a farm-to-fork healthy meal delivery service.
- Rent Guard: A Proptech startup that automates property management for property managers, individual landlords, and homeowners with a platform connecting tenants.
- Singular: A Fintech startup offers a first-class investment management mobile app, aiming to democratise active and sophisticated wealth management for the mass affluents.
- Trabble: Singapore-based tech startup develops a guest engagement SaaS platform that empowers travel and hospitality businesses in adapting to return to post-COVID tourism.
- Wise Crafters: An Agrifoodtech startup personalises meal plans and kits to support healthy eating for customers.
What’s next?
The selected startup will run an impactful pilot project to validate the product with one of Sunway’s business divisions and tap into Sunway’s regional market access. Sunway iLabs will provide the founders with mentoring and coaching sessions with industry and technical experts, as well as connecting them with potential investors through a Demo Day.
Also read: Meet the new batch of 8 Vietnamese startups joining VSV Capital’s accelerator programme
What is Sunway iLabs?
Launched in 2017 as a joint venture among Sunway Group, Sunway Ventures, Sun SEA Capital and Sunway University, Sunway Innovation Labs (Sunway iLabs) is a non-profit entity with an aim to foster entrepreneurship and stimulate market-driven innovations. It enables entrepreneurs to scale their business faster through its broad partnership with the startup ecosystem in Malaysia and abroad.
The 2021 programme gathered local entrepreneurs and business experts like Naluri CEO and Founder Azran Osman-Rani, Dropee CEO and Founder Lennise Ng, and LAW Partnership Partner Raphael Tay to share their experiences and advice to the 23 participating startups of the pre-accelerator phase.
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Image credit: ADPList, Sunway iLabs
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