Mandiri Capital Indonesia team
Finance
Bank Mandiri’s Mandiri Capital plans to invest up to US$5M in startups
Mandiri Capital Indonesia (MCI), a subsidiary of Bank Mandiri, has said that it seeks to expand its investment portfolio in startups to tap into the growth of digital businesses in the country, The Jakarta Post reported.
According to MCI President Director Eddi Danusaputro, the company plans to provide an initial investment of up to US$5 million for startups targeting especially the e-payments sector.
MCI stated that it would give out between US$2 million and US$5 million to acquire at least 10 per cent of the selected startups’ shares.
Danusaputro confirmed that MCI has invested a total of US$70 million in 13 startups since 2016. They include Amartha, a P2P lending platform for micro-enterprises owned by women; Investree, a small and medium enterprises-focussed lending platform; and Crowde, a P2P platform focused on farmers.
Before investing, MCI said it would take into account several parameters such as whether the startups are involved in providing solutions, have appropriate business models for sustainability, a sensible and profit-oriented projected valuation, and have reliable founding teams.
The founding team of a startup is also an important factor in decision making as it will never invest in a startup with a single founder because of its high-risk.
Business
Blockchain startup OKCoin expands to Singapore, adding Singapore currency as digital assets exchange
OKCoin, a fiat-focussed digital asset exchange platform, has opened an office in Singapore.
The company said it will add the Singapore dollar to its digital assets exchange, enabling traders in the country and Brunei to exchange the currency for bitcoin and ethereum, with additional trading pairs coming soon.
The Singapore dollar joins the US dollar and the euro as the third fiat currency to become available for purchase or withdrawal in exchange for digital assets through the OKCoin platform.
Hong Fang, Chairman of OKCoin, said: “By adding the Singapore dollar to our global digital assets exchange, we’re doing our part to help make the blockchain a vital part of everyday life for the people of Singapore, while also moving closer to making digital assets readily available to the whole world.”
Singapore’s blockchain market is predicted to reach US$272 million by 2022.
The Singapore office becomes OKCoin’s eighth international location, joining the US, Hong Kong, England, Malta, Argentina, Vietnam, and the Philippines.
OK Group develops a range of blockchain initiatives, ranging from data and technology to education and investments. Its business lines include OKCoin, a fiat-focused digital asset exchange; OKLink, a technology service provider that provides blockchain information and big data services; OK Capital, an investment arm focussed on the blockchain industry; B-Labs, an incubator program for early-stage blockchain companies; OK Engineering Academy, an open-source developer community working on blockchain technologies.
Vingroup’s VC arm closed down, focussing its fund to real estate subsidiaries
Vingroup Ventures, the venture capital unit set up by Vietnam’s conglomerate Vingroup in December 2018, has ceased its fund operation.
The conglomerate, as reported by DealStreetAsia, has renamed the unit to Vinhomes Industrial Park Investment JSC in February and has now transferred its ownership to its real estate subsidiaries, Vinhomes JSC and Green City Development JSC.
Also Read: Vietnamese retail tech Vingroup to sell US$1B shares to SK Group
Vingroup said that the move is a restructuring exercise to foray into the industrial real estate sector.
“Vingroup will continue to consider venture capital investment opportunities in technology, but has delegated this mission to subsidiaries so that they can select investment options within their own sectors,” said a Vingroup spokesperson.
Vingroup Ventures’s existing website and LinkedIn page mention a US$100-million corpus with no investment made since its establishment in 2018. Just in January, the CEO of Vingroup Ventures, Linh Thai had left the firm, along with other employees.
OneDash launches personal shopping messenger app to tackle e-commerce cart abandonment issue
OneDash, an e-commerce marketing technology startup, has announced that it has launched a chat-to-checkout service in the form of a messaging platform.
The platform allows online shoppers to perform direct, in-app, add-to-cart functions, with the option to check out in the very same chat to eliminate the need to exit a chat session to complete a purchase.
With cart abandonment becoming a major issue in online retail, OneDash is looking to address this pain point by optimising the online shopping experience, providing a real-time service for customers to see their purchases from start to finish.
OneDash’s app also enables interactive video allowing customers to connect with retail outlets, in real-time to enhance customer engagement to boost brand loyalty.
Oleksandr Matviishyn, CTO of OneDash, said: “We were driven by the idea of making video more affordable and providing the ability for every business to create, distribute, and monetise their video content, while at the same time, improving the production speed of interactive video content. During the implementation phase, we came up with a few additional ideas like advertising, Messenger commerce, and live streaming to make the platform even more robust.”
OneDash was founded by Rayhan Perera in 2017 with a vision of creating a more immersive shopping platform, allowing consumers to better engage with brands online.
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Picture Credit: Mandiri Capital Indonesia
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