Mynt, a Philippines-based fintech platform offering mobile payments and business loans, announced today it has raised over US$175 million in fresh capital from ASP Philippines.

ASP is a Limited Partnership fund managed by Bow Wave Capital Management, a Private Equity fund with a mandate to invest in strategic partners and investments of Ant Financial and Alibaba Group.

The new funds will go towards growing its product offerings to “further spur” the growth of financial inclusion and digitisation of payments and financial services in the Philippines.

The financing was raised in multiple tranches, with the post-money valuation of the final tranches reaching close to US$1 billion.

Also Read: Top 5 fintech predictions that will take over the world in 2021

Founded in 2015 as a partnership between Philippines’s largest telco Globe Telecom, locally-listed conglomerate Ayala Corporation, and Ant Financial, Mynt operates two fintech companies — GCash, a mobile payments service, and Fuse, a lending platform for Filipinos to get micro and business loans.

“The pandemic has acted as a catalyst in highlighting the importance of digital finance in society today and with this investment from Bow Wave, we look forward to further living out our vision of finance for all, enabling democratised access to payment and financial services to every Filipino,” said Martha Sazon, President and CEO of Mynt.

“Mynt has made great strides in the fintech space in the Philippines. Recognising this fact and our shared values, Bow Wave supports the vision of Mynt to provide finance for all Filipinos,” remarked Itai Lemberger, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Bow Wave.

As more and more Filipinos turn to digital services, GCash claimed it recorded a gross transaction value of over Php1 trillion (US$20.8 billion) in 2020, spurred by services like online payments, bank cash-in and sending money.

Also Read: GCash and Qwikwire partner to innovate real estate industry in Philippines

GCash shared it has reached over 33 million Filipinos with digital financial tools and services through its mobile wallet, using it for a variety of services including opening deposit accounts and acquiring insurance products.

“We are further encouraged by the fact that Mynt’s momentum has continued, even as the country moved out of quarantine restrictions, suggesting a fundamental shift in our customers’ behaviour towards a cashless lifestyle. We are confident in Mynt’s future prospects as a unicorn in the Philippines,” opined Ernest L. Cu, Chairman of the Board of Mynt.

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Image Credit: Mynt

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As we head into the new year, one question remains at the top of everyone’s minds: what will the future workplace look like?

Having lived through the biggest remote working experiment in history, many companies are now well-equipped to accommodate telecommuting arrangements.

However, as the number of COVID-19 community cases continues to remain at zero in Singapore, we see safety measures being relaxed and more people allowed back into the office. This poses yet another challenge for companies as they now need to adapt to a hybrid workforce, where only half of employees are working in the office, while the other half work from home.

For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), these frequent changes can dampen their productivity and efficiency. Compared to their larger multinational counterparts, SMEs have fewer resources, and oftentimes, employees need to wear multiple hats.

For instance, it’s not uncommon to find an administrative clerk doubling up as an office manager due to limitations in manpower. Thus, these frequent changes in workplace regulations can disrupt their daily duties, causing a dip in productivity and efficiency.

Moreover, through working with our clients and staff, we noticed that having the right digital tools is not enough to keep companies nimble and quick to adapt to today’s ever-changing work environment. Instead, there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the business operates.

To help SMEs tide through the crisis, we have found three proven business methodologies that SMEs can implement to stay leaner, operate at faster speeds, and be more agile. These methods include Parkinson’s Law, Kanban Board and the Agile Method.

Parkinson’s law

According to Parkinson’s Law, any given task requires as much time as it is permitted. Simply put, if you’re given two weeks to complete an assignment, you’ll most likely take the full two weeks to finish it, even though it could’ve been done in five days.

Now, imagine the amount of time you could have saved if the deadline was reduced by half! Thus, Parkinson’s law forces leaders to question how they set their deadlines and rethink how to best manage projects.

There are many ways SMEs can implement Parkinson’s Law in their business methodology. For starters, try cutting all allotted time for tasks and meetings by 50 per cent. Chances are you’ll find that many of these tasks can be accomplished in half the time.

Also read: 7 ways to increase productivity at work

However, if you find that the new deadline is too short, you can always extend it as you see fit. The key here is to experiment in searching for the optimal deadline times.

Parkinson’s law is especially relevant in today’s hybrid workforce, where physical oversight is virtually impossible. Leaders can’t stand over the shoulders of a team member as tasks are being performed, and hence implementing Parkinson’s Law can help to reduce time wasted on tasks.

Kanban Board

Kanban has slowly but surely become one of the most popular methodologies in modern business. This is because Kanban is a very visually representative methodology, requiring a big board either physically or digitally.

At its core, Kanban starts with three columns labelled “requested”, “doing”, and “done”. Each card is passed through the columns as it gets completed, but the kicker is the limit for each column. This forces teams to address problems if a card is stuck in “doing” for too long, creating a bottleneck for the next series of “requested” cards.

Many of today’s most popular productivity applications such as Lark have Kanban capabilities built-in, allowing users to quickly implement this methodology on a company-wide scale, departmental level or even on an individual level.

The Kanban is an effective method to help you understand issues your organisation may have with existing processes. The visual nature of Kanban means that you will naturally recognise bottlenecks when you see a column where tasks arrive faster than they leave and allow you to take appropriate steps to deal with the issue.

Furthermore, the strict work-in-progress limits imposed by the Kanban Board also push you to focus on completing existing tasks before taking on more.

Agile method

The last methodology is the agile method, which emphasises delivering products or outcomes in small increments. This incremental delivery comes with many advantages, as it allows teams to bring new products to the market faster, incorporate feedback along the way, and easily experiment with new features.

With the agile method, teams are also encouraged to continually test out new ways to see what does and does not work. This makes the agile method suitable for an environment where change is constant, such as in a post COVID-19 world, and helps teams remain nimble and adapt quickly.

Also read: How to manage energy and improve your productivity

While startups and computer software companies would be most familiar with this method, it’s starting to gain popularity in other industries as well. SMEs can also stand to benefit from the agile method, as its incremental approach allows companies to pivot quickly according to changes in the environment or market.

Overall, these three methodologies can be adapted and scaled depending on the size of the company. However, it’s crucial to note that above all, embracing change is key in today’s uncertain world. Whether that change stems from adopting one of these methodologies or from one of the dozens across the ecosystem, the process differs from business to business.

Finally, while we may not be able to predict how the future of workplace looks like, one thing is for certain: the way we work and collaborate has changed and will never go back to exactly how it was.

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When Ox Street started, I had a co-founder for about a month — a talented and experienced product manager, who was going to take care of the tech side of things.

Unfortunately, he got an ‘offer he couldn’t refuse’ from his employer and didn’t follow through. That left me as the sole founder, in charge of finding engineers and leading the development of our product.

No problem! I thought my experience with project management and team management in general, as well as my obsession with structure and clear communication, left me well prepared. I was squarely at the peak of “Mt. Stupid”.

We ended up with a product that wasn’t ready for launch, and at the end of October 2019, I made the hard decision to launch with a Shopify storefront and an elaborate set of Google sheets and Google forms to manage our supply side. Even at that stage, I thought we were only about four weeks away from launching ‘the real thing’.

Well, as I crashed down into the “valley of despair”, we stayed about four-six weeks away from launch until we finally switched over to our own product in May 2020 — seven months later than planned.

It’s not easy to build a marketplace from scratch, it turns out, and product management is a serious job that requires both deep and broad knowledge, as well as both creativity and structured thinking.

Currently, we are shipping a daily release on oxstreet.com, and we are the only regional sneakers marketplace with mobile apps.

With our own product giving us full control over the UX for both sellers and buyers, we finally started to get traction over the past six months, and now we are processing over 5x as many orders as in our peak month on Shopify, with less than a third of the marketing spend. To be honest, I really love the PM job, and I do believe I have started my long journey up the “slope of enlightenment”.

There are endless learnings ahead, but the journey from complete zero to halfway adequate in managing a product, not to mention the satisfaction of shipping a working marketplace across three platforms, has been for my personal journey the most enlightening, frustrating and educating experience of 2020.

There is a fundamental ‘technical co-founder problem’

So much has been written about this already I’m not going to add much to it. If you want to launch a high quality product fast and it can’t be off-the-shelf, you need a technical co-founder, who is aligned with the vision and can and will code the first version themselves.

Also read: How Shopback customers help drive the company’s product development journey

This is almost impossible to find on-demand for a business founder for many reasons. My summary is: there are #1) way fewer technical co-founders around compared to business co-founders, and #2) they have their own ideas to build rather than someone else’s.

Find engineers who will talk to you

At the start, we had engineers who were unable or unwilling to explain what was really going on. After missing deadline after deadline as a founder, you crave clarity and some agency. I have rarely felt so helpless as when an engineer told me to “just trust him that he would get it done” (he didn’t).

Later, I found a great engineer who would actually just show me in the code what the problems were. That was a game changer. I finally became aware of the size and scope of the issues we had with some of our core backend services, and it enabled me to become part of the solution instead of an adversary.

Communication is probably the product manager’s most core job, but it starts with hiring engineers who communicate back.

The wireframes are wrong, the designs are wrong, and the spec is wrong

If you are the Product Owner, in the sense that you own the user stories and the vision and acceptance criteria for the product, you must really own the product. One of the key things I did wrong at the start was specifying the user stories and acceptance criteria, and then just leaving it to the engineers. That is not enough.

It takes constant alignment to make sure everyone really understands the user stories and what is expected. Also, you need to put in the work to find out where and how the specs are wrong and which cases have been forgotten.

Git Flow, Github Flow, branching, merging and shipping

Remember that as kid when you read Donald Duck, you thought quicksand would be a serious danger throughout your life? Shipping and managing merge conflicts was my quicksand, and there was a time in May/June where I was super freaked-out about it.

But every real PM I spoke with considered this something that is not even really in the scope of the PM job. They were right. It did not turn out to be a problem.

Why I thought it was going to be a massive issue is because at the time just before release, we had a develop branch that was often unstable, because many different elements were still in flux. Also, there were so many dependencies between our supposedly ‘micro services’ that often a small change would break all kinds of things all over the app.

After we had a fully featured, relatively stable version of the code, it turns out our develop branch is actually stable most of the time, and since we release (almost) daily, our releases are small and conflicts therefore pretty unlikely.

2021

I plan to continue spending 50 per cent or more on product. One of the benefits of my quantitative background is my obsession with data and measuring stuff.

By measuring and tracking conversion through our checkout funnel and making improvements based on that data, we have more than doubled our conversion rate since June. Looking to the future, there has rarely been a more exciting time to have an early-stage consumer app in the market.

Also read: Founders Series: Data driven product development

Ox Street is a leading player in one of the most rapidly growing, passion-driven product categories. And placed squarely in the centre of the great verticalisation/unbundling/re-bundling that is currently happening in online commerce. We need to follow the market, but also transition into shaping our future and defining our space ourselves. Exciting times ahead and we have lots of stuff planned for January.

Resources for product management

This is a shortlist of my personal key sources of learning. I hope others will benefit as much as I have from these:

• Lenny’s Newsletter: Without a doubt one of the best monthly subscriptions I gladly pay for. This is not just a newsletter providing one person’s opinion, but often incorporates knowledge from some of the best companies in the world. One of the best posts is free and you can find it behind the link above.
• This git guide: I actually did learn to check out, modify and merge branches on github. It is really not that hard, and it helped me a lot to understand how it all works.
• Intercom product blog: Clear, detailed, actionable. Just great deep content on how to ship a product.
• The Mom Test: I would (and have been) recommending this book to everyone who wants to learn to ask better questions and avoid inadvertently asking really bad ones. Absolutely brilliant and I wish I had discovered it earlier.
• My team, advisors, investors and friends: In particular Khoa for coming on-board and knocking it out of the park on engineering, Puli and Yan for helping with interviewing, Karthik, Honey, Mike, Andrew, Gibson, Juan, and so many others for answering my dumb questions and pointing my in the right direction.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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Nusantics, an Indonesian genomics technology startup, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding, led by East Ventures.

The money will be used to further enhance its R&D capability to improve its microbiome analysis and medical diagnostic kits.

Additionally, Nusantics has roped in Triawan Munaf, a Venture Advisor at East Ventures, as its Commissioner. A former Indonesian cabinet member under President Jokowi, Munaf is currently President Commissioner of flag carrier Garuda Indonesia.

The funding news comes less than a year after East Ventures led the biotech startup’s seed funding round. The VC firm said the fresh financing is a result of the “strong growth” and “swift response” by Nusantics to disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nusantics was started 2019 with the ever growing belief in the importance of microbiome balance in life, that is focused in providing sustainable solutions by integrating science and nature​. ​

Despite its core focus on microbiome research, the biotech startup repurposed its capability to develop COVID-19 test kits that can detect mutations of the coronavirus, including the recent UK strain.

The firm said it has partnered with state-owned biotech firm Bio Farma to produce up to three million test kits per month. First-generation test kits were also distributed to 19 provinces across Indonesia as part of the Pasti Bisa movement, a collaborative effort by East Ventures to stem the rise of the virus-19 cases in Indonesia.

Also Read: Startup of the Month, December: Biopharma company Krosslinker

Plans are underway to develop a third-generation test kit that can detect the coronavirus through salivary samples.

“We plan to develop a new test kit that can detect the COVID-19 virus in a salivary sample. This will be more efficient, less painful for users, and safer for medical practitioners. Saliva will also make infectious and less-infectious detection possible,” shared Revata Utama, CTO of Nusantics.

Last year, the startup opened Nusantics Hub in Jakarta, which it claims is the first skin microbiome laboratory in the archipelago that provides testing and consulting services for skin microbiome balance treatment.

“Indonesia’s rich biodiversity makes it the ‘world’s pharmacy’. We must protect the future of our future generations by preserving this biodiverse wealth and preventing exploitation for other interests that do not benefit us as a nation. This underlines the urgency to support the growth of startups like Nusantics, who possess expertise in this preservation,” Munaf remarked.

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Image Credit: Nusantics

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Poema Global Holdings, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) focusing on tech firms in Asia and Europe, has announced it has raised US$300 million in its IPO on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

The capital stems from pricing 30 million units at US$10 each, with each unit consisting of one share of common stock and one-half of a warrant, redeemable at US$11.50. The company offered five million more units than anticipated.

The units is listed on the NASDAQ Capital Market and is traded under the ticker symbol “PPGHU” beginning January 6, 2021.

The offering is expected to close on January 8, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Led by Emmanuel DeSousa and Joaquin Rodriguez Torres, Co-founders and Managing Partners of Princeville Capital, the SPAC intends to focus on highly-scalable tech companies with high growth rates and sound unit economics across Asia and Europe.

Princeville Capital is a San Francisco-based venture investment firm founded in 2017. With offices in Berlin and Hong Kong, the firm has over US$1 billion in capital under management and 13 active portfolio companies.

Also Read: David Gowdey of Jungle Ventures: Why we will see an IPO from SEA in the next 12-18 months

As per Investopedia, SPAC is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO to acquire an existing company. They are also known as blank-check companies.

While the concept has been around in the market for many years and is used as a mechanism to bring companies public in the US, it has been relatively new to Asia, where companies are yet to jump on the SPAC bandwagon.

This news comes amidst the growing popularity of SPACs as an option to go public for startups within the region.

“A SPAC is one of the options we are evaluating given we have been approached by a few,” Traveloka President Henry Hendrawan said in a statement in response to a Reuters report that it was evaluating a merger with a SPAC as a possible listing option.

Also Read: Traveloka considers SPAC option as it plans to go public

Earlier, Bridgetown 2 Holdings, a SPAC targeting internet economy companies in Southeast Asia and backed by billionaires Peter Thiel and Richard Li, announced last month that it was seeking to raise US$200 million in an IPO in the US.

In an interview with e27, experts commented that the SPAC model that the company is implementing can be “an alternative” way to fundraise for startups in SEA.

“Having seen the more than 100 SPACs emerge in North America earlier in 2020, we are not surprised to see this new SPAC coming out to focus on Southeast Asia. We welcome this initiative, which will provide an alternative path to liquidity and access to public markets for one or more rising tech, financial services or media company in the region,” said Sanjay Zimmermann, Senior Associate at White Star Capital.

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gojek in advanced talks with Tokopedia for a US$18B merger; They’ve signed a detailed term-sheet to conduct due diligence of each other’s business; gojek and Tokopedia have considered a potential merger since 2018, but discussions accelerated after deal talks between gojek and Grab reached an impasse. More here

gojek, Tokopedia make not-so-strange bedfellows as they pursue union; Having an e-commerce biz in its portfolio would broaden gojek’s appeal to public market investors; For Tokopedia, a merger would help command a higher valuation in the capital markets and pose stronger competition to Shopee; The combined entity spanning ride-hailing, payments, e-commerce, and food delivery could raise larger pools of capital at faster pace in the public markets. More here

GoBear shuts down amidst decreased demand for its financial products, services; To date, the startup has raised US$97M from investors such as Walvis Participaties and Aegon; Last May, it acquired digital lending platform AsiaKredit; As of May 2020, GoBear had 100+ commercial partners and its services were used by over 55M people. More here

Conglomerate Malaysian United Industries (MUI) to step up focus on startup investments; It created an early-stage VC vehicle Pan Malaysia Ventures in Aug 2020; MUI aims to invest in tech or tech-enabled businesses at the seed or Series A stage, primarily in Malaysia, and also across SEA; It has no immediate plans of raising from external investors as it will invest from its balance sheet. More here

India witnesses a string of startups joining unicorn club; As per data compiled by Venture Intelligence, Pine Labs, Nykaa, Unacademy, Razorpay and Postman have joined the club; 2020 also brought the first unicorns from the Indian social media and content space: Glance and Dailyhunt; India is expected to be home to 60K-62K startups by 2025, including 100 unicorns. More here

Indonesian robo-advisory platform Bibit snags US$30M; Investors are Sequoia India, East Ventures, EV Growth, 500 Startups; In 2020, the company claims to have added 1M+ first-time investors; As per a report, the number of retail investors in the country grew by 56% y-o-y in 2020, mainly driven by millennials. More here

Europe- and Asia-focused SPAC Poema Global raised US$300M in US IPO; Peoma plans to list on NASDAQ; The SPAC seeks to complete business combinations with firms that have validated technologies and attractive unit economics, with a particular focus on Europe and Asia. More here

Genomics tech startup Nusantics raises Series A led by East Ventures; The Indonesian firm will use the funding to continue to innovate in the field of microbiome analysis and medical diagnostic kits; The company is currently developing its third-generation COVID-19 PCR test kit that can detect SARS-CoV-2 in a salivary sample. More here

Indonesian edutech company Zenius raises pre-Series B; Investors include Alpha JWC, Openspace, Northstar, BeeNext; The company offers an online platform focusing on developing critical thinking and scientific reasoning; A year ago, it secured US$20M Series A from Northstar. More here

Singaporeans working for top e-commerce firms are the most unsatisfied in SEA despite higher salaries, finds study; The iPrice study also finds that that only 31% of women occupy C-level roles within e-commerce companies in the region; Overall, there is a 60-40 disparity between men and women when it comes to being in positions of power. More here

Bullish VCs spot big promise in Vietnam’s e-logistics; Logistics is in its preparatory phase with a lot of untapped potential and will explode by 2022, according to Do Ventures’s Vy Le; Given there is an increasing demand in domestic consumption for foreign goods, both first-mile and last-mile activities in Vietnam are expected to become more vibrant. More here

Heritas Capital aims to hit initial close of US$30M fund II in H1 2021; HVF II aims to invest in up to 15 seed and Series A startups in sectors ranging from foodtech to edutech across Asia; The VC firm recently led a US$3M Series A+ in Indonesian edutech Cakap. More here

Singapore emerges as foodtech hub, thanks to state support; The city-state has positioned foodtech as a key industry deserving of support from state entities from the R&D stage all the way to market entry and sales; It has strong IP rights protection and a highly skilled talent pool. More here

Singapore-based AI food ingredient analysis platform ProfilePrints secures 7-figure pre-Series A; Investors include SEEDS Capital, Glocalink, Leave-a-Nest, BP de Silva Group; ProfilePrints allows food growers, collectors, wholesalers, manufacturers and retailers to predict quality profiles without human intervention or destroying the sample. More here

Malaysian lifestyle social commerce platform Poptron raises US$1M from a NASDAQ-listed co.; It’s planning to raise an additional US$375K via pitchIN; Poptron connects microbrands selling high-quality, natural and eco-friendly products or artisanal goods with like-minded global users. More here

Top 5 fintech predictions that will take over the world in 2021; Digital banking is gaining immense popularity; The main reason for this evolution is that it provides customer due diligence and also eliminates tedious verification processes based on paperwork and visiting banks physically. More here

Vietnam attracts global investment in tech-driven businesses; With growing interest, sci-tech and ICT have continued to be among the most attractive sectors to international investors and businesses in Vietnam in 2020, despite the pandemic; The country’s total registered FDI in sci-tech and ICT hit about US$1.25B in the first 11 months of 2020. More here

How blockchain can help combat ongoing fraud in the Halal food industry in SEA; By using blockchain, the food industry can now ensure that the food sold is traceable back to the source; Food fraud typically involves mislabeling or using fake labels, as in the case of the Malaysian Halal meat scandal. More here

Tribecar partners with Carro, NTUC Income to launch usage-based motor insurance in S’pore; Unlike conventional fixed costs auto insurance premiums, usage-based insurance charges are tied to the vehicle’s mileage, location and timing consumption; Tribecar has adopted this insurance programme, allowing it to provide car-sharing rentals from US$0.38 per hour. More here

Digital trends that will transform SEA businesses in 2021; Virtual onboarding and training of staff, interacting and working with customers remotely, and enabling digital communications for customers and stakeholders will be critical. More here

Vietnam’s fintech forecast to be robust this year, driven by the creation of regulatory sandbox; The strong development of fintech in Vietnam was driven by the rapid growth of e-commerce platforms and the government’s efforts to accelerate digital transformation and cashless payments to cope with the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. More here

The new ‘self-service’ era: where B2B selling is headed in 2021; B2B buyers have come to crave the ‘Amazon-like’ experience they’ve become accustomed to in their personal lives; Sellers need to make info around product details and purchasing methods clear right on their e-commerce platform to provide a seamless shopping experience. More here

Singapore-New Zealand digital economy partnership takes effect; It allows companies in both countries to conduct biz with greater efficiency, increased trust, reduced costs or digital barriers; It will also facilitate cooperation among SMEs, with capacity-building efforts and dialogues held to promote info sharing and exchange. More here

Temasek-backed ABC World Asia leads Series C round in Indian farm-tech startup CropIn; Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan’s family office and UK’s CDC Group also joined; The AI startup provides SaaS products to farms and development organisations globally to improve predictability, efficiency and sustainability of crops; CropIn has raised $33.1 million so far. More here

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We all are accommodated with fintech in this modern era of digitisation. The trend is rising especially after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also, we face rapid fintech transformations on a daily basis and virtual cards, ATMs, mobile transactions and digital wallets are becoming a new normal. Cutting-edge technologies claim that the fintech horizon is expanding more rapidly than ever in the upcoming future.  

The majority of the businesses faced a downfall when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Only a few of them were smart enough that somehow successfully showed an upward trend and out of them, one was the fintech industry.

Both businesses and customers start utilising contactless payment methods to avoid physical contact with each other. According to a study, there was 72 per cent of evident usage of fintech apps in Europe, especially since the occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Following are the top 5 predictions that will take over the world especially in 2021 and later upcoming years. 

Digital banking

Virtual banking services are expanding in the industry of digital banking. Those services include contactless MasterCard, P2P transfer and international remittance with free transaction fees and also with the ability to buy various cryptocurrencies such as ethereum and bitcoin.  

In such a short time period, digital banking gained immense popularity. The main reason for this evolution is that it provides customer due diligence and also eliminates tedious verification processes based on paperwork and visiting banks physically.

According to a report, it was a 36 per cent conversion rate from physical visitors to online bank users from the year 2017 to the year 2022. In 2021, a huge surge can be seen in digital-only banks and this surge will significantly drop the number of physical bank visitors.  

Blockchain

According to Business Insider Intelligence, around 48 per cent of the bank representatives think that there’s a great impact of blockchain technology on financial infrastructure.

The revolution in the fintech industry is because of innovative and rapidly evolving blockchain technology. Transactions can be carried out in a secure and safe manner with the help of this cutting-edge technology. 

Blockchain technology also minimised centralised procedures of online transactions. This technology also ensured customer due diligence and enhanced risk assessment. Also, the customers’ information is secured end-to-end.

Also read: 3 key trends defining the hottest startup sector in Asia: Fintech

Monetary transactions are enabled by many peer-to-peer (P2P) transaction platforms and this technology is invoked in a wide range of financial sectors to deter fraud, reduce expenses, and enhance internal procedures. 

Biometric security systems

Mobile banking, ATMs and e-wallets are becoming a new normal. Integration of biometric security systems with the fintech industry ensures that everything is just one fingertip away. Massive security-related issues are solved by incorporating biometric authentication services in financial infrastructure to control rapidly evolving cyber crimes.

It is mandatory for organisations that involve financial transactions to incorporate all the possible security measures. Keeping in mind threats in cyberspace, biometric identification technology is playing a crucial role to deter fraud.

In the upcoming years, more advancements in AI-based biometric identification systems can be seen to take security to the next level, providing an enhanced customer experience.

According to a study, identity verification solutions that involve physical contact are facing unpopularity. Contactless solutions of biometric systems will take over touch-based fingerprints in the near future.   

AI/ML

Customer identification plays a crucial role in keeping in mind the immense rate of fraudulent activities and illicit money transactions. Thankfully, Artificial Intelligence has managed the increasing rate of cyber crimes and also plays a vital role in enhancing the fintech industry.

It is predicted that by the year 2030, financial transaction and operational expenses will be reduced by 23 per cent because of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Advanced AI and Machine Learning algorithms have made the customer repository in financial infrastructure more accurate and have made the data recording process efficient.

Banks and sectors that involve financial transactions are investing a large amount for incorporating AI and ML-based technological advancements for customer due diligence, and for incorporating cutting-edge technology for customer service such as chatbots, etc.   

RegTech

The advent of technology has risen the risks of fraudulent activities such as money laundering, cyber attacks, data breaches, etc. Regulatory technology, abbreviated as RegTech, is the technology that is used to manage regulatory processes in financial infrastructure.

RegTech technology involves the following main functionalities: monitoring, reporting and compliance. Demand for cloud-based platforms will increase in 2021 to promote a contactless future, especially in COVID-19. 

RegTech is basically a more advanced form of fintech technology, invoked by higher authorities into financial institutions. RegTech empowers technologies with advanced security features to deter fraud and illicit money transactions.

RegTech, in compliance with ML and Big Data, can fight a great battle against data breaches, protects customers and ensures financial stability. 

The rising tide of AI is becoming immense as we move on to 2021. This massive innovation is leading use towards an unpredictable future of social upheaval. Contactless futures are becoming a new normal keeping in view an increasing number of coronavirus patients.  

Also read: Here is the e27 Malaysia Fintech Ecosystem Report 2019

The purpose of advancements in fintech trends is the transparent relationship between business and customer, enhanced customer experience, and risk assessment using biometric solutions, KYC/AML compliance, and digital identity verification.

Integration of fintech innovations with blockchain technology is gaining tremendous transaction in the upcoming era of digitisation. Further disruption can be seen in 2021 and upcoming years in financial infrastructure, especially in the digital banking sector. 

If you are looking for online transaction solutions, make sure that you integrate yourself with such a financial sector that involves enhanced fintech solutions, advanced risk assessment technologies, and also which presume simple, secure and convenient management of financial transactions. 

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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Zenius, an Indonesia-based edutech company focusing on developing critical thinking and scientific reasoning, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount in pre-Series B investment.

The money came from new investors such as Alpha JWC Ventures and Openspace Ventures and existing backers, including Northstar Group, Kinesys and BeeNext.

Zenius plans to use the funds to further develop its platform to “meet the growing customer demand”.

The latest round comes less than a year after it secured US$20 million in Series A from Northstar in February 2020.

Also Read: Why digital capabilities aren’t fully deployed in the education sector

Founded in 2004 by Sabda PS and Medy Suharta, Zenius has developed  a mobile app offering a series of products across different verticals. The app focuses on K12 students and claims to have over 90,000 concept videos and more than a hundred thousand practice questions.

Zenius claimed it experienced strong growth in 2020 with revenues increasing over 70 per cent in the second half of the year, compared to the same period in 2019. User growth increased by over 10X from its launch of its live classes in March 2020, with user retention rate at over 90 per cent.

“Zenius has demonstrated over a decade of track record in proven learning outcomes while reinventing the core offering as new mediums have emerged. We believe its proven track record will be a key differentiating factor in the rapidly evolving education landscape and we hope that the fresh round of funding will propel its growth further,” said Ian Sikora, Director at Openspace Ventures.

Also Read: Zenius raises US$20M from Northstar

“In line with our purpose of bringing Indonesia’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) competence to the global level, we continue to work around the clock to develop new features that will help students to get the best learning outcomes through our technology,” added Rohan Monga, Zenius CEO since 2019 and previously COO of gojek.

The edutech startup offered most of its services for free during the first half of 2020 to support the Indonesian government’s learn-from-home initiatives during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Image Credit: Zenius

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Indonesia-based digital investment platform Bibit has raised US$30 million in fresh funding to expand its robo-advisory platform and other services.

Sequoia Capital India joined existing investors East Ventures, EV Growth and 500 Startups in the round.

Launched in 2019, Bitbit’s robo-advisory platform enables users to build customised portfolios based on their risk profiles and investment goals. It was originally launched as Stockbit, a platform for investment news and for investors to share strategies in real-time, before rebranding and pivoting to provide automated investment services.

In a statement released by Bibit, CEO Sigit Kouwagam said the startup has experienced a high growth rate since its launch, with more than a million first-time investors joining in 2020.

Also Read: How to prep the future workforce for a tech-first financial sector

With 90 per cent of Bibit users being millennials and new investors, Kouwagam remarked the growth is a consequence of increased financial literacy and a renewed focus on personal finance management among the younger generation.

Data from Indonesia Stock Exchange and Central Custodian showed that the number of retail investors in the country grew by 56 per cent year-on-year in 2020, with growth mainly driven by millennials, who accounted for 92 per cent of new investors.

“Consumers across the world are moving their savings from low-yielding assets like gold and real estate to higher-yielding financial products,” said Rohot Agarwal, VP of Sequoia India.

“In Indonesia, Bibit has become the most trusted platform for millions of consumers with its well-balanced portfolio that offers the best risk-adjusted returns,” he added.

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Image Credit: Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash

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Covid-19 has accelerated digitalisation for companies across the globe, forcing many to adapt to a remote workspace during periods of lockdown. Therefore it makes sense that certain sectors and businesses, whose remote teams are working across time zones, have fared much better than their traditional counterparts. Consumer priorities have shifted, along with the way we interact with the world. As a result, global supply chains have slowed down, while the use of virtual services has increased exponentially.

The economic effect of Covid-19 hit traditional sectors the hardest. Brick-and-mortar stores have shuttered, restaurants have turned into food delivery hubs, and airlines have gone bankrupt. As we shift towards more permanent remote work and online consumption, agile startups that have been able to adjust to these trends can thrive and investors should encourage these types of companies in their portfolios.

Also read: ProfilePrint’s AI tool predicts quality profile of a food sample “within seconds”, raises funding

Economic crises breed winners and losers, and 2020 has expanded the gap between both. As the Covid-19 pandemic is one of the world’s largest economic crises ever, digitalisation efforts have also amplified. For example, tech companies that cater to remote needs, such as e-commerce, video conferencing software, and delivery, have grown significantly over the past year. As a testament to this, Zoom’s market valuation exceeded Exxon Mobil’s US $138 billion price tag at the end of October 2020.

Many innovative companies became competitive because of their flexible working arrangements and high level of digitisation. Moreover, rather than traditional office hierarchies, they operate via project-based teams of individuals located in various time zones. This may be unusual for private equity companies to embody, but in setting the example for their portfolio companies, they might also find efficiencies in modernization.

Globalization 4.0

The Covid-19 pandemic has a silver lining; it normalised location-independent forms of work to allow employees to log in and get to work, wherever they are based. In other words, it is the perfect moment to build a global team. Hiring across borders presents an opportunity to bridge gaps in the market by connecting professionals with specific skill sets to the consumers who demand their service or product. Even without physical travel, globalization will continue through international networks formed by apps like Slack, Notion, and Microsoft Teams, which increasingly define the virtual workspace.

Also read: Top 5 fintech predictions that will take over the world in 2021

Dropbox announced it was going virtual-first in early October and has since wholly embraced this new model as the future of work. Remote work has become the primary experience for all Dropbox employees, along with non-linear workdays where collaboration hours overlap between time zones instead of following the standard 9 am-5 pm workday schedule.

Exemplified by Dropbox and many innovative brands, the pandemic spurred a new kind of globalization that is not based on the flow of goods across borders, but on the flow of data. Going global will help VCs and PE firms adopt a more hands-on approach to running their portfolio companies — ultimately increasing the likelihood that their investments will prove successful in a post-Covid environment.

New tools, new normal

A passive approach to managing portfolios remotely limits portfolio companies’ opportunity to capitalise on the investing fund’s expertise. Thankfully, a new set of tools has made it easier for PE firms and VCs to adopt a more hands-on approach.

The normalisation of virtual conferencing means that firms can more easily bridge the gap between their portfolio companies and compliant, trusted partners in their network. As advisors with a collective wealth of experience in scaling companies, increased investor involvement at a strategic level tends to benefit portfolio companies and videoconference software has made collaboration easier than ever.

Another tool available to investors is a partnership with a global Employer of Record (EOR), which brings a geographically dispersed talent pool under one single, locally compliant payroll. By teaming up with an EOR like Globalization Partners, investors can remove the administrative burdens associated with hiring, onboarding, and payroll from their portfolio company’s shoulders and let them focus on growing their business. Thanks to its proprietary cloud-based solution coupled with the company’s unmatched legal and tax expertise, Globalization Partners facilitates global hiring, and provides technology to help the employer efficiently manage their global workforce.

Saving costs while going global

Firms pursuing international M&A transactions traditionally face a unique blend of challenges. Sellers may face setbacks during cross-border employee transfers due to the complexities of international regulations, while buyers face legal issues like benefits matching and disbursing salaries through foreign banks. Resolving these issues can be a drain on financial resources and time.

Also read: How blockchain can help combat ongoing fraud in the Halal food industry in SEA

While firms might use mergers and acquisitions to expand globally, or tap into international talent, doing so without a trusted partner can result in value loss and delays to deal close. With the help of Globalization Partners, startups and investors can navigate employee transfers, onboarding, and offboarding seamlessly and compliantly.

Prepare for Economic Recovery

According to a McKinsey global survey, over 50 per cent of respondents in China, India, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region hold an optimistic economic outlook for economic recovery.

Forward-thinking companies are planning now to take advantage of new global opportunities, however, it can take months or years to expand globally by setting up a local branch or entity, which can prevent portfolio companies from creating value for their investors. Globalization Partners enables companies to grow on a global scale and build international teams in a matter of days or weeks — well in time to catch the recovery wave into a more interconnected future.

Learn more about Globalization Partners.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by 
Globalization Partners

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