Smart credit startup Flowcast snags US$3M Series A funding co-led by ING Ventures, BitRock Capital [Press Release]
Flowcast, a smart credit startup powered by AI that helps financial institutions and corporates make decisions, announces that it has raised a US$3 million with additional funding from existing investors including Katalyst Ventures and Alpana Ventures.
The company noted that the proceeds of this round will be used to fund the acceleration of Flowcast’s go-to-market strategy, global market expansion especially in Singapore and the APAC region, and the continuing product development and improvement.
Flowcast offers an AI-enabled platform to power smarter credit decisions for financial institutions and corporates. Flowcast’s API-based machine learning platform harnesses alternative data to unlock credit at scale, which helps empowers lenders and corporations to extend and monitor credit that is historically unavailable with conventional lending and credit scoring methods.
Flowcast shares that it is also participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore program, which aims to accelerate startups via providing them access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology, and application programmable interfaces (APIs) with opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers in the Southeast Asian region.
Lao ride-hailing service app LOCA to showcase business model at Thailand’s Mekong Innovation Startup in Tourism [Eleven Myanmar]
LOCA, a ride-hailing service operating in Laos will be showcased at the Mekong Innovation Startup in Tourism (MIST) meeting in Thailand next week, as reported by Eleven Myanmar. It will represent Laos in the final pitching competition at MIST on October 8-9 in Bangkok, Thailand.
Also Read: Mekong regional initiative aims to help travel startups
LOCA is a Lao startup that claims to dominate the ride-hailing business. It has been operating since early 2018 with more than 300 cars.
The co-founder and CTO of LOCA, Souliyo Vongdala, said that tourism is a major contributor to GDP and that innovative startups will help attract more tourists to Laos.
Right now, there are two ride-hailing services in Laos – LOCA and the Cambodia-based Drive-up. These two were recently launched and it is expected there will be more in the future.
Mekong Innovative Startups in Tourism is jointly managed by the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office and the Mekong Business Initiative.
The initiative is supported by the Australian government and the Asian Development Bank and organised by UNWTO Affiliate Member Chameleon Strategies.
Indonesian logistics startup Paxel reportedly gears up to close series A round from East Ventures, SIG, SMDV [Tech In Asia]
Indonesian logistics startup Paxel is reportedly in the dawn of closing a Series A funding round that will likely be US$7 million in total, as reported by Tech In Asia. East Ventures reportedly leads the round, with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Sinar Mas Digital Ventures (SMDV).
In September, Paxel reportedly raised a seed round led by one of its founders, Johari Zein, who is also a founder of omnipresent logistics provider JNE. One person familiar with the matter adds that the founding team put in US$10 million of their own money in the seed round.
Paxel was founded by Bryant Christanto and Zaldy Ilham Masita. It is an app-based logistics startup providing same-day delivery services for a flat rate to several major Indonesian cities, promises customers to get their money back in the event of failure fulfilling the delivery within a certain time limit.
Nikkei acquires a minority stake in Singapore’s AI startup DC Frontiers [Nikkei Asian Review]
Japanese media group Nikkei announces that it has acquired 14.79 percent of DC Frontiers’ stake, a Singapore’s AI startup, looking to enhance data and news service scoutAsia with the collaboration.
Nikkei and the Financial Times launched scoutAsia last year, creating an extensive database of Asian companies and regional business news. Nikkei acquired the FT back in 2015.
Also Read: Singapore Press Holdings unveils AI initiative and stock photo marketplace
Founded in 2011, DCF offers the use of AI for tasks like article tagging and creating maps that illustrate relationships between companies, individuals, and investments. DCF’s AI and machine-learning technologies are aimed at improving the accuracy and efficiency of searches for news and corporate data.
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