Pazcare, a Bangalore-based employee benefits and insurtech platform, announced today it has raised $8.2 million led by Jafco Asia, bringing its valuation to $48 million. The funding also included participation from returning investors 3One4 Capital and BEENEXT.

Pazcare currently offers health, term, accident insurance and outpatient health benefits. It monetizes from service providers through commissions.

The startup says it currently serves more than 130,000 members from over 500 companies on its platform and has seen quarter-on-quarter growth of 100%. Its enterprise clients include Mindtickle, Mamaearth, Levi’s, Cash Karo and Open Financial.

Pazcare’s last round of funding was a $3.5 million seed round raised in October 2021. It has now raised a total of about $12 million since its founding in 2021 by Sanchit Malik and Manish Mishra. It aims to bring 2,000 more companies onto its platform over the next few quarters.

Malik told TechCrunch that the new funding will be used to expand Pazcare’s offerings and double its team size. He and Mishra wanted to create Pazcare because “health and life insurance penetration in India has been very low,” Malik told TechCrunch. “In India, we are on our own, either we buy insurance by ourselves or we are dependent on our employers to provide these benefits. We believe that insurance penetration will be primarily employer-driven and this became a big trigger for us to get into it.”

In a statement, Jafco Asia head of South Asia investments Supriya Singh said, “B2B insurance is a large white space in Asia. Pazcare is well equipped to disrupt this space and the company’s numbers speak for itself.”

Google is expanding a verification program for financial services ads that it launched in the UK last summer after seeing what it describes as a “pronounced decline” in reports of ads promoting financial scams.

First in line to get the requirement, as part of a phased expansion of the policy, are Australia, Singapore and Taiwan. But Google says it plans to further expand the verification requirements to advertisers in additional countries and regions “in the coming months”.

The verification layer sits atop Google’s financial products and services policy — looping in a local financial regulator which advertisers must demonstrate they are authorized by in order to have their financial services ads accepted by Google — thereby adding a layer of security against the adtech giant accepting and running ads for crypto investment scams and the like.

In the UK the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) is the regulatory body that financial services advertisers must demonstrate they are authorized by. Equivalent oversight bodies will come into play in the three new markets.

Google said advertisers wanting to promote financial products and services in these markets will be able to apply for verification at the end of June — with the policy slated to go into effect on August 30, 2022.

“Advertisers that have not completed the new verification process by this date will no longer be allowed to promote financial services,” it warns in a blog post penned by Alejandro Borgia, a Google director of ads privacy and safety.

“We work tirelessly to make sure the ads we serve are safe and trustworthy, and we know that partnering and collaborating with government regulators is critical to our success. That’s why we’re closely coordinating with regulators in these three markets to make sure this program is effective at scale,” he added.

Google hasn’t offered any data to back up its claim that the policy change has led to a substantial decline in reports of financial scam ads in the UK market — offering only an overall (global) figure for ads that it blocked or removed in 2021 (58.9 million) for violating its financial services policies, culled from its 2021 Ads Safety Report.

Prior to launching the financial ads verification policy in the UK, Google had been under pressure from the FCA to tackle scams — with the regulator threatening legal action if Google continued to accept unscreened financial ads.

Salary Hero wants to provide lower-income Thai workers with more financial flexibility. The startup, which focuses on earned wage access and finance education, with plans to add neo banking products, too, announced today it has raised $2.8 million. The funding included participation from Global Founders Capital, M Venture Partners, 500 Global, 1982 Ventures, Titan Capital and Thai corporations and angel investors.

Salary Hero was founded in late 2021 by former Bain & Co. Bangkok executives Jonathan Nohr and Prabhav Rakhra. Both were also former bankers at Credit Suisse and Barclays. Other members of the founding team include Tep Neeranatpuree former head of corporate sales at Lalamove, and Thanakij Pechprasarn, former CTO at edtech startup Gantik.

Salary Hero’s team

Rakhra said that while working at Bain, he and Nohr focused on financial services engagements. “With our common backgrounds both being in investment banking, and while working on strategy cases for various banks in Southeast Asia, we experienced how banks continuously de-prioritize lower income customer segments,” he told TechCrunch. That is because they aren’t as profitable as affluent demographics. As a result, Rakhra added, lower-income customers end up paying more than wealthier individuals for the same basic financial services.

“It seems fundamentally wrong that people with fewer means should pay more for financial services, if they have access at all,” he said. “We saw an opportunity to use technology to help level the playing field in Thailand and Southeast Asia.”

By being able to access their earned wages on demand, workers are able to better handle emergencies and unforeseen expenses, instead of being forced to borrow from lenders who charge 10% to 30% interest per month, Rahkra said. “These compounding rates lead to cycles of debt that are very hard to break free from,” he said. “Additionally, financial uncertainty and a lack of a financial safety net creates a lingering feeling of insecurity, and is the main cause of mental stress among workers.” He added that 80% of Thai workers who make less than $1000 USD a month have used loan sharks at some point.

The company says it has seen double-digit week-on-week user growth in 2022 among its clients in the manufacturing, logistics, hospitality and retail sectors. Salary Hero works with companies with as little as 100 staff members on their payroll, but their initial focus is on companies with a full-time headcount of between 500 to 50,000. Rakhra said that by addressing the financial needs of their workers, companies are able to improve employee satisfaction and reduce turnover in a competitive labor market. The company monetizes by charing a low access fee for its earned wage access, but does not charge interest or other hidden fees, Rakhra said.

In the future, Salary Hero plans to add neo banking products, including at-source savings accounts, insurance products, remittances and other financial services like micro-investments and debt restructuring advice. These other products will go live in 2023, while Salary Hero’s earned wage access and financial education features are already live.

In a prepared statement, M Ventures Partner CEO Mayank Parekh said, “We’re proud to be backing Salary Hero, supporting their innovative solution for employers to differentiate themselves in an increasingly competitive labor market. The future of payroll is one where we say goodbye to traditional pay cycles. Salary Hero empowers workers, and at the same time, solves immediate challenges for employers-driving retention, recruitment and productivity of their workers.”

Last year saw a huge funding boom for Southeast Asian consumer investment apps and if Pintu’s funding announcement today is anything to go by, that looks set to continue. The cryptocurrency-focused app has raised a $113 million Series B from Intudo Ventures, Lightspeed, Northstart Group and Pantera Capital.

Launched in April 2022, Pintu bills itself as “Indonesia’s leading homegrown crypto assets platform.” This is the third round of funding the startup has landed in little over a year. The first was a $6 million Series A announced in May 2021, and the second was $35 million in Series A+ funding just two months later. At the time, Pintu chief operating officer Andrew Adjiputro told TechCrunch that it raised an A+ instead of moving onto a Series B because its focus on product development and execution remained the same.

Now 10 months later, Pintu chief marketing officer Timothius Martin tells TechCrunch that it has added more tokens, making more a total of 66 available, with more added each month. The app also added additional payment channel integrations; Pintu Staking, which lets users stake their Pintu Token; and Pintu Earn, a product that enables them to earn an up to a 15% annual percentage yield (APY) on selected crypto assets which are paid hourly with no lock-up period. Users can top-up or withdraw their Earn wallet at any time.

According to data from the Indonesian Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency (Bappepti), the number of crypto investors in Indonesia doubled over the past year to more than 12 million traders, compared to 7 million domestic public equity investors. But since crypto asset ownership still only has a 4% penetration rate among the population, Pintu’s team notes that it has plenty of room to grow. Pintu is registered and licensed by Bappepti.

The app is geared toward first-time cryptocurrency investors, primarily Gen Z and millennials with features like Pintu Academy, an educational program. It lets them invest in Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies. It currently says over four million people have installed the app, up from 500,000 in May 2021. The app also has communities with a total of 790,000 members across Telegram, Discord, Instagram and TikTok.

The company will use its latest funding, which brings its total raised to about $156 million, to add more tokens and supported blockchains and new products. It plans to expand its Pintu Academy program to, as it they put it, “help traders understand both the opportunities and risks of crypto investing and promote healthier and sustainable trading practices.” It will also perform additional hiring, having already doubled its team to 200 in 2021.

The pandemic spurred interest in retail investment last year, and as the pandemic subsides, Martin said “we see that the market is more mature now compared to last year. Users are starting to make investment decisions based on the use-cases of the crypto assets. For example, gaming is a big thing in Indonesia with over 100 million gamers in the country. This spurs significant growth in gaming and metaverse-related crypto assets, as many believe that these projects are contributing to the future of gaming.”

In a prepared statement, Lightspeed partner Hemant Mohapatra said, “We are excited to continue our journey with Pintu and to welcome our new partner Northstar Group. Since our investment in August last year, Pintu has scaled 5x to become the country’s leading retail focused crypto brokerage, and hired one of the strongest teams we’ve seen in this market. The crypto wave is entering mainstream adoption globally and Pintu is building a generational company in this category.”

Super, the Indonesian social commerce startup focused on small towns and rural areas, announced today it has raised an oversubscribed $70 million Series C. The round was led by NEA with participation from Insignia Ventures Partners, SoftBank Ventures Asia, DST Global Partners, Amasia, B Capital, TNB Aura, Bain Capital chairman Stephen Pagliuca, Goldhouse, and Xendit CEO Moses Lo.

This brings Super’s total raised so far to $106 million since it was founded in 2018. TechCrunch last covered the startup at the time of its $28 million Series B in April 2021.

Steven Wongsoredjo, the co-founder and CEO of Super, says that Indonesia’s Tier 2, Tier 3 and rural area’s gross domestic product is three to five times lower than Jakarta, yet the cost of consumer goods there is higher by 20% to 200% thanks to supply chain issues. Not only that, but more than 30% of Indonesia’s GDP comes from East Java, Kalimantan and East Indonesia, making those places a valuable source of potential revenue for fast-moving consumer goods. By streamlining the supply chain and giving FMCG brands an easier way to reach consumers in rural areas, Super is also able to lower the costs of goods.

The startup plans to use its funding to expand into Kalimantan, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, Maluka and Papua over the next few years.

Super currently works with third-party logistics providers to create a hyperlocal logistics platform that it says can deliver consumer goods to thousands of agents within 24 hours of an order. The company’s agents, or resellers, can either be individuals or local shops called warungs.

Super says it currently has thousands of community agents, and aggregates and distributes millions of U.S. dollars worth of goods to communities each month. It now operates in 30 cities in East Java and South Sulawesi, primarily targeting areas that have a GDP per capital of $5,000 USD or lower.

Part of the funding will also be used to apply machine learning to the SKU’s in Super’s warehouse, to help the startup understand what sells best and where, so it can better determine the kind of inventory it holds. It is launching two private-label brands, including in cosmetics, and will create an app feature for agents that will let them track end-consumer transactions.

Super, the Indonesian social commerce startup focused on small towns and rural areas, announced today it has raised an oversubscribed $70 million Series C. The round was led by NEA with participation from Insignia Ventures Partners, SoftBank Ventures Asia, DST Global Partners, Amasia, B Capital, TNB Aura, Bain Capital chairman Stephen Pagliuca, Goldhouse, and Xendit CEO Moses Lo.

This brings Super’s total raised so far to $106 million since it was founded in 2018. TechCrunch last covered the startup at the time of its $28 million Series B in April 2021.

Steven Wongsoredjo, the co-founder and CEO of Super, says that Indonesia’s Tier 2, Tier 3 and rural area’s gross domestic product is three to five times lower than Jakarta, yet the cost of consumer goods there is higher by 20% to 200% thanks to supply chain issues. Not only that, but more than 30% of Indonesia’s GDP comes from East Java, Kalimantan and East Indonesia, making those places a valuable source of potential revenue for fast-moving consumer goods. By streamlining the supply chain and giving FMCG brands an easier way to reach consumers in rural areas, Super is also able to lower the costs of goods.

The startup plans to use its funding to expand into Kalimantan, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, Maluka and Papua over the next few years.

Super currently works with third-party logistics providers to create a hyperlocal logistics platform that it says can deliver consumer goods to thousands of agents within 24 hours of an order. The company’s agents, or resellers, can either be individuals or local shops called warungs.

Super says it currently has thousands of community agents, and aggregates and distributes millions of U.S. dollars worth of goods to communities each month. It now operates in 30 cities in East Java and South Sulawesi, primarily targeting areas that have a GDP per capital of $5,000 USD or lower.

Part of the funding will also be used to apply machine learning to the SKU’s in Super’s warehouse, to help the startup understand what sells best and where, so it can better determine the kind of inventory it holds. It is launching two private-label brands, including in cosmetics, and will create an app feature for agents that will let them track end-consumer transactions.

A host of major European tech founders and investors are today backing the launch of OneUkraine, a new charity providing sustainable humanitarian relief for the Ukrainian people.

OneUkraine will be supporting Ukrainians at home and abroad, delivering humanitarian aid, and aiming to rebuild the tech and broader infrastructure of Ukraine by SMEs and startups on the ground. With many of the organization’s founding members being from Ukraine or with family ties to the country, the organisation hopes to leverage direct access to local networks and real-world data about the country’s needs.

The organisation says it has now evacuated more than 5,500 people, mostly women and children, and already delivered aid worth more than EUR 4 million. It’s also built a Ukrainian school in Lithuania to provide education for refugees.

In a statement Martin Reiter, CEO and co-founder of OneUkraine: “With many of our founders born and raised in Ukraine, we felt compelled to help our friends, family, and colleagues. All of our founders have proven track records leading or founding tech unicorns, and we are now doing collectively what we do best: working quickly and efficiently at scale, providing instant and much needed humanitarian relief for the people of Ukraine. We believe that we can help best by bringing an entrepreneurial, data-driven and sustainable approach to the world of humanitarian aid, complementing other major relief efforts.”

OneUkraine’s founding team:

• Martin Reiter: Martin ran Groupon Ukraine back in 2011 and still has many friends in Ukraine. 
Martin previously held leading positions at Airbnb and Wayfair Europe and co-founded 
mademoisellemartina.org to help evacuate Ukrainian women and children.

• Martina Kojic: Martina grew up in post-war Croatia, with the impact and trauma of the post- war situation shaping much of her childhood. Martina co-founded mademoisellemartina.org to 
help evacuate Ukrainian women and children.

• Markus Fuhrmann: Markus, whose wife and her family are from Mariupol, Ukraine, is CEO 
and co-founder at GROPYUS, and previously co-founder of Lieferheld.de and Delivery Hero.

• Wolfgang Heigl: Wolfgang, who lives in Lithuania, is the founder of NFQ and HomeToGo.

• Viktoriya Tigipko: Viktoriya, born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine, is the founding partner of TA 
Ventures and founder of ICLUB Global, the network angel investors. She is the founder of WTECH, a 5k+ network of women in tech business, chairman of the Board of Ukrainian Startup Fund and founder and president of Odesa International Film Festival.

• Johannes Reck: Johannes, whose grandfather grew up in a small village which today is part of western Ukraine, is the co-founder and CEO of GetYourGuide.

• Dmitry Gorilovskiy: Dmitry, whose mother is from Rovno, Ukraine, has been organising adoptions of Russian orphans with disabilities since 2014, when the Russian government prohibited adoption by foreigners. He is a serial founder of product design, IoT and machine learning businesses such as Woodenshark and Moeco.

• Klaus Hommels: Klaus is the founder and chairman of Lakestar and one of Europe’s leading venture capitalists.

• Jens Hilgers: Jens, whose wife is Ukrainian, is a serial entrepreneur and has built and managed international games and tech companies in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Asia. Among others, Jens is founding GP at BITKRAFT Ventures and is co-founder and chairman at G2 Esports.

• Alexa Sinyachova – Chief Executive Officer – Moeco. Alexa is Ukrainian. She is the Co-Founder & CEO at Moeco and WTech Berlin curator.

OneUkraine was set up as a long-term initiative and requires substantial donor funds. The cost of the operational team will be fully funded by the founders’ personal funds, but OneUkraine is inviting donors and other partners to help fund the projects and support Ukraine efficiently. The platform is incorporated in Germany as a gGmbH, a charitable limited company and is audited by Ecovis, a leading auditor specialised on charities.

A host of major European tech founders and investors are today backing the launch of OneUkraine, a new charity providing sustainable humanitarian relief for the Ukrainian people.

OneUkraine will be supporting Ukrainians at home and abroad, delivering humanitarian aid, and aiming to rebuild the tech and broader infrastructure of Ukraine by SMEs and startups on the ground. With many of the organization’s founding members being from Ukraine or with family ties to the country, the organisation hopes to leverage direct access to local networks and real-world data about the country’s needs.

The organisation says it has now evacuated more than 5,500 people, mostly women and children, and already delivered aid worth more than EUR 4 million. It’s also built a Ukrainian school in Lithuania to provide education for refugees.

In a statement Martin Reiter, CEO and co-founder of OneUkraine: “With many of our founders born and raised in Ukraine, we felt compelled to help our friends, family, and colleagues. All of our founders have proven track records leading or founding tech unicorns, and we are now doing collectively what we do best: working quickly and efficiently at scale, providing instant and much needed humanitarian relief for the people of Ukraine. We believe that we can help best by bringing an entrepreneurial, data-driven and sustainable approach to the world of humanitarian aid, complementing other major relief efforts.”

OneUkraine’s founding team:

• Martin Reiter: Martin ran Groupon Ukraine back in 2011 and still has many friends in Ukraine. 
Martin previously held leading positions at Airbnb and Wayfair Europe and co-founded 
mademoisellemartina.org to help evacuate Ukrainian women and children.

• Martina Kojic: Martina grew up in post-war Croatia, with the impact and trauma of the post- war situation shaping much of her childhood. Martina co-founded mademoisellemartina.org to 
help evacuate Ukrainian women and children.

• Markus Fuhrmann: Markus, whose wife and her family are from Mariupol, Ukraine, is CEO 
and co-founder at GROPYUS, and previously co-founder of Lieferheld.de and Delivery Hero.

• Wolfgang Heigl: Wolfgang, who lives in Lithuania, is the founder of NFQ and HomeToGo.

• Viktoriya Tigipko: Viktoriya, born and raised in Kyiv, Ukraine, is the founding partner of TA 
Ventures and founder of ICLUB Global, the network angel investors. She is the founder of WTECH, a 5k+ network of women in tech business, chairman of the Board of Ukrainian Startup Fund and founder and president of Odesa International Film Festival.

• Johannes Reck: Johannes, whose grandfather grew up in a small village which today is part of western Ukraine, is the co-founder and CEO of GetYourGuide.

• Dmitry Gorilovskiy: Dmitry, whose mother is from Rovno, Ukraine, has been organising adoptions of Russian orphans with disabilities since 2014, when the Russian government prohibited adoption by foreigners. He is a serial founder of product design, IoT and machine learning businesses such as Woodenshark and Moeco.

• Klaus Hommels: Klaus is the founder and chairman of Lakestar and one of Europe’s leading venture capitalists.

• Jens Hilgers: Jens, whose wife is Ukrainian, is a serial entrepreneur and has built and managed international games and tech companies in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in Asia. Among others, Jens is founding GP at BITKRAFT Ventures and is co-founder and chairman at G2 Esports.

• Alexa Sinyachova – Chief Executive Officer – Moeco. Alexa is Ukrainian. She is the Co-Founder & CEO at Moeco and WTech Berlin curator.

OneUkraine was set up as a long-term initiative and requires substantial donor funds. The cost of the operational team will be fully funded by the founders’ personal funds, but OneUkraine is inviting donors and other partners to help fund the projects and support Ukraine efficiently. The platform is incorporated in Germany as a gGmbH, a charitable limited company and is audited by Ecovis, a leading auditor specialised on charities.

Chinese ride-hailing giant Didi’s shareholders have voted to delist the company from the NYSE. The decision is a long-expected result of the company finding itself in hot water with the Chinese government after a rushed and later troubled public-market debut in the United States.

Didi went public in the middle of 2021 in an offering that came together quickly. After listing in June, by early July, TechCrunch was already flagging issues between the newly floated company and the Chinese government.

Putatively irked over data concerns, the Chinese Communist Party was executing a regulatory push at the time, making Didi’s foreign IPO all the less palatable. Quickly after the listing, Didi had to stop accepting new user registrations, among other regulatory penalties.

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The company’s subsequent suffering was absorbed by its new investors post-IPO. After listing at $14 per share and trading as high as $18.01, per Yahoo Finance data, Didi’s shares bottomed out recently at $1.37. Today, the company is worth $1.56 per share, up 4% on the news of its impending delisting.

Per filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (condensed):

[Didi] today announced that the following resolution, which had been submitted for shareholder approval, has been approved at the extraordinary general meeting of the Company’s shareholders held in Beijing today: as an ordinary resolution, to delist the Company’s American Depositary Shares from the New York Stock Exchange as soon as practicable, and that in order to better cooperate with the cybersecurity review and rectification measures, the Company’s shares will not be listed on any other stock exchange before the Delisting is completed.

The company is expected to list in Hong Kong after it delists from U.S. markets, though when that could occur is not clear.

What’s notable, or perhaps ironic, about the timing of the Didi delisting is that it seems to have caught the worst on both ends. Recall that the scuppered Ant IPO of late 2020 was the unofficial kickoff of a regulatory crackdown by the Chinese Communist Party on its domestic technology market. A wave of changes was announced, from video game restrictions to the abolishment of the for-profit edtech market, and more.

But after years of punishment, the Chinese tech market is shedding staff and value as its ruling government seeks to smooth the waters somewhat. More simply, Didi went public in the United States quickly after its government began clamping down on the company and its peers, and is now delisting just as the Chinese government is seeking to change its tune about its tech economy.

Vice-Premier Liu He made noise just last week about “signs of easing [China’s] crackdown on the technology sector which has wiped billions of dollars of value from its most prominent companies,” as CNBC put it. Those came too late for Didi. How will other companies fare?

Xendit, a payments infrastructure platform for Southeast Asia, has raised $300 million in fresh funding. The company’s new valuation wasn’t disclosed, but it hit unicorn status in its last round of funding in September 2021. The new round brings its total raised to $538 million and was led by Coatue and Insight Partners, with participation from Accel, Tiger Global, Kleiner Perkins, EV Growth, Amasia, Intudo and Goat Capital.

Part of the funding will be used to expand into new markets, like Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. The company, which bills itself as “the Stripe of Southeast Asia,” also plans to add value-added services in addition to payments, like working capital loans. Xendit now has over 3,000 customers, including Samsung Indonesia, GrabPay, Ninja Van Philippines, Qoala, Unicef Indonesia, Cashalo and Shopback.

The company says that over the last year, it grew annualized transactions from 65 million to 200 million and increased total payments value from $6.5 billion to $15 billion. Xendit has made several strategic investments in companies that serve startups and SMEs, including private bank Bank Sahabat Sampoerna in Indonesia and payment gateway Dragonpay in the Philippines.

Xendit was founded in 2015 by chief executive officer Moses Lo and chief operating officer Tessa Wijaya.

For people who aren’t familiar with Southeast Asia’s fragmented payments landscape and the challenges its poses for businesses, Wijaya explained that “while the U.S. builds everything around credit cards, you just cannot do that in Southeast Asia. Credit card penetration is extremely low especially in countries like Indonesia, so we have to help merchants offer alternative payment methods.”

She added that before using Xendit, merchants who wanted to accept and send payments would first need to contact banks and other partners to integrate with them. Many small businesses, however, do not have the time or resources to do that. Xendit solves that problem by aggregating payment options for merchants.

“From the consumer perspective, let’s look at a specific example. In the U.S., if you enjoy ‘Game of Thrones’ like I do, you can pay for a recurring subscription on HBO online by entering your credit card information just once,” Wijaya said. “In Indonesia, if you subscribe to HBO, the experience is extremely high-friction. HBO thought that in markets where cards don’t exist, the way to go was to pay through your telco provider. For me, the consumer, this means I have to go to my telco app, wait 10 seconds for it to load, find HBO amongst many other products, pre-purchase a 30-day plan and repeat every month.”

This friction means lost business for companies. Xendit solves this problem by integrating payment options for merchants.

“Before Xendit entered the scene, payments infrastructure was disjointed and provided no reliable way for SMEs and startups to connect with customers,” said Lo. “Since payments are a foundational part of any business, you can’t create a seamless experience without addressing payment issues first.”

Indonesia’s 60 million blue collar workers contribute 20% to its gross domestic product, but they face a lot of uncertainty. Many are forced to bounce from job to job, some fall victim to scam job postings and without a steady employment history, are unable to qualify for financial services, say the founders of Pintarnya. That’s why they created the app, which includes verified job postings and financial services, like loans, for blue collar workers. The startup announced today it has raised $6.3 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India and General Catalyst. The funding includes a $100,000 grant from Sequoia Spark, a program for women founders that co-founder Nelly Nurmalasari participated in.

Pintarnya was launched this May in major Indonesian cities by Nurmalasari, Henry Hendrawan and Ghirish Pokardas. Nurmalasari and Hendrawan were formerly senior executives at lifestyle super app unicorn Traveloka, while Pokardas was a KKR executive who worked with portfolio companies in financial services.

In an email, the cofounders told TechCrunch that Nurmalasari also owned a hair salon and as an SME owner, she experienced the pain points of trying to hire, filter and verify applicants for blue collar jobs. She also saw that they struggled to obtain loans from traditional financial institutions because of their lack of verifiable employment and income history.

“The problem became clear when the spillover of her employee’s struggles became hers as these challenges impact employee performance,” they said. “This fortified the vision for a one-stop digital platform that can help in tackling this challenge, to be more employable and access financial services products.”

Pintarnya focuses on the food and beverage, hotel and retail sectors, now reopening after COVID lockdowns, and logistics. It plans to expand into other sectors as well and is open to partnering with employers from other industries.

Job seekers register and create a profile, then Pintarnya uses that information to recommend job openings based on their requirements, location, skills and other data. Key criteria include the distance between a job and their home, their profile and job history and their self-determined capabilities. The team said that as they build a track record of successfully connecting and placing jobseekers with employers, Pintarnya’s recommendation algorithms will become better by “understanding what other jobseeker traits have a higher propensity of converting their application into a successful job placements.” Variables that it takes into consideration include a jobseeker’s current salary and availability, whether or not they have a photo on their CV and the frequency in which they switch jobs.

Pintarnya also works with employers to screen and recruit the most suitable workers for their needs, including online tests. It also verifies job listings’ authenticity to avoid scams and highlights verified job posts using green shield markers. Verification includes checking that a job listing came from a real employer and curating them based on new posts, jobs closest to a jobseeker, jobs for people without experience, salary information and other factors that the platform is experimenting with.

“Technology has transformed the kinds of jobs being created in Indonesia, but the process of hiring, especially in the blue collar segments, continue to be broken,” said Sequoia India managing director Abheek Anand in a statement. “Pintarnya’s founding team brings years of exceptional experience building tech and financial products to solving this problem, and we are thrilled to partner with them in their journey to help millions of Indonesians realize their full economic potential.”

Singapore-based venture firm Jungle Ventures is digging deeper into Southeast Asia and India with the close of its fourth fund. Fund IV totals $600 million, with $450 million for new investments and $150 million earmarked for follow-up investments in its portfolio companies. The fund’s close brings Jungle Ventures’ total assets under management to over $1 billion, which it says makes it the first independent, Singapore-headquartered venture firm that invests across Southeast Asia and India to hit this milestone. 

Fund IV’s limited partners are split equally between returning investors and new ones. Returning backers include Temasek, IFC, FMO and DEG, while new LPs include StepStone Group. TechCrunch covered the fund’s first close of $225 million in September 2021.

Jungle Ventures was founded in 2012 by Amit Anand and Anurag Srivastava, launching with a $10 million debut fund. Jungle Ventures has about 60 portfolio companies and says its enterprise value is over $12 billion on $250 million of invested capital, with a loss ratio of less than 5%. 

Some of Jungle Ventures’ most notable investments include unicorns Kredivo, Livspace and Moglix. It looks for companies that can expand between Southeast Asia and India; for example, Livspace was founded in India and now operates in Southeast Asia, too. 

Fund IV will continue Jungle Ventures’ “concentrated portfolio” approach, making a projected 15 to 18 key investments out of India and Southeast Asia. It makes many follow-up investments and has invested about $30 million to $40 million in some companies, across multiple rounds. 

“We’ve been investing with that philosophy since our inception in 2012. It’s driven by two major factors that influenced our thinking. Factor number one is that most founders in this region, are first-time founders, and you need a lot of help and support to give to these founders to help them grow their business, help them grow as a leader as well,” Anand told TechCrunch. “From a founder to becoming a CEO is a very long journey, a very painful journey, and not many people become successful CEOs.” 

He added, “This region has been completely under-penetrated in every sector and we would rather focus our time and energy and our capital on fewer investments an make them larger.” 

Fund IV has already backed Vietnamese digital bank Timo; Singapore back office operating system Sleek; Indian D2C consumer electronics brand Atomberg; Web3.0-based social-crypo-community platform for women Eveworld; and inFeedo, an employee retention SaaS platform. 

“If I take a step back and just think of one singular overarching thesis, I would say we are now very, very inspired by the whole decentralization and equitable internet movement that’s happening around the world, whether it’s concepts like Web 3, whether its concepts like even social commerce, whether it’s the SME technology digitalization,” Anand said. “Essentially, bringing the power of the internet to that smallest participant in the internet economy is what’s the most exciting aspect of this fund.”