Fashion tech VC firm Lyra Ventures announces new Japan-backed global fund

Fashion tech VC firm Lyra Ventures, which was formerly known as Start Today Ventures, announced the launch of their second fund with investment from TSI Holdings, one of Japan’s largest fashion conglomerates.

This announcement follows Lyra Ventures’ recent investment into the US retail platform Neighborhood Goods, a move that has been heralded as “the reinvention of the department store.”

The investment from TSI Holdings complements Lyra Ventures’ existing partnership with ZOZO Co. Ltd, Japanese fashion e-commerce operator.

The new fund, Lyra Ventures said, allows it to focus exclusively on global opportunities. In particular, the experience and international operating expertise of Lyra Ventures’ team and advisors in providing a strategic platform for companies that are ready to expand to Japan and Southeast Asia.

Lyra Ventures’ earlier investments include Syte AI —a visual AI technology provider whose clients include Farfetch, Marks & Spencer, Boohoo, and ZOZO, and UK-based customer engagement SaaS solution Mercaux.

Indonesian waste management startup Waste4Change gets funding from three VCs

Bekasi-based waste management startup Waste4Change received an undisclosed amount of funding from Agaeti Ventures, East Ventures, and SMDV, Tech In Asia reported.

Waste4Change said it plans to use the funding to increase its waste management capacity, targeting to contain at least 2,000 tonnes of waste per day in 2024. The startup also plans to launch an integrated smart city management platform in collaboration with other waste management system provider Sampah Muda from Semarang.

Waste4Change was established in 2014 by Environmental Engineering graduate Mohamad Bijaksana Junerosano. In addition to offering waste collection and management service, the startup also offers consultancy, education, and environmental campaign.

Global student support platform Zookal raises US$9.8M to set foot in Southeast Asia

Australian edutech startup Zookal, which provides a variety of services and products, announces that it has raised US$9.8 million in equity funding, looking to accelerate the company’s growth in Southeast Asia.

Existing investors Koh Boon Hwee (former Chairman of Singapore Airlines and technology investor) and Bernard Sabrier (Chairman of USD$26 billion funds, Unigestion) led the round with participation from Wee Hur Holdings Ltd, a publicly listed Singaporean construction and property development company that has a portfolio of purpose-built student accommodation.

Also Read: Zookal raises US$550K for student textbook rental portal, eyes SEA

The capital raised will support the company’s growth in Southeast Asia by allowing Zookal to triple the size of its engineering team and make strategic hires. The hiring includes its recently appointed VP of engineering Manuel Silva, who was the former director of engineering and consumer product of The Iconic.

Ahmed Haider, Co-founder, and CEO of Zookal said, “Southeast Asia is a very attractive market with our digital users growing to 300,000 in just eight months. Our goal is to reach 10 million students in the coming years as Asia comes online by making education more affordable and accessible to them.”

Moovaz secures Series A funding from supply chain company YCH Group’s venture arm SCAngels

Moovaz, Singapore-based relocation solution startup, announces an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from YCH Group, the supply chain solutions company, through its corporate venture arm SCAngels.

According to Tech In Asia, Moovaz said it will use the funding to develop features that will simplify processes in the global relocation industry.

Went online just a year ago, Moovaz works with its global network of more than 2,000 certified moving service providers as partners.

As a co-investment partner of SCAngels, SGInnovate will also contribute to the funding.

Medtech startup Cardiotrack gets funding from Singapore-based Frontline Strategy Funds

Singapore-based private equity platform Frontline Strategy Funds announces that it has led an investment in the Singapore-headquartered medtech startup Cardiotrack, along with other angel investors. According to an article by YourStory, Cardiotrack will use the funds to grow its customer base in India and international markets.

Cardiotrack was founded by Avin Agarwal and Ashim Roy. It aims to bridge the gap between healthcare providers and chronic patients for affordable access to healthcare and better disease management. The platform has an end-to-end disease management platform with diagnostic-grade medical devices connected to the mobile, cloud, and AI technology.

It includes 12-channel portable ECG and remote medical consultation services through its network of trained and certified medical professionals. In more than 16 countries where it has presences, it offers portable medical devices, report interpretation, and medical consultation for home screening, corporate wellness screening, and health camps to support chronic patients anywhere and anytime.

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Image Credit: Lyra Ventures

 

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Personalised customer experience is now possible at better values. With a filtered, informed insight on consumer demands, companies may also tailor-fit their inventories, saving wasteful production costs. Efforts are optimised, and
customers are satisfied. Both parties win.

Nike, the world’s biggest and most prolific sports retail brand, has taken this personalised customer experience offering a notch higher by combining its recommendation tool with augmented reality tech. In select markets, customers may determine their shoe sizes by simply taking a photo of their feet through its mobile app. The sizes are even optimised per shoe type. A customer’s best fit may be a size nine for a Nike Pegasus but a size 8.5 for a Nike Cortez, since running shoes need more space for better cushioning.

The company’s execs say the app can determine the shoe size of a customer better as it learns over time, so if a customer buys more shoes, the app will get better in the long run. That may be more of a marketing tactic to get you to buy more shoes, but I would bet that it works.

This is just the beginning of the transformational effects of AI on businesses. According to the latest IDC survey in 2018, only 14 per cent of businesses in Southeast Asia have adopted the technology. With more embracing the tech, artificial intelligence is set to transform not just board rooms but production lines too.

In the Philippines, AI is already threatening to massively upend an entire industry—business process outsourcing. Chatbots or AI-operated assistants have proven to be the quicker and more cost-efficient responder to customer inquiries, replacing human call centre agents altogether.

Also Read: How not to build a bot: 3 steps to a cringeworthy chatbot experience

Conversational commerce

Commerce is perhaps one area where AI seems to be making the most noticeable leaps and bounds. When Siri was introduced by Apple in 2011, retailers thought customers would eventually shop for their favourite clothes or their pantry needs as easily as calling a friend through voice assistants. Almost a decade since though, the market, especially in emerging countries, is yet to embrace voice commerce. But they’ve turned to another force of conversations today to do the shopping in their stead: chat assistants.

In the Philippines, the third most visited platform is Facebook Messenger, with nine out of 10 internet users in the country utilizing the service regularly. Aware of Filipinos’ love for chat, some consumer brands, including financial services such as banks and e-wallets, have deployed highly interactive chatbots on its Facebook pages to engage with customers.

Philippine startup Aiah is one of the leading startups in the Philippines to develop interactive bots for select brands that want to participate in conversational commerce. It has automated chat conversations for brands to help them with leads generation or customer service. “For one of our clients, we have automated how the page will respond when a user clicks on their ad on Facebook, which fast-tracked the application process for the service o$ered,” Aiah co-founder Gian Paulo dela Rama said.

The chatbot, instead of just forwarding the inquiry to a human customer service officer, interacts with the user instead, asking standard questions, from requesting the applicant’s name to requesting their identification documents.

At the backend, the chatbot also simultaneously checks if that specific user’s location can be catered to by the specific service offered by Aiah’s client since it’s site-sensitive. That mere process alone has optimised the application process, enabling the company to cut it down from two weeks to two days.

Also Read: Ways to improve your brand awareness with chatbots

And this is just the beginning of the chatbots’ takeover. Gian has shared that in a few years’ time, chatbots will also get better at identifying the tone of the customer, so the bot can anticipate negative emotions and have better responses to prevent dissatisfaction. Chatbots can help brands provide a drastically better customer experience. Empathy can even be taught to machines.

Already, chatbots are cheaper, faster and sometimes more effective than their human counterparts. After all, chatbots don’t get exhausted from hours of responding to human inquiries. The exciting part is, chatbots are just one level of automation. The more labour-extensive work happens at the backend, which
involves another type of AI—robot process automation.

If chatbots automate responses on any messaging service, RPA (robot process automation) automates any manual work with a computer. Think of any job that involves paper, forms, or interactions. Soon, encoding work will be done by computers alone. There are computers today that can scan hundreds and thousands of forms in 24 hours. Imagine how transformative that can be to companies that still rely on human agents to manually type out written text, and encoders who sit day in and day out just transferring written text to the screen.

In the insurance technology or insurtech space, Saphron, has found a way to make the lives of their agents easier by giving them an AI-powered assistant called NAN.AI. A bot on Messenger, NAN.AI allows agents to simply upload the photo of application forms online, which then identifies the written text and enters it into the system as fully-parsed data. This cuts the onboarding process from days to mere minutes, transferring the manual work of typing out thousands of text “fields to the machine. With a faster process, Saphron is able to provide more in less time, helping not just the agent but the insured customers as well.

AI is set up to complement human work, freeing humans from simple, routine jobs, and allowing people to do more creative, stimulating tasks. Technology has always been adapted to humans, not the other way around. AI’s ability to do simple tasks at scale has also made deployment of seemingly sophisticated tasks
easier, allowing more markets to have access to better opportunities.

Also Read: Ways to improve your brand awareness with chatbots

That immense impact to markets is already felt in the fintech scene, where startups are utilising machine learning to reach unserved and underserved markets more efficiently.

The country’s leading microinsurance provider, CARD MRI, for example, now employs AI to develop a credit scoring scheme for the masses. The company feels it could provide affordable, formal loans to those at the bottom of the pyramid, where the majority of their five-million large customer base doesn’t have the documents for a traditional bank.

To do this, they are filtering their current customer dataset based on a set of criteria. The criteria would allow them to see the customers who are diligent payors, those who have good credit history and even the amounts they are paying. From just their dataset alone, CARD MRI already knows who will most likely be the best customers to provide better loan packages, without checking their documents. Suddenly, the five million customer base is down to a few hundred thousand —a customer base their agents could better focus their efforts on and help with their financial needs.

That effort would have taken months, even years, if done by a few hundred agents who will assess each loan applicant’s documents. It frees up both the company from laborious work and the customer from going through rigorous effort just to complete requirements. It all seems beneficial on paper to the loan provider, but with this kind of process, the customer is also given access to better packages with less waiting time.

That could be life-changing for the market CARD wants to serve, especially when chances are, their lives are a race against time. It could mean a student gets to pay tuition on time, or a farmer can buy the proper fertilisers for richer harvests next season. AI is now increasingly affecting everyday customers, even without their knowing.

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This story has been excerpted by courtesy of the publisher from Ready or Not 2020: The 5 Trends Changing the Landscape of Business by Winston Damarillo (Talino Venture Labs, 2020).

To purchase the book, please visit this site.

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Quona Capital closes US$203M round to focus on fintech companies in emerging markets

American VC firm Quona Capital, which focussed in growth-stage fintech companies in emerging markets such as Asia, Africa, and Latin America, announced the close of its second fund at US$203 million, according to Tech in Asia.

The fund has been said to exceed its US$150 million target, and receives support from various global asset managers, insurance companies, banks, university endowments, family offices, and development finance institutions.

Some of the firm’s investments in Southeast Asia include Koinworks, Julo, Sunday, and Ula.

Frogs Indonesia carries out flying taxi test flight in Yogyakarta

Yogyakarta-based startup Frogs Indonesia has carried out test flights of its two-seater all-electric taxi Frogs 282 at Gading Airport in Gunung Kidul regency on Saturday, according to Asiaone.

Developed over the past two years, the taxi floated a few centimetres above the ground during a series of trials and was examined by technicians after it landed. However, Frogs Indonesia CTO Dedi Satria Maulana expressed his dissatisfaction of the prototype.

According to him, improvements need to be done to the machine to cope with the “rather heavy” air density in the regency.

The test was conducted to prepare for the upcoming 2020 Hannover Messe technology exhibition in Germany.

2C2P adds Eva Weber as investment director to accelerate growth

Payment services company 2C2P announced today that it has appointed Eva Weber as its Investment Director.

With experience in the financial services industry, Weber will be responsible for future investments as well as investor relations.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Fashion tech VC firm Lyra Ventures launches new fund

Most recently, Weber led financial planning and investor relations at Adyen, a global payment company headquartered in the Netherlands.

Undeterred by COVID-19, Hong Kong’s Omnichat lands US$800K seed fund from AppWorks

Hong Kong-based e-commerce messaging platform Omnichat announced that it has raised NT$24 million (US$800,000) seed funding round led by AppWorks. Joining the round was Aria Group and other undisclosed investors.

The proceeds will be used for customer acquisition and expansion within and outside of Taiwan, with plans to launch in Singapore and Malaysia in 2021.

The Hong Kong startup has recently worked with brands including HH Herbal, TOYSELECT, and Moët Hennessy.

By the end of 2019, Omnichat claims to have 3,600 new customers, of which more than 70 per cent were from Taiwan.

India’s Paytm Mall Executive Director Rudra Dalmia quits after promotion

Paytm Executive Director Rudra Dalmia has quit the company only less than a year since his promotion, according to a report by Entrackr.

Paytm Mall is the online consumer marketplace division of the Paytm brand, one of the largest digital payment services in India.

Also Read: Owning your data is a basic human right, says blockchain-based startup Credifys Rasmus Kütt

“Dalmia resigned last month and is currently serving his notice period. His abrupt departure from the company raises questions on the coherence and longevity of Paytm Mall’s strategy,” the report quoted.

Indonesia mulls 2032 Olympics bid with SoftBank backing

Indonesian President Joko Widodo is considering to enter the bid for 2032 Olympics with potential financial support from SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son and other investors, Reuters wrote.

The plan centered around the country’s up-and-coming new capital in Borneo, which SoftBank had expressed interests to invest in.

Bahlil Lahadalia, chief of the country’s investment coordinating board (BKPM), stated that the government has submitted a bid for Jakarta.

Representatives of Grab and SoftBank have declined to comment.

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Anisa Menur Maulani also contributed to the writing of this article.

Image Credit: Quona Capital

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Coined in the 2010s, in response to a surge in high-profile closures of brick-and-mortar retail stores in the US, the term “retail apocalypse” supposedly heralded the end of physical retail.

While the situation in Malaysia is not yet as dire, the retail landscape has changed, and the outlook for traditional retail in Malaysia is gloomy.

Just last year, Parkson Corp Sdn Bhd shuttered its department store outlet in Suria KLCC, where it had been since 1998; and, as footfall into shopping malls continues to dwindle, more closures could be on the horizon. 

However, it may not be the end of days for physical retail. In China, malls and traditional retailers are seeing a resurgence as they adopt technologies that give them a better understanding of their customers, enabling them to deliver a better experience and value.

Furthermore, they have also invested in converging the online and offline experience for their shoppers, giving them seamless experiences between their online and offline stores. 

It is unlikely that physical retail will completely die out; if anything, the movement of e-commerce retailers into the brick-and-mortar landscapes shows that consumers still have some preference for sampling products in real life before purchasing them.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Vietnam’s e-commerce startup Leflair accused of owing US$2M to suppliers

However, in order to stay abreast of the changing retail landscape, brick-and-mortar retailers must adapt to customers’ changing expectations. This includes adopting the latest trends and technologies such as experiential retail, mobile payments, and big data. 

Bringing small retailers up to speed

What are the challenges they face?

That said, this solution may come easier to some businesses than others. Big data, analytics, market research, and even large-scale experiential retail employed by brands like Sephora, have traditionally been seen as capital- and labour-intensive solutions available only to big players; for SMEs with limited funding and technological know-how, these solutions seem out of reach. 

According to a study, 69 per cent of SMEs have incorporated Industry 4.0 technologies into their operations, which is certainly a figure to be optimistic about. However, obstacles remain in the adoption of the latest technologies, in the form of insufficient finances, knowledge, or workforce talent. 

This is something we at Innergia Labs have realised first-hand while communicating with retailers: Some retailers lack awareness of the benefits of data, and how understanding customers through data can drive revenue; some retailers hesitate to adopt new systems out of a fear that they lack the manpower and expertise to use the tools effectively; others believe that adopting new technology is an expensive affair with an unclear return on their investment. 

The troubles facing small retailers only deepens when online retailers are included in the equation. In contrast to the struggling physical retail sector, ecommerce seems to be on the up-and-up, with online retail in Southeast Asia predicted to grow from $19 billion in 2018, to $53 billion in 2023.

Increasingly, consumers are turning to large online marketplace platforms, like Lazada and Shoppee, who are able to provide products at competitive prices and deliver them at convenience. Already, 80 per cent of Malaysian internet users are shopping online. 

Also Read: Afternoon News Roundup: Malaysian e-commerce aggregator iPrice raises US$10M Series B financing

In order to remain competitive, retailers — big or small — must adapt. However, there is a significant gap in the adoption of beneficial technologies between big businesses and SMEs. When considering that 98.5 per cent of Malaysia’s business establishments are SMEs, this is something that requires immediate attention. 

How can these issues be addressed?

As the saying goes, “if you can’t beat them, join them.” For small retailers to thrive, they must get on board with the sort of technologies that their competitors are using. 

When devising solutions for small retailers, the constraints that SMEs face must be taken into consideration. To address the lack of capital that most SMEs have, the solutions offered must be priced fairly.

To address the manpower and knowledge shortage SMEs deal with, these tools must be easily implemented: the amount of resources required to start utilising them must be kept to a minimum — they should require as little extra hands, and extra knowledge as possible.

Of course, education is also paramount. More efforts must be made in reaching out to small retailers: They need to know that there are tangible benefits to adopting these tools, and that solutions they can afford exist in the market. 

An example of this is retail business analytics. With retail business intelligence software, data is no longer solely the domain of ecommerce and big businesses.

It is now possible for small retailers to gather data, to personalise their customers’ shopping experiences, craft sales strategies, and address the pain points of physical retail. 

Also Read: E-commerce trends: What to expect in 2020

Data collection addresses some of the unique pain points and challenges that small physical retailers face. These are the time and costs of manually collecting and managing sales data — which can take up to three days, or even more, when done traditionally — and shrinkage and pilferage by staff.

These problems are further exacerbated when expanding into multiple outlets as resources are spread thinner, resulting in a drain on revenue. With point-of-sale data analytics, managers can cut down on time spent rifling through and organizing sales data, and can quickly catch anomalies in sales records to nip pilferage at the bud. 

Furthermore, collecting data enables these small businesses to remain competitive by employing tailored sales strategies e-commerce-style. Just as most e-commerce websites gather data on consumers to personalise their shopping experience and thus drive sales, with the proper use of retail analytics, small businesses can identify sales patterns in the data they have retrieved and visualised, in order to craft sales strategies.

In the case of an F&B outlet, this could mean using retail analytics software to collect data on what their best-selling products are, what other products are bought alongside them, and what the average expenditure of each customer is. With this knowledge in hand, they can design a set meal that fits not just their customers’ tastes, but also their wallet size. 

In conclusion

Reports of physical retail’s death may have been greatly exaggerated, but it remains true that physical retailers must continually adapt in order to stay ahead of the game in the rapidly-changing retail landscape.

As SMEs form the backbone of Malaysia’s business establishments, it is imperative that they are not left behind. Now, there are more solutions available on the market that physical retailers — even those with limited capital — can utilise to give themselves that much-needed edge on the rocky road ahead.

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Business

Vietnam’s e-commerce platform Leflair allegedly owes US$2M liabilities to suppliers, customers

Leflair Vietnam, an e-commerce startup which ceased its local operations in February, is accused of owing US$2 million in liabilities to around 500 of its suppliers and many customers, Tuoi Tre News reported.

According to the suppliers, Leflair representatives admitted in a meeting that it is undergoing a capital crunch and is seeking funding from different investors. 

The company also revealed that it only has less than US$50,000 in its cash account.

Founded in 2015, Leflair was started as an online platform with a flash-sales model and sourced goods from brands and official distributors such as Calvin Klein, Botanist, and Moleskin, and resold them to Vietnamese customers. 

Before ceasing operation, Leflair raised US$7 million in Series B funding from Belt Road Capital Management and South Korean retailer GS Shop.

Coronavirus Drug Discovery competition reveals top 3 potential COVID-19 treatments

Sage Health, an organisation with a mission to help treat, prevent and cure all human diseases by the end of the 21st century, hosted Coronavirus Deep Learning Competition.

The competition has revealed its top three potential solutions identified from contestants, they are:

First place: 

Matt O’Connor, Founder of Reboot.AI, Data Science Coach-based in Hong Kong and New York City.

Results: He identified Remdesivir as a potential COVID-2019 treatment, as well as a few other novel molecules that still need to be tested for synthetic feasibility, using a generative recurrent network trained on the Moses and ChemBL datasets which together represent about 4 million molecules to learn a representation, a compressed form, of all of them.

Second place: Thomas MacDougall, a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of Montreal.

Results: He identified a novel compound as a synthetically feasible potential treatment for COVID-2019by building a neural architecture using constrained graph variational autoencoder to generate molecules, and an edge memory neural network to classify them.

Third place: Tinka Vidovic, a PhD student at the Mediterranean Institute of Life Sciences based in Croatia.

Results: Vidovic identified Valproic Acid as potential treatments for COVID-2019 using a Connectivity map genome-scale library of cellular signatures that catalogues transcriptional responses to chemical, genetic, and disease perturbation her analysis. She also used a dataset called ‘Harmonizome’, which contains 72 million functional associations between genes and their attributes as a starting point.

Also Read: Keep calm and remain communicative: Startup founders share how they cope with coronavirus crisis

Sage Health was founded in February 2020 by Siraj Raval and Dr John Billings with a mission to assist healthcare providers in both volunteer and paid projects, involving its growing community in as many related initiatives as possible every step of the way. 

The Coronavirus Competition is its first initiative, and it will be donating samples of the winning compound to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for further analysis.

Malaysia’s Cradle Fund reveals 5th cohort of Coach and Grow programme

Malaysia-based early-stage startup nurturer Cradle Fund announced a collaboration with Proficeo Consultants to launch the fifth instalment of Coach and Grow Programme (CGP)2020 to support the fast-growing innovation ecosystem in the country.

According to Digital News Asia’s article, CGP is a specialised coaching programme focussed on nurturing startups and growth-stage companies to get them on the path of sustainable revenue generation and scale.

The programme provides “show-how” techniques from successful entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate professionals who join the programme as coaches in order to Pay-It-Forward to the ecosystem.

Acting Group CEO of Cradle, Razif Abdul Aziz (pic) said the CGP’s goal is to help build and strengthen the capacity of local entrepreneurs and to accelerate the growth of Malaysian tech-companies.

Started in 2011, the CGP was the first long term coaching programme offering customised content and dedicated coaches for a period of 12 months. 

This programme is fully mandated by the Government of Malaysia for high potential entrepreneurial ventures with the objective of creating a pipeline of high-quality companies that will grow and scale their businesses locally and regionally and attract investment and growth funds from funding agencies and investors.

Enrolment for CGP opens from March 6, 2020 with 100 places available for startups and growth-stage companies.

People

Co-founder of Bali-based creative community hub Rumah Sanur Arif Budiman passed away

One of three co-founders of Bali’s Rumah Sanur – Creative HubArif’ Ayip’ Budiman passed away yesterday at 10 pm local time at Puri Raharja Hospital, Denpasar, Bali. Budiman was known as a creative hustler in Bali’s startup scene and also Deputi Litbang (Head of Research and Development) of Indonesia Creative Cities Network (ICCN).

The deceased will be laid rest at Kampung Jawa Jalan Maruti 13, Denpasar at 1 pm local time today.

Also Read: Indonesia’s association for coworking spaces is officially launched

Rumah Sanur – Creative Hub was opened in June 2015. In line with the co-founder’s vision of fostering Indonesian makers and creatives, Rumah Sanur nurtured two startup businesses—Kopi Kultur, a coffee shop that works directly with Indonesian coffee farmers and To~Ko Concept Store, a store that presents designs by small-to-medium enterprises from across Indonesia with a focus on sustainability and upcycling.

Over time, as the website recorded, Teras Gandum, the Bali Export & Development Organisation, Rudolf Dethu Showbiz, and Chris the Barber joined the Rumah Sanur family.

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Picture Credit: Unsplash.com/Dimitri-Karastelev

 

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SAMA, a digital recruiting platform for migrants, closes US$1.15M seed round

Sama, a Singapore-based startup that uses a digital recruiting platform to match migrant workers to jobs, announced today that it has closed a US$1.15 million seed funding from Collaborative Fund, 3tvcp, Antler and other unnamed angel investors.

Steve Melhuish, Co-founder of Property Guru, also joined the round.

The company plans to use the capital for growth in 2020.

SAMA recently became a fully-licensed agency, having obtained the Singapore Ministry of Manpower (MOM) license to work directly with companies to address hiring needs.

Also Read: Owning your data is a basic human right says blockchain-based startup Credifys Rasmus Kütt

Migrant workers are currently said to be paying S$10,000 in agent fees to secure a job in Singapore, Sama targets to drastically lower these rates and enable workers to save for the future.

Newman, a medtech startup for men in Indonesia, raises US$150K to boost marketing initiatives 

Indonesia-based men’s medtech startup Newman, which was part of Y Combinator in the US last year, has raised US$150,000 from the accelerator, according to DealStreetAsia.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Vietnam’s e-commerce startup Leflair accused of owing US$2M to suppliers

Prior to this, the startup had raised undisclosed pre-seed funding from Indonesian early-stage VC firm Everhaus.

The platform that aims to tackle uncomfortable topics in health through its online consultation aims to use the funds to grow its team and bolster its marketing initiatives.

Newman has also expressed plans of offering consultation into other verticals, like erectile dysfunction and smoking cessation.

First Digital Trust raises US$3M from Taiwanese venture studio Nogle

First Digital Trust (FDT), a technology-driven financial institution powering the digital asset industry, has secured US$3 million in funding from Taiwanese venture studio Nogle according to a press release statement.

Previous investments of Nogle include Telegram and TNG.

Also Read: Singapores Vouch Insurtech raises US$755K from GREE Ventures, Nogle Capital, angels

The newly added funds will support FDT in building its platform as they prepare their Asia launch in May.

“At Nogle, we are always looking for the next innovative technology that will disrupt the financial services industry. That is why we have invested in First Digital Trust. We see great potential in their technology for the digital asset industry, which will pave the way for the future of trust and custody services”, said Jonathan Leong, Founder of Nogle.

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Image Credit :  Anthony Fomin

 

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The tech sector is a notoriously difficult place to be a woman. A congressional report shows that only seven per cent of women-founded businesses receive venture capital funding. Every time we turn around, it seems there’s another gaffe that causes a rise within the community — this ranges from major companies’ lack of women in board positions to distasteful overheard conversations.

While most everyone in the tech sector has an opinion on the issue, for me, being a woman in the fast-growing tech space has actually paid off. In fact, I think that in most ways, being a female in tech has worked to my benefit.

Also Read: 3 awesome Indian women entrepreneurs tell you what it takes to start up

Maybe it’s the dynamic between me and my Co-founder Eileen Murphy Buckley, or the fact that we’re an ed-tech company that operates in a female-dominated industry (nearly two-thirds of teachers in the US are women). I’d like to think it’s because we built an amazing product that helps great teachers teach better. So far, all signs point to the fact that we’re doing something right: ThinkCERCA is now available in schools nationwide, and we’ve secured US$1.5 million in funding. We were a graduate of the Impact Engine Accelerator’s inaugural class, and we won the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Literacy Courseware Challenge in July 2013.

So how can you navigate the complex male-dominated tech world and succeed?

Combine skill sets
You have to be strategic about whom you partner with and bring onto your team. Our biggest success had nothing to do with gender. It had to do with our team’s unique combination of skills. I come from an entrepreneurial background, and have years of experience taking businesses from concept to launch, growing them in both revenue and size. Eileen is a teacher turned entrepreneur, and the former director of curriculum and instruction for a major school system. So while I brought the entrepreneurial know-how, Eileen brought the industry expertise and a firm basis of pedagogy and research. This helped us create a product that principals, teachers and students really need. Her deep knowledge continues to help us meet our core goal: helping students achieve college and career readiness.

I believe it’s this combination of skills that has not only helped us build a successful business, but also secure funding.

Never shy away from the hard stuff
So much of our success can be attributed to our dedication to our customers. Sometimes that means going against what others are telling you to do. While the ed-tech market continues to boom, there’s still the age-old problem of the chicken and the egg. Several investors wanted ThinkCERCA to be something it was not. They told us we either had to be a content publisher or a technology platform. Despite this feedback, based on our expertise and what our customers were telling us they needed, we decided to be both. Technology alone wasn’t the answer. Content alone wasn’t either. Focussing on both, and using a research-based approach, we have carved out a place in the ed-tech ecosystem and are poised for continued and rapid growth.

Build a team of mentors and advocates
While Eileen and I have a great partnership, we have strived and will continue to work to create a team that complements our skills and builds off of what the two of us have created. We now have 16 people at ThinkCERCA whose expertise ranges from technology to sales to marketing. In addition, we’ve had an incredible group of mentors and advisors, such as Chuck Templeton, the former Managing Director of the Impact Engine accelerator. Our mentors have provided the encouragement we need but also given us hard-nosed doses of reality from time to time. Our mentors aren’t the people who always tell us what we want to hear. They’re always looking out for us and telling us what we need to hear.

Also Read: Crowdfunding is a strong community building tool for women

As our business has grown, so have we. When we came together, Eileen was “the educator” and I was “the entrepreneur.” Now, we have both learned and have each assumed both roles. We are able to fluidly assume the voice of the customer and the voice of the business, which allows us to brainstorm and problem solve, and — most importantly — switch hit. Thanks to our complementary skill sets, dedication to our customers, and our refusal to accept the stereotypical limits that go along with being a woman in tech, ThinkCERCA is doing great things for the future of education.

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Abby is the Co-founder and COO at ThinkCERCA (www.thinkcerca.com), an education technology company that provides teachers with tools and lessons they need to personalise critical thinking instruction.

The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organisation comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched StartupCollective, a free virtual mentorship programme that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

This article was first published on e27 on September 19, 2015.

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Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technologies are disrupting the technology landscape for sure. Right from small businesses to giant multinationals, right from grocery stores to financial institutions, everyone is talking about leveraging blockchain and changing the course of their industry altogether.

Cryptocurrencies that were once perceived to be evil, and were only associated with the dark web, have attracted the attention of almost everyone with the rise in the prices of Bitcoin that happened last year. Now, everyone is betting big on the success of the currencies as well as their underlying technology Blockchain.

Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies are all set to disrupt the stock markets now. While this goal is an ambitious one, it is not very far from reality. Only recently, Wall Street went down from being promising and optimistic to really depressing. What was shocking for analysts and researchers was the fact that the cryptocurrencies closely resembled the behaviour of the traditional financial market.

It is then that the question of the traditional finance market affecting cryptocurrencies and vice-versa sprung up. Another question this leads us to be how much correlation exists between these two markets.

1. Challenging the Dollar Standard

While up until now, the US Dollar was termed and perceived as the reserve currency of the global economy, with the rise in the use of cryptocurrencies, the trend might take a toll. The US Dollar lies at the core of the financial web that is spread all over the world. As an example, the 2008 global financial crisis that started in the US spread like wildfire to other parts of the world as far as Iceland.

This centralisation and the authority of the US Dollar is being challenged, and at the same time, disrupted by the rise in cryptocurrencies. Financial transactions are being decentralised at a rapid pace with the advent of the most popular Bitcoin and about 1,000 other cryptocurrencies.

Also read: Everyone talks about cryptocurrency, but the real hero is blockchain

The dynamics of international trade can be changed once and for all with the help of cryptocurrencies. There always have been attempts to get the US Dollar off its throne, and the rise in cryptocurrencies might be the last nail.

2. Investing in stocks and Crypto-trading

Trading in the cryptocurrencies market fulfils for some people the same purpose as trading in the traditional stock market does. Profit, ownership, and motivation are the three plain reasons why people have been investing in the stock market since forever, and all these reasons are fulfilled by the cryptocurrencies market too.

The investors who love to go global can do so easily with cryptocurrencies. While investing in stocks that are out of your home country is a painstakingly long process, the alternative to it, crypto-trading, might prove to be beneficial for the truly global investors.

Initial Public Offerings have smoothly been replaced by Initial Coin Offerings. Investing in companies that open ICOs is so effortless that it might be preferred over the traditional methods by almost all of the investors in the near future.

ICObench is a company that lists ICOs from about 70 different companies and confirms the fact that stock markets are begin disrupted by the invaders called cryptocurrencies.

Investors today are of the opinion that if the prices of Bitcoins can surge in a week like they did, why can’t the same happen with other currencies and the companies that are leveraging these currencies, too.

It has been easy up until now to ignore cryptocurrencies in all their merit, but soon things are about to change. The world will witness the staying of cryptocurrencies as alternate ways of investing, or maybe, the primary ways of making investments.

Cryptocurrencies are set to affect the real financial market and not just a bit!

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e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

Image Credit: antonprado / 123RF Stock Photo

This article was first published on e27 on April 26, 2018.

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What happens when 20 years of development experience meets that of e-commerce, blockchain, and finance? Most likely, it will lead to a shift in how all or at least one of these areas will function.

And that’s what founders of Credify –Makoto Tominaga, Shuichi Nagao, Rasmus Kütt and Maurizio Raffone — want to data management in e-commerce and finance with their collective experience.

Started in 2018, Credify was born out of research they conducted on how to achieve a fair and genuinely meritocratic reputation system in e-commerce. Their study showed that systems to ensure counterparty credibility in finance and digital exchange of money were fundamentally flawed and that they can easily be manipulated by rogue actors in the system.

Their core product acts as a personal data bridge, connecting consuming services like e-commerce marketplaces and lending platforms with institutions that possess valuable, yet untapped information like identity verification results and credit scores.

They aim to significantly reduce fraud in e-commerce and finance, while also unlocking entirely new revenue opportunities through their secure and cost-effective blockchain-based Credify Universal Identity and incentive-based Trust System.

We spoke to Kütt, Head of Marketing and Business Development, to understand more about how Credify employs blockchain to make data management more secure and how it can empower the consumer while incentivising business.

How exactly do you use blockchain in your core product at Credify?

One of the ways Credify is unique is that the technology used for its core services is based on secure and cost-effective EOSIO blockchain technology. This technology allows for industry-leading throughput capabilities and a highly flexible deployment environment.

Only indices of encrypted data, and not the data itself, are stored in the blockchain, securing user account information through a tamper-proof record.

As a result, user data cannot be leaked or breached through a central-point vulnerability, reducing the risk of fraud for companies and raising overall levels of trust in the ecosystems they enhance.

All of this is secured by standard encryption protocols that ensure the true owner of the data controls access to and manages their credentials. At the same time realising new monetisation opportunities as the data is accessed on a compensation basis.

As an illustration, when a company wishes to retrieve user data from the owner, and the owner grants that permission, then that user data is securely decrypted on-device and sent directly to the requesting party. On top of this, we are developing a novel stake-based mechanism of expressing counterparty credibility that relies heavily on smart-contract managed DLT’s, called Credification.

But how exactly does Credify help the end-user?

The issue nowadays is that companies are using user data in ways that are not visible to the end-users. In some instances, it has led to dramatic losses, such as those associated with Cambridge Analytica and other Facebook-driven scandals.

Companies are also storing that user data centrally within their ecosystems, which are constantly breached by hackers. We have an endlessly growing list of links that show this problem is much emphasised in the SEA region, where high incidents of account takeover and fakes jeopardise ecosystem health.

Also read: 3 companies leveraging the power of blockchain technology in security

The flow for the end-user, and the way Credify helps the end-user in e-commerce and finance ecosystems, is as follows.

By installing Credify Universal Identity app, a user then starts putting together his universal digital identity “passport.” The user does this by first aggregating his user data into Credify ID from sources like their carrier, social accounts, eKYC, and eventually data sources that we already trust, like banks and insurance providers.

By having a universal and unique digital identity “passport,” the user now has one service where its most commonly used personal data resides, inside the Universal Identity app.

That information is retrievable from multi-layer encrypted decentralised networks, where there exists no central point of attack–this is in stark contrast from centralised systems that are in constant peril of this vulnerability.

This user is now the only entity who can access and manage his data. When companies want to utilise parts of the user’s data, they have to request permission directly from the user, allowing the user to determine whether they would like to provide that access or not.

Naturally, the user is okay in letting the company access his data for registration and login purposes but he might decline company access to other more sensitive data for cases where the requesting platform is not fully trusted or does not logically require such information.

Such a Universal Identity solution also allows easy data interoperability throughout enterprise ecosystems, which in some cases amount to more than 10 separate services owned by the same company. The Universal Identity is similar to a “Sign in with Google” but with all the added benefits and security mentioned previously.

Credify Trust System acts as an enhancement to the Universal Identity solution in cases where rating and vouching is needed. Company “coins”/” points” are tokenised and used by the end-users to vouch for the reputation of transactions, products, digital services, merchants, shoppers, borrowers, etc.

Such rating and vouching activities incentivise and unlock gamification in the ecosystem so that rewards are given out for vouching for positive outcomes. All these histories and events are also cryptographically secured and stored on the blockchain.

This is quite empowering. So how will Credify execute this over the next decade?

Credify is a believer in the concept of ‘Own Your Data’, and that it should be part of a basic human right that everyone has the right to legal ownership of their inherent personal data as property.

We are laser-focused on developing a user base for the technology that catalyses greater credit inclusiveness around SEA markets, giving this much-underserved area of the world a leap ahead when it comes to personal data privacy and participation in its value.

In five years, we aim to be deployed across all major SEA nations, with deep integration into each member country’s digital finance and commerce leaders.

Over the decade, we envision becoming an integral piece in the connection between the coming world of decentralised finance and hyper-integrated commerce, where users can freely move about service providers without having to worry their options are limited by lack of portability of their financial/credit profile and reputation.

I am glad you mentioned SEA expansion. What are your key markets or clients in the region? 

ASEAN nations represent the fastest growth opportunities globally in fintech and e-commerce: US$72B fintech market with 72.5 per cent CAGR by 2020, and US$102B e-commerce market by 2025.

At the same time, Southeast Asia fraud rates in finance and ecommerce are globally one of the highest.

Credify aims to tackle these issues with its software backed by patent-pending technologies, and also enable entirely new revenue streams for these traditional organisations in a completely secure and data privacy-compliant manner.

Credify’s goals for 2020 are to enhance the development of its suite of products, further localise its software development operations in South East Asia, and move ahead with its live client engagements. Our key markets are: Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia. And we are currently in the process of starting a project with one Japanese-Philippines Security Token Exchange.

We recently closed a US$1M seed round investment with two leading Beenext and Deepcore which it plans to use for expansion in SEA.

What does the latest funding mean to you?

This funding round allows Credify to enhance the development of its suite of products, further localise its software development operations in South East Asia, and move ahead with its live client engagements.

Also read: Top 9 data and analytics trends to watch out for in 2020

The investment represents far more value than the capital that will assist us as we execute on our vision to elevate trust in digital economies. Both Beenext and Deepcore bring with them strong networks within our target markets and deep understanding of the strategic and practical execution necessary to transform early-stage businesses to large-scale growth enterprises.

How will Credify aid data regulation and consumer protection of data in Asia?

GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA/HiTech, and California Consumer Privacy Act are all having an impact on user data. All data regulations have one thing in common: they urge businesses to respect users’ privacy, anonymity, and consent to share or withhold certain information.

Credify’s CFO and Interim COO, Maurizio Raffone, has direct experience working with regulators and public entities in SEA to foster the adoption of best practices and support the development of a secure yet open digital economy. We seek to educate all stakeholders about the importance of adopting open standards, secured and cost-effective solutions to foster financial inclusion and individuals’ rights to data ownership.

We believe that consumers should have sole ownership of their digital and analogue identities and should have the right to moderate how their personal data is shared and used by third-parties. Personal information should remain in the hands of users, also reducing compliance, cybersecurity and data management costs of businesses servicing consumers.

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Image credit: Credify

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When e27 sits down with blockchain-based fintech startup Propine, it had been a month since the company was being selected to take part in a sandbox programme by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Founded by CEO Tuhina Singh and CTO Wong Liang Zan, Propine offers services in the form of a full-service custodian for blockchain-based digital assets.

“We exist to reduce the friction in the close-bordered capital movement to increase efficiency in the capital market. We cannot do it by ourselves; we are building an infrastructure to enable other innovators to be able to build such innovative solutions,” Singh explains.

“For example, we are working with a company that is trying to come up with a new type of bond issuance which will create opportunities for startups investors which had never existed before,” she adds.

In the long run, through their works, Singh states that Propine seeks to disrupt the private capital market.

“The public market itself is already very efficient … there are lower hanging fruits to be picked in the private market,” she stresses.

The irony of the private market, according to Singh, lies in the fact that it is ripe for disruption.

Also Read: Propine Capital raises US$1.2M to help institutional investors safely store their crypto assets

“Private equity companies tend to invest in companies that are disruptive to the traditional industry. However, it seems to me that they are being kind of slow in disrupting themselves. It is oxymoronic and it is only a matter of time until they get disrupted themselves,” she says.

“Eventually, there will only be the top firms who are able to justify the illiquidity of their LP interests. Most of the companies cannot justify it and they will have to go the tokenised route,” the CEO sums.

Promoting the mission

But how does Propine promote its products and services to these private equity firms? How do they build the awareness that change is necessary?

Singh states that the company did not play a very active role in promoting itself until very recently, dubbing itself one of the most “under-the-radar” in the space.

“We had zero marketing activities and we just focussed on getting the job done first. It was only after we get into the sandbox that we realise, ‘Okay, let’s start focusing on marketing and advertising,’” she explains.

Singh describes their marketing strategy as becoming the “super early adopter” in the space –an approach that involves practical steps such as doing a speaking engagement at events.

“We’re not focussing on large blockchain conferences; we’re focussing on talking to real stakeholders, striking to the heart of it,” she stresses.

But before making an outward move such as promoting their work, the company first needs to make sure that they have the right foundation for it. To achieve that state of readiness, Propine puts emphasis on the importance of focus.

Also Read: 52 fantastic investors that might be your next match at #Echelon2019

For Singh, these are some of the most crucial lessons that they got during their time in the sandbox.

“On a company level, there are so many opportunities that are coming our way. The most important thing is to be able to say no and focus on the reason why we exist,” she says.

“For example, there are four different types of tokens in the market: Cryptocurrencies, utility tokens, asset-backed tokens, and security tokens. We need to be able to say no to the three of them and focus on security tokens. It makes sure that our resources are being focussed, even though we do have the tech capabilities to support all of them,” she further explains.

Next steps

Moving forward, in addition to launching services for their new clients, Propine Capital is also looking forward to growing their team.

One of the key elements in growing a team is making sure that the people who are leading the team are sharing the same value as the company itself. This is another reason why having a clear focus is crucial, and Propine Capital achieve it through implementing objectives and key results (OKRs).

“We need to ensure that the same value is being propagated by every single person that is making decisions on a daily basis in the company … We started by implementing OKRs in a very generic way before adapting it to the company’s needs to ensure that everybody knows where the direction is,” Singh elaborates.

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Image Credit: Propine

 

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