Vesta raises funding to expand to APAC
The story: Vesta, a US-based startup specialising in fraud protection and payment technologies, has secured an undisclosed sum in strategic investment from Singapore-based EDBI.
The plans: This investment, along with a strategic alignment with EDBI, will accelerate Vesta’s momentum and efforts to expand its fraud and approval enhancement platform across Asia Pacific (APAC).
Vesta will have its regional headquarters in Singapore.
What does Vesta do?
It enables companies to grow their online businesses by eliminating the fear of fraud. This allows customers to focus on what really matters for success, growing revenue. Vesta’s real-time decisioning platform — built on data science and Machine Learning — analyses customers’ online payment transactions to assess the risk of fraud, backed by Vesta’s zero-risk, zero-liability payment guarantee, means customers never have to worry about the risk of fraud again.
Removing the fear of fraud also decreases the likelihood of incorrectly declining good customer transactions and increasing revenue. Vesta provides its service directly to partners in the telecommunications and e-commerce industries around the globe and also allows merchants to seamlessly integrate through commerce and payments platforms including Plaid, Shopify, and Verifone.
Previous funding: Vesta recently raised US$125 million in new growth capital from PE firm Goldfinch Partners.
Singapore’s e-learning marketplace ACKTEC secures funding
The story: Singapore-based edutech startup ACKTEC Technologies has received an investment from a family office to scale ACKTEC KQwest, a learning marketplace that connects industrial partners that are developing accredited, immersive-learning courses with learners across Asia.
The plans: To accelerate ACKTEC’s growth, in line with its vision to serve 100 million learners with over 10,000 enterprise-grade learning contents.
What does ACKTEC do?
The startup claims to be lowering the barrier to entry to immersive learning, making it accessible to businesses across Asia. Its KQwest product digitises courses by industry partners and accredited learning institutions, and converts them to bite-sized immersive learning content, connecting them with learners looking to up-skill or re-skill with training that is immediately applicable and relevant to their work demands and learning targets.
Its flagship mobile platform ACKTEC Learn delivers engaging and immersive learning content via VR, AR and interactive 3D simulations, without requiring any expensive VR hardware.
Korea’s NOROO launches biotech startup in Singapore
The story: South Korea’s leading industrial and chemicals company NOROO Holdings has selected Singapore for its global agri-solutions (agriculture solutions) hub to drive innovation in the food industry through its food solutions business and agri-tech offerings.
What is agri-solutions hub?
The hub includes a seed biotech startup that combines plant biology, data analytics, Machine Learning and novel genomic innovation to unlock the natural genetic diversity of plants. According to Yip Hon Mun, CEO of NOROO Singapore, the firm’s goal is to promote crop development through conventional means and to use these innovations as a way to complement what’s natural. Using them will help to predict better farming outcomes and food systems, he said.
NOROO Singapore will expand the availability of its seeds to farmers in Southeast Asia to reduce the need for fertilisers and improve crop protection.
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Image Credit: ACKTEC
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