NextBillion.ai, an Artificial Intelligence-powered hyperlocal solutions startup in Singapore, today announced the completion of its Series A investment co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Falcon Edge Capital.

This brings the firm’s total funding raises in Series A to US$7 million.

With a presence in Singapore, China and India, the startup will utilise the capital to grow its team, product and R&D in future focus areas.

NextBillion.ai was co-founded earlier this year by Gaurav Bubna, Ajay Bulusu, and Shaolin Zheng — all former tech-leadership members of Grab who developed Grab Maps.

The AI startup is focused on building hyperlocal solutions, particularly in emerging markets where language and geospatial infrastructure challenges are significantly complex and unique.

Among its product is nextbillionmaps, which provides customisable features, such as routing and navigation, matrix calculation, and map data curation.

The second product currently under-the-making is nextbilliontasks, where AI is used for decoding of data to simplify multilingual texts, image classification, sentiment analysis and video annotations.

Also Read: Singapore’s Botsync closes seed round to scale up its heavy-duty autonomous mobile robot solutions

Co-founder and CTO Shaolin Zheng said: “From mapping to natural language processing, content moderation, facial-recognition and cybersecurity related challenges, our AI solutions are aligned with hyperlocal nuances in both emerging markets and developed markets, which is ideal for companies who wish to expand on a global level.

We see great opportunities in China and the potential to support more and more businesses with NextBillion AI solutions for their expansion into emerging markets in the Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, North African and Indian region,” he added.

Co-founder Bubna said: “Emerging markets across the world are far more complex, with different languages, cultures, hyperlocal nuances and densely populated cities, than the developed markets.

With our first product nextbillionmaps, we are building an intuitive and intelligent location AI-platform by using open-source data combined with proprietary client data, that makes logistics, transport, ride-hailing, delivery, e-commerce solutions accessible, effective, efficient and affordable. We intend to expand into multiple verticals by delivering world-class AI-powered solutions to our customers,” he added.

NextBillion.ai has already on-boarded several global brands in the social media, ride-hailing, food delivery, freight and logistics industries across China, Southeast Asia, India and the US.

The post NextBillion.ai, a 6-month-old startup founded by the brains behind Grab Maps, raises US$7M Series A appeared first on e27.

We know investment decisions are personal and logic (‘gut feeling’ about a deal and founder) does not always apply. We do recommend however to build an evaluation framework and stick to it, simply because investing is a constant learning process and you want to construct a portfolio of companies and look back in a few years to evaluate your framework and sharpen your decision-making process.

By using the four-layered structure below one should be able to touch all essential aspects while evaluating a deal:

• Pre-qualification phase
• Interview phase
• Research & Review phase
• Due Diligence phase

With HH Investments VC we have refined this framework over the years and it’s proven to be successful. Our ratio of investments is typically one out of 100 companies that we evaluate.

It is important to realise that the answers to the questions below do not make the investment decisions for you. We have to accept that no company nor founder is perfect and it’s fine to make exceptions to your decision framework, just make sure you have the logical reasoning to do so.

Also Read: Tips for drawing in angel investors for your startup

You wouldn’t be the first angel that makes the difference for a startup that wasn’t perfect when the investment was made:

Time

We have broken down the approach in multiple layers in order to introduce the ‘time’ factor. Investors might fall in love with a startup or a founder immediately after the first interactions.

It is important however to take a step back and see if the founder is persistent and pursues the investment opportunity or if we simply feel a deal is not ready for our investment yet but it might be in several months from now, we want to spectate.

Or perhaps we want to see if the founder can find other investors to join as you don’t want to be the only one?

It is important to take a step back before making decisions

Fear-of-missing-out (FOMO)

The really (rare) ‘amazing’ deals and founders typically don’t allow you to spectate and you simply have to make fast decisions as the funding round will likely fill rapidly and you should be grateful that you are allowed to have a place on the cap table. Worse; you might not even see these types of deals as they are typically concluded in small circles of investors.

Also Read: Confusing Angels with VCs is a common startup mistake

However, the majority of the deals are not immediately ‘amazing’, they are ‘potentially good’ (diamonds in the rough) (even though a lot of founders attempt to create FOMO, it’s probably better to wait, nine out of 10 times these founders are still trying to raise money in two months from now), you need to have patience and take a proper deep dive before making a decision.

Pre-qualification phase (One week — six months)

During this stage, we typically haven’t spoken much to the founders yet. We let them fill out a form or we simply extract information from the investment deck that we ask them to share with us.

Note: I try to refrain from using classifications such as pre-seed, seed, and pre-series A in this article as they can be confusing and are not helpful metrics for evaluation. It’s fine to put a staging label on a company, but let’s do it AFTER the evaluation.

Our focus is Southeast Asia and we like Singapore to be the country where the HQ (legal and tax safe-haven) is established. Your preference can be different but you want to look at the legal aspects and whether you feel comfortable to invest in the relevant country or not.

Stick with what you understand. As an angel investor, you need to be able to envision growth in this industry, so you’ll need to understand it. Also, you want to add as much value to the company as you can (the founders will need it). Sure, you can venture into new industries but be prepared to put in the extra work.

We want companies to raise money for growth and not for survival. So we like to see at least 18–20 months of the runway after the round has been closed.

Also Read: Angel investors appreciate these 5 uncommon things that founders do

Is there a minimum viable product with at least 6 months of data?
If you like to invest ‘very’ early stage with smaller tickets you’ll find companies that are still in the idea stage and I personally think you’ll be taking an unnecessary risk of the company not even being able to launch a product or service. Instead, there are sufficient good companies with traction out there (coming out of accelerators, venture builders, or started my second-time founders) with at least six months of data that we should focus on.

Is there a business- and financial plan?
We want founders that have thought things through even though a lot of it might still be guesswork.

Is it clear from the deck what problem the company is solving and how they are solving it?
We like to see a clear problem statement and a deck built around it. This shows that the founder and the company have a focus. Even though the problem might be very complicated, a great founder is able to break it down in understandable chunks of information.

Raising how much?
The size of the amount by itself doesn’t say much, but it does show how realistic the team is when you look at it in combination with the problem statement and the goals of the company. Typical angel rounds are between US$100,000–US$500,000.

Also Read: Angel investing is full of risks –but that is why it is so rewarding

Did the founders run a startup before?
Working with founders that have ‘done it before’ whether successfully or not can save a lot of learning costs.

Interview phase (Two to three hours)

Once a company passes the pre-qualification phase we speak to them personally and take a deep dive. A lot of the questions below are meant to establish how the founders react to potential challenges and help us to try and understand their personalities better. A lot of times there’s no right or wrong answer and we simply want to see the right mentality.

How did the founders find us?
We like to be introduced through our trusted connections. Or we want to hear why a founder wants to work with us. We have to be mindful when working with founders that are shopping for any money they can find.

What is the background of the founders?
Why did they start this venture? Was it a personal problem they were facing and how passionate are they about this idea? Do they have the relevant expertise? Building a successful company can take up to 10 years, so we want to founders to be resilient.

Did the founders run a startup before?
We already looked at this question before during the pre-qualification. But if they did build a startup before, we want to understand more. What happened? Did they exist? What did they learn from any success or failures? Why did they start a new venture?

What is the company trying to achieve?
We want founders to lay out a clear goal for us. They can be aiming for the stars which are fine as long as there is a realistic plan for execution. The bigger the goal the more detailed the founders should understand the execution plans.

Also Read: [Updated] Singapore’s WeInvest raises US$12.2M in Series A funding round from Schroders, angel investors

What is the market size?
Marketing sizing is important, even though it might be a process that is completed with a lot of assumptions, it shows that founders understand the potential value that the company is trying to (and realistically can) extract from the market.

We don’t just want to see that the total market of ‘product X’ is worth $X billion. We want to always see:

• Total Addressable Market
• Service Available Market
• Serviceable Obtainable Market

Why is now a good time?
Timing is critical when launching a new startup. We want the founders to be able to explain why right now is not too early or too late.

The competition
We want to understand who the direct- and indirect competitors are. It is critical that founders deeply understand the landscape and who else is trying to get a piece of the pie. Saying ‘there is no competition’ means that the founder doesn’t understand the landscape well enough. There is always competition.

We also want to see a competitive advantage that can be validated with the limited data that the company already has.

What is an unfair advantage?
We want to see a logical explanation of why this team is better than other companies that are trying to get into the same industry. Effectively this can be things like; contacts, unique knowledge, etc.

The unfair advantage typically relates to the team and less to the product or service that the company is selling.

Also Read: I met with some of the biggest angel investors in Southeast Asia, and here are some insights I learned

How much revenue does the company have?
For B2B companies we want to see some revenue in the range of US$5–10,000 per month. For B2C or C2C companies we can typically look at user growth alone if there’s no revenue.

How large is the team?
One of the skills of a founder that we are looking for is the ability to attract a talented team around him. By the time we invest, we want to see the essential skills already hired or a very clear hiring plan in place.

How do you make money?
We want to understand the business model and the logic behind it.

How much do you charge your customers?
We want to see a competitive price point that can provide healthy (top line) margins. Also, the best solutions out there have some form of pricing power or might get it down the road.

How much does the average customer spend?
With this data, we can start to predict the potential lifetime value of a customer. At the same time, it shows us how ‘sticky’ the product/service is if there are recurring customers.

How much money have you raised in this round?
We like to see founders that are able to secure (soft- or hard commitments) funds from other investors besides ourselves or get existing investors to reinvest.

What are the top 3 reasons the business might fail?
We always end the interview with this question. We are looking for founders that are realistic and understand the risks of doing business.

Also Read: 6 Asian celebrity angel investors you may not have heard about

Did the founder follow-up after the interview?
Finding investors means ‘selling’ for the founders. Investors don’t close directly during or after the first meeting.

Do the founder’s follow-up with more information? Do they follow-up again after two weeks if they haven’t heard from us?

Are they keen to share with us what they have achieved and kept us updated on the progress of the company while we were doing our research or if we have indicated that now might not be the right time to invest but we like to stay updated?

A lot of the questions are meant to establish how the founders react to potential challenges and help us to try and understand their personalities better. A lot of times there’s no right or wrong answer and we simply want to see the right mentality.

Review and Research Phase (One to four weeks)

This is the phase where we typically involve other investors with relevant knowledge.

What has been the monthly revenue growth for the past 6 months (B2B)?
We like to see companies in the early stages grow revenue by at least 10–20 per cent on a monthly basis.

What has been the daily active user growth for the past 6 months on a weekly basis (B2C or C2C)?
We like to see companies in the early stages grow their user base by at least 10–20 per cent on a weekly basis.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) to Lifetime value (LTV) ratio
When evaluating the financials we like to see a healthy CAC to LTV ratio of at least 1:3 within the next two to three years. More information can be found here.

Also Read: China’s top 6 angel investors

Burn multiple
Capital efficiency is an important metric when looking at the financials of a company. As an angel, we want to understand how much money the company is burning or expects to burn (on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis) to generate new revenue. We typically calculate the multiple as follows:

• Efficiency Score = Net New ARR / Net Burn

Any score below 2 is considered efficient (and could be unrealistic). Anything above 2 is cause for investors to take a closer look at the financials. The score can be higher in the early stages as the company is burning money to gain traction. However, the company should never use raised capital inefficiently and scores above 3 are unacceptable.

Is it realistic that the company can reach its goals with the funding raised?
This is where our industry knowledge and entrepreneurial experience kicks in. Imagine yourself at the helm of the company. How would you do it? Are the goals realistic? Should they raise more funds?

They will likely run out of money in the next 15–20 months, but would the team by then have created sufficient traction to raise follow-on funding from a venture capitalist, or is there a big risk that they will require more angel money?

Valuation
Pricing the company in the early stages is challenging since there are little revenue and data available. Many companies offer a convertible note to investors and basically postpone the valuation discussion until the next funding round closes.

In case founders or investors would like to price the round there are a few methods they could try to use:

• (net Monthly Recurring Revenue * 12) * 5–10x (multiplier to be negotiated)
• Discounted Cashflow
• Trying to predict what a future VC might want to pay for the business in the next 24 months. An investor can then decide whether this is a worthy multiple on the ‘current’ valuation.
• Look at the valuation of similar deals in the same industry and region

From experience, we know that the value of a company in the stages that we look at is typically between US$1–3.5 million pre-money.

We will discuss valuations a bit more in a future article as there’s a lot to say about it.

Also Read: Tips for drawing in angel investors for your startup

Cash flow positive
At what point in time will the company be cash flow positive? Every business will need to generate cash at some point in time (aside from the fact that more investments might be needed to grow).

Try out the product or service
We typically sign up for the product/ service that the company is offering to try it out and put ourselves in the shoes of the customer.

External investors
We usually bring in other investors to share ideas and opinions. This is a critical part of the process and helps us to defy biases.

Market / competition research
It is important that we do our own market and competition research. This will give us a deeper understanding of the challenges and possibilities in the market.

At the same time it helps us to compare other companies that are trying to solve the same problem to the company that we are evaluating.

What is our exit strategy?
Maybe one of the most important topics. We need to decide how long we want to stay in the company. Will we be trying to sell our shares in secondary transactions or do we wait until a company might be acquired (IPOs are unlikely in Southeast Asia)?

If I’m going to be invested for five years I want to try and see if I can predict what (I hope) the company could be worth at that time?

Due diligence (One week)

The due diligence is the tail that starts after we have evaluated the company. At this point in time we likely already have made a decision for ourselves that we like the company.

Due diligence is performed for two reasons:

• We want to make sure what we heard from the founders so far during our discussions matches with the reality
• We want to make sure there are no irregularities

The due diligence can be executed using a standardised checklist. Examples can be found here (keep in mind that most companies raising capital from angels might not have a whole lot of data and documents yet):

Evaluating companies is hard work. As mentioned; for each investment we typically look at 100 companies. There are good companies out there but one has to be willing to put in the effort to find and evaluate them.

–

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The post All you need to know about how angel investors evaluate their opportunities appeared first on e27.

InfraDigital, a digital school management startup in Indonesia, has announced the closing of its Series A funding from Taiwanese accelerator AppWorks.

The deal size has not been disclosed.

This capital infusion follows seed round of funding last year.

Edutech has the potential to substantially elevate Indonesia’s quality of education, while improving outcomes and overall standards of living for over 50 million students. Unfortunately, most schools struggle with tracking even basic student data and often lack the digital tools for proper financial management and planning.

Also Read: NextBillion.ai, a 6-month-old startup founded by the brains behind Grab Maps, raises US$7M Series A

The high cost of existing solutions has also inhibited widespread access to digital technologies, especially for schools in more rural areas which are often strained for resources.

Founded in 2018, InfraDigital aims to assist schools to address these pain points, targeting two of the most impactful areas of school management — financial operations and data transparency.

The edutech firm helps schools digitise student and financial data, automates back office processes, and facilitates online tuition payments. To achieve this goal, it has partnered with a variety of stakeholders, including banks, education foundations, and government bodies.

Through its platform, schools can transition to cashless tuition collection, increasing income up to 16 per cent in some cases. With InfraDigital, school administrators are granted full visibility into the operational health of their organization, enabling them to make smarter financial decisions and create a better student experience.

InfraDigital is also offers Jaringan IDN, a payments processing network established in conjunction with gojek, Tokopedia, LinkAja, Alfamart, Ayopop, and Indomaret to help educational institutions seamlessly collect tuition fees both online and offline.

The edutech company is active in 13 provinces in the archipelago, from North Sumatera to South Sulawesi, with its platform deployed in over 350 schools serving over 165,000 students.

The company is currently dedicating all its resources to assisting new and existing clients and helping them meet the added demands and complexities during COVID19 closures.

Moving forward, InfraDigital hopes to expand its footprint to other regions of Indonesia and eventually become a full-stack digital solution for educational institutions.

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Image Credit: InfraDigital

The post AppWorks joins Indonesian edutech startup InfraDigital’s Series A round appeared first on e27.

On Monday, June 22, in Jakarta, the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) released the list of its new commissioners for the 2020-2023 period, which is to be confirmed through an annual general stakeholder meeting today.

One of them was a familiar name in the local, perhaps even regional, tech startup ecosystem: Pandu Sjahrir.

Currently holding the position of Founding Partner of AC Ventures, Sjahrir has a long track record in the startup scene. He is widely known for his involvement in leading names such as gojek (as Board Member) and Sea Group (Chairman of Indonesia) as well as Xurya (Board Member) and Antler (Advisory Board).

He is also the Managing Partner of Indies Capital, which controls Indies Special Opportunities Fund, the leading alternative asset manager in the region, and Indies Pelago, a secondary tech fund in Southeast Asia.

Outside of the startup ecosystem, Sjahrir is the CFO of publicly listed energy company PT. Toba Bara Sejahtera Tbk, that was selected as Forbes’ Top 30 leading companies in Indonesia.

“My goal here is to find an outlier,” he speaks to e27 over the phone.

Also Read: Portable wifi rental service startup Passpod officially listed on IDX, raises US$3.2M

In this special interview, the startup investor reveals more details about the vision and mission for IDX –and how he is going to bring more Indonesian startups to get listed on the stock exchange.

A fresh start for IDX

Sjahrir begins our conversation by explaining the stock exchange goals in the next period: Increasing the participation of the younger generation –particularly Gen Y and Z– in the capital market and encouraging Indonesian tech startups to go public.

“As you might be aware of, there has not been any major tech company listed on the IDX,” he points out.

“It’s a completely different story with China and the US where the top 10 capitalisations are owned by tech companies. In Indonesia, it is still being dominated by banking and telco companies –exactly how it was 10 years ago,” Sjahrir continues.

He further elaborates how these two goals will support each other. By having more younger investors, major tech companies such as the local unicorns are expected to consider listing in Indonesia instead of other capital markets.

“We need to take a more active role in preventing them from leaving to other capital markets. Because we have to remember: The bigger guys, they have options,” Sjahrir warns.

Also Read: IDX-listed M Cash launches new partnership to digitise ‘warung’

By having these “cool” tech companies on IDX, the younger generation is also expected to be more interested in investing in the capital market.

“What we are doing here is deepening the demand, particularly by having more young investors on board. This is something that starts with education about the capital market,” Sjahrir says.

Trouble in the ecosystem?

In 2017, Kioson and M Cash made headlines when they became the first local tech startups to get listed on IDX, followed by several other companies.

These movements had led to speculation in the media on the possibilities for major tech startups in Indonesia –particularly the unicorns and decacorns– to have their IPOs soon after. But three years have passed and we are still waiting for these companies to make their move.

What will be the stock exchange’s strategy to encourage these unicorns to get listed on IDX, and not anywhere else?

“We have to be more market-friendly in various aspects, [starting] from regulation to the founder’s shares treatment. Like in the US, there is a difference in the treatment, and this is what Indonesia is currently studying. There is also got to be minority shareholder protection, which OJK is concerned about,” Sjahrir states.

Also Read: Portable wifi rental service startup Passpod officially listed on IDX, raises US$3.2M

But what is actually the challenges faced by Indonesian startups that have been preventing them from being listed? According to Sjahrir, there are two main hurdles: Profitability and founder shares treatment.

“The latter is the part where we are still ‘stuck’ on. In the US, founders are allowed to have different voting rights. We aim to address these issues to remain competitive with the other stock exchanges,” he says.

The focus

In this new period, IDX aims to get 20 to 40 companies on board, but Sjahrir says that they do not wish to be burdened by quantity. There is got to be a focus on the quality as well, he stresses.

“We need to start with the mindset first, how to capitalise on tech companies in Indonesia. Because the main difference between us and Singapore and Thailand is that our capital market is smaller than our GDP,” Sjahrir points out.

“So our focus is on how to increase the market capitalisation of the companies on the stock exchange,” he closes.

—

Image Credit: Pandu Sjahrir

The post As IDX commissioner, this is how Pandu Sjahrir aims to help more Indonesian startups go public appeared first on e27.

Grab CTO Mark Porter quits to join MongoDB

Mark Porter, CTO (Core Technologies and Transport) is leaving Grab, making him the second CTO to depart the firm since the start of 2019.

Group CTO Theo Vassilakis had relinquished his position in April last year but remained an advisor at the Singapore-based company.

Porter wrote in a blogpost that he will be assuming the CTO role at NASDAQ-listed SaaS firm MongoDB on July 20.

Also Read: As IDX commissioner, this is how Pandu Sjahrir aims to help more Indonesian startups go public

“Grab has been a privilege and a gift; being a tech leader with the mission to bring the economy and people of Southeast Asia forward has been amazing. I’m leaving one family and joining another – and for anybody who knows me, they know that’s hard – I’m pretty sappy and emotional about this kind of stuff,” he said.

“My goal at MongoDB is to help our great teams develop technology and products that delight anybody who touches them. That’s been my goal for over 40 years, from my first 6502-assembly game or HP41CX program, to the latest Grab ride-hailing app,” he added.

Singapore’s health-tech startup Plano receives investment from Santen

Singapore-based health-tech startup Plano has received an undisclosed sum in investment from Japanese company Santen Pharmaceutical as part of strategic alliance between the two firms.

Under this deal, Santen, through Plano, will initiate to tackle the burden of myopia using both a holistic approach and innovative technological solutions.

“This funding and strategic alliance with Santen will play an instrumental role in growing Plano’s user engagement, strengthen its Big Data analytics and Artificial Intelligence capabilities, and drive its international expansion plans,” said Plano’s Managing Director Associate Professor Mohamed Dirani.

Launched in 2017 by Dirani, Plano is an eye health-tech company and is a spin-off from the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI). Its key products include the plano application and the online optometry booking system, Plano Eyecheck.

The science-based plano application has been adopted by more than 250,000 households.

Santen specialises in ophthalmology based on a thorough customer orientation, including patients and healthcare professionals.

In recent years, it has focused its attention on medical devices and digital technologies, and has continued to take on the challenge of contributing to the health of the eyes of people around the world through activities that meet the needs of customers in each region, as well as offering products and solutions that cover a wide range of disease fields.

Eko acquires Thai chatbot platform ConvoLab

Eko, a virtual workspace technology platform in Thailand, has acquired Artificial Intelligence (AI) and chatbot platform ConvoLab in a “8-figure USD” deal.

Additionally, Eko has has launched parent company Amity, which is focused on helping organisations, teams, and people to fully-benefit from new mobile technologies and digitisation.

Amity brings together three pre-existing technology solutions to make up its portfolio — Eko, Upstra (an app development kit for building in-app community experiences), and ConvoLab.

Further, the company will continue to power and expand these products out of their four core global offices in Bangkok, London, Austin, and Milan.

ConvoLab’s acquisition, completed through a mix of stock and cash, was finalised ahead of Amity’s launch.

Established in 2016, ConvoLab automates business processes by helping their clients engage with their customers through various channels using best-in-its-class AI natural language processing (NLP).

“ConvoLab is at the forefront of developing machine learning, chat management platforms and work automation. By joining forces, we’ll be able to provide customers with an ecosystem of expertise and services competitive and unique at a global level,” said Korawad Chearavanont, who now becomes the CEO of Amity.

Cocoon Capital launches Female Founders Mentoring Hours in SEA

Cocoon Capital has launched Female Founders Mentoring Hours (FFMH) for Southeast Asian entrepreneurs.

FFMH will offer female founders 1-on-1 remote mentoring sessions with some of the region’s most prominent VCs, creating a rare opportunity to both pitch ideas and to receive friendly, on-the-spot advice.

Also Read: AppWorks joins Indonesian edutech startup InfraDigital’s Series A round

Supported by Enterprise Singapore and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the inaugural FFMH event will allow over 50 female founders to meet investors over four 15 minute sessions to discuss their tech business ideas, ask for advice, and/or simply pitch for investment.

The focus will be on tech startups at the seed and Series A stages.

The venture industry has long acknowledged that there is still a huge funding gap between male and female founders. A large part of a successful fundraise is in building relationships with investors over time.

FFMH aims to give female founders a good starting point, with the chance to cultivate relationships with the best of the best early on.,

The post In brief: Grab CTO quits; Cocoon Capital launches initiative for female founders; Santen invests in Plano appeared first on e27.

Malaysia-based startup Rush’s premise is simple. Whenever you’re in need of smartphone energy to ensure connectivity, go to the nearest store to rent a power bank. Scan code on any Rush kiosk, grab the power bank, and once you’re done using it, drop it back to the nearest kiosk you can find.

Rush believes that our day-to-day life is not something that can be done without a properly working smartphone. “As the world evolved, smartphones have become part of an important device in our daily life. All our work, communication, social, transportation, wallet, food, and more are solved by using a smartphone. It’s made life more efficient and convenient,” says Dylan Wong, co-founder of Rush.

Malaysia has 26 million internet users, and the country is currently the top four country in the world who spent an average of 4.02 hours a day on smartphones in 2019. This kind of lifestyle provides plenty of opportunities for startups such as Rush.

Why powerbank

“Running out of battery on our phones happens at least two times for us in a day. Like anyone else we have also tried different methods, including buying extra phone charging cables, powerbanks, and even carrying phone chargers wherever we go. Then we notice the problem didn’t really go away, because you would need to either remember to bring these extra items on top of what you need everyday. And as an additional tool, there could be times when you don’t remember to charge them! We also noticed that these problems happened to most people around us,” explains Wong.

To validate this issue further, Rush’s team conducted a survey in Klang Valley, about their phone usage and charging habits. The results showed that 56 per cent of the people surveyed are experiencing the same mentioned issues on an everyday basis.

Also Read: Indonesian Wi-Fi rental startup Passpod to raise US$2.6M via IPO

“Some funny but common scenarios include, asking around for cables, or trying to look for a power plug socket to charge their phone. It all happened as a part of the daily lives of people with smartphones,” Wong comments.

In the dawn of 5G

In the sense of welcoming the highly anticipated 5G, Rush aims to be ahead of innovation.

“New phone technology is almost everywhere today, and with 5G coming soon, and the battery consumption of a 5G phone is 2.5 times more compared to 4G phones. Phone innovations continuously evolve, but battery technology remains stagnant for the next few years with battery capacity expansion not significantly ‘catching up’ to cater to the actual needs and increasing usage of these new phone features,” says Wong.

So according to Rush, the immediate solution is to have a power bank ready to rent anywhere at any time.

Challenges in familiarisation

As power bank sharing is a relatively new product and business in the Malaysian market, there are challenges to face in promoting the use of the service.

“The biggest challenge would be helping our users to understand and change their phone or mobile devices charging habit that has been with them for a long time,” Wong points out.

Furthermore, based on the results of the survey the company has conducted in the Klang Valley area, 83 per cent of the respondents have also expressed that they are receptive to power bank rental or sharing service, something that boosted the confidence of Rush that there are untapped markets for ready-to-rent power bank.

“Our approach is direct to users, promoting our products through events, and on-ground roadshows. Besides that, we also work closely and extensively with all our partners, who are from different industries: F&B, entertainment, hotels, and services,” says Wong.

Wong mentions that they have partnered with established names such as Tealive and Holiday Inn Express.

Also Read: HostelHunting rebrands into LiveIn.com; to expand into Indonesia, Philippines

“We strive to create an ecosystem by understanding both our partners and our users’ needs and wants, hence our approach mainly aims to help our partners’ business drive awareness, footfall and consequently sales, while at the same time having Rush users enjoying the convenience of our power bank sharing service and the various features that benefit their everyday lifestyle,” Wong adds.

Behind Rush

Currently, Rush is operating in a team of 15 people. It was established by co-founders Dylan Wong, who is also the CEO, and Ng Yong Ching as the COO, who is also Wong’s long time friends.

Both Wong and Ng were part of the pioneer team of Grab and e-scooter oBike and shared a few years working together in several startups before co-founding Rush.

What to expect after pandemic

COVID-19 pandemic undoubtedly has thrown a curveball for most businesses and startups in particular, and Wong says that the company’s not immune to it.

Like other startups trying to survive, Rush also did some adjustments to the situation by trying to cater to their customers and partners better.

“We’ve worked with partners or kiosks to help them to promote their business by providing and selling exclusive e-voucher to our users which we subsidise as well. Our focus is to help merchants to gain some cash flow and conserve more cash. It also can attract users to visit the retails,” Wong elaborates.

As for the post-pandemic era, Wong adds that sanitisation is their main priority to provide comfort and convenience. “We will sanitise all the power bank and our partner/merchant will help us to sanitise after users use it.”

Focussing on user experience

User experience is at the core of Rush’s product developments, as Wong emphasised.

“We constantly review our app functions and features and rolls out new features that enhances the Rush user experience. Just this month, we have launched a new reward and advertising features in our app, which Rush users can now enjoy to get their hands on exclusive deals and rewards from our partners. These rewards wrap around our users’ everyday activity and lifestyle, and most are redeemable as long as you have a Rush account.”

To ensure service availability, as well as enhance user convenience, in the coming months, Rush will be launching its loyalty programme that aims to benefit both partners as well as users.

Also Read: Fashion rental startup Style Theory secures US$15M funding led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, eyeing expansion

Power bank sharing and rental service still being considered as a novelty. Not only in Malaysia, but also in other Southeast Asian countries.

“Compared to other regions like China that are more matured with this service, Chinese people are now very familiar with the power bank rental service as the solution to everyday device charging and/or battery issues. They find it convenient as it has become a necessary service to be provided by most businesses,” Wong draws an example.

With the country’s effort in building and improving our public infrastructure and transportation, mobile devices and internet usage will only increase significantly for the next few years.

“The potential is definitely there, if we look at the trend and how prepared the country is,” Wong concludes.

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Image Credit: Rush

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Ackcio, a Singapore-based provider of wireless solutions for industrial monitoring, announced today the completion of its pre-Series A capital, co-lead by Wavemaker Partners, and Michael Gryseels, President of True Digital Group.

Existing and new investors, including SEEDS Capital, AccelerAsia Ventures, Aletra Capital Partners, Foundamental, and Entrepreneur First, participated in this round.

The size of the round was not disclosed.

Ackcio was founded in 2016. Its technology helps contractors monitor their projects to manage risks and increase safety. This, in turn, helps the construction and mining industries reduce costs, improve worker safety and also comply with regulatory requirements on geotechnical monitoring that govern construction and mining operations in many countries.

The startup has recently opened a sales office in Canada to penetrate the North and South American markets. It currently serves clients globally with a presence in over 15 countries in Southeast Asia, China, Oceania, Europe, and North America.

Also Read: Your smartphone battery runs out at least twice a day. This Malaysian startup has a solution for that

“The additional funds will help us expand our presence in our existing markets and also expand to new markets in the coming months,” said Co-founder and CEO Dr. Nimantha Baranasuriya.

In Singapore, Ackcio’s solutions have been used for monitoring geotechnical sensors in major infrastructure development projects, such as the Thomson–East Coast MRT line, Bedok Canal expansion, and Paya Lebar Quarter.

The company was recently awarded a large contract to supply its equipment to a new infrastructure development project at the Changi Airport.

Along with this new funding round, Arnoud Balhuizen recently joined Ackcio’s advisory board.

Foundamental is a global investor in construction, mining and renovation technology with offices in San Francisco, Berlin and Singapore.

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SEEDS Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, along with other six co-investment partners, has unveiled its plans to invest US$36 million into maritime tech startups, Sea Trade Maritime has reported.

The partners are Schultz Group’s capital arm Innoport, Kuok Singapore’s venture capital unit KSL Maritime Ventures, PSA unboXed, Rainmaking, ShipsFocus-Quest Ventures, and TecPier.

The initiative seeks to invest in early-stage ventures to develop sustainable solutions that improve operational efficiency and safety across the different segments of the maritime sector.

Ted Tan, Chairman of SEEDS Capital and Deputy CEO of Enterprise Singapore, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need to accelerate the transformation of our industries. As a global hub for trade and connectivity, we have continually leveraged technology and innovation to develop and facilitate efficient, resilient, and secure trade flows.”

Startups will also receive hands-on assistance in fast-tracking commercialisation, with mentorship and connection to potential clients through their networks.

Also Read: These are the top three startups chosen by PIER71, offering latest maritime tech solution

The initiative is also supported by ESG and the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), with the aim to drive the growth of the maritime sector through technology and innovation.

In total, there are more than 50 promising Singaporean startups that can benefit from the joint investments.

According to Tan Beng Tee, MPA’s Assistant Chief Executive (Development), maritime technology startups play an even more important role in accelerating digitalisation and innovation efforts to prepare the maritime industry for a new normal post-COVID-19.

The maritime tech sector in Singapore has seen a rise since last year, when PIER71 (Port Innovation Ecosystem Reimagined @ BLOCK71), a collaboration between the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and NUS Enterprise, launched a PIER71 Accelerate – a five-week market and business model validation programme joined by 24 startups in November. PIER71 has a mission to build a maritime entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem in Singapore.

A year ago, Techstars had started dedicated global maritime accelerator called the Eastern Pacific Accelerator powered by Techstars, with Singapore’s largest shipping company Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS).

The programme saw the first class of nine startups, selected from hundreds of worldwide applicants, selected with consideration and input from EPS’s Operations, Marine Technical, Commercial, IT, Fleet Personnel, and Management teams.

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Photo by Billeasy on Unsplash

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SINO Hua-An’s F&B biz Craveat International to go tech

Malaysia-based investment holding company Sino Hua-An International has announced its plan to invest RM30 million (US$7 million) to transform its subsidiary, Craveat International, into a technology company for the F&B industry.

This is a kickoff for Techna-X, the technology division, to grow the group’s revenue stream as a digital enabler to lead digital transformation of the old economy in the Asia Pacific region.

“In line with Hua-An’s direction of focusing on the digital transformation space, we want Craveat, our F&B subsidiary to be known as a technology company that serves excellent food and drinks. Drawing on the Techna-X infrastructure, today signifies the day of the transformation of the F&B operations and mindset,” said Jared Lim, Executive Director of Hua An.

Also Read: Ackcio raises pre-Series A co-led by Wavemaker for expansion of its wireless monitoring solutions

Homegrown F&B brand, Teh Tarik Place (TTP), will lead in the transformation which targets to open 100 outlets in 36 months throughout Malaysia and in the Asia Pacific region.

The Techna-X platform will provide advantage to TTP via its POS system, business intelligence platform and data engine as well as TTP’s Halal-certified central kitchen in order to better plan and manage operation processes with the aim to deliver a superior customer and business experience to its customers.

TTP also uses data analytics in traffic flow to allow TTP’s management to make more informed decisions in the selection of locations for outlet expansion.

Snap to open office in Singapore as part of SEA expansion

Snap is expanding its operations into Singapore, with Anubhav Nayyar tapped to lead Snap’s market development efforts across the Southeast Asia region.

According to a BrandingAsia report, Snap plans to open an office in Singapore later this year.

“The company is monitoring the global COVID-19 pandemic, and following local guidance by encouraging remote working. Once the situation eases, the company will accelerate plans to establish a local presence,” said Nayyar.

Prior to joining Snap, Anubhav spent seven years at Viber where he was the Senior Director & Head of Asia Pacific. Anubhav was Viber’s first regional employee, and was responsible for establishing it in multiple countries in Asia as well as setting up operations across the region.

GrabPay expands its merchant base in Malaysia

Grab today announced the expansion of GrabPay’s merchant-partners to include household brands from all essential categories, such as groceries, pharmacies, food, electronics and hardware across the nation.

The list of brands includes a variety of chained outlets such as MyNews, Tesco, Guardian, Watsons, KFC, McDonald’s, Mr.D.I.Y and SenHeng.

“The expansion of GrabPay’s merchant base is part of Grab’s on-going commitment to create awareness about the benefits of digital payments and nurturing the cashless adoption in Malaysia. The expansion of GrabPay’s partner base is also timely with the government’s recent PENJANA announcement to encourage Malaysians to spend as a means to help revive the economy post the impact of the pandemic and movement control period,” said Priyanka Madan, Head of GrabPay Malaysia.

Inflection Point Ventures invests in Indian foodtech startup Samosa Party

Indian angels investment platform Inflection Point Ventures (IPV) has invested an undisclosed amount in snacking startup Samosa Party.

IPV has been investing in startups in sectors like health-tech, edutech, delivery, online grocery and social distancing tech to help companies working in these areas scale up and eventually create a large-scale impact for helping people in managing the COVID situation.

Also Read: Do you have a burgeoning startup trying to attract investor capital?

Ankur Mittal, Co-founder, IPV, said: “Samosa Party has grown tremendously over the past couple of years and has risen to amongst the top brands for Indian snack food in Bangalore. In a post-COVID world of increasing focus on hygiene standards, startups like Samosa Party will be relevant as customers would trust hygienic and professional managed brands to serve them food with safety being the guiding force from kitchen to table.”

Samosa Party was launched with a mission to make good quality samosa accessible to customers across all channels in a hygienic and trustworthy environment. It operates by solving the supply side problem with the production and consumption of samosa at scale using technology.

The startup has scaled to serve 150,000 samosas per month. It combines the traditional cooking processes to solve the problems of scale using food technology and production innovation at every stage.

Samosa Party intends to utilise these funds to set up the infrastructure for scale, open cloud kitchens across Bangalore and other tier 1 cities.

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Botsync, a Singapore-based robotics startup that builds heavy-duty autonomous mobile robot solutions, has secured a seed round of funding, jointly led by Wong Fong Industries, SEEDS Capital, Angelhub, and Artesian Venture Partners.

The company will use the capital  — the amount was not disclosed — to accelerate product development, build new technology teams and scale up production.

“This funding support empowers us to scale up the commercialisation of our robotics solution and enhance the features of our automated vehicles for safer and more reliable use,” said Rahul Nambiar, CEO and Co-founder of Botsync.

Botsync was founded in 2017 by graduates from Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) — Nikhil Venkatesh, Prashant Trivedi, Singaram Venkatachalam and Rahul Nambiar.

The startup enables companies to simplify automation of their material movement processes with an intelligent fleet of autonomous mobile robots that can transport payloads between 500 and 1,000 kg.

The robots are designed to be modular and can be deployed without any dependence on infrastructure-based sensors like QR codes. This allows companies to automate daily material handling processes without stopping their existing operations, claim the founders.

The robots can be configured and commissioned in minimal time, in some cases less than a week, the firm boasts.

Also Read: Your smartphone battery runs out at least twice a day. This Malaysian startup has a solution for that

Powered by deep learning engines, Botsync’s in-house built autonomous mobile robots traverse the local area to create maps of their operating environment. Using this data, they intelligently execute autonomous manoeuvres while avoiding other people and equipment.

To date, Botsync has completed sales contracts across Singapore and India and is currently working with a global energy management solutions company and an international transport and logistics company on pilot projects.

In 2020, the company expects to complete two to three commercial deployments of their MAG robots, increase sales of their industrial training products, and expand its market reach in Southeast Asia and India.

Botsync was incubated at the EcoLabs Centre of Innovation for Energy (EcoLabs), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), where its product commercialisation was accelerated and its funding rounds supported by the EcoLabs co-investor network.

Botsync’s early investors also include Brinc and Nanyang Technological University’s Ecolabs Center of Innovation.

SEEDS Capital is the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, Wong Fong is a SGX-listed group specialising in several businesses, including customised engineering solutions, industrial and hospitality training, education and talent management and placements.

Angelhub is a startup investor based in Hong Kong, and Artesian is an alternative investment firm in the Asia-Pacific region with over 400 startups in its portfolio.

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Image Credit: Botsync

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