Digital SMEs have been categorized as underbanked or unbanked segments for quite some time, even though they have crucial contributions to the economy; in Indonesia alone, SMEs are contributing 60 per cent of the country’s GDP while absorbing 97 per cent of the local workforce.

“As one of the first fintech companies that focus on helping them, we have experienced their spirit and creativity in building a sustainable business that resulted in remarkable impact for the country,” said Benedicto Haryono, CEO and Co-Founder of KoinWorks, an online peer-to-peer financing platform for small and medium-sized businesses in Indonesia.

But not everything is rosy, as based on the Digital SME Confidence Index research that was done by KoinWorks last year, the majority of Indonesian SMEs are facing challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with an average confidence index of 2.37 out 5.

However, the same research also shows that SMEs that have more than one sales channel — after expanding to online marketplace, social media, or creating a website – tend to have less of an income drop.

The trading industry, for example, can even reach a high confidence index of 4.7 from 5.00, likely because of the online transaction boost that happened after the government applied the large-scale social restriction. This shows that digital support for SMEs has a positive impact amid the pandemic.

Supporting SME growth even through the pandemic

Through innovation, KoinWorks has enabled thousands of SMEs to access credit and financing that would normally be inaccessible to them through traditional financial institutions. Since 2016, KoinWorks has become the pioneer in the Digital SME sector by collaborating with prominent tech companies in Indonesia, such as Tokopedia, Shopee, Lazada, Moka, Pawoon, Mekari, and BukuKas. Because of those partnerships, the loan approval process for SME owners can be more efficient.

“In the age of technology, it’s easier for us to diversify our investment according to our risk profile and financial purpose. For example people can choose peer to peer loans and government bonds for their short term investment and gold for long investment. In KoinWorks, you can do it without having to switch apps,” said Dani Rachmat Kurniawan, an Investor of KoinWorks and Certified Financial Planner.

Also read: India’s first accelerator and VC fund gears up for its maiden demo day series

On average, KoinWorks’s lender can get 18.37 per cent in annual yield. With a low Non-Performing Loan rate of 1.2 per cent, KoinWorks has strengthened its business and has achieved profitability earlier this year. KoinWorks as a Super Financial App has a multiverse of products generating Take Rate up to 6% of their balance, through platform fees and partner fees.

With the COVID-19 outbreak that has disturbed economic stability in Indonesia, KoinWorks worked on supporting SMEs that could not quickly adapt to the situation by providing a loan restructure program for several borrowers, prolonging their payment to 24 months and reducing the monthly repayment.

In 2020, around 12 per cent of KoinWorks’ borrowers have restructured their loans. However, it has decreased to only 4 per cent this year. In comparison, it is lower than several banks that restructured more than 20 per cent of their loan portfolio.

Paving the way for a strong P2P finance ecosystem

The restructuring process not only helps the borrowers in managing their cash flow, but also lenders in getting their full repayment.

Kurniawan said that he understood the risk before deciding to invest in KoinWorks, which is why he kept investing in the platform despite some restructure that happened to several of his loan portfolios.

“I believe KoinWorks will do their best to get the payment sooner or later because it’s a fintech company that has a license from OJK (Indonesia’s Financial Service Authority). It also offered convenience for me to diversify my portfolio by allowing lenders to invest as low as IDR 100.000. It’s a good feature that many P2P lending companies don’t have,” he said.

On the other hand, loan restructuring has been proven to help all SMEs to survive in these hard times, indirectly giving a positive contribution for the recovery of the national economy. Currently, 82% of SMEs that have loan restructuring facilities have been able to stabilize their income and do full repayment.

Also read: STPI’s Vision Programme: empowering Taiwan-based startups to tap into Southeast Asia and beyond

Dedy, the owner of a Jogja-based bed sheet brand called Jaxine, is one of the SMEs that had his loan restructured in KoinWorks. He started availing of KoinWorks credit facilities in 2016, and topped up again in 2018. When the pandemic happened, he called it a horrific time in running a business.

The loan restructuring on KoinWorks helped reduce his monthly repayment from IDR 50 million (around US$3,400) to only IDR 30 million (around US$2,000) per month.

“Honestly, I can’t be here if I did not get help at that time,” he said. Today, Dedy’s business continues to grow and helps maintain employment for his 40 employees.

Arias Sudiarta, owner of a used car dealer called ARS Auto Car, also got breathing room through the loan restructuring facility from KoinWorks that helped him manage his business cash flow and prevent staff layoff.

He said that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a steep decline in his monthly sales from IDR 3.5 billion to around IDR 1 billion. “However, it currently has increased 250 per cent to IDR 2.5 billion per month,” he said.

KoinWorks will release the Digital SME Confidence Index Report for H1 2021 in August.

You can read the Digital SME Confidence Index Report Q4 2020 on this link.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Koinworks.

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edamama, a new e-commerce platform designed for mothers in the Philippines, has announced that it has raised US$5 million in its latest pre-Series A round from investors.

Investors include Gentree Fund, Robinsons Retail Holdings, and Kickstart Ventures, who are the affiliates of SM Investments Corporation, JG Summit, and Ayala Corporation, respectively.

The round also saw participation from Foxmont Capital Partners, an early-stage VC firm based in the Philippines, besides unnamed Filipino and global angel investors.

The startup plans to use a part of the funds to expand its warehouse capabilities and improve its delivery services for customers to receive their goods more quickly.

Also Read: E-commerce enabler Great Deals closes US$30M Series B to build automated fulfilment centre in Philippines

Apart from this, it is also working on omnichannel expansion and providing new mediums of direct-to-consumer communication, such as selling through a live stream. “Our goal is to continue being vertically focused, so we could gain and build the trust of more mothers in the country,” said edamama co-founder Bela Gupta D’Souza.

edamama was established amidst the pandemic by the husband-wife duo of Nishant and Bela Gupta D’Souza, who saw the pain points of mothers as consumers when purchasing online. They noticed mothers spend many hours in search of the best products for their children only to end up with mediocre items with inferior quality from untrusted sources.

The Philippine startup aims to address the issue of quality, as well as the other challenges common among today’s e-commerce platforms — such as channel fragmentation, non-established brand trust, the lack of a discovery-led buying experience, and poor customer service.

The site is designed for mothers to “get easy online access to quality products and services while ensuring the lowest prices through a system that simplifies purchasing experience”.

Since its launch in May 2020, edamama claims to have served tens of thousands of expectant and new mothers through doorstep delivery of over 22,000 SKUs, plus a wide range of online classes and activities.

It operates several products designed to make shopping more convenient for moms and their families.

Through edamama’s Gift Registry, users can create gift wish lists for special occasions, from baby showers to birthday celebrations, and share these with loved ones. They will then receive their desired items gift wrapped and in time for their special occasion.

Another feature is Subscribe & Save, an online diaper subscription service launched in partnership with Pampers.

It also offers Explore, a one-stop destination for parents to book the best online classes, events, and activities for their children.

Moreover, its platform also delivers authentic parenting content, personalised promos, and a community for parents to make the right decisions. It has also developed “bean” rewards that can be converted to peso credits.

“edamama is leading the future of personalised e-commerce in the Philippines, offering mothers a safe forum to share experiences while integrating discovery-led experiences into their platform. edamama is underpinned by a strong content strategy that allows it to support mothers at every stage of parenting, a strategy that has won them a loyal following of mothers,” said Mark Sng, Vice-President of Gentree Fund.

Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart Ventures, said: “edamama captures the essence of this ‘village’: an easy, trustworthy, and personalised shopping experience for busy moms; useful, curated, verified content; and safe community interactions that affirm and support parenting.”

“The developing e-commerce landscape that sells everything to everyone is a bit of a wild wild west, but through mindful curation and intense engagement, edamama is earning trust and repeat purchases, capturing a meaningful and growing share of the mommy market,” added Navarrete.

Also Read: Emotional leadership in a post-COVID-19 business world

The Philippine e-commerce market is the fastest growing in Southeast Asia. According to Google’s e-Conomy SEA 2020 report, it grew by 55 per cent at the height of the pandemic as the purchasing behaviour of consumers shifted from face-to-face to digital.

One of the major growth areas of the market is the maternity products segment, which is in turn being driven by the country’s high fertility rate. An HKTDC commissioned study predicts that the segment’s value will surpass the US$1 billion mark in 2022.

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Image Credit: edamama

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Syfe, a Singapore-headquartered digital wealth management company, today announced that it has closed its Series B funding round of SGD40 million (US$30 million) led by Valar Ventures, the US-based VC firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.

Existing investors Presight Capital (US) and Unbound also participated.

This capital injection comes just nine months after Syfe’s US$18.6 million Series A round led by Valar Ventures in September 2020.

With the latest round, the wealthtech startup’s total capital raised since its launch in 2019 has reached US$52.6 million.

Also Read: Syfe closes US$18.6M Series A to take its digital wealth management biz into new markets

The fresh capital will be used by Syfe to expand into new markets in Asia, invest in top talent, and develop new products and services.

Syfe has also announced it is making all of its employees become shareholders of the company.

Launched in July 2019, Syfe is a Monetary Authority of Singapore- (MAS) licensed digital wealth manager that aims to help people make smarter financial decisions. It enables users to create personalised and professionally managed portfolios with simple steps. Clients get access to Syfe’s wealth advisors and an intuitive investing experience that it claims is low cost and hassle-free.

The platform has no minimum investment amounts and maintains a low annual fee, starting at 0.35 per cent of the total amount invested.

As per a press release, Syfe’s assets under management have quadrupled since the start of the year.

Headcount in Singapore has doubled since the start of the year to 50, taking Syfe’s total global headcount to over 100.

Dhruv Arora, Founder and CEO, Syfe, said: “Managing wealth has become a necessity in this low-interest-rate environment, and we are seeing a significant increase in demand from customers looking for quality solutions.”

Andrew McCormack, Founding Partner, Valar Ventures, said: “Syfe was our first investment in Asia. The opportunity for the company to meet the saving and investment needs of a burgeoning mass-affluent consumer population in Asia remains significant, and we are confident that Syfe will continue to expand at pace. We are looking forward to partnering with this talented, dynamic team in its next phase of growth.”

Also Read: StashAway raises US$25M Series D to ‘fill the gap in digital wealth management space’

The wealthtech sector in Singapore, the second wealthiest economy in Asia, has seen accelerated growth over the past two to three years. StashAway is probably the leader in this segment. StashAway, co-founded by former Zalora CEO Michele Ferrario, raisedUS$25 million in Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital India in April this year.

Earlier this month, Endowus.com, another fast-growing startup, announced a US$22.3M Series A from strategic investors, including UBS, Samsung Ventures, and Singtel Innov8.

On Tuesday, Bambu, a Singapore-based startup providing digital wealth technology for B2B businesses across the globe, announced the acquisition of Tradesocio, a developer of wealth management software for advisors, based in the island nation.

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Image Credit: Syfe

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Southeast Asia will become the fastest-growing region for mobile wallets globally, with mobile wallets in use expected to triple in the next five years, a research report by London-based fintech firm Boku.

Within the region, Indonesia is one of the fastest-growing mobile payment markets, with mobile wallet users set to more than triple (from 63.6 million to 202 million) by 2025. Ovo dominates the market share in the region with 38 per cent of users.

Malaysia, on the other hand, is lagging behind other Southeast Asian countries, as mobile wallets are slower to enter and gain traction in the market. Malaysia is currently dominated by a triopoly, with GrabPay and Touch ‘N Go (together with about 40 per cent market share), and Boost with roughly 22 per cent market share, the report stated.

Also Read: Is Southeast Asia now more accepting of mobile wallets?

However, Malaysia is set for hyper-growth over the next five years, as mobile wallet users and penetration are set to triple.

In spite of all the developments within the region, Singapore takes the cake with mobile wallet penetration set to reach nearly 95 per cent by 2025 from 30.4 per cent in 2020.

Despite its small population, the mobile payments ecosystem is thriving, with a number of offerings that include the regional super app, Grab, a telco wallet (Singtel Dash), a bank-based wallet (DBS payLah!) as well as the digitisation of the national transit card, EZ-Link.

Another major trend in the mobile wallet market in Asia is the rising expansion of major Chinese wallets outside of their home market. This includes WeChat Pay and bKash.

The report further suggests that while Chinese e-wallets continue expansion it seems unlikely that they will conquer emerging Asian markets as many once thought.

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It’s been a chaotic year for investment app Robinhood. The platform played a significant role in the famous GameStop short squeeze in January, where huge volumes of retail investors organised themselves on Reddit to dumbfound hedge funds and send the shorted stock to unprecedented highs.

Now, as Robinhood prepares to go public, could we see more short squeezes like GameStop emerging on a regular basis?

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Robinhood has rarely strayed from controversy. The app’s imposition of restrictions on the investor accounts in the wake of the GameStop saga drew criticism from investors and onlookers alike.

In May, Warren Buffett, one of Wall Street’s most famous figures, likened Robinhood to a casino. “American corporations have turned out to be a wonderful place for people to put their money and save but they also make terrific gambling chips,” explained Buffett.

“If you cater to those gambling chips when people have money in their pocket for the first time and you tell them they can make 30 or 40 or 50 trades a day and you’re not charging them any commission but you’re selling their order flow or whatever … I hope we don’t have more of it.”

However, despite the controversies, Robinhood’s outpaced all of its competitors since the arrival of the pandemic to become one of the biggest names on the investment scene.

As the chart above shows, Robinhood significantly outpaced traditional brokers since the beginning of 2020. Despite drawing criticism in the wake of the GameStop saga, we can see that downloads spiked at the time.

Also Read: 6-month-old Infina wants to become the “RobinHood” of Vietnam with a US$2M funding

Perhaps most significantly of all is that data shows Robinhood account holders have, on average, a much smaller portfolio than those on more traditional brokerage platforms like Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab.

This shows that the app is consciously seeking to build appeal with more casual investors who are looking to place some spare money into stocks and shares.

With a long-anticipated IPO set to launch in July, Robinhood may well win more appeal among retail investors. But what will the impact of having a dominant retail market on one app be? And could we see more GameStop short squeezes as a result?

The rise of the memes

The age of the pandemic has led to a widespread influx of new retail investors into the stocks and shares landscape. Maxim Manturov, head of investment research at Freedom Finance Europe, believes that the addition of stimulus packages has paved the way for more entrants into the investing landscape than before.

The pandemic supplied additional reasons for the retail investment market to grow. To support the economy, most countries adopted stimulating policies, which brought both the loan and deposit interest rates to historic lows,” Manturov said.

“As an alternative to low-rate deposits, many started investing their savings into stock markets, which posted significant gains last year despite the lockdown and the productivity slump.”

Many of these new arrivals have coordinated with social media users to generate money on apps like Robinhood by squeezing ailing assets.

Recently, individual investors arranged on social media to drive up the price of AMC, a struggling US movie theatre chain, pushing up shares by 71 per cent. Off the back of this momentum, AMC announced a US$230 million hedge fund investment– only for the said fund to dump the shares a matter of hours later claiming the stock had become ‘overvalued.’ Subsequently the stock surged even higher.

Also Read: Accelerating Asian IPO markets: How long can the initial public offering boom last?

This event, which is largely similar to that of the GameStop saga in January, has shown that social media-driven short squeezes aren’t a one-off and that people with spare money are increasingly willing to social-invest in nostalgic or novel companies in order to inflate the value of their stocks and generate greater personal wealth.

The impact of meme investors on social media is such that it’s now not uncommon to see articles appearing on websites like Yahoo! Finance speculating where the next short squeeze may come from by investigating Reddit sentiment and plucking the most frequently discussed stocks out of the forum.

Robinhood’s timely IPO will keep focus on wall street

The timing of Robinhood’s IPO could be significant for retail investors looking to capitalise on the next short squeeze. The cryptocurrency landscape is still reeling from Bitcoin’s tumbling price across May and June, and the value of meme crypto assets like Doge is still in retreat.

Robinhood’s flotation coupled with an uninspiring crypto landscape could drive even greater levels of interest towards meme stocks and the lure of short squeezes.

As the data above shows, three notable meme stocks in GameStop, AMC, and Blackberry have all trended upwards following the decline of cryptocurrencies, and Reddit forum WallStreetBets has been eager to pump the three stocks even further.

These aren’t the only stocks that have been targeted, with the likes of Nokia also acting as a nostalgia-driven meme stock and even commodities like silver has seen sentiment growing around it.

Although the pandemic is subsiding, it appears that the rise of meme stocks and sentiment-driven investing is only gathering momentum. The recent surges in AMC price shows that enthusiasm among retail investors for generating quick profits is growing beyond that of the GameStop short squeeze of January.

In going public, Robinhood will open itself up to greater levels of adoption among retail investors. As a result, Wall Street may have to adapt to this new era of short squeezes and social investing.

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Carsome Group, Southeast Asian car e-commerce platform has acquired 19.9 per cent of ASX (Australian Stock Exchange)-listed iCar Asia from Catcha Group.

The total transaction is estimated to be worth more than US$200 million.

Both the companies have made a joint proposal to the independent directors of iCar Asia to acquire the balance of 80.1 per cent of iCar from its shareholders.

Catcha Group will also become a shareholder of the Carsome Group in exchange for the sale of its shares in iCar Asia to Carsome.

iCar Asia’s acquisition will offer an enhanced suite of digital products and services to dealers and consumers in all key markets.

The expanded suite of solutions will offer an end-to-end, super-app experience that covers the entire car buying and selling value chain

Also Read: Carsome snags US$30M Series D to strengthen its C2B and B2C offerings

Founded in 2015, Carsome provides end-to-end solutions to consumers and used car dealers — from car inspection to ownership transfer to financing.

The company continues to grow fast claiming to have an annualised revenue of US$800 million with plans to achieve US$1 billion this year.

“We are excited to have Patrick Grove, co-founder of Catcha Group to join us as he brings along two decades of tech entrepreneurship and capital market expertise. This transaction is an important part of our growth strategy to build the entire automotive ecosystem in Southeast Asia and part of how we are transforming the industry through trust, transparency, and technology,” said Eric Cheng, co-founder of Carsome.

“This is the first step toward consolidation to form the largest digital automotive group in terms of revenue, user base, largest live listing, and the best end-to-end fulfilment capability in the region,” he added.

“Bringing iCar Asia’s extensive traffic and dealer network in the region together with Carsome’s leadership position in automotive e-commerce is extremely powerful. We are excited to join Carsome as shareholders and work with Eric and his team to expand our leadership position and look forward to helping the combined business dominate the US$55 billion digital automotive space in Southeast Asia in the years ahead,” added Grove.

A few days ago Carsome also managed to acquire an equity stake in Indonesian offline car and motorcycle auction service company, PT Universal Collection (PT UC).

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Image Credit: Carsome

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Vara, a Singapore-based staff management platform for small businesses in Southeast Asia, has secured US$4.8 million in a funding round.

Investors include Go Ventures, RTP Global, Alpha JWC Ventures, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, FEBE Ventures, and Taurus Ventures.

“Our ultimate goal at Vara is to deliver more time, energy, and money into the hands of SMEs and their staff. This funding round enables us to continue developing our products and serving our users with an increasing set of value-additive features to accomplish exactly that,” said Abhinav Karale, co-founder at Vara.

In many countries in Southeast Asia, small businesses form the backbone of their respective economies. For example, in Indonesia, over 60 million small businesses contribute to more than 60 per cent of the country’s GDP and employ close to 95 per cent of the labour force.

Since many of these businesses operate in labour-heavy segments of the economy, their staff is critical to daily operations. However, a vast majority of these organisations still manage their human capital — from tracking attendance to tabulating salary — manually.

For employers, this process of attendance and payroll management is cumbersome, time-consuming, and prone to human error. Vara seeks to address this issue by digitising SMEs and their employees.

Also Read: Malaysian startup HAUZ’s all-in-one platform enables companies to manage workforce remotely

Founded in November 2020, Vara aims to transform how small companies manage their staff. Its product, Bukugaji, is geared towards the Indonesian market and claims to have serviced the staff management needs of over 100,000 small companies.

Bukugaji allows business owners to quickly track staff attendance, tabulate salary and loans, generate payslips, and disburse payroll within a few minutes.

Vara is also part of Surge’s fifth cohort of 23 startups that have developed new digital solutions to help companies and individuals work, live, and learn better in a rapidly evolving Southeast Asian landscape.

However, the workforce management model is not new as Vara is likely to face competition from several similar players operating in this vertical, including Hauz, Swingvy, HReasily, and more.

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Speedhome (formerly Speedrent), an online property rental platform in Malaysia, has announced that it has raised RM7 million (US$1.7 million) in Series A funding from Gobi Partners and Allianz Malaysia, an investment holding company and a subsidiary of global insurance major Allianz.

The Kuala Lumpur-headquartered startup will use the capital for regional expansion and tech advancements. “This fund will help us kickstart our regional expansion in Bangkok and accelerate our efforts towards making Speedhome as the region’s super app for property investors,” CEO Wong Whei Meng said.

It aims to expand regionally to 10 other metropolitan cities in the next five years, namely Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Also Read: Can SEA’s proptech come back to its pre-COVID-19 glory? Experts speak

Established in 2015, Speedhome aims to simplify the rental process. A zero-deposit automated platform, it connects landlords directly to quality tenants providing rental protection services.

It combines mobile technology and automation to bring together a pool of tenants, transparency and interactivity for all users to make more informed decisions during the rental search experience. Landlords are free to advertise and manage their properties and contact potential tenants anytime, anywhere.

The company claims its mobile app has over 575,000 app downloads on Play Store and App Store so far, and a database of more than 128,000 property listings.

In partnership with Allianz Malaysia, Speedhome also provides insurance and rental protection of up to RM42,000 (US$100,000), covering more than standard security deposits.

Speedhome further claims that it helped tenants free up a total of RM37 million (US$8.8 million) over the years through zero-deposit rental.

The proptech firm claims to have managed to soften the adverse impact of the pandemic on the property industry with the introduction of its ‘virtual viewing’ and ‘home runners’ services that addressed the restrictions posed by the various Movement Control Order (MCO).

Thomas G.Tsao, Chairman of Gobi Partners, said: “Speedhome is one of our first investments for Gobi’s SuperSeed Fund II. This investment also marks another venture into the booming proptech industry for our firm. In Indonesia, we currently have two proptech investments that are doing well during these uncertain times — online short-term home rental marketplace Travelio, and premium coworking space operator GoWork. As such, we see great things ahead for Speedhome, and we are optimistic about the company’s ability to perform well in the Malaysian market.”

Also Read: Edukasyon investor Foxmont joins Philippine proptech startup AHG’s US$1.1M seed round

“Digital partnerships are very much part of our strategy at Allianz Malaysia as we look towards capitalising on new opportunities and new markets. However, more importantly, we are equally driven to support our local digital champions, startups like Speedhome, and currently have over 50 active digital partnerships across various sectors. Speedhome has been a standout digital player in the property rental industry, whose innovative ideas have enhanced the way we do business,” said Zakri Khir, CEO of Allianz Malaysia.

The proptech sector in Malaysia has seen a lot of activities in recent months.

In May, Singapore-headquartered PropertyGuru Group acquired REA Group’s operating entities in Malaysia, iProperty.com.my.

Last October, Patrick Grove, co-founder of iProperty Group and Catcha Group, joined hands with serial entrepreneur Eric Tan to launch an online home rental platform Instahome in Malaysia, with a “7-figure USD” seed funding.

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Image Credit: Speedhome

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Next Gen Foods, a Singapore-headquartered plant-based foodtech startup, has extended its seed financing round by raising US$20 million afresh.

This comes less than five months after it raised US$10 million from a host of investors, including Temasek and K3 Ventures — bringing the total funds raised from this round to US$30 million.

The latest tranche came from a clutch of investors, including existing backers Temasek and K3 Ventures. Others who participated in the round are global fund GGV Capital; China-based agriculture and foodtech venture fund Bits x Bites; Yeo Hiap Seng (Asian food and beverage player); Chris Yeh, co-author of Blitzscaling, a book on how tech companies build scale quickly; and a prominent group of athletes including Dele Alli, the England national team footballer.

Also Read: Alt.Flex.Eat: Flexitarianism is the flavour of the SEAson

The investment will drive the entry of Next Gen’s plant-based chicken brand TiNDLE to the US market within the next 12 months. It will be hiring more than 50 employees across R&D, sales, supply chain, finance and marketing in the country.

The US is the largest plant-based meat market and home to leading plant-based brands Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat. According to the Good Food Institute, the US retail market for plant-based foods was worth US$7 billion in 2020, up from US$5.5 billion in 2019.

“The United States is the world’s biggest market for plant-based foods. We are already putting our foundations in place to be in-market within the next 12 months as we accelerate our goal of becoming the world’s number one plant-based chicken. The outstanding response from both existing and new investors shows their confidence in our innovative technology, highly scalable business model, differentiated taste experiences and the ability of our team to make TiNDLE a market leader in the US,” said Next Gen co-founder and CEO Andre Menezes.

“Following our March 2021 TiNDLE launch, we have expanded to three key markets, and we expect to be in more than five by end-2021, a mark that some leading brands do not cross after years of existence. We are scaling at this incredibly fast pace with our asset-lite business model, distribution network, talent, and collaborations with great chefs and hot restaurants,” added CMO Jean Madden.

A portion of the capital will also be used for the continued international expansion in APAC and the Middle East, developing its technology, establishing a research and development centre in Singapore and product diversification.

The roadmap for the next one to two years includes raising Series A funding, product diversification, and continued international expansion, notably into Europe.

Additionally, Next Gen has announced changes to its leadership team. CEO Timo Recker is taking the position of Chairman and COO Andre Menezes is the new CEO. Rohit Bhattacharya, who was previously Director at Temasek, joins Next Gen as CFO.

Next Gen was co-founded by Recker and Menezes in October 2020. The duo personally invested US$2.2 million into the company from the get-go. Recker is the founder and former CEO of German plant-based meat company LikeMeat while Menezes was the General Manager of Country Foods Singapore.

First launched in Singapore in early 2021, TiNDLE is sold in over 70 restaurants in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau. This includes ADDA by four-time Michelin Star Chef Manjunath Mural and two Michelin Star Bo Innovation by Chef Alvin Leung in Hong Kong.

Also Read: ‘Global demand for plant-based meat products will be driven mostly by flexitarians: Next Gen’s Andre Menezes

Developed by Next Gen CTO John Seegers in collaboration with chefs and for chefs, the first TiNDLE product TiNDLE Thy, brings the taste and versatility of chicken. Chefs can use TiNDLE Thy to prepare dishes in multiple culinary applications, and for many kinds of cuisines: Western, Chinese, Indian, Middle Eastern and more.

The global plant-based protein segment is expected to reach US$85 billion by 2030, according to UBS. Global investment in food technology for the first three quarters of 2020 was US$8.37 billion, beating the US$7 billion raised in 2019.

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Image Credit: Next Gen Foods

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The Indonesian Venture Capital landscape has evolved dramatically in the past ten years, creating enormous opportunities. In a podcast with IndoTekno’s Alan Hellawell  I shared 15 years of my experience in technology entrepreneurship and venture investment from China and Indonesia’s markets.

So much has changed in the Indonesian VC ecosystem since I first started working on a fund in 2014. From an investor’s perspective, among the most apparent challenges previously was finding entrepreneurial talent and significant downstream funding risk.

But back then we were pioneering and starting venture capital as an asset class in Indonesia along with several other players in the market.

However, entrepreneurs faced bigger challenges than just securing funding. The entire market for the online space, payment and logistics infrastructure was still very nascent. Smartphone capabilities were also far from where they are now, and of course, without the penetration of Gojek, Grab, and Shopee, consumer confidence was much lower.

Just seven years on, things have entirely changed. The majority of consumers do not think twice about buying online given the prevalence of online shopping apps.

In addition, the hardware used in smartphones is far better, including all the supporting infrastructure for e-commerce, payments, and logistics.

When it comes to the talent ecosystem, we’ve also seen extensive recycling of talent, not just promising returnees; but also early team members who have graduated from Tokopedia, Gojek, Grab, Shopee and decided to start their own businesses. And this has fuelled the growth of new companies in the ecosystem.

Also Read: India’s first accelerator and VC fund gears up for its maiden demo day series

Now, while Indonesia still is some ways away from receiving the capital attention that a market like India has received; nonetheless, we’ve seen multiple funds raised, successive funds, as well as top-tier global investors plugging this gap in both Series B and Series C and onwards.

So, the environment and ecosystem investing in venture businesses are far more mature than several years ago.

Focus on growth over monetisation

When looking at Indonesia, VC cites many superlatives about how significant Indonesia’s potential is as the fourth most populous country in the world.

However, the question that then arises is whether this large market can be monetised?

For me, it’s important to understand that while tech companies often take time to monetise, they are often disrupting traditional incumbents through their better and more efficient models. So, the potential revenue cake or monetisation potential can sometimes be seen in their conventional counterparts.

If you want to understand in the future how big that pie is and how big these technology companies can become, you can look at some of the traditional incumbents they are seeking to disrupt.

For example in the banking industry, BCA is one of the most valuable businesses in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, if we look at the consumer category (FMCG), there are companies such as Indofood or Gudang Garam. These companies are among the largest publicly listed companies worth multibillion dollars.

And so we can see from the traditional counterparts, whether we’re tackling fintech or e-commerce, that it is possible to build companies of this size.

Also Read: BRI Agro CEO Kaspar Situmorang: Why tapping into the ecosystem is key to a digital bank’s success

However, like China, and many other markets, at the early stages of many technology-enabled businesses, their focus is on adoption and growth instead of monetisation.

Most companies, certainly prior to Series C businesses, are much more focused on their growth trajectory than monetisation.

The most promising investment opportunities

One sector that we have a vast amount of confidence in is MSMEs or micro, small and medium enterprises. However, it’s pretty hard to drive meaningful subscription revenue from these small-medium enterprises on a SaaS (software-as-a-service) basis from what we’ve seen so far.

And because of their small size, they also have a low willingness to pay for software or tools that they may be using. So this is one area that’s yet to see some solid monetisation.

If we talk about how big this market is based on reports, there are over 63M MSMEs in Indonesia that employ over 97 per cent of working adults.

Clearly, there is a massive market here as well as multiple ways of monetising in the future, in particular through the quality collection of data to provide financial services to the unbanked and underbanked.

Comparison between Indonesia and China

There are several similarities when talking about the Indonesian and Chinese markets. For example, China is a large, homogeneous market enabling massive scaling of technology-enabled businesses. This is the reason why we focus on Indonesia, not ASEAN or SEA.

We believe that founders in this region should start through building in the single largest market in SEA and not think regionally too early. Almost all of Indonesia’s billion dollar tech companies focus exclusively on the Indonesian market.

Also Read: Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam have a huge potential in APAC for neobank growth

The second thing, as we’ve seen in China, there’s themassive importance of localisation. Even though we’re identifying disruptive; proven disruptive business models that we see in markets, such as India or China; it’s not a simple copy-paste.

On the other hand, there are some clear differences. For example, in China, certain industries are highly regulated such as search and social media. Hence in China can see the emergence of companies such as Baidu and Tencent.

But in Indonesia, this is not possible because of the open market. So you’ve seen the dominance of Facebook, TikTok, and global players take dominant market share in these areas.

The second thing is the role of government. The Indonesian government has worked in a very inclusive and proactive manner to support the growth of the digital economy.

We can see this very clearly in terms of how the Indonesian government has approached regulation in fintech compared to how it happened in China.

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