iKala, an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven digital transformation and data-driven marketing solutions company headquartered in Taiwan, has received US$17 million in a Series B funding, led by Taipei-based Wistron Digital Technology Holding Company.

Previous investors Hotung Investment Holdings and Pacific Venture Partners are also joined the round.

Also Read: Demystifying artificial intelligence: Breaking down common AI myths

This round takes the company’s total funding raised to date to US$30.3 million.

The proceeds from the round will be used to expand into new markets, including Indonesia and Malaysia, while strengthening iKala’s position in its existing markets — Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan.

“We’ve been on a strong growth trajectory over the last couple of years, expanding into new markets and developing cutting-edge technology that has put us in a leading position in the region’s digital transformation and commerce space. With this funding, we look forward to exploring new opportunities in AI commerce beyond our existing markets,” said Sega Cheng, Co-founder and CEO of iKala.

iKala’s mission is to “enable AI competencies” of its enterprise customers to increase their customer acquisition capability and customer lifetime value, by providing AI-driven digital transformation and data-driven marketing solutions.

More than 400 enterprise customers across 12 industries, along with 15,000-plus advertisers, have used iKala’s technology, it said in a statement.

In June this year, the company also started a new division, called iKala Commerce. It consolidates AI-powered influencer database KOL Radar and AI social commerce solution Shoplus to provide an integrated solution and holistic customer data insights for the region’s social commerce players.

Also Read: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Is the technology only as good as the human behind it?

Wistron Digital is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Wistron Corporation, which invests in digital technology and software application firms.

The strategic investment in iKala marks Wistron Digital’s, which also focuses on Big Data analytics, entry into Southeast Asia.

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Image Credit: iKala

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Big corporations may have all the resources they need to build customer loyalty, but even then they continue to face challenges doing it. This is what captured Bui Hoai Nam’s attention when he was working at Grab, along with other big corporations in Vietnam.

With the thought that there was a missing link that big corporations should address when engaging their customers with rewards, Nam got together with Hieu Truong (CEO) and Minh Nguyen (CFO) to start UrBox.

UrBox describes itself as a digital rewards and loyalty solution for corporations in Vietnam.

What UrBox does is helping corporates integrate their loyalty and reward programme with multiple gift suppliers or merchants via API. Recipients can get digital gifts instantly on their phones to redeem at both offline and online stores.

“I came up with the idea of the business based on the pain points experienced in my previous stints. I’ve seen how big corps like Grab having a hard time keeping track of their loyalty programmes to engage the customers better. Basic things such as sending gifts and tracking the behaviours of the customers could be a headache. It got me thinking, why don’t we digitise all the rewards process instead?” Nam explains.

Nam viewed the company’s offering to be a niche in its industry. “We’re very tech-oriented, as we don’t focus only on selling the gifts. We bundle our platform as a solution with the rewards provided by gift suppliers. We build the loyalty solutions ecosystem and add rewards in it for our corporate partners,” Nam elaborates.

Also Read: UrBox Vietnam raised seed funding from two Vietnamese VCs

The business of loyalty

UrBox now has more than 200 retail brands and 6,000 stores from different industries on board. In 2019, the company managed to catch the attention of local investors such as VinaCapital Venture and VIISA.

“I must admit that our previous experiences helped our bootstrapping journey before getting the seed funding last year, the way our previous teammates in Grab and Timo digital bank supported UrBox and tried our services before we slowly grew to have more customers,” he adds.

To get to where they are, Nam recalled, it took the company five years to convince that their solutions are something that the retail market today is still missing.

“There is only five per cent of the top companies in Vietnam that have reliable loyalty solutions because many of these top corporations still face issues with fulfillments and the process of sending gifts to customers. So, with our platform catered to the need of each company specifically, these companies can have a way to do all sorts of customer engagement using rewards. They can also strategise their marketing around the behaviours tracked upon customers receiving the gifts,” says Nam.

That is how the company intended to work with other big corporations on top of their existing clients in the banking, insurance, airlines, telco, and technology.

“We are vertical agnostic in a sense that we are looking to adjust to each company’s needs according to their industry,” Nam points out.

The pandemic and the silver lining

According to Nam, big corporations in Vietnam also suffered the impact of COVID-19’s physical interaction limitation. “We viewed this as a positive opportunity for them to try digital rewards as a way to offer something else to their customers,” Nam opines.

Also Read: UrBox Vietnam raised seed funding from two Vietnamese VCs

Nam uses UrBox’s recent partnership with Vietnam Airlines as a case in point. “Vietnam Airlines’ partnership with us allows them to sell the miles as the rewards for the customers. This way, even though they can’t interact directly with their customers, they can still increase the liquidity of their products by having their customers redeem other services and get merchandise and other items,” Nam explains.

The gift redemption platform is named LotusMall, and it entitles members to a diverse ecosystem of gifts. The UrBox digital gift set is integrated with the platform to streamline gift redemption.

“Vietnam Airlines previously had no resources to build a digital rewarding platform, so our tech team built it for them and they’re free from the hassle of working with hundreds of gift suppliers and gift fulfilment,” Nam says.

Right now, Nam focusses on their plans to improve the products to increase customer experience after their Vietnam Airlines’ partnership.

“It made us realise that there are still room for growth. We’ll focus on how we can have attractive digital products to give and how we can build our bundle of products to meet both the corporations and their end customers’ needs. Aside from that, we will also focus on building a 24/7 customer care capability. These are what our future plans entail,” Nam said.

There is also a need to think about how the merchants can leverage their service, especially those that have experienced a negative impact from COVID-19.

Also Read: Korean digital rewards service Spoqa raises US$2M to expand into Japan

“We need to think about how UrBox can create more solutions for merchants, improve their cash flow, and how they can reach the right customers. What we have is a subscription programme, where they can come to merchants for a repeat purchase. This way, both ends are mutually benefited with the Improvements loyalty activities and still have a chance to grow their business,” Nam elaborates.

However, even if the digital rewards industry has a strong connection with the retail industry, the penetration rate for the retail market is still small in Vietnam.

“There are still 35-40 per cent potential to grow within this market, especially with rewarding and loyalty programmes. With the new normal situation, many big corporations in Vietnam need to secure their market share to be able to digitise their daily business to optimise productivity. And we’d like to view UrBox as an important bridge to that,” Nam further explains.

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Image Credit: UrBox

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Lever VC, a new global alternative protein venture capital fund based out of Hong Kong, has announced the first close of its first fund.

As per an official statement, the Fund I has U$23 million in commitments so far.

Also Read: Why Sesamilk thinks plant-based milk is healthier than cow milk and has a bright future

The firm claims to have attracted “strong support” with around 70 per cent of capital commitments from Hong Kong and Asian family offices and conglomerates with diversified interests, including consumer products and the food industry hoping to gain exposure to the high-growth alternative protein sector.

Lever VC was founded by Managing Partner Nick Cooney and Partner Lawrence Chu, who have been investing in the alternative protein sector since 2015. They were also investors in Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats, JUST, Aleph Farms, and Kite Hill.

It invests in early-stage plant-based and cell-cultivated meat and dairy companies. The firm has already backed ten startups, including Singapore-based TurtleTree Labs, which develops cow’s milk and human breast milk from cell cultivation; and Hong Kong-based Avant, a cell-cultivated meat company in the greater China region.

The company further added it will continue to identify investment opportunities in early-stage alternative protein companies, carefully evaluating around 1,200 plant-based and cultivated meat and dairy protein companies that the firm tracks globally.

Alternative protein, which generally refers to plant-based and food-technology alternatives to animal protein, is one of the most popular investment trends in recent years.

Barclays, UBS, and JP Morgan project the sector to grow by 31 per cent year over year, becoming a US$85-$140 billion market over the next ten to fifteen years.

According to Lever VC, the alternative protein industry is on track to transform the food industry, thanks to macro trends toward greater awareness of health concerns, food safety and sustainability.

Also Read: Bühler invests in Big Idea Ventures’s New Protein Fund; to invest in up to 100 plant- and cell-based firms

“The alternative protein market is continuing to grow quickly, and with our deep experience and proven record of returns in the sector, as well as the preeminent deal flow across Asia, North America, Europe and beyond, Lever VC is perfectly positioned to deliver value to investors looking for financial or strategic exposure to alternative protein and the broader impact investing market,” said Chu.

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Image Credit: Lever VC

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As economies begin to reopen and businesses grapple with a new digital and socially distant landscape, industries as we know them have inevitably changed over the course of the outbreak. While many sectors struggle to tide through this new reality, fintech is in a promising position with S$650 million (US$475 million) invested in fintech firms throughout the first half of 2020.

With the challenges brought forth by the pandemic, digital financial solutions are vital in serving economies and societies of the future. Southeast Asia is actively accelerating the digital financial services sector with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) urging the use of digital finance and stimulating the fintech sector with S$125 million (US$91 million) to support the digital financial industry to navigate new obstacles.

With new socially distant norms, many firms are now forced to adapt to the new realities. The pandemic has already prompted a 20 per cent increase in Singapore businesses kick-starting their digital journey, and this number is likely to rise further as the outbreak continues.

Amidst the changing business and economic landscape, customer’s demands are also changing. Eighty per cent of surveyed respondents in Singapore has stated that they are likely to continue using online banking after the pandemic.

With more consumers migrating and adapting to digital, they will naturally expect other financial providers to follow suit, and insurance will be no exception. Traditional insurers are now faced with joining the digital wave or succumbing to those offering digital solutions fit for a socially distant society.

Tradition vs technology

Digital by design, today’s fintech and insurtech startups have an operational structure rooted in technology and the agility to continue services amidst business disruptions and limited contact. In contrast, much of traditional insurance is structured around face-to-face contact, and as such, the transition to digital is met with more challenges as they create new avenues for customers to make well-informed decisions without having to physically meet financial advisers.

Also Read: Asian insurtech on the rise: An overview of the main players

In addition, new products take an average of six to nine months and close to US$1 million to develop and test. Caught at a technological crossroads, it is slow and costly to integrate into a digital ecosystem.

In a rush to expedite digital processes, many companies have implemented solutions in weeks rather than the months or years it would have usually taken, raising concerns on the long-term impacts that could arise from such quick digital fixtures.

With many traditional insurers taking this digital leap, there is an even greater need to scrutinise solutions from a digital perspective to avoid the pitfalls of quick technological fixes. The transition to digital goes beyond structural changes and involves a re-engineering the mindset and culture of the organisation to think from a digital perspective, from product to customer service.

The future of insurance

With a growing focus on technological transformation, naturally, most would expect that the future of insurance is digital. No doubt, to an extent that is true but I believe that the future of insurance is not just digital, but efficient—being able to connect to our customers more instantaneously, to understand their needs more promptly, and to address their concerns immediately.

Encompassing new technologies from big data and machine learning to robo-advisory and IoTs, digital insurers are built to lower costs for policy administration and improve claims management, streamlining processes more efficiently than traditional insurers.

Having such technological solutions provides multiple touchpoints for customers to connect at any time which is crucial in accelerating processes and creating an efficient customer onboarding process.

Also read: Why insurtech startup Igloo is eyeing Vietnam for expansion

In this new economic climate, finances are a concern for many, making it even more necessary to have seamless services that provide clarity and connectivity to customers at a time of uncertainty.

Presented by new challenges, traditional insurers are forced to evaluate old practices and innovate new processes in a bid to stay relevant in an ever-changing economic landscape.

As we look at a post-pandemic world, it will be paramount to embody the nimbleness of a digital insurer, providing the efficiency that the customers of tomorrow not only need but expect.

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MDI Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) owned by Indonesia’s state-owned Telkom Group, has announced the launch of a new US$500 million tech fund.

The new fund aims to bolster the digital transformation agendas of the archipelago’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at large.

The push is as part of an ambitious goal of building out a full-fledged, state-owned digital ecosystem.

Also Read: Meet the VC: How Indonesia’s MDI Ventures managed 3 overseas exits within a month

MDI Ventures claims with the launch the new fund, it has now become the largest corporate-backed, multi-fund VC firm in the nation, with more than US$790 million in assets under management.

Since 2016, MDI Ventures and Telkom have worked together to expand the telecoms company’s in-house digital capabilities. So far, it has invested in more than 44 startups from more than 12 countries.

The CVC is now on the lookout for tech startups that aspire to dominate the local market and help traditional, and largely offline SOEs, join the nation’s thriving digital economy.

So far, SOEs have played an essential role in Indonesia’s US$1 trillion modern economy. As the country’s consumer market is quickly shifting toward digital-first and digital-only user experiences, transformation is seen to be a top priority for local SOEs moving forward.

“Indonesia’s digital economy managed to reach US$40 billion in 2019, with the e-commerce sector acting as the main catalyst for the spike,” said Donald Wihardja, the newly-appointed CEO of MDI Ventures. “Increased ease of digital payments across the country and widespread consumer adoption also significantly contributed to this growth.”

“To maintain their strong footholds in the market well into the future, our SOEs know they need to embrace digital business models more profoundly than ever before. By allocating this fund in accordance with the government’s bold mission and by partnering with local tech innovators, Indonesia’s SOEs will be ideally positioned to thrive for generations to come,” he added.

In recent years, Indonesia had already been transitioning major SOEs into a fully digital paradigm. State-owned banks, for example, had released various tech innovations since 2018 and some even launched their own online and app-based lending platforms for SMEs.

They had also established key partnerships with numerous fintech startups such as Privy, Oy, LinkAja, and ModalRakyat.

Meanwhile, Telkom has been the driving force behind SOE digital transformation efforts at large. Since 2016, MDI has created multiple in-house synergies for its parent company and also cultivated a slew of highly profitable portfolio exits.

These included Melbourne-based Whispir’s IPO on the ASX, Naspers’s acquisition of Red Dot Payment at a valuation of US$65 million, and the acquisition of Singapore-based cloud communications platform Wavecell by US-based 8×8 in a deal worth approximately US$125 million.

Also Read: MDI Ventures names Donald Wihardja as its new CEO, aims to announce new funds this year

Sandhy Widyasthana, COO of MDI Ventures, commented: “SOEs and tech companies can establish symbiosis by allowing startups to instantly access large corporate clients and their consolidated networks of consumers. Meanwhile, these startups will furnish state-owned companies with value-added digital services that will help them adapt to a rapidly changing business landscape in Indonesia. This also means startups can potentially have more exit opportunities later on.”

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Image Credit: MDI Ventures

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At the recent Against All Odds Startup Summit 2020 online conference by Freshworks for Startups, Saleswhale Co-Founder & CEO Gabriel Lim explained how he and his team built a global SaaS platform from Southeast Asia (SEA) with a US$1 million annual recurring revenue (ARR).

But he began his presentation by dubbing his presentation as a “glossary of f*ck-ups.”

“We broke every single rule there is about building a startup,” he pointed out. “But life is not linear and we made tons of mistakes.”

Based in Singapore, Saleswhale builds AI assistance for demand generation. Lim wrote the first lines of codes for the platform when he noticed the disputes faced by sales and marketing teams, where the leads generated by marketing teams are often deemed unsuitable by the sales team.

A Y Combinator alumnus, Saleswhale has gone through the journey and lived to tell the tale. So here are the five things that Saleswhale has learned about building a global SaaS platform from Southeast Asia.

1. You have to decide about being a global SaaS company since Day One

Lim began by explaining how for many SaaS startups based in SEA or APAC, their earlier customers are usually the people in their own network. While this is not inherently a bad thing, these startups have to be careful as it might prevent them from building a product that suits the market that really matters: the US.

“For example, we did not realise how important it was to be integrated to Salesforce — this is because we have been so focussed on Asian users,” Lim elaborated.

Also Read: AI sales assistant Saleswhale raises US$5.3M Series A round led by Monk’s Hill

Which leads us to the bigger question: Why is it so important for Saleswhale to enter the US market?

“Because you should become a dominant player in the US before you can become a global player,” Lim answered.

2. In SEA and APAC, avoid sales-led go-to-market (GTM) motion

Lim spoke of the time when the company experienced a decline in their sales, and he attributed this to its lack of proper marketing motion.

“We did not have a proper product-led motion; a lot of it was led by sales,” he said, stressing on the importance to have a consistency in marketing, lead generation, or some kind of virality in one’s own product.

“It’s going to be extremely painful to get a sales-lead business from APAC because, number one, we do not have the talent density here … Number two is if you’re selling to the US market, this means a lot of 2 AM and late night costs,” Lim continued.

3. Just because you do something, doesn’t mean you should do it

To give context, Lim explained about the one-time Saleswhale overgrew its team. Labour in APAC is relatively cheaper, and whenever problems arise, the company found itself hiring more people as an immediate solution. This ended up with the company having a massive but ineffective team structure.

“If I could turn back time, I would become more thoughtful before I grew the headcount too quickly,” Lim said.

4. Be shameless about learning

As he continued to stress on the importance of looking towards the US market, Lim said that it is crucial for founders of global SaaS platform in SEA to reach out to those in the US. This means doing cold calls and email to their US counterparts to ask questions about building a team and many more.

“In Singapore and APAC, there are just not too many SaaS veterans to learn from. Even the investors may not have that deep of a knowledge,” Lim opined.

Doing outreach can help shorten the learning process for startups.

“If you don’t do this, you’re taking a lot of execution risks,” he stressed.

Also Read: Y Combinator startup Saleswhale raises US$1.2M to automate sales processes

5. Another one related to talent: Hiring the right people

Hiring a capable person is not enough; a global SaaS platform should also hire ones with the right kind of capability. Lim dubbed this as “an expensive mistake that can take back your growth by one year.”

For example, Saleswhale used to hire executives from major SaaS companies with regional HQ in Singapore, but this turned out to be a mistake. Why? Having worked in the regional HQ, these executives are accustomed to operating based on the directions they received from the main HQ.

“This does not transfer well to a startup where you really have to reinvent your playbook from scratch,” Lim said.

Related to the previous points, Lim suggested hiring talents directly from the US, something that remains feasible even during the COVID-19 pandemic due to remote working. But what if a startup does not have the resource to do this?

“It is better to promote someone internally and push them to learn as fast as they can,” he closed.

 

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Singapore’s edutech startup Doyobi announces US$1M in funding from 500 Startups, others

The story: Singapore-based edutech startup Doyobi has raised US$1 million in funding.

Investors: 500 Startups and Xoogler Angels.

What is Doyobi? : Launched early this year, Doyobi is an online school for kids which offers coding courses that are supported by Google, the Singapore government, as well as educators from around the world. It uses videos, quizzes and projects to make teaching and learning fun and easy.

More about the story: Some of the companies partners include Tutor ID (Brazil), Coding & More (India), Galileo (US), Tenopy (Singapore).

Investment in edutech companies have also gained a lot of interest and according to Holon IQ has grown from US$500 million in 2010 to US$7 billion in 2019.

“VCs have been looking at edutech in a big way even pre-COVID-19. Asian parents spend more on their children’s education than sometimes even food – but the pandemic has been an accelerator of this – governments and parents see how powerful alternative platforms such as Doyobi can be. We’re grateful Doyobi chose us to be one of their partners to provide scalable education solutions for our children’s generation,” said Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Startups.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Anchanto raises US$12M; MAS earmarks US$182M more to boost fintech innovation; How Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy

Lightspeed India closes US$275M fund for early-stage companies

The story: American venture capital firm Lightspeed has closed US$275M of its new fund Lightspeed India Partners III from global institutional LPs.

“The new fund is the biggest for India and will enable Lightspeed India Partners to make early-stage bets on more than two dozen startups in the region,” said Hemant Mohapatra, a partner at the firm.

Where it will invest: Early stage, seed, and Series A companies from India

How it will support startups: By leveraging its global network, building customer partnerships, talent acquisition and growth capital. Some of its portfolio companies include Byju’s, Indian Energy Exchange, Oyo, ShareChat and more.

About Lightspeed: It is a multi-stage venture capital firm which invests across several stages and sectors in India, including technology-led businesses as well as non-technology sectors like advertising and media, business services, financial services, healthcare, education and retail. It currently manages more than US$10 billion across global Lightspeed platform.

Lu International partners Kasikornbank to develop Thailand’s online wealth management platform

The story: Singapore’s Lu International has partnered with Kasikornbank, one of Thailand’s largest banks, to establish an online wealth management platform for retail investors in Thailand.

Behind the partnership: Lu International will leverage on Kasikornbank’s wide customer base in Thailand whereas the Thai bank will use Lu International’s technological capabilities and experience in doing business to help address the financial services gap in the market.

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Image Credit: Doyobi

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Developing a corporate innovation strategy is no easy feat. Akin to cooking a good dish, aside from ensuring that you put in place the best ingredients and chef, adopting the appropriate cooking methods and processes is critical to delivering that dish that you so desire. 

Likewise, aside from taking into consideration factors such as innovation culture, resources, and the executing team, adopting the appropriate innovation approach is key to determining the outcome of your corporate innovation efforts. 

With that, this article highlights an innovation approach that has been gaining traction that could serve to enhance your corporate innovation strategy: the Pre-accelerator. 

Uncovering the pre-accelerator

Most corporates that have been early in the game are familiar with innovation approaches such as hackathons, accelerators, startup scouting, innovation challenges, and even venture to build. But what are pre-accelerators? 

Pre-accelerators have only been rising in prominence in the past couple of years, and mainly in US and Europe. Such programmes have been gaining momentum across startup communities, with the increased awareness of the effort and resources required to enable ideas to take flight.

Given so, pre-accelerator programmes focus on equipping entrepreneurs with skill sets and resources to develop their first minimum viable product and establish a strong product-market fit. The foundation required for any good business venture. 

Also Read: How to get into a pre-accelerator programme

Pre-accelerator programmes can be structured from anywhere between eight to 12 weeks, focused on equipping participants in the areas of customer and market validation, prototype and business model development, fundraising, and development of branding and marketing strategies.

Given that resources are highly limited for entrepreneurs at such a phase of development, the ability to gain access to a consolidated platform of high-quality mentorship, resources, and tools is critical to spurring the rise of new innovative solutions. 

Evidently, the sell for such programmes to entrepreneurs is strong, but why has such an innovation approach also increasingly appealed to corporates? 

How pre-accelerators enhance your corporate innovation model

The answer to this is simple – corporates that are keen to collaborate with startups face the same problem as startup ecosystem players that have been early adopters of this approach, the need to enable ideas to take flight.

This applies regardless of whether you are looking at it from a return of investment perspective in the long-term for your corporate innovation initiatives, or just by the very fact that you need these ideas to mature in order for pilots to be plausible.

It applies whether you are looking at an internal or an external innovation programme, in which both would face the challenge of providing the necessary support to further develop ideas generated by staff or entrepreneurs. 

Given so, corporates have been increasingly drawn to adopting such an innovation approach to enhance and complement their existing corporate innovation initiatives.  

Here are a few ways that pre-accelerators can be brought in to enhance your corporate innovation model: 

Increase the return on investment for hackathons

It is undeniable that hackathons are a good way for corporates to crowdsource new ideas and solutions from the broader ecosystem, in which this is especially so if the industry is nascent and mature solutions are far and few. Fostering the rise of new ideas is as such a key innovation strategy in the long-term, to enable corporates to have viable solution providers to work within the years to come. 

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Anchanto raises US$12M; MAS earmarks US$182M more to boost fintech innovation; How Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy

While recognising the merits of hackathons, corporates that have engaged in them often struggle with the long term feasibility of such an innovation programme given the low success rates of ideas that have emerged. This comes with the realisation of the need for post-hackathon support to enable entrepreneurs to further develop their ideas, validate it in the market before the idea is able to take flight in the form of engaging in pilots or raise further funding support. 

Given so, to enhance the return on investment poured into hackathons, pre-accelerators have been increasingly paired with hackathon programmes. This serves to provide structured support for ideas generated from hackathons, enabling ideas to be further developed to produce pilot-ready solutions. 

Serve as the ideal funnel for corporate venture building

Pre-accelerator programmes are unique in that they work with ideas and solutions that are still in very early stages of development (pre-MVP). As the products and solutions are still in the early stages of development, this presents more opportunities for corporates that are looking to collaborate with startups to jointly shape and develop them.

This serves as an ideal pipeline for corporates that are looking to explore new solutions to bring in as new business units and/or to source for new solutions to engage in further development jointly with their venture building teams. 

The ability to jointly shape and develop these solutions through the pre-accelerator programme, also serves to align solutions more closely to internal processes and constraints increasing the likelihood for the solutions to be adopted. Such a pairing capitalises on the merits of open innovation approaches in the ability to source ideas from the broader ecosystem, to strengthen venture building efforts. 

Serve as curated pipelines for corporate investments 

Given that corporate venture arms often focus on solutions that enhance existing business lines, the investment focus of each corporate is a unique one. While startup scouting is often relied upon to bring in investment leads, corporate venture arms find themselves competing with other corporate venture arms and venture capital firms for this deal flow.

These solutions also often do not meet internal requirements, to which corporate ventures find themselves in tricky situations having to exit investments when business units are not able to work with their portfolio company.

Also Read: Meet 6 of our corporate partners who will FORGE their corporate-startup innovation at Echelon

Investing in a pre-accelerator programme to build up a curated pipeline of early-stage ventures has as such been a model that is increasingly attractive to corporate venture arms. Through customising the scope, scale, and theme for these pre-accelerator programmes, corporate ventures are able to foster the development of ideas that are more closely aligned to their business needs.

Through engaging the startups through the pre-accelerator programme, corporates would also have the opportunity to work with the startup for a certain period of time prior to investment. This increases the likelihood of these solutions being adopted internally and enables investments to be made with more certainty on the potential of the startup. 

Perfecting your corporate innovation model

It is of hope that the above has helped to uncover the beauty of pre-accelerators and how they can serve to boost your corporate innovation model. For those engaged in hackathons, pre-accelerators could be that structured post-hackathon support you have been looking for.

For those engaged in venture building, a pre-accelerator programme could provide that steady pipeline of solutions in a sweet spot of development to collaborate with. For those involved in corporate ventures, pre-accelerators could be that curated deal flow pipeline that you have been looking for. 

So if you are a corporate developing your innovation model and/or reviewing your existing innovation strategy, why not consider the pre-accelerator and see how it can complete the dish for you?

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M17’s Japan chief promoted as new global CEO

The story: Taiwan’s M17 Entertainment has appointed Hirofumi Ono as the new global CEO, replacing the incumbent Joseph Phua, who has stepped down from the top post to assume the role of non-executive Chairman.

Ono until recently led M17 Entertainment in Japan.

Under Ono’s leadership, M17 will aim to continue growing into a global live streaming platform.

Who is Ono?

Born in Sapporo in 1974, Ono completed his Bachelor’s Degree in biological sciences, and his master’s degree in science from The University of Tokyo.

After graduation, he participated in several mobile and media startups.

In 2000, he was the founding member and the first employee of CyberAgent Mobile Co., of which he retired in 2008 as Senior Managing Director.

In 2008, Ono co-founded Infinity Ventures, from which he acted as an investor and veteran entrepreneur, to found Rekoo Japan under Sunshine Ranch, Jimoty, Groupon Japan and Farfetch Japan. In addition, he started the “Infinity Ventures Summit”, the largest conference for entrepreneurs in Japan.

In 2017, Hiro started 17 Media Japan.

Ono retired from Infinity Ventures in July, 2020.

Impact investor SEAF Invests in CloudCfo

The story: Global impact investment fund manager SEAF has announced that its Women’s Opportunity Fund, SWOF, has invested in CloudCfo.

This is the second investment made by SWOF in the Philippines.

What is CloudCfo?: Established in 2016, CloudCfo offers the full range of outsourced finance services, including accounting, bookkeeping, tax compliance, financial reporting, payroll, budgeting, financial forecasts, catch-up accounting, strategic financial advisory and virtual CFO services.

Plans with the money: The startup will use the investment to grow faster across three key business areas — investment in technology, further development of its in-house expertise and people, and for the expansion of its services within the market.

India’s Captain Fresh raises US$2.3M

The story: Freshwater fish and seafood supply chain platform Captain Fresh has raised US$2.3 million in pre-series A round of funding.

Investors: Ankur Capital (lead), Incubate Fund India and Silicon Valley based angel investors.

Plans with the money: The fundraise will be used to invest in technologies like computer vision, IoT, bots, data analytics to digitise and drive efficiencies across the supply chain. Additionally, it will expand to new cities and add key hires to build a mission driven world-class team.

What is Captain Fresh?: It is building a trusted seafood supply chain by bringing in intelligence for superior demand-supply matching, enabling e-auctions for sourcing, standardising supplies and maintaining digital traceability systems.

Captain Fresh works with leading brands in the modern trade channel as well as the pioneers in the online meat and seafood space.

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Matthew Tippetts started his professional career as a tech banker about 20 years ago, before moving out to manage portfolios at US-based hedge fund Citadel. This enabled him to come to Asia where he soon discovered the massive gap in terms of the user experience.

“There wasn’t a lot happening in online space. There were a lot of things that could be done to help merchants and get them to really leverage data properly to grow that business. So that’s basically how the idea started,” Tippets recalls.

The first thing that Tippets and his co-founders did was to do a market study. “We wanted to understand how people do payments. So we interviewed 1,800 businesses, about a thousand people, to really understand what people are ready to do and how they do it,” Tippets says.

Tippets wanted to see what the people were using at that time and what the trust factors were out there.

This initiative eventually led to the founding of Cambodia-based fintech startup Clik.

“We wanted to see their interest in some of the services that I was envisioning at the time, and the result of the study was positive. And so we decided to start building up the team, Skye (Skye Cornell, Chief Marketing Officer) and I. We then met the third co-founder, Darren Jensen, along with other co-founders who are all either serial entrepreneurs or tech professionals, fintech professionals,” Tippets continues.

Why Cambodia

In its platform, Clik shares its vision to “create a digital community across Southeast Asia by providing a 100 per cent safe and seamless payment method, suitable for everyone” by building an advanced mobile payment system for enterprises, merchants, and consumers.

In doing so, the question arises on why Cambodia was chosen to achieve this.

“I was at the time in Cambodia, so that was a natural reason. But also it’s mostly because Cambodia, in our view, is the best place for piloting a new technology infrastructure. Here, we have close to more than 80 per cent of internet coverage for the population, where you can get 10 gigabytes for US$7-8. Ninety-five per cent of people here have smartphones, so they have the tools to do mobile payments,” Tippets elaborates.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Intuit acquires TradeGecko; Synagie proposes US$45M sale of e-commerce arm; Ayoconnect, Wahyoo, Clik, Vesta secure investment

“When we did our feasibility studies and asked questions to people paying in Cambodia, close to 60 per cent of them were already using apps to make payments. One of the payment companies was in 30 per cent of people’s smartphones, which showcased how big the level of penetration is,” Tippets says.

In contrast to what most people believe, Cambodia has a pretty dynamic fintech sector. There are already quite a few players such as Pi Pay, a youth-targeted cashless mobile payment platform.

Phone-to-phone tapping payment

To understand the kind of ecosystem Clik is building, imagine the not-so-distant future where no hardware is required to do a cashless payment.

“We’re looking to enable banks to link bank accounts to the app, so that when you tap with your phone to make a payment, it comes straight out of your bank account, making it practical because it’s completely seamless,” Tippets announces.

Tippets adds that what can be seen now of the company is a little bit like the tip of the iceberg.

“The visible part of the platform is that we help merchants do different things related to data insight. From creating loyalty plans to microtargeting, messaging and so on, all available in the app for the consumer. But beyond that, we have web applications developed for internal purposes, such as building our own customer relationship management and sales force automation system to automate and assist the activation team in reaching out to merchants and converting them,” says Tippets.

“We’ve also built an electronic KYC product that could allow these merchants’ customers to link their bank accounts and onboard customers in 90 seconds when it comes to consumers,” Tippets adds, saying that the e-KYC is where they really hit it off when they first showed it to the target merchants.

“We decided to prioritise the e-KYC and it’s a critical part to the customer journey, whether it’s a merchant or the customers. A merchant can just download the app and look through the application to fulfil all the necessary Know-Your-Client, which is similar to what a bank would require, but in an automated way,” he continues.

Also Read: Cambodian fintech startup Clik raises US$3.7M in seed funding, announces key hirings

In Cambodia, however, to do the standard KYC, it is required to have a face-to-face check-in.

“To address this, we have an activation team queued up with this sales force automation tool, which can really make it easy for the activation team to target merchants and act on converting these merchants onto our platform. So they would go to a merchant, help them download the app, help them collect all the information they need, and within five minutes, a merchant can be fully KYC,” Tippets breaks it down.

The capability to onboard merchants in five minutes is powerful because it opens up a completely new market, which is where the micro SMEs can really thrive with the elimination of needing a Visa account or hardware tool, as everything is done via smartphone only.

The investment and partnerships preceding the launch

“We were unorthodox in terms of our late commercial launch, as we’re looking to really establish our footing in this space. But we have signed agreements with the equivalent of over 2,500 merchants, and we also have agreements with financial institutions for testing and partnering with our services,” Tippets said.

Even before it was officially launched, Clik manages to secure several investments and international partnerships. The company is also raising for its Series A.

Clik’s leading investor is Openway Group, one of the leading investors in mobile payment and cloud payment systems.

“When we explained it to the founder, Andrew Vereninov, he immediately understood what we were doing and volunteered to help us. And within a call, we got nearly US$700,000 in funding, and we’d been working with them for nearly four years now.”

The company then got another investment from Phillip Capital’s POEMS.

It is also securing a guaranteed license by the National Bank of Cambodia. “We expect to get a license by October earliest. So there’s no longer any regulatory risk before our official launch,” Tippets adds.

Also Read: MYPINPAD and Clik aim to unify the digital point-of-sale industry

In addition to the investments, Clik also utilises MYPINPAD’s enhanced Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant payment security, as well as facilities that allow integration with existing payment infrastructures.

Being data-driven as the main focus

The recent and on-going funding will be used for a product roadmap.

“Let’s assume that we’re on track with the launch at the end of 2020, by the first half of 2021, we expect to have quite a few more payment capabilities. So we’re hoping to start with Visa, but we’ll add on MasterCard, and most likely UPI and Alipay. We’ve also already been in discussions with a few other financial institutions to be able to link up with their accounts,” Tippets details.

“We also plan on having additional functionalities launched shortly after the commercial launch, with international remittance being one of them. And in the second half of 2021, we will have further data-driven tools around data analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning to help our customers predict their revenues and also optimise loyalty plans and the micro-campaigns,” Tippets further adds.

“On top of that, we also expect to expand by the end of the year as we’re already well in the process of applying for a patent license in a neighbouring country, which most likely will be Myanmar,” he ends.

The data-payment gap

Right now, according to Tippets, 85-90 per cent of transactions are still in cash in Cambodia, and that is with around 25 mobile payment players existing in the market.

Tippets says that the potential for market growth is huge as there is enough space for quite a few players. He specifically points out the brick-and-mortar businesses, in which there’s a massive fragmentation of payments and of data.

“In Southeast Asia, for retail payment, 97 per cent are in brick-and-mortar businesses, but nobody’s really catering to these brick and mortar merchants to help them gain some of the data-driven tools that the online space has to really better understand that customer base to better cater to them, get them to be more loyal, and repeat purchase and basically drive more value,” Tippets says.

Tippets believes that moving forward, payments aggregators are going to be key in bringing that interoperability between all these different players to be able to grow the business.

Also Read: Without privacy, Asia’s cashless society will only benefit governments

“That’s why … we’re all about building an ecosystem where we can bring a lot of value to our partners, to the merchants and to the consumers, so that they have a good enough reason to use the service six times a day all the time. Because it’s seamless, practical, ultra-safe, and because it’s everywhere,” Tippets closes.

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Image Credit: Clik

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