Singapore-headquartered HitPay, a payment gateway for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has secured US$15.75 million in a Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global.

Returning investors Global Founders Capital and HOF Capital also joined the round.

With the capital raised, HitPay will develop SME-friendly features, including support for local and international payment methods and integrations with accounting and e-commerce platforms.

The fintech firm will also invest in top-tier talent to support its clients globally.

Also Read: The future of fintech: The latest trends in the industry

The fintech firm was founded by Nitin Muthyala and Aditya Haripurkar. HitPay was recently accepted to Y Combinator’s accelerator programme.

HitPay is a one-stop payment platform for SMEs. It provides solutions such as local and cross-border payment acceptance and payouts, an online store platform, POS software with card readers, plugins, and payment links. The firm claims over 10,000 merchants use HitPay, and its transaction payment volume has grown by over 8x in 2021.

HitPay is available in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, the UK, Europe, and the UAE. It plans to expand to new markets in Southeast Asia in the coming months.

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MoEngage, a customer engagement platform for consumer brands, announced today it has raised US$77 million in a Series E round of funding.

Led by Goldman Sachs and B Capital, the round also saw participation from its existing investors Steadview Capital, Multiples Alternate Asset Management, Eight Roads Ventures, and Matrix Partners India.

This is the third fundraising for MoEngage in the last 12 months, which includes US$32.5 million in July 2021 and US$30 million in December.

MoEngage will use the new capital to deepen its geographic footprint in the US, the UK, and Asia markets and also expand in new markets like Latin America and Australia. A portion of the money will be used to explore strategic acquisitions.

Also Read: Five ways startups can improve their customer engagement

Established in 2014, US-headquartered MoEngage provides marketers and product managers with consumer behaviour data and the ability to act on those insights to engage customers across web, mobile, email, social, and messaging channels. The firm claims it has clients in 35 countries. Its clientele includes Alfagift, AllValue, Astrapay, Blibli, CIMB Bank, JD.ID, Lummo, POPS, Syfe, Telekom Malaysia, theAsianparent, and XL Axiata.

In the last 12 months, MoEngage claims to have grown annualised recurring revenue by more than 105 per cent, added 500 new customers, and doubled its headcount to more than 650.

MoEngage has a presence in the UK, Germany, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The firm launched offices in Singapore and the Philippines this year, with an Australian office coming soon.

The startup had earlier raised US$9 million in Series B funding from Ventureast and Helion Venture in 2018.

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Starting a business or a startup has always been a dream of mine. So as a young entrepreneur, I thought that I had most things figured out. But the truth was I hadn’t. This may sound a little controversial, but the idea for Hipster Inc. came by accident.

The year was 2016, and Bok (the Co-Founder of Hipster Inc.) and I, computer science graduates, started some product companies, including a book barter company called Barterli, where people could exchange books to promote reading.

We pitched this idea to StartupX, and it took off pretty well. Even the National Library Board partnered with us to propel our idea forward. We partnered with some developers to bring our idea to life, and the other incubator companies started to notice that we could quickly launch products and re-iterate versions, so the cohort startups in the incubator we were a part of started to reach out to us for help.

Coming from a programming background and having some entrepreneurial senses, we offered to help. Mainly, we were curious how we could bring their ideas to life and enhance them so their products take off.

So we started helping them part-time for two hours a day. This led to more startups wanting us to help them. What began as a part-time hobby became a full-time business. Bok and I employed more developers, and just like that, Hipster Inc., a humble software development company, was birthed.

Today, the company undertakes projects across various industries like edutech, finance, productivity, travel, F&B for subscription models and even blockchain. The team is now 60 men and women strong. Our USP is that we are developers who know how to put ourselves in the founders’ shoes through our startup ventures.

Also Read: How to generate winning startup ideas

This comes from working with a few dozen startups and directly working with their founders. Observing their thought process and how they solve problems give us good insight. As Sam Levenson puts it, “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Advice to budding entrepreneur: Elements you need to get started

Find an SEO-worthy business name

Now that you have your winning idea choose a name for your business that is unique and relevant. Down the inevitable road, this will help you in SEO and marketing. Shakespeare once said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Unfortunately, this isn’t true of SEO.

Find a Co-Founder that can complement you

Statistics state that about 80 per cent of partnerships fail within the first year. When choosing a business partner, it is important to exercise caution and be selective. Find someone you can trust. After that is established, the right partner is also someone who will complement you and that has strengths that vary from yours.

In the case of Bok and myself, Bok takes care of business development and finance, and I take care of the technical aspects and operations.

Do your market research and competitor analysis

Sometimes, what you want to create exists already in the target market or somewhere else. Learn about existing solutions, and don’t re-invent the wheel if someone is already doing it unless you can do a lot better. Also, talk to users about their pain points and see what they say about your product before you create anything.

Don’t be disheartened by no’s

When you first start, you will get a lot of no’s everywhere you go. The nos with explanations are very important to hear and introspect. No’s, are also a good sign that you are innovating. Take failures with curiosity and change your course of action without getting disheartened.

Network with like-minded people

This will get you ahead more than any marketing. Give before you get. When we started, we did much pro-bono work for the right client. This allowed some good association with companies no one had ever heard of before.

Partner with as many companies as you can to help them do better. Of course, this also means establishing a brand for yourself and marketing yourself.

Keep learning

Read good books, and watch good videos on every topic related to your startup, sales, marketing, scaling, and product development. Look to people who have pulled a business off successfully to guide you, so you don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Well researched market and products from competitors or someone who did it well before saves time and money for you.

Bootstrap as long as you can

A significant investment isn’t needed to start anything. Work with what you have. There are a million free tools out there at your disposal. Being liquid is important and even more so as the company matures.

On work-life balance

Be prepared to work double the hours. Being an entrepreneur means also doubling up as a manager and supporting HR, the marketing and sales teams.

Entrepreneurs need to be willing to work approximately 60-80 hours a week. Ironically, the push to be an entrepreneur was to avoid working a 40-hour week some.

How to grow your business: How to grow, best practices, what to invest in

Product quality: Real meaning of MVP

Never ignore the quality of the product. Focus on the MVP or Minimum Viable Product, a product of minimum features with top-notch quality rather than an inferior quality product with a myriad of features.

Also Read: Guide to successfully start realising your product ideas

When considering the development of a product, consider how it will impact the customer, and do your research. Before a product is ready for launch, start marketing it. Value and prioritise design and branding. Many startups ignore these aspects.

It can’t be denied that, to some extent, people with good looks get an advantage in life. Good handwriting has its benefits in school. The same is true for a product with a good design.

Be realistic by taking calculated risks

Take risks but the calculated ones. Consider how much money will you lose if a risky venture fails. In our early days, we made the mistake of too aggressively expanding into too many new markets.

That didn’t work out. In Asian culture, making mistakes and failures are not encouraged, but there is immeasurable value in trying things early, failing faster and learning from this process.

Appreciate early clients and serve them well

Learn to love and appreciate your early customers. They may not pay a lot of money but also realise they sacrifice opportunity costs by trusting you with their opportunity. Treat them well, they are going to be testimonials for future customers to come.

Be a true leader to your team

As the captain of a ship, people look to you to be their leader, to impart vision and direction. Employees who join startups do so because they believe in the leader’s vision and think that they are working towards something concrete. They partner with you and, in some cases, sacrifice through pay cuts because they know as the company accelerates, so will they because of the contributions they are willing to make.

In a startup, vision and culture is everything. People skills are more important than any tech skills. Empathy and a high emotional quotient will get you ahead. Always be clear with your team members and promise only what you can deliver.

Value and appreciate your employees, especially those who have been with you for some time. Be humble. Kindness goes a long way. Be realistic when planning future milestones. Focus on creating values and building a great culture.

Hire the right talent

Never hire solely for skills. Hire for personality and attitude. In one way or another, people learn skills if they need to do something, but changing a person’s attitude and mindset is hard. Encouragement and motivation won’t work in the longer term.

Also Read: How startup leaders can delegate to prevent burnout 

People who make great employees are hard-working, always learning, and proactive. During an interview, notice what they do, not what they say. Give them a small task to do to test their sincerity.

Manage pragmatically

Be cognisant of your team’s progress and celebrate that. By being aware of their little milestones, you can ensure that their direction is aligned with your company’s vision.

Active involvement creates a sense of team and allows you to learn from external projects and other businesses’ challenges. While founders should focus on the big picture and vision, they can’t afford to avoid the details.

Customer experience over product superiority

Humans are emotional creatures, and your customers will remember their experience far longer than the feature list and technology you provide. Therefore, ensure you give your client’s the best possible experience from start to finish.

In approaching any new venture or opportunity, and in all your dealings, always try to solve problems. Be patient when starting, and remember it’s a slow and tough climb to the top. At the same time, have a sense of urgency when approaching tasks and launches.

Businesses that seem to have it all together are a product of all the hard work poured into them. The answer to what it takes to do X is whatever it takes. Always challenge the status quo. There is so much still to learn, so we should never stop learning, growing, or evolving.

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Privyr, a Singapore-based startup that helps consumer-facing salespeople and businesses convert leads right from their phones, has raised US$6 million in Series A funding.

The round was co-led by MassMutual Ventures and Vulcan Capital, with participation from Wavemaker Partners, bestselling author Nir Eyal, and Binance Investment Director Gwendolyn Regina.

The new funding will be used to expand Privyr’s product capabilities, increase market penetration, and scale its team from less than ten employees to over 40 within a year.

Earlier, the startup raised US$900,000 from Wavemaker Partners, Entrepreneur First, and several angel investors.

Also Read: Wavemaker Partners closes 4th fund at US$136M, announces new appointments

Privyr builds a mobile-first sales productivity and workflow management tool. It helps salespeople and small businesses better engage and convert their leads into clients through WhatsApp, SMS, iMessage, and phone calls.

The startup aims to make sales interactions more personalised and convenient, leading to much better customer experiences and sales conversion rates.

The company claims over 45,000 sales professionals across more than 75 countries use its product.

Co-Founder and CEO Aaron Lim, said: “Over the past few years, virtually all consumer-facing sales have moved to mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage. What used to happen in a few face-to-face meetings has turned into hundreds of micro-interactions with dozens of leads simultaneously. Salespeople are spending hours every day copying and pasting messages, updating spreadsheets, and figuring out who they need to follow up with – it’s a complete mess.”

While many businesses are turning to chatbots and automation to solve this problem, Lim believes there’s room for a different type of solution. “If you’re in a high touch profession built on human relationships, putting a chatbot in between you and your customer removes the personal interactions they’re looking for. Instead, Privyr provides an easier and more efficient way for businesses to personalise engagements and manage client relationships from their phones.”

“There’s incredible demand for simple, mobile-based solutions targeted at individuals and SMEs — particularly in developing markets where sales primarily happen on mobile and WhatsApp,” explained MassMutual Ventures Managing Director Anvesh Ramineni. “Privyr’s solution addresses a massive pain point in the sales process, and the fact that the company has come this far with zero sales or marketing staff is a testament to the widespread appeal of such a product.”

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For the last few years, we have been banging the drum about the evolution of video as a brand-building tool. With the pandemic fuelling the rise of all forms of mobile video, particularly short-form video, this trend is only set to accelerate.

eMarketer estimates that digital video consumption is expected to soar to 2.2 billion viewers in APAC by the year 2025.

Also, through our research and experience over the last few years, we’ve seen two distinct categories of video experiences that have accelerated largely due to mobile: “on-the-go” and “captivated viewing.”

As a result of these changing viewing habits, people are most drawn to brands that are easy to discover and use, whether it’s through their strong presence in online communities or their high-quality mobile content across platforms.

This is evident, especially among younger audiences who are increasingly influenced by video content when discovering new brands or when it comes to brand selection. A McKinsey study of Gen Z across six countries in APAC revealed that 70 per cent of Gen Z respondents surveyed discover new brands via video-based social media at least once a month.

So in the latest episode of Ideas That Matter, a content series brought to you by Meta, we chose to look at the evolution of video and discussed how social trends are intersecting with business to create new opportunities.

I had the opportunity to speak with  Joanne de Rozario, Managing Director, Prodigious Singapore, MC/creator Khánh Vy, who has over 6 million followers and Viksita Singh Menon, General Manager, South East Asia, Paula’s Choice Skincare, to uncover how agencies, brands and creators use video for growth and success.

We explored why it is important for businesses to tell a connected story about their brand and all of the different ways they can do it today with video.

The power of educational videos

Menon, a self-confessed beauty enthusiast, has seen how videos drive awareness, interest, engagement and consideration for beauty brands. She said that people could not visit stores to try products or ask beauty advisors about what made the product unique with the pandemic.

Also Read: 5 video marketing trends that marketers can leverage in 2022

They turned to tutorial videos which served the dual function of educating and entertaining them. “Once the consumer is interested in the product, they want to know, how do I use the product? What’s the before and after going to look like? This is where videos play an extremely important role,” she said.

This has also fueled the rise of beauty influencers who teach how to get the desired look, and share product intelligence as well as tools and techniques that engage their followers.

Storytelling versus story-yelling

While beauty is an obvious category, video’s power goes far beyond anyone category or vertical. Joanne de Rosario, who has worked in creative production for half her life said she is a true believer in the power of a good story.

“The combination of moving visuals, voices, a powerful script, music, all provide the perfect way to tell a story to move someone,” she said.

Moreover, as a result of the pandemic, people are even more likely to respond to purpose and connection. People are much more concerned about how brands make them feel. They want to know what the brand stands for, and will make considered choices to support brands that stand for a purpose they personally identify with that reflects their values and beliefs.

Therefore, as Joanne put it, “Brands need to work into what I personally call storytelling, not story-yelling.”

Build unique and personalised experiences with video

From big brands to individual businesses, video’s role in branding is universal. Just ask Vy, who went from being an unknown high school student to a language influencer with over 6 million followers across her social platforms in just six years.

“I was just a high schooler, an ordinary girl in a small city in Vietnam. One day, my friend uploaded a video of me mimicking seven languages just for fun. And after one night, that video just went viral all over the internet, and my Facebook page went from 300 friends to 50,000 followers,” she said.

Vy received invitations to attend several shows and discovered that people were hungry for language education and personal development skills. In 2017, she started a Facebook page but wasn’t quite sure about what kind of content she should create. In 2019, a mentor advised her to create more video content.

However, with so many content publishers flooding the web and social media with their own videos on learning languages, Vy quickly realised that creating just any video wasn’t enough. In order to attract and engage viewers, she needed to create videos that offer a unique experience, and focus on their needs.

Also Read: How smart video integration can improve your remote working environment

She believes success with video is tied to authenticity, and consistency breeds familiarity, which is why she has consistently been posting videos about learning languages for free, for people from all walks of life.

“In the last three years, my Facebook Page saw massive growth from 50,000 followers to 2.3 million followers,” she said.

Experiment with different video formats and lengths

With the plethora of video options out there, brands of all sizes face similar challenges and are looking for ways to create a video that achieves good reach, attention and completion rates.

Joanne’s advice, “If you want to tell a long story, and sometimes you have to, it’s not wrong. But don’t forget to look at the sections, which you can then lift for different platforms that require a shorter story. More importantly, don’t forget to shoot them so you can use them for both horizontal and vertical formats.”

Video is indeed here to stay and grow. To find out more, check out our new resources here.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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Ringkas, an Indonesia-based digital mortgage platform, today announced it has secured a US$2.3 million pre-seed funding round.

Investors that participated include 500 Global, Iterative Capital, Creative Gorilla Capital, Teja Ventures, Init-6, and several founders of “companies valued at over US$1 billion.”

“Shelter is a basic physiological need that every person should have access to. It unlocks the pursuit of entrepreneurship, career ambition, family, education, and more. Homeownership has been a building block for the advancement of economies, and this is why we believe Ringkas’ application of financial technology to homeownership has the potential to be a multi-billion dollar journey with massive social impact,” commented Khailee Ng, Managing Partner at 500 Global, in a press statement.

With the capital from this round, the company will focus on launching its platform in collaboration with Ciputra Group, the largest property developer in Indonesia.

Over the next six to 12 months, Ringkas plans to onboard 10,000 home seekers and launch its platform across multiple impactful projects in the Greater Jakarta Region in Indonesia. After that, Ringkas will roll out its platform across Indonesia and will consider further expansion in Southeast Asia.

Also Read: Is co-living a good opportunity for property owners?

Founded in early 2022, Ringkas aims to solve the housing problem by digitising the overall value chain and creating an intelligent platform that would simplify the mortgage process, efficiently match customer profiles, and target assets to the risk appetite of the financial institutions.

“Indonesia has millions of home seekers and over 12,000 developers on one side; on the other side, over 1,200 banks and financial institutions. The secret sauce to unlocking this opportunity is to leverage technology to connect all the players in the industry in a simple, fast, and customer-obsessed way,” says Ringkas co-founder Ilya Kravtsov.

The company wrote that the mortgage penetration in Indonesia is one of the lowest in the world with total mortgage lending from banks equivalent to 3.25 per cent of GDP. In comparison, it is 11 per cent of GDP in India and over 50 per cent of GDP in the US.

Furthermore, the Indonesian housing backlog has grown over the years and currently stands at 11.4 million units. The root cause of this challenging situation lies in the fact that 55 per cent of the country’s workforce comprises small and medium entrepreneurs, freelancers, and individuals without a fixed-term contract. According to Ringkas co-founder Leroy Pinto this means over 70 million people in Indonesia struggle to prove to the banking system that they have the financial resources to secure a mortgage.

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Image Credit: Ringkas

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Recent trends in regional markets show that infrastructure plays a key role in economic growth. However, as one of the drivers of economic development, businesses often contend with ageing facilities that deteriorate over time. 

Companies belonging to big industries like energy, oil, and gas require constant upgrading in this regard or else suffer significant costs to doing business. For instance, in the United States, infrastructure damage has cost USD10.7 billion dollars in the period from 2001 to 2007 alone. 

The good news is that such losses are preventable. The only challenge is that these solutions are not yet widespread due to the fact that they are rooted in one of the younger industries developed in recent years: artificial intelligence, or AI.

AI and optimising infrastructure

AI can assist oil and gas companies in well-placement analytics and analysing pipeline flows. These optimise not only workflow in the energy industry, but also reduce possible risks such as leakages and accidents. Other technologies that have helped improve operations in such industries include data capture images, which help assess the situation on the ground before sending out manpower to inspect ageing infrastructure.

Also read: oVice, a virtual office platform, uses innovative technology to redefine remote work

Skyller is one of the companies that aim to solve these industrial problems through data capture and machine learning. Equipping fellow businesses with the tools to analyse and strategise their next steps, Skyller promotes a safe, smart, and cost-efficient way of dealing with ageing infrastructure. Apart from this, the company also deals with other logistical concerns such as the deployment of pipeline inspectors and offshore platforms. 

Skyller’s modern solutions to modern problems

Siwat Saibua, Skyller co-founder and CEO, traces Skyller’s vision in its name––Skyller means “scholar,” and in this sense, the company’s team of experts can be seen as a group of scholars providing smart solutions to modern problems. 

Using drones, robots, satellites, and any image data acquisition devices, Skyller turns to information modelling, or what Siwat refers to as the “digital twin.” From here, clients are able to gauge problems on the ground without necessarily being the first responder. 

Skyller’s clients can hire the company to undertake the data capture and locate specific issues in their infrastructure and logistics. Alternatively, clients are also free to do this themselves and ask help from Skyller for tools and data processing only. Siwat notes that Skyller has a ready fleet of drones and robots mostly in Thailand so far. For international clients, staff can be trained by the Skyller team to use the company’s tools and also open for collaboration of fleet partnership. (trained or collaboration partnership local drone service)

Although most of the examples that have been mentioned so far are in the oil and gas industries, Skyller is also active in other industries, such as renewable energy, telecommunications, and construction. 

Also read: Alpha JWC Startup Series: pitching & fundraising through the lens of a VC

For renewable energies, Skyller can help in onshore and offshore solar farms, wind turbine generators, power transmission and distribution networks, and substations. Their assistance in telecommunications still largely concerns infrastructure by way of inspecting and assessing telecom towers. Similarly, their engagement with construction involves outdoor stockpiles and construction sites.

Such engagements can greatly benefit these industries by cutting down on costs and improving staff retention and satisfaction. For the former, the data imaging derived from Skyller’s data acquisition devices can help identify and address any infrastructural issues before they get worse. Reporting of issues will also be easier in this manner, as data captured can be analysed in real-time. For the latter, staff’s lives are not put at risk in inspecting faulty ageing facilities, and they get to be equipped with helpful technology. 

For Skyller, the keyword in addressing issues in infrastructure is efficiency. The analysis of these issues in real-time is what makes AI so crucial. 

Instead of waiting for human intervention, large threats such as pipe or gas leaks can be avoided. With the help of agile machines and the knowledgeable eye of Skyller’s experts, these problems can be minimised so that companies incur fewer costs, and at the same time, prevent environmental damage. 

Environmental opportunities and expanding reach

For the latter point, Siwat explains that environmental safety is part of Skyller’s vision, apart from reducing operational hazards and expenses. As an example, Siwat cites the image capture and processing on the coastal patrol of oceanic wildlife, analysing any anomalous events such as coral reef bleaching and rising ocean temperatures.

Also read: Get to know the startups in the 2022 APT 5G Challenge

At present, Skyller is looking for global partners to collaborate with to improve its services. If widely used, the company’s tools can greatly help not just other businesses, but also mitigate environmental damage through data. Potential collaborations could help save not just costs, but also lives.

The potential for expansion and improvement is endless, especially considering what the company’s devices can do. Innovation takes the lead in mitigating potential impacts of climate change, improving company efficiency, and ensuring worker safety. 

For more information on Skyller, visit http://www.skyller.co/. 

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Skyller

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Looking at the financial headlines over the past month, it is hard not to notice the flood of news relating to unpegging of the TerraUSD (UST), the freefall of its sister cryptocurrency LUNA, and their palpable impact on the selloff within the broader crypto market. The UST and LUNA crash alone wiped out US$60 billion, with an estimated US$400 billion evaporating from the larger crypto market due to contagion.

Stablecoin projects (the majority of which emerged in 2017–18) aimed to resolve one of the key impediments to mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange,  price volatility.

Some of the largest stablecoins by market capitalisation today have survived the “crypto winter of 2018” and the most recent cryptocurrency crash inspired by the meltdown of TerraUSD and its sister currency, LUNA. These include USD Coin (USDC) and DAI at market caps of 52.3 billion and 6.3 billion (26 May 2022), respectively.

With Political Science as my primary major, people around me are often surprised when I share my keen interest in finance or when they see me preoccupied with what’s happening in the stock market, despite having Economics as my second major.

“What’s a social science student doing here at a venture capital (VC) firm? And why is someone with a humanities background pivoting?”

All I can say is that our interests tend to change over time, and the true value of a diversified education and exposure is how it empowers one to draw interdisciplinary connections readily.

This is one of my motivations for this article, in which I seek to elucidate the parallels between the UST crash and the Asian financial crisis in an easily digestible manner whilst also sharing some takeaways that, in part, have been shaped by my short time interning at Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India.

What are stablecoins?

Stablecoins are digital currencies whose value is typically pegged to a more stable asset such as fiat currencies or commodities to minimise the price volatility of cryptocurrencies, a key obstacle to broad-based acceptance of cryptocurrencies as a medium of exchange.

Assuming that a stablecoin fulfils its stated goals, it has a number of advantages over fiat, mainly pertaining to fees and speed of transfer.

Also Read: The 27 Web3 startups in Singapore that show crypto is more than Terra Luna and stablecoins

Businesses accepting payments in stablecoins bypass the transaction fees of intermediary financial institutions, overseas workers remitting money back home can circumvent the hefty transaction fees of cross-border payments, and payroll settlements need not be subject to the working hours of centralised institutions, and the list goes on.

There are four types of stablecoins in the market:

• Fiat-collateralised: Stablecoins that are backed at a 1:1 ratio by fiat currency, in which owners can exchange their stablecoin for the underlying currency held in the coin issuer’s reserves at any time. Examples include Tether (USDT), Binance USD (BUSD) and USDC, which are USD backed stablecoins.
• Commodity-collateralised: Stablecoins backed by commodities such as gold, other precious metals, and even oil and real estate. Owners can exchange their stablecoin for the underlying commodity at the stipulated ratio. Examples include Digix Gold (DGX), which is backed by gold, and SwissRealCoin (SRC), backed by a portfolio of Swiss real estate.
• Crypto-collateralised: Stablecoins are backed by other cryptocurrencies but are often over-collateralised to absorb the underlying asset’s price fluctuations. DAI is the most popular stablecoin in this category, and ETH and other crypto assets back it.
• Algorithmic (non-collateralised): Stablecoins that do not have any underlying collateralised assets but maintain their price stability through algorithms and smart contracts that manage the supply of tokens in circulation to counter price movements. Examples include DEI and Ampleforth (AMPL).

In the case of UST, it falls within the fourth category of stablecoin classification, relying on its specialised algorithm to manage the supply of tokens such that the UST is pegged to the USD at a 1:1 ratio.

In short, the peg is maintained by an arbitrage mechanism that is simplified in the following scenarios:

• When UST is at US$x > US$1, traders will buy US$1 worth of LUNA, sell it to mint UST, and subsequently sell UST for a profit of (US$[x-1]). In the process, the supply of UST increases and the price falls back to US$1 until arbitrage is not possible.
• When UST at US$y < US$1, traders will buy 1 UST, sell it to mint US$1 worth of LUNA, and subsequently sell LUNA for a profit of (US$[1-y]). In the process, the supply of UST decreases and the price increases to US$1 until arbitrage is not possible

Much of the demand for UST actually stems from UST tokens locked up in the Anchor Protocol,  a savings, lending and borrowing platform on the Terra blockchain that incentivises savers to deposit in the lending pool with UST tokens, promising an annual percentage yield of up to 19.5 per cent.

Does history repeat itself? Asian financial crisis and the UST meltdown

The rapid unpegging of the UST to the dollar has been attributed to a concerted short attack by unknown attackers, who simultaneously withdrew significant deposits from the Anchor Protocol, dumped about US$350 million worth of UST on the exchange, and further shorted Bitcoin, the crypto reserve that the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) held as ammunition to reinstate the dollar peg if UST unpegs.

The large and sudden supply shock of UST, combined with the broader macroeconomic headwinds affecting the financial markets, created a “death spiral” or bank run situation in which panicking savers depositing in the anchor protocol and owners of UST withdrew their holdings at a rate that arbitrageurs could not keep up with, rapidly devaluing LUNA (as more and more LUNA are minted in the desperate bid to save the peg).

With LUNA’s value approaching 0, their linkage with UST naturally means that the latter becomes of little value.

Also Read: What investors should know about security, hacking and cryptocurrencies

Asians familiar with economic history would see glaring similarities between the crash of the UST and the tale of George Soros’ speculative attack on the Thai Baht and other Southeast Asian currencies during the Asian financial crisis.

His famous Quantum fund sold about US$1 billion worth of Thai Baht short in 1996. The Bank of Thailand exhausted large amounts of their dollar-denominated reserves to purchase Thai baht on the foreign exchange markets, preventing them from reinstating the dollar peg when the crisis hit in 1997, with short-sellers piling on and owners of the Thai baht indiscriminately selling them on the forex.

The resulting supply shock led to the floating baht depreciating by 60 per cent against the dollar after it broke its dollar peg.

However, while the narratives of short-sellers causing the crash of UST and the Thai baht make for captivating tales, they are merely catalysts amidst the fundamental and structural weaknesses within the two economies.

In the case of the Thai baht, it was the weakness of the Thai economy, while for UST, it was the Terra ecosystem. The financial crisis in Thailand resulted from careless lending and borrowing, which led to the accumulation of nonperforming loans.

Pre-crisis Thailand was characterised by high-interest rates, about five per cent higher than the rest of the world. The result? It enticed not only foreign lenders to deposit their money in Thailand, but domestic borrowers also realised that they stood to gain simply by borrowing from abroad and depositing domestically.

The external debt doubled from US$40 billion in 1992 to US$80 billion in 1997, and the number of loans tripled in the financial system. This led to careless lending that generated speculative bubbles across various sectors, with a supply of loans outstripping demand by 150 per cent in iron and steel and by about 200 per cent in housing and automobiles, just to name a few.

Loans were channelled into inflated assets such as real estate, where the bubble became apparent by 1996, with residential vacancy rates higher than 25 per cent.

The parallel to UST cannot be clearer, with the hot money bubble largely influenced by the Anchor Protocol’s 19.5 per cent APY. The decentralised finance (DeFi) lending protocol could not be self-sustained, with the borrowing interest of about 11.7 per cent putting off many borrowers even with the added incentives for borrowers such as the right to vote in protocol proposals.

The drastic oversupply of loans was underlined by the low borrowing rate of 22 per cent of all UST deposited in the protocol. To maintain the interest paid to depositors, Anchor Protocol’s reserves were drained rapidly as the organic revenue generated from borrowers was insufficient to balance what it owed depositors.

Sounds familiar? This was akin to the Bank of Thailand’s depletion of reserves to purchase baht on the forex markets prior to the onset of the financial crisis.

At an “economy” level, the similarities are also glaring. The founders of the Terra ecosystem set out to emulate Bitcoin as an electronic cash system (price-stable money protocol) that can become a leading e-commerce stablecoin payment and DeFi service provider.

However, about ⅔ of all UST circulation was hot money attracted by the Anchor Protocol’s APY. At the same time, demand for LUNA (the other native token on the Terra blockchain) was similarly tied to UST.

This mismatch of funds within the Terra ecosystem and the structural weakness due to the fundamental lack of use cases for the blockchain protocol meant that demand for UST or LUNA was non-existent when push came to shove, just like the selling pressure on the baht as the financial crisis unveiled the very real weaknesses of the national economy.

My key takeaways

The meltdown of the once third largest stablecoin and the largest algorithmic stablecoin in UST, with a market cap of over US$30 billion just over a month ago, highlights the risk of investing in an asset with a layer one protocol that lacks sufficient fundamentals.

Also Read: Southeast Asia is one of the best markets for Web3 to take off, say experts

However, to me, the fact that the USD backed stablecoins have retained their peg and crypto-collateralised DAI has also remained stable implies that the problem might be specific to algorithmic stablecoins.

The underlying collaterals in these cases are tied to functioning “economies”, be it the US economy (for USDC, USDT) or the Ethereum blockchain (for DAI), similar to how the Singapore dollar remained relatively unaffected during the Asian financial crisis, as their strong economic fundamentals cemented investor confidence.

As evident from the curious case of the UST, the deep cause might have been “traction overrunning the fundamentals”. At Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, I learnt that due diligence is king when it comes to investing.

Focusing on building your domain expertise before investing in a particular field and knowing when to quit when elements of your original investment thesis change are two pieces of advice that Vertex’s investment team consistently emphasises.

Judging by the number of professional and retail investors who got burnt in this unfortunate episode, the age-old advice to “look deeply into the fundamentals, not at what is trending” ought not be overlooked.

This story first appeared on Vertex Ventures. If you are keen to read more about crypto and analysis from a non-crypto native VC’s perspective, check out my colleagues and general partner Genping Liu’s articles on Vertex SEA’s Medium.

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It is the stated goal of the current government to make India a US$5 trillion economy in the near term. This would make India creep out of the “developing country” tag and move slowly towards a “developed country” tag. No country in the history of the world has become a developed country without sustained investment in science and biotech.

The Indian economy lost ₹32,000 crores every day during the 21-day lockdown during the first wave of COVID-19. The budget for the Department of Biotechnology, India’s premier agency for life science development is ₹2,581 crores. The budget for life sciences for Purdue University (not a top 50 science university in the US) is ₹3,000 crores.

Let us take one problem at a time and try and find solutions.

Non-linearity of basic science research

Japanese scientists were studying bacteria in 1987 and were surprised to discover repeated, interspersed sequences of a gene when they were studying bacterial metabolism. At that time, no one had any idea that funding for this project would create one of the most consequential technologies of our time. Therein lies the first problem of non-linearity.

Without a capability in basic sciences, it is not possible to be leaders in science but it is impossible to create a linear correlation between basic science funding and eventual outcomes which are beneficial to society.

When governments make budgets, especially in a resource-constrained country like ours, it is quite natural that they would lean towards funding areas where there is a near term, predictable return. 

Every US$1 that the National Institute of Health, the largest funder of biomedical research in the world, generates US$8.38 of private research after eight years. The Human Genome project alone is estimated to have spurred investments of over US$1 trillion globally, a stunning 178 fold return on investment. The government simply needs to bite the bullet and fund science at over two per cent of GDP based on the experience of the past 200 years. 

Scientists as a wealth creator

Barring a few people who are truly passionate about life sciences (and the country needs to be grateful to them), the sad fact is that most people who start a bachelors in life sciences do so because they could not get into engineering or medicine.

Also Read: How biotech is changing the global agriculture game for investors

The main reason for this is that life sciences are simply not a financially rewarding career in India. A PhD in life sciences today earns less than any IT professional with basic experience. If we truly need to motivate the next generation of scientists, we have to demonstrate an “Infosys” version of biotech where there is substantial wealth creation for the top 200 employees.

Established companies, as well as startups, need to be generous with their stock option programs and prove that they present a once in lifetime wealth creation opportunity for scientists who succeed in their goals. Science needs to be seen as an aspirational profession just as engineering and medicine are seen today. 

Translational science funding

I once presented to a venture capitalist who very candidly said, “I cannot even understand your business deck, how do I understand your business?” In the west, there are several biotechs focused VC funds that have scientists and clinicians on their rolls. Barring a few exceptions, the Indian venture capital community has shied away from taking bets on biotech innovation. 

Australia runs a translational research program where, upon qualification, the government provides a 40 per cent rebate on all costs and then venture capitalists take it from there. If we truly want to jump-start translation in India, we will have to stop talking about incremental reductions in GST for customs duty etc. (which have a nominal effect) and provide a booster dose of such benefits.

The VC community needs to step up and partner with founders who, in turn,  have the responsibility of explaining the science with a story that is understandable and relatable. If the VC community needs more persuasion, here is a little known fact: Biotech investments consistently provide better returns than tech investments!

We stand as a nation at the crossroads.  Invest in science for the next 20 years at over two per cent GDP and become a developed nation, or do not invest and continue to be a developing nation and become the manufacturing warehouse of the world. 

We got lucky with COVID-19. Let us ensure we do not depend on luck the next time and truly become atmanirbhar for our citizens. 

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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MDI Ventures, the corporate VC arm of Telkom Indonesia, is launching a new impact investment fund.

Alvin Evander, Vice President (Business Development) at MDI Ventures, will head the new fund, which will focus on local startups and, opportunistically, regional startups targetting the Indonesian market.

“I can confirm that MDI Ventures will launch a fund for impact investing. However, I can’t share all the granular information about the fund yet, such as the size and the average ticket size. This information is still under wraps and will be made public when the time is right,” Evander said in an interview with e27. However, a DealStreetAsia report said the VC firm is exploring a US$100 million impact fund.

Also Read: SEA’s VC landscape will soon get more specialised, says ADB Ventures

The MDI impact fund will explore sectors with tremendous opportunities in the archipelago, such as agriculture, education, healthcare, SMEs, energy, and waste management.

In his view, agriculture is an ever-expanding sector. It has a growing transition rate from refined foods and artificial substances to more organic ingredients of 18 per cent from 2020 to 2021, thanks to technological advancements in agriculture and aquacultural spaces.

As for education, Southeast Asia — with around 680 million people — accounts for 8 per cent of the global population. It grew 1 per cent in 2021, with 60 per cent entering their productive years. However, 41 million still live in poverty due to unemployment.

He added that investment in education will improve the overall quality of Indonesia’s workforce, thus increasing productivity and resulting in a better standard of living. With better living standards comes the demand for better healthcare, and it is impossible to have a modern and digitalised healthcare ecosystem without proper energy/waste management.

The impact fund also sees great initiatives in renewable energy and electric vehicles. Some startups in these sectors have raised large rounds, such as Form Energy (which raised US$240 million in Series D in August 2021). “Specifically in Indonesia, with the recent developments with Tesla, there are opportunities that Indonesia could become the largest battery manufacturer with our important nickel supply,” Evander noted.

In addition to making new investment deals, MDI will likely invest further in its existing portfolio across agriculture, healthcare, financial inclusion, and education, especially if they have a provable and tangible social impact that fits its criteria.

MDI Ventures will help its startups to connect with various business units within Telkom and other state-owned enterprises to form strategic alliances. “For example, if a startup we invest in operates in the healthcare space, we would seek to get them plugged into the leading pharmaceutical and hospital chain company to find product-market fit and see their product implemented nationwide quickly,” he explained.

As the head of the impact fund, Evander’s first move will be to explore implementing an ESG (environmental, social, and governance) framework and start measuring ‘impact’ based on the UN sustainable development goals for its portfolio companies. “We’ll partner with a global firm with experience in impact assessment and try to work together to implement a world-class ESG framework in MDI.”

In his view, impact-oriented funds generally have a stigma of lower returns than conventional funds, which is untrue. Their research indicates that impact funds generate competitive returns compared to other traditional venture capital investments. It will be a matter of time until more investors understand the potential and move toward impact investing.

Also Read: MDI Ventures launches angel investment network eMerge with an investment in GOX

Globally, impact ventures, in general, are still far smaller in size compared to conventional ventures. This condition is not limited only to Southeast Asia and Indonesia but to the general investment landscape, he remarked.

“However, there has been a recent surge of interest in ESG-conscious investments in the last few years. As the global investment climate moves toward impact ventures, we strongly believe that venture capital in Indonesia and Southeast Asia will follow suit in the years to come,” he concluded.

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