Indonesia-based accounting app BukuWarung raises seed funding led by East Ventures
BukuWarung, an Indonesia-based accounting app for MSMEs to digitise their bookkeeping, has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding in a round led by East Ventures.
AC Ventures (previously Agaeti Ventures & Convergence Ventures), Golden Gate Ventures, Tanglin Venture Partners, and Indonesian billionaire Michael Sampoerna joined the round, with strategic angel investment from Grab, Gojek, Flipkart, PayPal, Xendit, Rapyd, Alterra, ZEN Rooms, and others.
The company will use the funds to strengthen its market leadership and expand its team to grow across engineering, product, design, growth, and partnerships based out of Jakarta.
BukuWarung was founded in late 2019 by Abhinay Peddisetty and Chinmay Chauhan — both previously worked together at Carousell.
The app enables customers (merchants), who are mainly from tier II and III cities, to receive credit repayments three times faster than the traditional method, claims the company. This helps them improve cash-flow due to automated payment reminders sent by the app.
PLDT, KKR, Tencent, others invest up to US$120M in Philippines’s Voyager Innovations
Voyager Innovations, a tech company based in the Philippines, has secured US$120 million in funding commitments from tech and investment grants, such as PLDT, the Philippines’s leading telco and digital services provider.
Other investors are KKR, Tencent, IFC, and the IFC Emerging Asia Fund, a fund managed by IFC Asset Management Company.
Also Read: Tencent invests in the Philippines’ fintech firm Voyager, aims to battle Alibaba
The investment is part of a broader fundraise for Voyager and is intended to support its fintech product PayMaya’s growth, as it pursues its mission to accelerate digital and financial inclusion in the Philippines and enable the wider Filipino population to participate in the digital economy.
In 2018, KKR, Tencent, IFC, and IFC Emerging Asia Fund made initial investments totalling US$215 million into Voyager. In doing so, they showcased their supports of Voyager and its strategy to provide access to digital financial services across the Philippines through PayMaya.
PayMaya a digital payments ecosystem enabler offering platforms and services cutting across consumers, merchants, and government. Aside from providing the acceptance of the payment for the largest e-commerce, food, retail and gas merchants in the Philippines, PayMaya also enables national and social services agencies as well as local government units with digital payments and disbursement services.
Wing Bank’s parent company to make investment in online ticket booking platform CamboTicket
Inter Logistics (Cambodia), the parent of Wing Limited Specialised Bank, has expressed its intention to invest in CamboTicket.
According to Khmer Times, the investment is aimed at scaling up online tickets and holiday bookings in Cambodia.
Operated by Sea Venture, CamboTicket offers online ticket booking and holiday planning experience in the country through Wing App and CamboTicket.com.
Established in early 2015, the startup expanded its presence into Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos covering the route to and from the major destinations of the region such as Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, Sihanoukville, Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh, Kep, Kampot, Battambang, Pakse, and others.
The deal is subject to approval from the authorities, and both partners will provide strategic support on key functions.
Singapore-based edutech startup KooBits launches home-based learning, live tutoring
Singapore-based edutech startup KooBits has announced the launch of two new products — ‘Home-Based Learning’, an online mathematics learning platform, and ‘Live Tutoring’, an AI-enabled online live tutoring service — both with accompanying apps for parents to track learning progress.
This makes the first official launch of KooBits e-learning products to the consumer market, catering to parents and kids across households in Singapore and beyond.
Also Read: These Indonesian edutech startups are helping students cope and thrive during the COVID-19 crisis
The KooBits platform uses personalisation technology and gamification to support students to learn on their own; and at the same time, uses AI and big data to generate learning insights and make them visible to parents and teachers.
Through a short pre-class assignment that is part of every session, the platform automatically identifies each child’s weaknesses and gaps in learning and automatically groups them, so tutors can personalise their lesson and address relevant issues for the students during each class.
The platform also enables assignment of homework to follow up on the concepts that require reinforcement, to ensure that understanding has been achieved. Parents can also monitor what milestones their children have reached in relation to the national syllabus, and can also benchmark their child’s progress against their peers.
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Image Credit: BukuWarung
The post Morning News Roundup: MSME-targeted accounting app BukuWarung snags seed funding, Philippines’ Voyager receives funding from host of investors appeared first on e27.