Singapore

Summer International uses social media data to launch new beauty brands • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 17, 2022Posted in Asia, beauty, Influencer Marketing, Singapore, social media, south korea, Southeast Asia, Startups, Summer International, wellnessNo Comments

If you follow #beautytok, #beautytube or any beauty content on social media platforms, you know that popular product trends are hard to keep up with. Summer International stays ahead of the game by identifying the most influential content creators, and working with them to incubate new brands. Founded in Singapore and based in Los Angeles and South Korea, Summer International announced today it has raised a $5 million seed round from investors including GDP Ventures, Teja Ventures, Gushcloud International and Singaporean angel investors Koh Boon Hwee and Shirley Crystal Tan. NYX founder and Bespoke Beauty Brands CEO Toni Ko will also join Summer International as a strategic investor. NYX was acquired by L’Oreal in 2014 for about $500 million. Summer International co-founder and CEO Xiaoski Kuik said the company’s goal is to create an ecosystem to help influencers and creators launch and sell beauty brands using consumer data and analytics. It operates in the United States, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. The company launched in 2018 along with Gushcloud International, an influencer marketing firm. Since then, Summer International has incubated brands like skincare line Baby Face with Singaporean influencer Jamie Chua, who has over 1.2 million followers, and wellness brands HANJAN, which launched in April at Coachella and recently struck a partnership with singer Nicole Scherzinger. Kuik told ZebethMedia that Summer International looks for creators and influencers who have a strong connection with their audience based on engagement rates, how active they are a video-first platforms and whether they have a strong localized community and global presence. “Many times, creators seek us out because of our reach and resources,” she said. “We have our own supply chain and we have the power to distribute brands across Asia via our social commerce and live distribution platforms. Our goal is to establish these top influencers as founders of the next-gen beauty, skincare and wellness brands and to provide them with the access and necessary resources they need to break into the market.” Other companies that also work with creators to launch brands include Pietra and Forma Brands. Ko said Summer International differentiates by owning its own distribution network and it also has a network of live commerce and social commerce distributors, mainly micro influencers based in Southeast Asia. “It gives us the ability to understand data of what consumers want and would buy and this allows us to collaborate with creators to build brands in a more cost-efficient manner,” Kuik said. Summer International’s live commerce distribution network helps it understand what brands and products consumers from different parts of Southeast Asia want to buy. It also provides data points like pricing and demographics to create new brands and market them. Summer International brands are sold through a mix of digital and offline channels, including e-commerce platforms, social and live commerce platforms and big box stores. They are also available on Summer.store, the company’s proprietary social commerce network.

‘Hybrid meat’? Meatable wants to get lab-grown meat to market faster by combining with plant-based proteins • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 16, 2022Posted in Biotech & Health, Climate, Love Handle, Meatable, SingaporeNo Comments

Alternative meat, seafood, and dairy products are all the rage in startup land, with countless companies raising bucketloads of cash and showcasing their first products throughout 2022. There are two broad categories within the meat-substitute space specifically: plant-based foods that strive to mimic the texture, look, and feel of real meat, and “lab-grown” cultivated meat that’s created from animal cells in a test tube. While each is effectively trying to solve similar problems, vis-à-vis saving the planet by weaning humans off their animal protein dependency, they each have their respective pros and cons. For starters, plant-based meat alternatives are already widely available to buy globally, whereas lab-grown meat is still in its relative infancy, with Singapore currently the only market in the world where cultured meat is permitted to be sold. The Asian city-state has emerged as a center of gravity of sorts for the burgeoning fake meat movement — just this week, Australia’s Vow announced a $49.2 million round of funding to bring its cultured meat product to Singaporean restaurants by the end of this year. It’s against that backdrop that Meatable, a VC-backed Dutch company that recently debuted its first product lineup in the form of synthetic sausages, today announced a partnership with Singaporean food startup Love Handle to create what it touts as “the world’s first hybrid meat innovation center.” This builds on Meatable’s recent expansion into the Singaporean market where it partnered with Esco Aster to develop cultivated pork products, with plans afoot to invest some $60 million in the next five years in the broader Singaporean market. Meatable’s fake sausages look like the real deal It’s (not) alive… The phrase “hybrid meat” in the context of a lab-grown meat company could perhaps stir some dystopian vision straight from the pages of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but when you learn that Love Handle is in fact a “plant-based butcher,” one can start to relax a little — Meatable isn’t stitching together components from different animals. The two companies are teaming up to blend the best of both their respective worlds — cultured meat and plant-based protein alternatives. What Meatable and Love Handle are striving for here isn’t entirely novel — others are working toward a similar end, and we’re seeing similar moves elsewhere to reduce animal consumption through products that mesh real meat with plant-based alternatives. The idea there is that while a burger might still contain real beef, it contains less of it, which can only be better for the environment (and people’s health). But what is the motivation, exactly, from a company such as Meatable which operates entirely off the back of its “fake real-meat” foundations? It all boils down to costs, and getting things to market more quickly. Cultivated meat is expensive to develop in a lab setting, and critics argue that there is little to suggest it will be affordable enough to scale at any meaningful level in the near future. On top of that, there are significant regulatory barriers (even in Singapore where it is approved for consumption), not to mention the mental barriers associated with eating meat grown in a lab. So by meshing cultured and plant-based meat alternatives, this could essentially lower all the barriers to entry. “We’ve decided to start launching with hybrid products in Singapore to help customers become acquainted with cultivated meat faster,” Meatable’s chief commercial officer Caroline Wilschut explained to ZebethMedia. “We know that the idea of consuming cultivated meat still requires further education in terms of what it is, how we develop it, and how we can produce it without harming animals, the planet, and people. The faster we launch, the faster we can start that education to build consumer acceptance and begin making an impact with harm-free meat.” Learning from electric cars It’s worth noting that Meatable isn’t going all-in on the hybrid model — it’s still very much continuing its lab-based work to rollout 100% lab-grown meat. But with the new innovation center in Singapore, it’s “seizing an additional opportunity in a supportive regulatory environment,” according to Wilschut. “Meatable continues with the development of full cultivated meat — however, we’ve also determined that hybrid products can be launched faster than entirely cultivated meat,” she said. “Meatable believes that a hybrid product will help gain acceptance amongst customers and maximise its reach within Singapore.” The goal here can perhaps be compared to something like that of a hybrid electric vehicle — it helps bring a nascent technology to the masses more quickly. And while there are a few other players dabbling with hybrids in terms of adding a bit of cultivated meat to a substantively plant-based product, Meatable says that it’s turning the tables on this concept. “In this instance, Meatable and Love Handle are taking a cultivated meat-led approach, which means they are starting with Meatable’s cultivated meat and adding Love Handle’s plant-based protein to develop a hybrid product that — in testing — has emerged as indistinguishable from real meat in taste and texture,” Wilschut said. This gets to the crux of why hybrid products could be a better idea. Purely plant-based meat alternatives typically lack the taste and texture of real meat, so by bringing together two distinct forms of animal-free meat alternatives, this could help everything scale for everyone involved — a win-win for both Meatable and Love Handle. This leads us back to the main thrust of today’s announcement. What, exactly, will the new innovation center in Singapore do? According to Wilschut, the lab is scheduled to open fully in 2023, with both companies co-investing in talent starting with around 10 new hires. It will sport a kitchen and a lab featuring all the machines and materials needed to bring hybrid food products to market, while it will also serve as a commercial front-end for everything going on behind the scenes, with space for consumers to try and buy products directly. “Both companies will invest in the lab, operate the innovation center, and will together hire the talent and resources to

Southeast Asia health tech platform Speedoc raises $28M • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 8, 2022Posted in Asia, Biotech & Health, health care, Health tech, healthcare, malaysia, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Speedoc, Startups, telemedicineNo Comments

Speedoc, a health tech platform that brings hospital care to homes, has raised $28 million in pre-Series B funding. The round included Bertelsmann Investments, Shinhan Venture Investment and Mars Growth. Returning investor Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, which led Speedoc’s $5 million Series A in 2020, also participated. Based in Singapore, Speedoc was founded in 2017 by Dr. Shravan Verma and Serene Cai. Its services include telemedicine consultations, on-site doctor and nurse visits, virtual hospital wards and ambulance hailing. Speedoc is available in a total of nine cities, including eight in Malaysia. Dr. Verma told ZebethMedia that he became interested in creating an app for on-demand medical services while he was a doctor in an emergency department, and saw how many patients had to wait hours for minor conditions. Cai, meanwhile, wanted to create an easier way for people to get medical help, especially in underserved communities, while her family was caring for her grandmother, who had severe dementia. Speedoc is currently participating in the Ministry of Health Office for Healthcare Transformation’s Mobile Inpatient Care@Home initiative, and its hospital partners include National University Health System (NUHS), the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. As part of the program, Speedoc plans to expand its virtual hospital program, which includes a 24/7 patient care team. H-Ward is one of the main ways Speedoc differentiates from other telemedicine platforms, Dr. Verma said, because it standardizes services like telemedicine, remote monitoring and home-based doctors and nurses for continuous care. Patients are able to receive frequent medical reviews, 24/7 nursing, intravenous therapies, blood tests and in-person visits. “Research and survey findings have shown that given the same medical care and treatment, patients could recover faster at home,” Dr. Sherma said. “We have also been encouraged by our patients advocating for home-based care, and preferences to be admitted at home. Most importantly, on the impact on the healthcare landscape, the thrust towards virtual hospitals will ensure more optimal utilization rates, and more capacity for medical personnel to attend to life-threatening conditions.” Speedoc will use its new funding to expand in Southeast Asia, especially in cities where there is a shortage of healthcare professionals. In a statement about the funding, Shinhan Venture Investment (Global Investment) director Jinsoo Lee said, “Healthcare provision and delivery in Southeast Asia is poised for tremendous change in the next decade. We believe the healthcare model Speedoc champions will see greater adoption in meeting the healthcare gap in the region.”

Hong Kong to explore legalizing retail crypto trades in reversal of previous proposal • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 31, 2022Posted in Crypto, Dubai, Fintech, hong kong, SingaporeNo Comments

Hong Kong has proposed allowing retail investors to trade in cryptocurrencies and crypto exchange-traded funds and plans to conduct pilots in NFT issuance and CBDC as it looks to regain its status as a global financial hub. The city had earlier proposed limiting crypto trade to professional investors, a move that saw many crypto entrepreneurs shift base to Dubai and Singapore. Hong Kong will review property rights for tokenized assets and explore legalizing smart contracts “to provide a solid legal foundation for their development,” it said. It is also planning to put in place “appropriate regulations” on aspects such as “governance, stabilization and redemption mechanism” of stablecoin. The proposal comes at a time when China has ramped up its efforts to crackdown on crypto transactions and Singapore is exploring a series of stringent guidelines surrounding virtual digital assets. “We want to make our policy stance clear to the global market, to demonstrate our determination to explore fintech with the global virtual asset community,” said Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan. In the initial stage, Hong Kong expects the underlying assets to be “confined to bitcoin futures and ether futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange,” he added. Hong Kong also detailing the approach it wishes to undertake in a policy statement. It said the Securities and Futures Commission will conduct a public consultation on how retail investors may be given a “suitable degree” to access to virtual asset under the new licensing regime. “We recognise VA [virtual asset] is here to stay, given how it has attracted attention of global investors and is increasingly viewed as a conduit for financial innovations, not to mention the future opportunities that will be opened up as VA moves into the areas of Web 3.0 and the Metaverse,” the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau said in a statement. “The Government, in conjunction with the financial regulators, are working towards providing a facilitating environment for promoting sustainable and responsible development of the VA sector in Hong Kong.” Sam Bankman-Fried, the chief executive of crypto exchange FTX and a high-profile backer in the industry, called Hong Kong’s steps today “really promising,” but added that if only the region had taken this stand last year, referring to aggressive exodus that Hong Kong’s previous proposal caused. “I deeply appreciate when policymakers engage constructively and optimistically with the people who matter the most for an industry’s direction: the customers,” he said in a tweet. In its statement Monday, Hong Kong said it will pilot projects to test the technological benefits of virtual assets and their applications in the financial markets. These pilot projects include issuance of NFTs, tokenization of green bonds, and “possible launch of retail Central Bank Digital Currency, the eHKD.” Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai have attracted crypto entrepreneurs, investors and tech employees from around the globe in the past half decade with their friendly views on cryptocurrency. But in recent quarters, they have wrestled with just how open do they want to remain. Last week, Singapore proposed new guidelines that may soon require retail investors to take a test and not use credit card payments and other forms of borrowing for trading cryptocurrencies. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a set of consultation papers that it’s worried that many retail customers may “not have sufficient knowledge of the risks of trading” digital payment tokens, which may lead them “to take on higher risks than they would otherwise have been willing, or are able, to bear.”

GenZero’s Frederick Teo on “limitless” opportunities in climate tech • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in Climate, climate tech, GenZero, Singapore, sosv, Southeast Asia, temasek, VentureNo Comments

2050 is an important year for climate tech, with the Paris Agreement calling for emissions to reach net zero by then. In a conversation with GenZero’s Frederick Teo for SOSV’s Climate Tech Summit, we talked about realistic paths to hitting that goal and how startups can tackle what Teo called one of the most existentialist challenges of our generation. GenZero is a $3.6 billion investment company that is backed by Temasek, already known for its climate investing. Teo talked about how it gauges companies before investing, supporting nascent technologies and solutions in the space and what startups can tackle in the next two decades. This Q&A was edited for length, and you can watch the full conversation here or at the bottom of the article. TC: GenZero’s initial commit is from Temasek, which was already a leader in global investing when it announced GenZero in June. It’s a wholly-owned company of Temasek, so why did Temasek decide to start GenZero and what is GenZero doing that Temasek isn’t already? FT: Temasek, as you know, has already taken a lot of steps in the past few years into making investments into sustainability, as well as clean energy and climate-related spaces. It is important for us to think about how to deploy capital in this space because obviously all of us are aware of the climate emergency, the fact that this is actually likely to be one of the most existentialist challenges of our generation. It is important for us to be able to find solutions that can actually address many of these things like global warming, sea level rises, the challenges of food production in a sustainable way. So we wanted to be able to have a dedicated capability to access some of these decarbonization opportunities, and Temasek decided to park aside a sizable amount of capital to be able to develop a team that would be able to focus on issues like carbon markets, decarbonization technologies as well as nature solutions. So that is the reason why we established GenZero as a separate investment platform company. In our work we have been looking at technology solutions such as low carbon materials and carbon capture capabilities, nature solutions that seek to protect and restore natural ecosystems, often with a view to generate carbon credits on top of that, as well as to invest into ecosystem enablers in the carbon market space. The reason for that is because we think that in the near term, energy transition would require some form of participation from carbon markets to allow people to gradually execute this transition. But we do need carbon markets to be credible, effective, transparent, high quality, and therefore there is still investments needed in order to be able to improve capabilities and technologies and solutions in that space. TC: For companies that are curious about trying to pitch themselves to you, what are some examples of your current portfolio companies? FT: In the technology space, we have invested into both funds as well as companies, so a major fund investment is Decarbonization Partners, and that is basically a climate-focused fund that is a joint venture between Temasek and BlackRock. We are an LP invested in that, and they are very focused on late-venture, early growth opportunities across different areas in the decarbonization space. We have also invested into a technology company called Newlight, which seeks to be able to produce bio plastics from captured methane. On the nature side, we have been investing into a few forestry projects that generate carbon credits, and then on the carbon market side, we count among our portfolio companies things like South Pole, which is a global leader in providing project advisory, technical advisory solutions and project development for companies seeking to embark on a net zero decarbonization journey, as well as a carbon exchange called Climate Impact X, which is headquartered here in Singapore. TC: For companies that are curious about potentially getting investment from you, what investment stage does GenZero typically look at? FT: We are kind of flexible. For very early-stage companies, say around the Series A or just before, we will work with different partners to be able to evaluate and deploy capital to support early-stage companies, but I think it’s important to understand why we need to do this. If we think about the broader net zero decarbonization challenge, everybody talks about this 2050 timeline to get to net zero. But the reality is that if we want to create significant climate impact by 2050, we are looking at new solutions that must already somewhat exist today or are starting to come into being today, because we will need another 10 to 15 years for the technologies and solutions to mature and get to a stage where they could be commercializes, and then probably another 10 to 15 years for it to actually be able to be deployed and create some kind of impact. That basically means that this current cohort of young companies are going to make a difference to the 2050 agenda. That is the reason why we are very excited to participate in this space right now, because the action must take place now in order to have any meaningful difference by 2050. TC: Considering that, with technology not coming to fruition by them until then, or making actionable results by then, in light of that, what kind of metrics or milestones do you like to see companies bring to the table before you consider them for your portfolio? FT: I think it goes back to the way we evaluate our performance at GenZero. We have a double bottom line, so our shareholder expects us to be able to obviously achieve some level of financial returns. That’s a given. But we also take the idea around measuring climate impact rather seriously. We try and understand, for example, the kind of climate impact that a solution would be able to achieve if successful deployed. We also look

Singapore may soon require retail investors to take test before trading crypto, prohibit credit cards • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 26, 2022Posted in Asia, Crypto, cryptocurrency, SingaporeNo Comments

Singapore may soon require retail investors to take a test and not use credit card payments and other forms of borrowing for trading cryptocurrencies, the central bank proposed on Wednesday in a series of measures as the island nation looks to make citizens aware of the risks surrounding volatile assets. The Monetary Authority of Singapore said in a set of consultation papers that it’s worried that many retail customers may “not have sufficient knowledge of the risks of trading” digital payment tokens, which may lead them “to take on higher risks than they would otherwise have been willing, or are able, to bear.” Several popular crypto exchanges already require their customers to periodically sift through questionnaires before they are allowed to trade crypto and participate in derivatives trading. The central bank acknowledged [PDF] that a number of industry players are supportive of some form of assessment on the retail customer’s knowledge of risks. The central bank has also proposed that stablecoin issuers make adequate disclosures about their tokens and hold reserve assets in cash, cash equivalent or debt securities that are “at least equivalent to 100% of the par value of the outstanding” tokens in circulation “at all times.” The debt securities, the proposal says, should be issued by the central bank of the pegged currency or organizations that are both a governmental and international character with a credit rating of at least AA—. “SCS [single-currency pegged stablecoins] issuers must obtain independent attestation, such as by external audit firms, that the reserve assets meet the above requirements on a monthly basis. This attestation, including the percentage value of the reserve assets in excess of the par value of outstanding SCS in circulation, must be published on the issuer’s website and submitted to MAS by the end of the following month (for the month being attested),” the proposal says [PDF], adding that issuers also must appoint an external auditor to conduct an annual audit of its reserve assets and submit the report to MAS. The proposal marks a major shift in Singapore’s stance on crypto. Once a preferred global crypto hub for its policies, Singapore authorities have toughen their views of digital assets following the collapse of a series of firms including Terraform Labs’ stablecoin UST and native token LUNA, and hedge fund Three Arrows Capital. (More to follow)

Skuad manages hiring and compliance for building distributed teams • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 20, 2022Posted in distributed teams, hiring, Singapore, Skuad, Southeast Asia, StartupsNo Comments

Singapore-based Skuad helps companies hire employees in different countries while staying compliant with local employment regulations and processing cross-border payroll. The startup announced today it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Skuad has signed up more than 350 employers so far, mostly from North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. This funding round, which brings Skuad’s total raised to $19 million, was led by NMVM and two global payments platforms. It also included participation from returning investors Beenext and Anthemis, plus angel investors Jitendra Gupta, Jupiter founder; Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau; Credit founder Kunal Shah; Alok Mittal, co-founder and CEO of Indifi; Varun Mittal and Rafael Lopez. Skuad was conceptualized just before the pandemic in 2019 by founder Sundeep Sahi with the aim of simplifying international hiring. Since then, the company’s focus has been on helping employers deal with issues that make building distributed teams challenging, like variations in regulations from market to market, international payrolls and remote onboarding. Skuad also serves as a platform for workers to find employment. Sahi told ZebethMedia that traditional hiring and recruiting methods aren’t sufficient to deal with creating a team of people around the world. “Building distributed teams or hiring in another country requires you to establish a subsidiary, register as an entity, open local bank accounts, stay up-to-date with local employment laws, as well as hire local HR, legal and payroll teams. This process often takes months, if not years, and requires an investment of thousands of dollar,” he said. Skuad lets companies hire, onboard and pay employees and contractors in more than 160 countries without needing to set up local entities, and it manages local compliances, well also providing country-specific benefits and insurance packages. Most of its customers are from the tech and consulting industries that employ digital workers in different geographies to fill a talent gap or scale internationally. The startup now has customers from 34 countries, talent placed in about 94 companies and 3x growth in ARR since January 2022. One of Skuad’s clients is Indonesian fintech Akseleran, which needed to fill tech openings. It built a strong candidate funnel through a vetted talent portal called allremote.in, social job networks, recruiters and agencies. Skuad serves as the legal employer in India, since Akseleran doesn’t have a legal entity in the country, and manages local compliance for payments, taxes and benefits. Skuad monetizes through pricing plans that start at $199 per employee per month for payroll and $499 per employee per month for talent found through the platform or 12% of the compensation of the employee, whichever is higher. The company is currently finalizing its acquisition of Codejudge, a data-focused talent assessment platform that automates tech interviews, to expand it hiring and onboarding capabilities. Some competitors in the remote hiring space include Deel, Remote, Globalization Partners and Multiplier. Skuad serves as a hybrid of talent platforms, like Turing and Toptal, but with a focus on remote full-time jobs that are enabled by its network of local entities that process payroll compliantly, like Deel and Remote do. Sahi says it differentiates with its process transparency and the size of its tech-enabled talent platform, which can be used to manage the entire employment lifecycle.

Thunes integrates with Visa Direct’s digital payments network • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 19, 2022Posted in Asia, cross-border payments, Fintech, Singapore, Southeast Asia, Startups, thunesNo Comments

Cross-border payments startup Thunes is partnering with Visa, in a move that will add more than 1.5 billion new endpoints to Visa Direct’s digital payments network. This enables many more consumers and small businesses to send funds to markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where digital wallets are often the default payment method. Based in Singapore and San Francisco, Thunes is backed by investors including Insight Partners, GGV and Checkout.com, and has raised $130 million in funding to date. Customers of its payments infrastructure include Uber Eats, Grab, MoneyGram, Remitly and Western Union, and it currently processes more than 180 million transactions a year across 130 countries. One of Thunes’ focuses is emerging markets where there are a lot of unbanked people. Many use digital wallets as an alternative to traditional financial services, since they can top-up cash without needing a bank account or credit card. CEO Peter De Caluwe told ZebethMedia that Thunes was created to fix gaps in payments market’s slow traditional banking infrastructure. He cited research that shows half of the world’s population will use mobile wallets by 2025, but says Thunes believe adoption will happen faster than that, with its network connected to 2.7 billion mobile wallet users by 2022. “Digital wallets are one of the fastest growing financial instruments for many small businesses and for unbanked individuals in emerging markets,” said De Caluwe. “Three billion people globally are still left out or poorly served by the formal economy. For these unbanked individuals in emerging markets, digital wallets are gaining traction as an empowering first entry point to the financial system.” The partnership means that about 14,900 financial institutions that are Visa clients can integrate send-to-wallet services for customers, retailers and SMEs through Visa Direct. Visa’s network is now connected to Thunes’ B2B platform, which means Visa Direct can reach more than 1.5 billion new endpoints (for a total of 7 billion) and that the 78 digital wallet providers already integrated with Thunes get a new send-to-wallet capability. Some examples of how Thunes’ software and APIs are used include connecting Paypal and Paypal Xoom payouts with top mobile wallets in Asia and Africa, including in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Kenya and facilitating payments for digital remittance companies like Remitly, World Remit and Moneygram. Grab used Thunes’ platform to localize payments, enabling it to accept mobile payment options and give on-demand payouts to drivers, which gave it an edge over Uber.

Pillow wants to make crypto saving and investing easy for new users • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 13, 2022Posted in Asia, Crypto, cryptocurrency, Pillow, Singapore, Southeast Asia, StartupsNo Comments

Pillow aspires to be an all-in-one platform that helps even newbie users save, spend and invest in crypto currency. The Singapore-based startup announced it has raised $18 million in Series A financing co-led by Accel and Quona Capital, with participation from Elevation Capital and Jump Capital. The app currently has more than 75,000 users in over 60 countries. It supports 10 digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Axie Infinity and USD-backed stablecoins USDC and USDT, and plans to expand to over 50 assets in the coming months. Founded in 2021 by Arindam Roy, Rajath KM and Kartik Mishra, Pillow is focused on emerging markets like Africa and Southeast Asia. It founders say that since the beginning of the year, it has grown its user base by 300%, with assets under management growing 5x. It also recently expanded into Nigeria, Ghana and Vietnam, among other markets. Before founding Pillow, Roy and KM explored web3 while working at identity verification and AML software provider HyperVerge, while also holding jobs in the traditional finance industry. During this time, the two started a Discord server on the side to onboard people onto web3, which eventually grew to more than 15,000 people. “We saw a pattern of problems repeating,” the two told ZebethMedia. “People do not know how to pay gas fees, do not know how to bridge across various blockchains, people do not know what transaction they are approving and end up losing funds.”Around this time, the two met Mishra, who was head of business for Indian delivery startup Dunzo, and started talking about how to solve the onboarding problem at scale. “Eventually, we realized that the challenge is that crypto transactions today do not fit the mental model of how retail users perceive transactions. You would need a strong technical background to transact seamlessly in crypto,” they said. As a result, Pillow was born to make crypto usage understandable. To do this, the Pillow team has to tackle a couple big issues. The first is awareness, since the majority of people still think crypto is just buying and selling Bitcoin, without understanding other use cases. The second is complexity, since using crypto in its entirety means understanding gas fees, blockchain technology and bridging. “A person who just wants to transact is not going to scale this learning curve,” they said. Pillow solves these problems by simplifying crypto investments and transactions to one click, instant swaps and savings using single-click daily interest savings. It plans to do the same for other crypto services like payments. To use Pillow for the first time, people sign up using their email accounts, and then provide KYC information, such as live selfie photos and national identity cards. Afterward, they get a short lesson on the potential risks of investing in digital assets before choosing which ones they want to deposit or invest in. Before their initial investment, they are taken through another lesson about that asset’s potential risks. After that, they can deposit cryptocurrency from their own wallets or another crypto platform by making a transfer to the displayed crypto wallet address on Pillow. In some countries where Pillow has partnered with local, compliant on-ramp service providers, users can also buy crypto with their local fiat currency. Pillow supports deposits and withdrawals with fiat currency through local partnerships in Nigeria, the Philippines and Vietnam, with plans to add more across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America with its new funding. The startup’s largest user base is in Nigeria, and it also has a major presences in India, Ghana and Vietnam, and growing user bases in Brazil, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. It focuses on retail investors, enabling them to start with investments as small as $5. Since Pillow’s users are from different geographies, its closest competitors also come from around the world. They include crypto exchange Luno in Africa, multi-asset exchange Pluang (another Accel investment) in Southeast Asia and global crypto savings app Nexo. Pillow’s founders says it differentiates with its goal of becoming a holistic home for digital asset-driven financial services that allows even first time crypto users users to earn, save, spend and invest from the same platform. Pillow is currently in growth phase and plans on introducing transaction fees as new products, including swaps and tokenized real world assets are introduced. It currently makes profits on returns generated on top of the 5% to 10.42% returns made accessible to users. Pillow keeps a small percentage of the spread generated, and another portion also goes into its yield reserves.

Singapore-based staffing platform Workmate acquired by Persol Asia Pacific • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 11, 2022Posted in Asia, hr, human resources, Persol Asia Pacific, Persol Holding, Singapore, Southeast Asia, staffing, Startups, WorkmateNo Comments

Workmate, a Singapore-based on-demand staffing platform, has been acquired by Persol Asia Pacific, one of the region’s largest HR service providers. Workmate focuses on frontline and essential workers, and the acquisition will allow it to expand its HR solutions throughout the Asia Pacific. Workmate currently operates in Thailand and Indonesia and is expanding operations into Singapore this month. Persol Asia Pacific is part of Persol Holdings, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It is one of the largest human resources companies in Japan and has invested in HR tech companies including Glint. Workmate’s Thailand team Workmate was founded in 2016 to help businesses find frontline staff, while ensuring that workers get consistent employment. About 120,000 frontline workers and more than 800 companies are currently on its platform. The company defines frontline staff as essential workers, typically in low- to mid-skilled work, who provide essential services to the public. Sectors include logistics and warehousing, manufacturing, food and beverage, retail and back office roles like admin and customer service. Workmate provides companies with a pre-vetted pool of workers for both short- and long-term work and uses proprietary AI-scoring algorithms to improve matching quality and attendance rates, worker retention and productivity. The algorithms take into account data points like work experience, location and skills, and combines that with first-hand behavioral data and worker history on Workmate’s platform, like attendance and supervisor ratings. Workmate will retain its own branding after the acquisition and will run independently with Persol Asia Pacific as its parent company.