Great Eastern buys 21.9% stake in Axiata’s Boost Holdings for US$70M
Singapore-based Great Eastern has announced that it has entered into a share subscription agreement with Boost Holdings, a fintech company incorporated in Malaysia.
Boost is Malaysia’s largest e-wallet and lifestyle app with over 7.5 million users and 170,000 merchants.
The company is currently wholly-owned by Axiata Digital Services, the digital services arm of Axiata Group.
The agreement was signed by Great Eastern’s wholly-owned subsidiary Great Eastern Digital on Thursday.
Under the agreement, Great Eastern Digital will subscribe for a 21.875% stake in Boost for a cash consideration of US$70 million.
Upon completion of the transaction, Axiata Digital’s stake in Boost will be reduced to 78.125 per cent.
Chun Li replaces Pierre Poignant to become Lazada’s new CEO
Alibaba-owned Southeast Asian e-commerce major Lazada has appointed Chun Li as its new group CEO, says a Reuters report.
He has replaced Pierre Poignant, who is stepping down from the top post to become a special assistant to Daniel Zhang, Alibaba Group’s Chairman and CEO.
Li has been described as the “chief architect” behind Lazada’s technology platform and organisational transformation in 2017. He became its Indonesia CEO in July 2019. Before joining Lazada, he was the CTO of Alibaba’s B2B unit.
Lazada said Li would work to improve its competitive advantage through data technology application and business localisation.
Indian edutech giant Byju’s raises funding from BOND
Byju’s, India’s largest edutech company, announced today a new round of undisclosed investment from BOND, a global technology investment firm.
In response to schools being shut down due to COVID-19, Byju’s has made content on its learning app free for all students. The app has also introduced live classes to further student engagement.
“This crisis has brought online learning to the forefront and has helped parents, teachers and students alike to experience and understand the value of it,” Byju Raveendran, Founder and CEO, said.
“We have the opportunity to positively influence how teachers teach, students learn and school’s function. The ‘Classrooms of Tomorrow’ will have technology at the core, empowering students to cross over from passive to active learning. The result will be a combination of the best of both online and offline educational offerings,” he added.
In the past year, Byju’s has seen good growth and now has over 57 million registered students, more than 3.5 million paid subscribers and annual renewal rates as high as 85 per cent.
The firm doubled its revenue from INR14 billion to INR28 billion in FY19-20.
BukuKas hires John Mathew as SVP (Product), Gurteshwar Singh as SVP (Engineering)
500-backed Indonesian financial management platform BuKuKas has hired John Mathew as SVP of Product and Gurteshwar Singh as SVP of Engineering.
Both are experts in their respective fields and have held successful tenures across a diverse range of multinational companies.
Formerly a Lead Product Manager at social game developer Zynga (famous for titles like FarmVille and Zynga Poker), Mathew then became VP of Product at Hansel.io for three years before joining BuKuKas.
For Gurteshwar, he derived his expertise in solving complex technical problems from his time at leading mobile communications provider Karix, where he served as the Director of New Product Development, and before that, as Engineering Lead at online supermarket Grofers.
Since launching in December 2019, BuKuKas, which helps Indonesian MSMEs manage their bookkeeping via a mobile app, has on-boarded 500,000 merchants from 700 cities as of June 2020.
BuKuKas was also part of Sequoia Capital’s third Surge cohort.
The startup is currently closing a pre-Series A round.
The post In brief: Great Eastern invests US$70M in Axiata’s fintech arm; Lazada appoints new CEO appeared first on e27.