Sea Group’s venture fund to invest US$1bn in tech startups; Sea Capital will be headed by Chief Investment Officer David Ma; Ma is founder of Composite Capital Management, a Hong Kong-based global investment management firm which has recently been fully acquired by the group. More here
SEA-focused VC firm Asia Partners’s maiden fund hits US$384mn final close; Its LPs include the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Germany’s DEG; It has already invested US$90mn+ across its first 3 investments, which collectively have operations across every major economy in SEA. More here
AirAsia rides into Singapore’s food delivery scene; According to a report, AirAsia Food will initially feature about 80 restaurants, including popular outlets like No Signboard Seafood, The Shepherd’s Pie; About 300 other restaurants are set to join the platform; At least 50% of Singaporeans eat out every day, with the country seeing a staggering 2.7mn active online food delivery users in 2020. More here
AppWorks raises US$114mn for fund III to back Series A and B startups in SEA, Taiwan; The new fund, with a target corpus of US$150mn, will seek to invest in AI, IoT, blockchain and decentralised finance; To date, AppWorks has invested in 395 startups. More here
Indonesian payments infra startup Xendit raises US$64.6mn in Accel-led Series B; Xendit is the first Indonesian company to go through Y Combinator’s accelerator programme; Xendit works with businesses of all sizes, processing more than 65mn transactions with US$6.5bn in payment value annually. More here
Indonesia’s Payfazz invests US$30mn into Singapore’s payments infra company Xfers; Both firms will be part of a newly-formed financial entity Fazz Financial Group (FFG); With this investment, Xfers will serve as the B2B arm of FFG — focussed on connecting external merchants to the payment infrastructure and user network amassed by the group. More here
Symbo secures US$9.4mn Series A, acquires digital health platform Vivant; Investors include CreditEase fintech investment fund (lead), Think Investments, Insignia Ventures, and AJ Capital; Symbo supports agents, third-party administrators, brokers, corporates and insurers in the purchase, distribution and administration of insurance across India and SEA. More here
Manabie secures US$3mn funding to bring Japan’s “high-quality” education to Vietnam; Investors are Do Ventures, Genesia Ventures and Chiba Dojo; This follows a US$4.8mn in April last year from Genesia Ventures (lead) and angels including professional soccer player Keisuke Honda; Besides a mobile app, Manabie also runs 5 learning centres in HCMC for students to receive guidance from individual counsellors. More here
Indonesian SaaS supply chain solutions startup Advotics raises US$2.75mn; Lead investor is East Ventures; Advotics provides end-to-end integrated supply chain solutions to a variety of clients ranging from SMEs to international companies; It has 9 SaaS products that provide solutions across production, warehousing, and distribution. More here
MyMy joins forces with Sukaniaga to bid for Malaysia digital banking license; This comes fresh off MyMy’s raising of US$2.4mn from Koperasi Tentera in Sep. 2020; As per BNM’s digital banking framework, 40 parties are reportedly eyeing the five licenses that will be issued by Q1, 2022. More here
Vietnamese online real estate startup Citics raises US$1mn; Investors are Vulpes Investment, Nextrans and TheVentures; Its first product is a Data-as-a-Service offer that banks use to validate the value of real estate employed as collateral for loans; Previously, the startup has raised US$700K in angel funding. More here
AI foodtech startup Easy Eat raises funding from ex-Uber CPO, Silicon Valley veterans; The money will be used to ramp up its operations in Malaysia, where it sees ‘great adoption and engagement’ for its products among F&B outlets; Easy Eat digitises all customer-facing interactions in restaurants — from browsing menu, ordering and tracking to payments. More here
Indonesia’s next-day grocery delivery startup Dropezy bags pre-seed funding; Investors include Taurus Ventures and Kopi Kenangan; Dropezy will also introduce a ‘pay later’ feature for its customers, as part of a company-wide strategy to scale up its business. More here
‘More conglomerates are embracing digital disruptions as they’re undergoing transitions between generations’: Emtek’s Andya Daniswara; Although Indonesia is constrained by fiscal limitation, the government has worked quickly to facilitate and regulate digital innovation happening in the country. More here
Autonomous drones developer for maritime logistics F-drones raises funding; Investors include Eastern Pacific Shipping (lead), Schulte Group, SEEDS Capital, EF; The firm’s mission to provide 24×7 commercial Beyond-Vision-Line-Of-Sight drone deliveries to ships; It is also developing a fully-electric and autonomous proprietary drone, capable of delivering 100kg payloads over 100km. More here
InVent invests in Datafarm, Swift Dynamics to accelerate growth of 5G in Thailand; Both the companies will play a crucial role in supporting corporates to strongly step into the fully-digitised 5G era; Datafarm is a cyber security company whereas Swift Dynamics is an IoT management provider which connects multiple devices of clients to the cloud. More here
Indonesia’s Eden Farm raises pre-Series A; Investors include Investible (lead), AC Ventures and Corin Capital; Eden Farm focuses connects farmers and communities upstream with F&B businesses, including restaurants, street food vendors and central markets; The capital will be used to expand operations to Java and Sumatra. More here
Neuron Mobility expands operations to Seoul; The Singapore-based e-scooter rental operator will deploy 2K Korean-spec e-scooters, which are fitted with the world’s first app-controlled helmet lock, which electronically secures a safety helmet for every e-scooter. More here
Digital wallets to overtake credit cards by 2024 amid e-commerce boom: report; Digital wallets such as GrabPay and DBS PayLah! are expected to account for 27% of the Singapore market by 2024, in line with global trends, said the report by Worldpay from FIS; BNPL is on track to grow to 13% of the online payment market in 2024, from just 3% currently. More here
Sea’s 2020 gross profit doubles on e-commerce, gaming boom; Total adjusted EBITDA stood at US$107mn, compared with a loss of US$178.6mn in 2019; Net loss, though, widened from US$1.46bn in 2019 to US$1.62bn in 2020; E-commerce proved to be the major growth propeller, with GAAP revenues for the unit grew 159.8% to US$2.2bn from last year. More here
Sea Group eyes LatAm e-commerce in potential battle royale against incumbents; Banking on the success of its hit game Free Fire, the group has seemingly set its sights on conquering LatAm’s e-commerce, beginning with Brazil and Mexico; Just over a week ago, Shopee launched with an app in Mexico. More here
Ant group boss tries to quell employee discontent with promise of eventual IPO; In a post on Ant’s internal website, Executive Chairman Eric Jing said the management is reviewing its remuneration and incentive policy and working on a “short-term liquidity solution” for employees that would take effect in April. More here
Ho Chi Minh City zeroes in on becoming regional AI hub; The city has set a target of concluding projects on building digital infrastructure and AI-related policies and establishing centres for AI research, technology transfer, and human resources between 2021 and 2025. More here
Indonesia’s e-commerce scene could change forever with the gojek-Tokopedia real; The e-commerce market has witnessed accelerated growth ever since pandemic restrictions charged up the demand for e-services; Indonesia has the fastest-growing internet economy in SEA, a region with nearly 650mn people and an expected internet economy revenue of US$300bn by 2025. More here
Amazon, Google vie for piece of India’s digital payments market; The companies are part of four consortia preparing to apply for licenses to operate retail payments and settlement systems in the country; The contest is fierce as regulator Reserve Bank of India is expected to give just one or two licenses. More here
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