Mental health app Intellect’s founder and CEO Theodoric Chew

Intellect, the Singapore-based mental health startup focused primarily on Asia-Pacific markets, announced today it has raised a $10 million Series A. The company’s services, including self-directed mental wellness programs in 15 languages and online therapy sessions, are available through two channels: as an employee benefit and through Intellect’s consumer app.

The round, which Intellect claims is the largest Series A ever raised by a mental health startup in Asia, was led by HOF Capital. New investors included Headline, East Ventures, MS&AD Ventures, DG Daiwa Ventures, Pioneer Fund and existing backer Insignia Ventures Partners also returned.

Intellect claims its year-on-year revenue grew by over 20x in 2021, due in large part to new enterprise clients like foodpanda, Shopback, Singtel, Kuehne & Nagel and Schroders. It also partners with insurers and benefits brokers like Mercer.

Co-founder and CEO Theodoric Chew told TechCrunch that Intellect differentiates from other employee wellness programs because “Intellect’s vision isn’t simply to be a self-care app or an employee benefits platform solely, but a full mental healthcare system for Asia. That drives a differentiated approach in how we build our platform which caters from the smallest of daily struggles through self-guided programs, all the way to clinical therapy for chronic issues.”

The company, a Y Combinator alum, will use the capital to increase its product, engineering and commercial teams as it continues expanding into new markets. It currently has about three million registered users, in a total of 20 countries, with a strong commercial presence in Singapore, Hong Kong and Australia, said Chew.

The new round brings Intellect’s total raised since its launch in 2020 (when TechCrunch first profiled the company) to $13 million and also included angel investors like Shopback co-founder and CEO Henry Chan; Cathay Innovation’s Rajive Keshup; former Headspace VP of Engineering Neel Palrecha; Forge co-founder Samvit Ramadurgam; Peak co-founder Sagi Shorrer; Snap Inc. Director of Southeast Asia Anubhav Nayyar; and Tinder and Match Group general manager of Southeast Asia Gaurav Girotra.

The startup says that among companies that offer it as an employee benefit, adoption rates consistently range between 20% to 40%, much higher than traditional employee assistance programs.

The startup is participating in 10 clinical studies in collaboration with academic institutions, including the National University of Singapore, King’s College London, University of Queensland and the Singapore General Hospital, and says some of them have already shown that Intellect improves stress, anxiety and depression among users.

In a statement about the investment, HOF Capital partner Victor Wong said, “The need for mental health support is exceedingly timely today and it continues to rapidly grow in demand across the world. Intellect has grown to over 3 million individuals and enterprises across 20 countries in just under 2 years and we’re very excited to back them for the long term as they continue to transform millions of lives through inventing a new mental healthcare system for workforces and individuals across Asia.”

Since the Ant Group IPO was canceled by central authorities, China’s government has been on a regulatory tear.

You know the broad outlines: After a lengthy period of growth, capital investment and aggressive business practices, China’s central government spent much of 2021 reining in its technology sector. While some of the actions were reasonable from an antitrust perspective, many of the changes to the country’s tech sector appeared more punitive toward entities viewed as too powerful.

The for-profit edtech sector got hit. Didi was effectively executed after it had the audacity to go public in the United States. Video game time for kids was cut, gaming titles left unapproved, algorithms put under the microscope, and more. The business climate for building tech companies under the new “Common Prosperity” push in the country appeared to take a dramatic turn for the worse.

As a result of the changes, the value of many well-known Chinese technology companies suffered.

Although the exit window for China-built tech companies is seemingly constricting to only domestic exchanges, and the space made available in the economy for tech companies to build and innovate apparently shrinking, venture capital activity was strong last year in the country.

We were surprised to see it as 2021 entered its final months, just as we were surprised when we got the full-year numbers.

But there was more. ByteDance recently “dissolved its strategic investment team, sending worrying messages to other internet giants that have expanded aggressively by investing in other companies,” TechCrunch reported. Why did TikTok’s parent company do so? We explained:

At the beginning of this year, ByteDance reviewed its “businesses’ needs” and decided to “reduce investments in areas that are not key business focuses,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. …

The “restructuring” still stirred up a wave of panic in the industry. China’s cyberspace regulator has drafted new guidelines that will require its “internet behemoths” to get its approval before undertaking any investments or fundraisings, Reuters reported. Some Chinese media outlets reported similar drafted rules.

Hot damn.

Obviously, we’re still sorting out precisely what is going on, but it appears that the ability of large Chinese tech companies to deploy capital at will into smaller companies is rapidly coming to a close.

From this juncture, our question is simple: Will government regulations slowing Big Tech investments into smaller companies in China shake up its larger venture capital market? Let’s talk about it.

Tracking corporate venture capital investment in China

The answer to our question is yes, but perhaps not lethally.

Tracking just how important corporate venture capital is to the Chinese VC scene is an interesting problem to crack. One way to view the data is to look at the list of most active investors in private Chinese tech companies in the last year.

A SaladStop worker uses StaffAny to clock in

StaffAny, a management platform for SMEs with shift workers, has raised a $3.4 million Series A led by GGV Capital. The round included participation from East Ventures, FreakOut Shinsei Fund, Far East Ventures, Farquhar Venture Capital and angel investors including Allen Shim, former CFO of Slack. The round will be used to expand into more markets and develop new features for StaffAny’s platform, which currently operates in seven countries, including Singapore, where it is based, Malaysia, and Indonesia. It brings the startup’s total raised to $4.2 million.

Co-founder Janson Seah told TechCrunch that StaffAny is used by businesses with more than 30 employees, and serves clients ranging from single outlets to chains with more than 1,000 employees. “Whilst we serve smaller businesses perfectly, there is much larger value for SMEs with aspirations to scale where labor processes need to be optimized with data and visibility,” he said.

Before onboarding to the platform, a lot of StaffAny’s clients, who are primarily in the F&B or retail sectors, were using spreadsheets, punch cards or apps that do not sync rosters, pay slips and leave management the way StaffAny does. The software also provides both management and workers with the ability to communicate in real-time.

Its features include an online rostering schedule that enables managers to view staff schedules across different outlets and forecast where workers might be needed and labor costs for the next week. Empty shifts are automatically scheduled and staffers are immediately notified about changes to their hours or additional shift requests. They can clock in and out through StaffAny using their smartphones, replacing punch-in cards or manual sign-ins, and adjustments to payroll are made automatically if their hours change. Both staff and management can see timesheets, so errors can be spotted. This means less disputes over pay slips.

StaffAny’s other features includes ones to handle leave requests and track employee work performance in case of auditing. To adapt to the pandemic, it also added features for contact tracing, testing reminders or vaccination status, depending on each country’s regulations.

In statement, GGV Capital global managing partner Jixun Foo said, “Despite F&B being the worst-hit industry by COVID-19, StaffAny saw strong growth and unprecedented adoption among the SMEs, a testament to its product and the resiliency of its leadership team. SMB tech is a sector GGV invests in globally. We are excited to work with StaffAny as they expand and scale.”

Another startup focused on SMEs in Southeast Asia has announced a funding round. Dropee, a Malaysia-based B2B wholesale platform that also offers financial services, like working capital loans, to SMEs, said today it has closed a Series A round totaling $7 million. The Y Combinator alum raised $3 million in equity and $4 million in debt, led by returning investor Vynn Capital. Other participants included HCL Capital, Resolution Venture and LKF Capital, along with returning investors Brama One Ventures.

Operational in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, Dropee plans to introduce new financing products for wholesalers and retailers over the next 12 months by working with strategic partners, including regional banks and non-banking financial institutions. It has now raised a total of $8.7 million.

Launched 5 years ago, Dropee focuses primarily on food and beverages and fast-moving consumer goods. The startup says it is used by over 80,000 SMEs, mainly small retail stores, to buy wholesale inventory through its marketplace, and now totals more than $100 million in annualized transaction value. Its marketplace is integrated with a SaaS e-commerce platform that automates payment collection, tracks orders and sales and manages offline-to-online orders.

Lennise Ng, CEO of Dropee, said the startup was created because she and one of her co-founders came “from family businesses that are involved in B2B trading on fast-moving consumer goods products for over two generations.” That gave them a close-up look at inefficiencies in the wholesale trading space across Southeast Asia. Dropee was created to make the process more efficient.

For example, the platform makes product recommendations through its AI-based smart catalog: each B2B consumer sees a personalized selection of best-selling goods, complementary products and campaigns based on their business needs. SMEs can also order directly from its wholesale marketplace or an assigned sales agent, allowing wholesalers real-time transparency and allowing orders to process more quickly.

Dropee began offering financial products in November 2020, including up to 60 days credit financing for invoices and supply chain. “It can be challenging for traditional wholesalers to extend longer credit terms to SMEs, especially during the pandemic,” Ng said. She added that credit financing for retailers helps increase the number of immediate inventory purchases. To gauge creditworthiness and loan terms, Dropee uses multiple variables captured through its platform, including an SME’s transaction data to lifetime value per business network.

The new round of financing will be used to expand Dropee’s supply chain financing, with plans to work with more brands and wholesalers across Southeast Asia to extend credit term payments for SME retailers.

Buy now pay later (BNPL) startups are proliferating around the world and the Philippines is no exception. Today, one of the country’s biggest BNPL providers, BillEase, announced it has raised an $11 million Series B. The round was led by BurdaPrincipal Investments, growth capital arm of Hubert Burda Media. Other participants included Centauri, a joint investment vehicle between MDI Ventures and KB Investment, and Tamaz Georgadze, CEO and co-founder of Raisin DS.

Operated by fintech First Digital Finance Corporation BillEase launched in 2017, with shopping marketplace Lazada as its first merchant partner. It can now be used at more than 500 merchants, including consumer electronics seller Kimstore and Philippine Airlines. Its BNPL is also available through payment gateways Xendit, Paynamics, 2C2P, Dragonpay and BUX, and it offers an app with personal loans, top-ups for digital wallets like GCash, PayMaya, Coins.ph, GrabPay and Shopee Pay and mobile phone and gaming credits.

Since the Philippines’ payment sector is fragmented, customers can pay back their BNPL loans through a variety of ways, including digital wallets, bank transfers, direct debit, linking their bank account or over-the-counter payments in physical stores like 7-11.

The new funding brings BillEase’s total raised to about $15 million in equity, and will be used for customer acquisition, developing new products and hiring.

One of the main ways BillEase differentiates from other BNPL services in the Philippines is that it allows customers to build formal credit records.

Georg Stegier, First Digital Financial Corporation’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch in an email that BillEase’s target segment is the Philippines’ emerging middle class, specifically Gen Z and millennials who are early in their careers. “About 80% of our customers are new to the formal credit system and do not have a credit record.

For those customers, BillEase also serves as an on-ramp to the financial system—we are the only credit app in the Philippines that is a member of TransUnion.” It is also part of the state-owned Credit Information Corporation.

Another differentiator is that BillPay built and owns its credit, fraud and payment software stack, and can approve more than 90% of BNPL loans instantly with it model. This means shorter checkout times and also enables BillEase to offer lower interest rates, at about 3.49% compared to 7% to 12% for other BNPL loans, Stegier said. It gives merchants customizable installment plans. For example, they can offer BNPL repayment terms of 10 to 30 days for smaller purchases, payment in four installments or monthly payments for larger purchases, and decide if those loans will be interest-free or not.

Since most of BillEase’s customers don’t have a credit record, it uses “a wide variety of alternative data sources to triangulate and get a good picture of our customers,” including telecom usage, phone metadata, network data and behavioral data points,” Stegier said.

“Credit scoring is also something we constantly tinker with,” he added. “As new data comes in or new variables become available, we upgrade our models. At any given time we usually run a few A/B tests to test new models or process improvements.”

Mio, the Vietnamese social commerce platform, has raised an $8 million Series A, less than a year after announcing its seed round. The funding was led by Jungle Ventures, Patamar Capital and Oliver Jung, with participation from returning investors GGV, Venturra, Hustle Fund, iSEED SEA and Gokul Rajaram.

TechCrunch first covered Mio at the time of its $1 million seed funding in May 2021. Founded in 2020, Mio is a group buying platform that focuses on selling fresh produce and groceries in Tier 2 and 3 cities in Vietnam. The company is able to offer next day delivery because it built a logistics infrastructure that enables it to send produce directly from farms to customers.

The Series A brings Mio’s total raised to $9.1 million, and will be used to expand its logistics and fulfillment system, enter new areas in Vietnam and add new product categories like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and household appliances.

Mio co-founder and chief executive officer Trung Huynh said that since TechCrunch first covered Mio seven months ago, it has achieved 10x gross merchandise value growth, a 10x increase in agents, or resellers, and grew its team from 60 people to 240. It now fulfills more than 10,000 pieces of fresh produce per day, operating in Ho Chi Minh, Thu Duc, Binh Duong, Dong Nai and Long An, with plans to expand into northern Vietnam.

The numbers “strengthened our conviction in this model and its potential,” he said. “We need fresh capital to accelerate hiring, product development and supply chain to keep up with the pace of growth as we deepen our presence in existing geographies and expand to new provinces.”

Mio is able to offer next day deliveries because its vertically integrated mayor layers of the value chain, including procurement, warehousing, order sorting and bulk delivery. The startup owns the majority of its logistics infrastructure and uses its own fleet of couriers. Its ability to delivery fresh produce directly from farms to customers in less than 16 hours contributed to higher customer retention and growth, Huynh said, and it will continue to shorten delivery times. .

Mio resellers are called Mio Partners. Huynh said one of the driving factors behind Mio is targeting the right people for the program, or “housewives and stay-home-moms in lower income regions who love sharing value-for-money products to their social circle of friends.”

They aggregate orders, usually from friends and family, and orders are delivered to them in batches for distribution. The startup claims Mio Partners can make up to $400 a month, including a 10% commission on each order and additional commissions based on the monthly performance of other resellers they referred to the program.

“There is a strong possibility” that Mio will expand beyond Vietnam, Huynh said, “but will only be considered at a more appropriate time after we successfully built our playbook for Vietnam.”

The backbone of Indonesia’s economy are its estimated more than 60 million SMEs. But many lack access to working capital and, especially before the pandemic, managed their finances using manual processes like spreadsheets. With COVID-19 prompting many to digitize, startups that focus on SMEs have been raising large rounds of funding to scale up quickly. KoinWorks is the latest. The Indonesia-based financial platform for SMEs announced today it has raised $108 million in Series C funding led by MDI Ventures. The round included $43 million in equity and $65 million in debt capital for the working capital loans KoinWorks provides to its customers.

The round brings KoinWorks’ total raised to $180 million. Existing investors who returned for its latest round include Quona Capital, Triodos Investment Management, Saison Capital, ACV and East Ventures. The new funds will be used for hiring about 400 new employees and scaling KoinWorks’ latest suite of products, SME Neobank.

KoinWorks is headquartered in Jakarta, with holding in Singapore and tech offices in Yogyakarta, India and Vietnam. KoinWorks was originally created to help SMEs, which are often turned away by traditional financial institutions, get access to working capital. Since then, it has also developed a comprehensive platform of financial tools to help its customers, including e-commerce vendors and social commerce sellers, increase their sales.

TechCrunch first profiled KoinWorks in 2019 when it raised $12 million for its lending platform. Demand increased as more businesses went online during the COVID-19 pandemic and the startup says its user base tripled to 1.5 million customers, and a waitlist of 100,000 SMEs who are being onboarded onto its new financial software. Co-founder and executive chairman Willy Arifin told TechCrunch in an email that since 2019, monthly loan disbursements have also tripled to nearly $50 million and revenue had quadrupled.

KoinWorks focuses on SMEs that are underserved by traditional financial institutions and may not have a bank account or credit cards. On the platform, users can create an online bank account and card, borrow working capital, and access accounting, point-of-sale, early wage access and human resources management systems tailored for small businesses.

Arifin said that since KoinWorks’ monthly disbursement rate reached $50 million a month, its take rate has grown enough that the company became cash flow positive earlier this year, and its non-performing loan (NPL) percentage is lower than 2%. He says banks serving traditional SMEs have at least double KoinWorks’ NPL. “As many as 20% of businesses shifted their sales channels offline to online during the pandemic, and 89% of businesses now use online channels to sell their products and services,” he said.

Over the last three years, KoinWorks’ competitors have grown to include other neobanks and startups that started out as accounting software but are expanding to include working capital loans and other financial services. Two notable examples included rivals BukuWarung and BukuKas, both of which have raised significant rounds of funding.

“When we started out, we were among hundreds of traditional financial institutions. Fast forward to the present day, we are seeing those same banks now undergo digitalization,” Arifin said. “Despite that, Indonesia’s yearly funding gap is $80 billion USD, so those who remain unbanked or underbanked are still at a disadvantage. There’s still a lot of room for improvement”

He added that with tens of millions of entrepreneurs in Indonesia, “it’s not a winner-takes-all market.” The top five banks in the country have a combined market value of close to $160 billion USD. There will undoubtedly be fintech companies out there tackling the unbanked/underbanked space, however, KoinWorks has a best in class approach tailored to the needs of SMEs and entrepreneurs that we believe will have a significant impact on the future sector.

In a statement, MDI Ventures CEO Donald Wiharia said, “Investing in KoinWorks is investing in the financial literacy of underbanked and underserved communities. We are ecstatic to be in concert with a team that understands the importance of each step in the journey of entrepreneurship and SME growth.“

Brankas, an open banking startup for Southeast Asian markets, is entering the new year with a $20 million Series B. The funding was led by Insignia Ventures Partners, with participation from returning investors Beenext and Integra Partners. Other backers included Visa (Brankas was a member of its 2021 Accelerator Program), AFG Partners and Treasury International, the venture capital firm led by fintech veterans including Jeff Cruttenden, co-founder of Acorns and Eli Broverman, co-founder of Betterment, also invested.

Brankas’ platform offers a roster of more than 10 “banking-as-a-service” embedded APIs, including ones for opening online bank accounts, credit scoring, identity verification, e-commerce transactions and gig economy payments. Founded in 2016, Brankas goal is to “democratize access to financial and identity data.” Clients include traditional financial institutions, banks and fintech startups.

Brankas says it is seeing 30% month-on-month growth in API usage and is now used by more than 40 banks and 100 enterprise customers and channel partners. Since many of its fintech clients focus on “unbanked” people, or people who don’t have traditional bank accounts or credit cards, Brankas’ partners include financial providers like remittance companies and e-wallet.

For more about Brankas’ start, see TechCrunch’s 2019 profile of the company, the same year it raised its Series A.

Since then, Brankas chief of staff Bala Subramanian told TechCrunch that it’s been “aggressively building new products during the pandemic, which have seen great uptake in our current operating markets of Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.”

For example, these included four new payments products—Direct, for account-to-account bank transfers; Disburse for remittances directly from accounts; Pay, a no-code solution for micro-businesses to collect payments; and for enterprise customers, IPG, a platform created for large financial institutions to collect payments on behalf of merchants).

In terms of data, Brankas developed four new APIS—Statement, for retail and corporate transaction retrievals; Balance, to let people view their current and average account balances; Income, which uses machine learning to identify individual income or salary; and Telco, to allow clients access to users’ telecom data.

Since its Series A in 2019, Subramanian said Brankas has witnesses more regulator support for open finance, because they see it as an enabler to financial inclusion and greater customer choice. Its also seen more “banking-as-a-service” products, or bank products like savings accounts, cards and loans offered as “embedded finance” on third-party apps, including e-commerce, SME account management and HR and payroll software. As a result of increasing adoption, he said that “large multinational financial service providers like Visa are embracing open finance, even if it may threaten their legacy business in the short term.”

Open finance has also been adopted by the mainstream cryptocurrency community, he added, thanks to increasing demand for “tradefi” products to complement crypto earnings.”

Brankas new funding will be used to build new APIs and double its current team of 100. It also plans to add more capabilities to its payments, data and banking-as-a-service API product menu in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Tt will also announce partnerships with digital banks and fintech companies in Vietnam and Bangladesh, two new markets where Brankas will go live early this year.

Brankas also plans to [[deepen the capabilities of its payments, data and banking-as-a-service API product menu in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand. Will also announce partnerships with digital banks and fintech leaders in Vietnam soon and Bangladesh, going live early this year].

Other open finance API startups in Southeast Asia include Finantier and Finverse. Subramanian said Brankas’ differentiators include its regional coverage and being the only company to offer regulated payments APIs enabling direct bank transfers and remittances without a middleman, as well as cryptocurrency payment and wallet linking APIs. He also said that through Visa, Brankas enables open finance for all Visa partner banks in the region and is currently developing new solutions for payments, identity and data analytics.

In a statement about its investment in Brankas, Insignia Ventures Partners principal Samir Chaibi, said, “We have also been impressed by Brankas’s approach to market development and their ability to launch and scale their products in a regulatory compliant manner while ensuring that developers benefit from a reliable and stable source of banking and financial data and beyond.”

German on-demand delivery giant Delivery Hero is pulling its food delivery service out of Germany again.

At the same time it has announced it will exit the Japanese market, by divesting Foodpanda Japan, starting in Q1 next year.

In a statement accompanying the pre-Christmas exit news, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Niklas Östberg, said: “Scaling down our operations in Germany and planning to divest our Japanese business have not been easy decisions. Facing a very different reality now than we did entering these markets, it is with a heavy heart that we need to pursue other growth opportunities with larger potential.

“Despite having built up two fantastic foodpanda teams showing great progress, it has become increasingly difficult to create true value for our ecosystem in these countries. I have nothing but gratitude and admiration for the accomplishments both teams have achieved in the last months. Seeing the amazing service they built from scratch makes me genuinely proud, and we will do everything we can to support our fellow Heroes on their journey ahead.”

The European on-demand delivery giant only fully returned to its home market — under its Foodpanda brand — in August, following a few weeks of testing.

Back in May, when it trailed the Germany relaunch in an interview with the Financial Times, Ostberg had talked in terms of being in it for a decade long-haul, telling the newspaper: “We don’t see necessarily that we are going to go in and win the market in the next year or so. This is a 10-year game.”

And only last month Delivery Hero was still expanding Foodpanda’s footprint in Germany — announcing the service would be launching into another six cities, as the division’s CEO, Artur Schreiber, trumpeted “great” demand and an expansion he said would create “a thousand” jobs.

Although that announcement also hinted that it might be having trouble getting customers to stick around — with Delivery Hero saying it would also be refreshing Foodpanda’s branding, launching a new app with a better user experience and expanding a loyalty program.

In the event it’s pulling the plug on a commercial delivery service in Germany — leaving only a Berlin-based R&D hub where it says it will test new services and features, so sounds like it will continue to run some (trial) deliveries in Central Berlin for employees working on developing new products.

It’s notable it’s not selling the Foodpanda Germany unit to a rival — as it did back in 2018 when it last pulled the plug on the market.

Delivery Hero either wants to retain the possibility of a rapid return in future; or — perhaps more likely — the local food delivery is so competitively tapped out there was little to be gained by selling the unit (unlike a few years ago when it was able to bag a meaty payout of ~$1.1BN when it sold its German ops to Dutch rival Takeaway.com).

How does Delivery Hero explain such a rapid rethink of its long-term strategy to win its home market?

“[S]ince launching the service, the landscape of the German market changed significantly. External factors, such as an increased number of players and a shortage of riders, provided a new reality towards the end of the year,” is the spin its PR puts on the reversal.

Its press release also seeks to strike an upbeat tone in a bid to reassure investors — saying it has identified “plenty of other growth opportunities… with a better expected return on investment, like other markets and new verticals, primarily in the area of quick commerce”.

Quick commerce typically refers to grocery-type deliveries via a new wave of on-demand platforms that offer consumers a selection of convenience products (bread, toothpaste, batteries etc) — often served out of micro fulfilment centers (aka dark stores) located in urban centers to ensure hyper speedy delivery times.

Europe has seen investor dollars pouring into the category since the pandemic struck, with a number of startups springing up across the region. And Östberg noted that it was seeing “a larger willingness” among its customers to have more than meals delivered when TechCrunch discussed the potential of grocery deliveries with the Delivery Hero CEO early on in the pandemic.

Germany, the EU’s biggest economy, has grabbed a major slice of this investor-heated q-commerce action — with homegrown startup Gorillas raising close to a billion dollars in Series C funding this October, for example; while Flink, another rapidly scaling rapid grocery delivery startup, nabbed $240M in the summer, a mere six months after launching.

Gorilla’s whopping Series C was — in fact — led by Delivery Hero so the writing was perhaps already on the wall for its local Foodpanda division at that point.

And in another Q-commerce related announcement earlier this month, Delivery Hero trumpeted an expansion of what it billed as a “logistics-a-service” play — suggesting it sees its future in serving delivery services to a growing sea of smaller (and more specialized) on-demand players.

“Partnering with e-commerce marketplaces and platforms, restaurants, as well as pharmaceutical and grocery companies, the company is changing the way that people buy and send goods,” was how it fleshed out the move, noting also that it has also recently opened its 1,000th “Dmart” (aka “small warehouses in strategic locations for delivery”).

Again, Germany is seeing on-demand action bubbling up on a variety of fronts — as homegrown startups seek to ride the q-commerce boom via a strategy of divide and conquer.

This means launching app-based delivery services that target (more) specific niches and segments — such as Yababa (multicultural groceries); Arive (high-end consumer goods); and Mayd (meds, but starting with non-prescription products sold in pharmacies) — to name three German startups which all raised recently.

The mood music suggests there are indeed opportunities for growth in quick commerce beyond the tricky business of biking hot meals to hungry bellies — and that the evolution of the on-demand delivery category is well underway.

This is about diversifying beyond takeaways and instant food gratification — to serving all sorts of convenience and specialist requirements and the platforms that will be needed to deliver that big picture vision of anything arriving quickly via app order.

In Europe there is also the issue of labor rights for gig platform workers to consider too, which looks set to further steer market developments — and could accelerate the reconfiguration of a business model that some accuse of being inherently exploitative.

Earlier this month EU lawmakers presented their legislative proposal on platform work which — if adopted — could see millions of gig workers reclassified as employees.

Östberg does not appear to be a fulsome fan of the proposal. Nor, indeed, of current German labor laws — which he has suggested make it difficult for platforms to hire riders.

In a series of tweets earlier this month, as the EU unveiled the draft legislation, the Delivery Hero CEO chipped in to offer the usual platform rebuttal — which seeks to frame the issue as a choice between employment or flexibility — making a call for “better terms for riders and more flexibility”.

However the academic research project, Fairwork, which tracks conditions for workers in the gig economy, argues it’s false framing to suggest it’s not possible for platforms to provide flexibility and fairness right now — although it has found only a minority do so currently.

Hence Fairwork accuses platforms of opting for “a ‘race to the bottom’ in labour standards” — instead of getting on and improving conditions for workers.

The EU’s reform proposal could help enforce fairer working conditions across the gig economy by removing the risk of reclassification for platforms that provide workers with more rights and protections — and by creating a level playing field of basic standards that all platforms in the region must abide by.

Although the reform still needs the backing of the European Parliament and Member States governments to be adopted as EU law. But that prospect may be concentrating gig platform CEOs’ minds — on how to evolve their models to account for fuller regional employment and higher costs.

Delivery Hero denied its exit from German has anything to do with the EU’s planned labor reform when TechCrunch asked — saying the decision purely relates to recent changes in the market, such as increased competition which it said has led to a knock-on shortage of riders, limiting its ability to scale.

“Despite having built up a fantastic foodpanda team showing great progress in all cities, it has become increasingly difficult to create true value for our ecosystem in Germany,” it added.

“When it comes to the EU proposal, Delivery Hero fully supports the European Commission’s aim to improve the labor conditions of platform workers,” a Delivery Hero spokeswoman also told us. “The Commission’s proposal includes positive and much-needed elements. Even though we believe that the suggested criteria to trigger the proposed rebuttable presumption of employment and reversed burden of proof are too broad and would not contribute to that goal, this has not influenced our decision to scale down our German business.”

Asked for more detail on where it intends to focus its efforts as it shutters service in its home market, the company offered little, saying only: “We will focus our efforts on a variety of attractive growth opportunities across the group and specifically invest into scaling new verticals, and more prominently quick commerce globally.”

It also declined to confirm whether or not it’s eyeing quick-commerce opportunities beyond food-related deliveries, saying only: “We are always looking for new opportunities to drive the industry forward and make a positive impact on the ecosystem we operate in. We cannot comment more precisely on this at this stage.”

Asked whether it will be offering any support to Foodpanda workers who did not have employment contracts and are — just a couple of days before Christmas — facing the prospect of no more work coming to them via its app, Delivery Hero’s spokeswoman said: “All affected employees, riders, pickers, customers, and partners have been informed about the upcoming change. The company will do its best to support them in their journey ahead. Around 70% of employees from foodpanda Germany, including riders and pickers, will be offered new opportunities. Delivery Hero confirms that its riders will keep being employed by Delivery Hero Germany Logistics GmbH (“pandalogistics”). As of December 23, 2021, the pandalogistics entity will deliver orders on behalf of other industry players in Germany as a transitory measure.”

(And it’s another interesting sign that Delivery Hero is — at least temporarily — going to be experimenting with fulfilling delivery orders for rivals still operating in Germany… )

Delivery Hero’s PR also commits to the company doing “its best to transition employees from foodpanda Germany to positions within the Delivery Hero Group, or with partners from the company’s industry network,” adding: “Employees who do not stay within the Delivery Hero Group will receive a severance package.”

What about Japan? Another market Delivery Hero only entered recently — also via its Foodpanda brand — but in that case it launched last year (September 2020).

The company blamed “a very similar situation” to the competitive challenges limiting its ability to grow in Germany for its decision to divest the unit early next year.

“In order to focus on other growth priorities within the group, Delivery Hero plans to divest its Japanese entity,” it said. “The divestiture process will be kicked off in Q1 2022. During this upcoming transition period, it is Delivery Hero’s utmost priority to support all Heroes and express gratitude for the dedication they have shown in the last 1.5 years.”

In Japan, Delivery Hero has faced some meaty competition — from the likes of South Korean ecommerce giant Coupang; the (recently) Softbank-backed local veteran Demae-Can; the US giant Uber Eats; and the now DoorDash-owned Wolt, to name a few.

In another recent move in Asia, Delivery Hero also completed the sale of its Korean business.

It’s not all scaling back for Delivery Hero, though. Also recently: It picked up a Danish food delivery biz called Hungry; expanded in Slovakia; and grabbed customers in Central American and the Caribbean via acquisition.

Last year it also splurged $272M to pick up Spanish rival Glovo’s LatAm business — so Delivery Hero’s consolidation vs growth story continues to be a market-reflective pick ‘n’ mix.

Cross-border remittances — when people living and working abroad send money back home to friends and family — continues to be a huge part of how those living in developing countries, off the global financial grid, can be helped. The World Bank estimates that some $589 billion will be sent this way 2021, according to research from the World Bank, up 7.3% on 2020, as parts of the global economy started to claw back growth after a tough 2020 due to Covid-19.

In one development of that theme, today, Taptap Send — one of the startups building tools to manage these money transfers — is announcing $65 million in growth funding as it continues its mission to enable remittances specifically to the most overlooked countries.

The company’s hook is that it charges no fee for the transfer (it makes its cut via foreign exchange rates), and believes that its service is the easiest on the market to use, and it integrates with whatever mobile money wallets are already being used locally, meaning recipients do not have to add anything extra to their devices, or learn any new techniques, to be able to receive money via the service. At a time when the global economy has been under pressure, Taptap Send saw business grow eight-fold, the company said.

The Series B is being led by Spark Capital, with participation also from Unbound, Reid Hoffman and Canaan Partners (both of which led its previous round, a $13.4 million Series A earlier this year), Slow Ventures, Breyer Capital, Wamda Capital, Flourish Ventures, and additional unnamed investors from the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America. The company has now raised more than $80 million, and while it is not disclosing its valuation, PitchBook data notes that it is $715 million as of this round (which appears to have closed earlier in the year).

There are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of companies playing in the cross-border remittances field, from incumbents like Western Union through a myriad of tech players, some of which have gone public and some of which remain privately held. Taptap Send believes that its unique place in the market is that it has built not just the easiest, but the most reliable system to initiate, manage and receive those transfers.

“It’s quite easy to say remittances are crowded, but you could have said that for social networking or videoconferencing before TikTok or Zoom came along,” said Michael Faye, the CEO who co-founded the company with Paul Niehaus. “Remittances are a deceptively simple product on the surface, with an exceedingly complicated execution under the hood. There are 1,000 parts to get right and when you do you can deliver more value to users via price, speed and reliability.” He notes that a lot of the remittance services have been less than reliable, another area to improve for those looking to be more competitive.

“Remittances is one of the most sensitive things a person buys. It’s not like a shirt that you can touch and feel,” he said. “In remittances you are entering payment information and waiting and hoping that the money is getting to someone who likely needs it quite urgently. You need to have the utmost trust to take that money and send to someone else.”

The founders have arrived at their understanding of the market based on a long history in the field, having previously founded GiveDirectly (for charitable cross-border transfers) and Segovia (focused on B2B transfers). Segovia was acquired by Crown Agents Bank in 2019, and theoretically the product of Taptap Send was spun out from that ahead of the deal.

Taptap Send has been steadily growing and adding more countries to its list of served markets. It currently covers some 20 countries for receiving money, some of the very poorest and/or least developed places in the world including Bangladesh, Cameroon, DRC, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Morocco, Nepal, Nigeria, Pakistan, Republic of the Congo, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Senegal and Zambia.

Its growth, as with many other remittance providers, has been predicated on the rapid rise of mobile technology, and the fact that even in the poorest communities, people will have handsets that can be used to initiate transfers and act as proxy-bank accounts, even if they are not smartphones.

“The change has been profound, and the number of countries where these domestic wallets are popping up around the world is shifting dramatically,” Faye said.

The company was attractive to investors in part because of its growth during what has been a challenging time for the industry, and in part because of the team and its ethos of bringing financial inclusion tools to as wide and unsexy a swathe of the developing world as possible.

We’ve looked at a lot of fintech companies in the space, and think Taptap’s team and community-led approach are best in class,” said investor James Kuklinski of Spark Capital in a statement. “We couldn’t be more excited to be joining them on our mission to bring low-cost, accessible, cross-border financial products to underserved diaspora populations around the world.”

“I invest for scaled global impact and team, and Taptap is among the best combinations I’ve seen, ” added Reid Hoffman.

With supply chains in the automotive industry continuing to be disrupted due to Covid-19, demand has surged in the used-car market. Today, one of the startups that’s seeing a lot of growth as a result of that is announcing a big round of funding to further tap the opportunity.

Cars24, a startup out of India that has built an app and website for selling used cars and motorbikes, has raised $400 million: a Series G of $300 million in equity and a further $100 million in debt. The fundraise is coming just three months after Cars24 last closed a round — $450 million, with $340 million as a Series F and a further $110 million in debt — and as a mark of how heated the market is right now, Cars24’s valuation has nearly doubled in that short time: it’s now $3.3 billion, versus $1.84 billion three months ago.

Alpha Wave Global (which co-led the last round under its previous brand, Falcon Edge Capital) is leading this Series G, with participation from other existing investors. Cars24 is not disclosing who those investors are, but other backers include DST Global, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Alibaba, Tencent, Moore Strategic Ventures, Exor Seeds, Raptor Group and around 20 others.

Cars24 claims to have a 90% share of India’s used-car market, and it’s gotten there by way of technology. Its tools include a search engine for people to find vehicles (its wide inventory being one of the main unique selling points versus physical used-car lots); options for financing for the vehicle; and logistics software to subsequently organize and carry out vehicle deliveries to new owners. It also has built analytics to measure demand and calibrate pricing and make online assessments of vehicles. Cars24 currently has some 13 million monthly visitors to its site and has sold over 400,000 vehicles (both cars and motorbikes) to date.

Cars24 is not only on a scaling, but also a funding, tear: it additionally raised $200 million last December, putting the total raised in the last year to about $840 million. (And rumors of this latest round were circulating a couple of weeks ago.) It’s not the only one: a month ago, Spinny, another startup in the used-car space raised $280 million.

While Cars24 plans to work on increasing new customers against rival services, it will also be investing in more hooks to extend its engagement with those already using Cars24. These will include more financing options and centers for servicing vehicles before and after purchase. It will also be continuing to add more countries to its international footprint, with its next launches expected in Southeast Asia.

“The primary use of the funding will be to continue to strengthen our presence in India, and in the countries where we have expanded,” said Gajendra Jangid, Cars24’s CMO, who co-founded the company with Vikram Chopra (the CEO), Mehul Agrawal and Ruchit Agarwal in Gurugram in 2015. Cars24 is active in some 200 cities in India, and it claims to have grown 50% in the last quarter, a record for the company.

A number of outsized startups have emerged in India with massive coffers of funding to grow domestically, with little in the way of international strategy. And with nearly 1.4 billion people, the world’s second most populous country after China, you can see why. Cars24, however, has followed a different playbook, exporting its model to several countries in the last year, starting with the UAE (July 2021), and then Australia and Thailand (both in October). It plans to add to that list with its next markets in Southeast Asia, Jangid confirmed.

Launching in more developed markets like Australia and UAE has seen Cars24 adjusting its approach based on different market factors, he added.

“In Australia and the Emirates, it’s been about getting a good global supply of cars,” he said. “Because it’s hard to get new cars right now, that’s impacting pricing and demand for used vehicles.”

In its home market of India, car ownership still lingers in the single-percentage digits — somewhere between 2% and 3%, according to estimates — so in that regard, the only way is up. Indeed, as one of the most populated markets, which is rapidly developing, and which has jumped in with both feet into digital services and mobile apps, India represents a giant amount of potential that Cars24 is hoping to tap.

While Cars24 will continue to focus on bringing on new users, it’s also investing in infrastructure to extend how it works with those who are shopping on its platform. It has built out seven so-called Mega Refurbishment Labs around the country to assess and fix up cars destined for its platform. Sitting as a complement to the company’s otherwise all-digital approach to sourcing and selling vehicles, Jangid said the idea will be to make these labs a part of how the company also provides after-care to those who have purchased vehicles with the company. Longer term, he said, these would open up to all car owners. The company is also starting to build labs in other parts of the world to extend the proposition, with the first opening in Dubai.

The other area where the company is expanding its services is in the area of finance. Jangid said. He said Cars24 was the only player in its category with a banking license and it’s been using that to create payment schemes for customers. LIke car ownership itself, this represents another area of currently-underserved opportunity.

“Less than 20% of used cars get financed, while more than 80% of new cars sold are financed, so you can see the huge gap,” Jangid said. He said that currently, more than 50% of its customer base is financing vehicle purchases by way of Cars24.

It’s not all smooth sailing for the company. Working in used vehicles, there are a number of inconsistencies in product, and the more Cars24 scales the harder it will be to ensure a consistent customer experience around that, too. We’ve seen other used-car startups crash over similar issues, so it will be worth watching whether Cars24 manages to navigate these challenges as it scales. It’s one area where building out the physical servicing centers might help.

“We are excited to back Cars24 yet again as they continue to cement their leadership positions across India, UAE, Australia and other international markets,” said Navroz D. Udwadia, co-founder and partner of Alpha Wave, in a statement. “CARS24’s robust competitive moats across in-house reconditioning, access to the widest assortment/supply and deep data science drive a delightful customer experience, and reflects in its best-in-class NPS. We believe this investment will help CARS24 fortify its moats even further and scale 10x from here over the next few years. We remain impressed by the team’s vision and execution, and are delighted to deepen our partnership with CARS24.”

The trend that is instant grocery delivery — online ordering of essentials with your purchases being delivered to you in under an hour — continues to proliferate across multiple markets, and in the latest development, Sequoia is leading an investment in one out of Australia.

Voly, a five-month-old Sydney-based startup that offers thousands of SKUs and promises deliveries in 15 minutes at a flat fee of A$2.99 ($2.14), has raised A$18 million (just under $13 million at today’s rates) in a seed round of funding that it will be using to expand its business to cities and towns across the country.

In addition to Sequoia, by way of Sequoia Capital India, other investors in the round include Global Founders Capital (GFC) and Artesian Capital, an Australian firm; the latter two also previously backed Voly in a $1 million pre-seed round.

At a time when the instant grocery market is very crowded in certain regions like Europe — where a number of local startups are coexisting and competing with some very heavily-capitalised players with international ambitions like GoPuff, Gorillas, Flink and Getir — Voly has picked a ripe moment to ramp up in Australia.

The market for groceries in the country is estimated to be worth some A$90 billion ($64.6 billion) annually, but while there are some services for delivering so-called “big basket” purchases that are typically made weekly, the field appears to be pretty open for those offering deliveries in under an hour.

“Instant delivery is still very revolutionary here,” Mark Heath, the co-CEO and co-founder, said in an interview earlier.

“We were the country that got left behind by the other delivery startups,” joked Thibault Henry, the other founder and CEO. “We are a breath of fresh air.”

It currently offers some 2,000 SKUs and the plan is to grow that to 3,000, with groceries and essentials also complemented by modular shopping that mimics the concept of meal kits: a customer can select recipes based on preparation time, and then buy the ingredients needed to make them.

Heath said this has helped the company market itself not just to the younger, urban-dwelling millennials that typical are the early adopters of instant grocery services; but also working parents “who still want to cook tasty food for their families.” Henry believes the typical Voly user will use its service several times a week.

That lack of competition could be one reason investors have been bullish on Voly; the other might be the track record of the founders.

Heath helped launch Uber in Australia heading up operations and logistics, and then he worked as the country manager for CloudKitchens. Henry, meanwhile founded and ran a last-mile refrigerated delivery startup, Balto Logistics, which racked up a long list of on-demand food delivery brands as customers.

“Australia’s grocery market, which sees $90B in annual spends, is a large and profitable space that continues to be dominated by offline retail,” said Abheek Anand, MD, Sequoia India, in a statement. “The Sequoia Capital India team was impressed by the strong consumer love for VOLY, their compelling value proposition, and an impressive team of repeat founders that has blitzscaled businesses in Australia before. With on-demand models traditionally scaling very successfully in the country, the decision to lead their seed round and help them scale their business across Australia was an easy one to make.”

While Voly may be a very new and likely very small outfit — it’s not disclosing customer numbers but says that right now its growing at a rate of 100% each month — it’s indeed the collective experience and network that the two have that’s helping them build their platform and establish supply chains that don’t completely kill Voly on margins while still aiming to sell goods at retail, rather than marked-up, prices.

Another point of distinction in how Voly is growing is that it’s choosing to make its drivers full-time employees rather than contractors. “That’s our choice,” Heath said. “Uber and DoorDash are gig economy companies. We’ve chosen a different model.”