Employment Hero co-founders Ben Thompson and Dave Tong

Four months after announcing its last round, Employment Hero has closed another $140 million AUD (about $103 million USD) in funding. The Series E was led by Insight Partners, the venture capital firm known for its ScaleUp program to help tech companies accelerate their growth.

Employment Hero is an automated human resources, payroll and benefits platform for SMEs. Founded in Sydney in 2014, the company is now expanding into Southeast Asian and Western European markets. Its previous funding announcement was a $45 million AUD Series D announced in March, led by online job platform SEEK, at the company’s previous valuation of about $250 million AUD.

Now Employment Hero has bumped up its valuation $800 million in less than six months by reaching 133% year-on- recurring revenue growth. Co-founded by Ben Thompson, its chief executive officer, and chief technology officer Dave Tong, Employment Hero is used by 6,000 businesses, with a total of 250,000 employees. Over the past 12 months, the company says $14 billion in gross wages was processed through the platform.

“We always thought Insight Partners would be a great partner,” Thompson told TechCrunch. “We had been speaking with them for years, so when they asked if we would consider raising, we agreed it was definitely worth exploring. As it turned out all the stars were aligned, and we reached a deal that made sense and allowed us to keep scaling without having to switch back into capital raising mode.”

Over the past year, Employment Hero grew its headcount by 65% to 325 full-time employees and now has a permanent remote-first work model. The new capital will be used to hire for its engineering teams and for the company’s continuing international expansion.

Employment Hero began entering new markets in October 2020, launching localized versions of the platform in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Malaysia and Singapore.

Thompson said Employment Hero will continue focusing on Malaysia and Singapore until the end of this year, while looking at ways to cross-promote SEEK’s products and services in Asia. After that, it plans to localize Employment Hero for Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Hong Kong and Vietnam.

To localize the platform, Employment Hero starts with employment contracts, policies, leave rules and pay rules. Then it integrates with tax authorities and pension funds, before focusing on local benefits providers to get discounts on non-discretionary expenses for users, like health insurance and mortgages.

During the pandemic, Thompson said Employment Hero’s teams shifted their focus to help companies adapt to a distributed workforce. Some of the services it launched include Global Teams, a professional employer organization (PEO) solution that pushes job openings to more than 1,700 career boards and helps companies onboard and manage remote workers. Employment Hero is also working with recruitment agencies that will help employers find remote workers.

Thompson said, “while it’s still early days for Global Teams, it’s definitely popular,” with dozens of companies in Australia, the United Kingdom and New Zealand using it to employ people in 21 countries.

Employment Hero’s Remote Work Report, released in June, found that 94% of respondents want to continue working remotely at least one day a week, up from 2% a year ago. Meanwhile, 74% of employers surveyed told Employment Hero that they plan to keep flexible working arrangements after COVID restrictions are lifted, up from 64% in 2020.

“We are seeing employers embrace remote work as a competitive advantage because it broadens their available talent pool and helps retain and engage their employees,” Thompson said. “Employers are now asking, how should we do things differently if we want to continue working remotely forever? This requires real intention and education, but it’s a whole lot better than losing great employees by forcing them back to office five days a week.”

In a statement about the investment, Insight Partners managing director Rachel Geller said, “We have been following Employment Hero’s journey for four years and have seen the impressive and consistent growth experience by the company. Its customer-centric solutions have been embraced globally by the small and medium business community and we are looking forward to supporting them through this next phase of their expansion journey.”

People shopping around for a fitness app already have a plethora to pick from: MyFitnessPal, Noom and Lifesum, to name a few. Founded in India, HealthifyMe is betting that users around the world will prefer its range of customizable health programs. The Bangalore-based company announced today it has closed a $75 million Series C from LeapFrog and Khosla Ventures, with plans to grow its user base in India, Southeast Asia and North America.

HealthifyMe is the first Indian health tech startup LeapFrog has invested in, and Khosla Ventures’ largest investment in India to date. The company did not disclose its post-money valuation, but co-founder and chief executive officer Tushar Vashisht told TechCrunch it is now at “soonicorn” status.

Unilever Ventures, Elm and Healthquad also participated in the round along with returning investors Chiratae Ventures, Inventus Capital and Sistema Asia Capital. HealthifyMe has now raised more than $100 million in total.

Vashisht said HealthifyMe is India’s top health and fitness app, but its long-term goal is to become the global leader. In North America, it is popular among Indian expat and Indian American communities, and now it will target other customer segments, too.

HealthifyMe’s products include HealthifySmart, which uses AI-based tech to customize diet plans for users, and HealtifyCoach, which also includes live conversations with coaches. During the pandemic, it launched two products: HealthifyPlus, for people who are managing chronic conditions like diabetes, polycystic ovary syndrome, high cholesterol or hypertension, and HealthifyStudio, with live workout classes.

The app also has a AI-based nutritionist called Ria that is trained for cuisines in different markets through a combination of user-tracked data, guidance from local nutritionists and databases from sources like the United States Department of Agriculture.

HealthifyMe will work with LeapFrog’s research and development hub, ImpactLabs, to develop more programs for people with chronic health conditions.

HealthifyMe’s Smart plan

HealthifySmart and HealthifyStudio, its newest products, already contribute 25% to the company’s line. HealthifyMe also says it doubled its user base and revenue over the last year, recently surpassing 25 million downloads, and is currently on target to reach $50 million in annualized recurring revenue within the next six months. It has about 1,500 trainers and coaches on the platform, with plans to add 1,000 more to support its expansion.

Since HealthifyMe began operating first in cost-sensitive markets, it started using AI early on to scale efficiently, Vashisht said. As a result, it is able to offer products at lower prices than its competition.

“Today in the U.S., you have free DIY calorie counting solutions like MyFitnessPal and expensive human-assisted coaching and diet solutions like Noom and WeightWatchers,” said Vashisht. “But nothing in the middle exists that allows one to track nutrition and calories while getting advice at an affordable price point.”

About 25% of HealthifyMe’s revenue comes from outside of India, including Singapore and Malaysia. When it enters a new market, the company localizes its services using a playbook.

“We begin by building a food database with local foods. We also tailor our search algorithms and app language to ensure accurate food searches take place in the app,” Vashisht said. “Next, we hire 50 diet and fitness coaches locally to cater to the region’s population via the platform and launch HealthifyCoach locally. Once we have sufficient data, we were able to retrain and refactor our AI to suit local preferences.” That is how the company launched HealthifySmart in Singapore and Malaysia, and it plans to do the same thing in North America.

The company measures the efficacy of its program through user-reported statistics and working with researchers like Sridhar Narayan, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, to verify and analyze its data. Vashisht said average paying subscribers lose about 8 pounds in 180 days, while the top 10% lose more than 20 pounds.

For its HealthifyPlus customers, the company has seen a statistically significant impact on their Hemoglobin A1C (Hb1AC), LDL cholesterol and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) levels. Vashisht added that HealthifyMe plans to publish its results in the coming months, and also hopes to integrate with diagnostics providers in the future to track clinical indicators.

Part of the new funding will be used to double HealthifyMe’s current engineering and design teams, including through acqui-hires, with the company looking for digital health and wellness companies to buy. It will also fill senior leadership roles in operations, marketing, human relations and technology.

Kdan Mobile founder and CEO Kenny Su

Kdan Mobile, a company that provides a wide range of cloud-based software, including AI-based tech for organizing documents, has raised a $16 million Series B. The round was led by South Korea-based Dattoz Partners, which will also take a seat on Kdan Mobile, and included participation from WI Harper Group, Taiwania Capital and Golden Asia Fund Mitsubishi UFJ Capital.

Launched in 2009, Kdan Mobile has focused on developing content creation and productivity software for mobile devices from the start, founder and chief executive officer Kenny Su told TechCrunch. “We’ve observed more and more industries embracing remote or hybrid work for years now, even before 2020,” he said. “We always sensed that trend would continue.”

Kdan Mobile has now raised $21 million in total. Since announcing its Series A in April 2018, Kdan Mobile has grown from 70 employees to 200 in Taiwan, China, Japan and the United States. It also passed 200 million downloads and now has more than 100 million members on its platform. More than half of Kdan Mobile’s users are in the U.S. and Europe, 30% from Asia and 15% from Africa and Australia.

Part of the funding will be used to develop Kdan Mobile’s enterprise products, including Document AI, its data processing and filtering technology, and SaaS products like e-signature service DottedSign, PDF software Document 365 and Creativity 365 for multimedia content creation, including animations and video editing.

After focusing primarily on individual users, Kdan Mobile decided to start working with more enterprise clients in 2018 and its software is now used by more than 40,000 businesses and educational organizations. Su said the company’s focus on enterprise was validated with the 2019 launch of DottedSign, which now has more than 300,000 users. During the past year and a half, the number of signatures processed by DottedSign increase by 30 times as companies switched to remote work because of the pandemic. Kdan Mobile also began offering a set of APIs and SDKs so internal developers at large enterprises can integrate and customize its technology.

“We use a lot of what’s called B2C2B approach, or business to consumer to business, meaning that we still try to connect with users at the individual level, but do so in a way that we hope they’ll adopt our solutions at the company level,” said Su.

Document AI was launched in 2021 after Kdan Mobile found that many of its users wanted to reduce the amount of time they spend managing documents. Its features include optical character recognition, smart tagging and search, and protection for sensitive data. Some examples of how Document AI can be used include automating data-entry tasks and creating summaries of research documents.

When asked how its products differentiate from those offered by Google, Microsoft and Adobe, Su said one way is that Kdan Mobile has always created products for mobile first, before designing the user experience for other devices, with the idea of serving professionals who are on the move a lot.

On the other hand, Kdan Mobile doesn’t necessarily see itself as a competitor with those companies. Instead, its solutions are complementary. For example, it creates files that are compatible with Adobe products and is integrated with Google Workspace, Zapier and, in the near future, Microsoft Teams.

“In that regard, it’s about helping users where they are, rather than trying to sway them away from existing products or services,” Su said.

In statement, Dattoz Partner CEO Yeon Su Kim said, “We see tremendous growth in the market for software and solutions that empower the post-pandemic hybrid workforce. Kdan’s powerful product suite and the leadership team’s ability to executive have led to its strong momentum in several key markets, including the U.S. and Asia markets.”

While working as the chief operating officer of a pizza chain in Vietnam, Taku Tanaka saw how difficult it is for restaurants to connect with farmers. Many small F&B businesses can’t buy in large volumes, so they rely on nearby markets or multiple suppliers who only sell one category. In turn, this means farmers are disconnected from the end customers of their products, making it hard to predict selling prices or plan their crops. Tanaka founded Kamereo, B2B platform with its own warehouse and last-mile delivery network, to focus on those problems.

Based in Ho Chi Minh City, the company announced today that it has raised $4.6 million co-led by food conglomerate CPF Group, Quest Ventures and Genesia Ventures. The capital will be used for hiring, building a new warehouse management system, user interface upgrades and expanding into Hanoi next year.

Before founding Kamereo in 2018, Tanaka was COO of Pizza 4Ps, which grew from one location in Ho Chi Minh City when he joined to 10 stores three years later (it now has more than 30 locations in Vietnam).

Kamereo works with about 15 farmers, including cooperatives, and serves more than 400 active customers, ranging in size from family-owned restaurants to chains with more than 20 locations. Despite COVID-19 related movement restrictions and temporary business closures, Kamereo says it has grown by 15% every month over the last 12 months. It currently has about 100 employees.

F&B businesses use the platform to order from multiple farmers. Kamereo handles supplier negotiations, order processing and management, and fulfillment. Tanaka told TechCrunch that the company operates its own warehouses and last-mile delivery network because it is cheaper than working with third-party providers.

One of Kamereo’s warehouses for fresh farm products

Most of Kamereo’s last-mile deliveries are done by motorbikes since Vietnam has many small roads that are inaccessible to trucks. Tanaka said one drawback is how many goods can be delivered in one trip. Since drivers need to make multiple trips each day, Kamereo plans to expand its micro-warehouse network in Ho Chi Minh City so they don’t need to travel long distances. Its tech team is also building an internal system to manage inventory, fulfillment and last-mile deliveries with the goal of minimizing variable costs.

In a statement about the investment, Quest Ventures partner Goh Yiping said, “Kamereo sites in one of the largest food production hubs of Southeast Asia, and there is much room to grow in solving many of the inefficiencies of the supply chain today, improving farmers’ livelihood outcomes and procuring the best products for businesses and homes.”

First created to give supply chain merchants a streamlined way to communicate with buyers, Tinvio is now preparing to launch financial services, including financing and credit card issuing. The Singapore-based startup announced today it has raised a $12 million Series A to build out its B2B transactions platform. The round was led by AppWorks Ventures, with participation from strategic investor MUFG Innovation Partners (MUIP), a venture capital firm for collaborations between startups and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.

All of Tinvio’s existing investors—Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, Global Founders Capital and Partech Ventures—also returned for its Series A, which brings Tinvio’s total raised to $18.5 million.

Tinvio’s last funding announcement was a $5.5 million seed round in April 2020. The company was founded in July 2019 by Ajay Gopal, whose prior professional experience included leading initial public offering and merger and acquisition transactions as a fintech investment banker for Credit Suisse in London.

Since its seed funding, Tinvio says its client base has increased four times to over 5,000 businesses in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand and other Asian markets. Gopal told TechCrunch that as its user base grows, it is acquiring more new customers through word-of-mouth and referrals. For example, Southeast Asian F&B supplier QQ Group onboarded all of its merchants onto Tinvio and now uses the platform for all trade orders.

One of the reasons Tinvio focuses on F&B businesses is because they deal with a lot of perishable goods and constantly need to manage orders and inventory. Gopal said the company also has clients in the healthcare and automotive sectors, but plans to keep targeting growth in F&B.

Tinvio app was originally launched as a way to consolidate orders from different places, including email, SMS and WhatsApp, and let suppliers keep real-time digital ledgers.

It recently entered financial services by adding a digital payments collection and reconciliation features. Gopal says many suppliers still take payment in the form of bank transfers or cash and paper checks on delivery, making it difficult to keep manage their cash cycles. So Tinvio launched a “super dirty pilot” for on-platform payments late last year in Indonesia, and after validating it, added B2B payments to its core product. Tinvio supports payments through credit cards, direct debits and automated bank transfers, and is integrated with regional payment gateways. Over the last two months, 95% of suppliers on the platform have continued to use Tinvio to collect payments from their merchants.

“It’s only been live for a couple of months, but we’ve already gotten so much feedback from our users and we’re sprinting to unlock new capabilities such as real-time payments and credit,” said Gopal.

The company has a 12-month roadmap for its other financial services, including transaction financing, credit card issuing and invoice factoring, with pilots planned for the next two quarters. “In this Series A, we’ve teamed up with MUFG bank,” Gopal said. “This sets us up in a fantastic position to go-to-market even sooner with our financial technology stack that we’ve been building.”

In a statement, AppWorks Ventures managing partner Jessica Liu said, “Tinvio’s focus on modernizing B2B trade with a seamless user experience has seen it onboard and digitalize thousands of merchant and supplier teams without disrupting their daily routines or procurement workflows. Despite COVID-19, we still see great growth momentum, led by increasing network effects, leaving Tinvio well positioned to dominate this category.”

Easy Eat AI, a Singapore-based startup that wants to “transform restaurants into technology companies,” announced today it has raised $5 million in funding. Easy Eat AI offers an operating system for restaurants that lets them digitize all parts of their business, from inventory and customer orders to delivery, and gain AI-based data analytics to improve revenue.

Many food and beverage businesses started digitizing orders and payments so they could offer deliveries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Though Easy Eat AI lets restaurants integrate with third-party food ordering apps, it also has its own delivery infrastructure, including on-demand riders, that costs just 4% per order, compared to the 20%-30% that many of the largest food delivery platforms charge.

Founded in 2019 by Mohd Wassem, Rhythm Gupta and Abdul Khalid, Easy Eat AI currently has operations in Malaysia, and plans to expand into other Southeast Asian markets. The funding included participation from Aroa Ventures, the family office of OYO founder Ritesh Agarwal; Reddy Futures Family Office; Prophetic Ventures; OYO global chief strategy officer Maninder Gulati; Alarko Ventures managing partner Cem Garih; and Esas Ventures founder and managing partner Fethi Sabancı Kamışlı.

Wassem told TechCrunch that Easy Eat AI was created because even though Southeast Asia “is a food paradise, everyone eats out, eating out is a culture here,” the restaurant industry is still one of the least advanced digitally. Before the pandemic, he said that about 80% of restaurant business came from in-person dining, but taking orders manually resulted in very little data kept about who customers are, what they like to order or how often they return.

Easy Eat AI’s platform helps restaurants create that digital connection with their customers. Some of its clients include chains like Richiamo Coffee, Mr. Fish Fishhead Noodles, WTF Group and Hailam Toast. During COVID-19 lockdowns, Easy Eat AI has helped restaurants fulfill deliveries and its other features, like targeted marketing campaigns and loyalty reward programs, are relevant to in-person dining, too.

A restaurant menu on Easy Eat AI’s platform

Easy Eat AI’s consumer interface is based on QR code ordering—customers scan the code with their smartphone and are taken directly to the restaurant’s menu online. They pick what they want, then create an account or sign-in by entering their mobile number. Payments and reward programs can also be accessed through the platform.

The company says that after analyzing 100,000 orders at more than 50 restaurants over six months, it found that people spend about 30% more when they order digitally compared to through a waiter—similar to when people go shopping for a specific item online and end up adding more items to their cart while browsing.

After a restaurant uses Easy Eat AI for about 30 to 45 days, it is able to build a customer database for targeted online marketing strategies, sending offers to the people who are most likely to use them.

For example, a month after launching in its third outlet of Mr. Fish, the platform had collected data from more than 1,400 customers. The restaurant was able to see that about 20% visited the restaurant more than once, and the average duration between their visits was 12 days. Based on that information, it created marketing campaigns to draw back people who hadn’t returned in 20 days. During that time, Mr. Fish also started fulfilling delivery orders through Easy Eat AI, and by the end of the month, 13.4% of its orders were coming through the platform, reducing its reliance on third-party delivery apps.

In a statement about the funding, Keshav Reddy, managing partner of Reddy Futures Family Office, said, “The team is customer obsessed and understands the pain problems of the industry. Their innovative software platform will be disruptive to the entire F&B ecosystem and how customers engage through the entire F&B lifecycle in the online-to-offline world.”

Arcc, a coworking space in Singapore available for bookings on Deskimo

Part of Y Combinator’s current batch, Deskimo wants to make finding coworking spaces easier. Its on-demand booking app is currently available in Singapore and Hong Kong, with plans to enter more markets after Demo Day. Its founders are former Rocket Internet executives who say that their main competition aren’t spaces like WeWork or other hot desk booking apps. Instead, its Starbucks, since Deskimo caters to people who usually work from home, but occasionally need a place nearby where they can get away from distractions or take meetings. Deskimo partners with employers and charges them by the minutes their workers spend at space, instead of a monthly or yearly fee.

Deskimo was launched in February by Raphael Cohen, Rocket Internet’s former head of Asia, and Christian Mischler, who co-founded Foodpanda and served as its global chief operating officer. After Rocket Internet, the two started HotelQuickly, an on-demand booking app they sold in 2017.

The pandemic has quickly changed attitudes toward remote work, with a McKinsey survey finding that 62% of respondents said they only wanted to return to the office a few days a week, or not at all. As a result, many companies, especially startups, will continue offering flexible arrangements.

Mischler and Cohen already have experience watching peoples’ behavior shift after Foodpanda was launched. “Back in 2012, people were saying that food ordering is not going to work online, people just order on the home or in person,” Cohen said. “What we learned from on-demand restaurant delivery, the shared market-based model, is very similar in that case to setting up with workspace partners.”

Deskimo now has about 40 properties in Singapore and 25 in Hong Kong, and wants to expand in both residential and business districts, since many remote workers prefer to find a space close to their homes. It works with several different types of property owners and is approaching each group step-by-step. The first are office spaces that are already set up for coworking and see Deskimo as an additional distribution channel. The second are hotels that are converting some of their space into coworking areas. Finally, Deskimo plans to partner with spaces like social clubs and event venues that usually sit empty during weekdays.

Deskimo app’s QR code

On the client side, Deskimo contracts with companies, who then offer the app to their employees. Each person gets a monthly budget on Deskimo, and their employers are only billed for the time they spend at a space. The Deskimo app generates a QR code that workers use to gain access to one of its spaces, and they also scan it when checking out to record how long they were there. Pricing ranges from about $2 to $4 USD per minute, with desks in central business districts typically costing more. Aggregated invoices are sent to clients each month and revenue is then shared with coworking space owners.

“Many companies realize they can save a lot of costs by having people work from home so they can reduce their office space, and instead of adding more fixed costs, they just add variable costs,” said Mischler. “They provide their employees with the ability to go to an office, but if they don’t want to because they have a great home to work from, employees are also more than welcome to work from home.”

In Deskimo’s current markets, other on-demand coworking space apps include Switch, Flydesk, WorkBuddy and Booqed. But Mischler says its main competitors are large F&B chains like Starbucks, since they are easy to find. He adds that Deskimo is more efficient for workers, who are guaranteed a table and don’t need to worry about finding outlets or the quality of Wi-Fi. Besides expanding into more markets, Deskimo also wants to add other services on top of coworking to give it a competitive edge.

“Once we have the company relationships and their employees use Deskimo for their bookings, there’s a lot of different things we can build on top of it, whether it’s employee engagement or workforce management, not just workplace management,” says Mischer. “But we’re focused on the transactional model right now because that’s the biggest pain point.”

“Chicken” Parmigiana made from Next Gen’s TiNDLE

Singapore-based Next Gen Foods will bring its plant-based chicken alternative to the United States after raising a $20 million seed extension. Investors included GGV Capital, agriculture and food tech-focused Bits x Bites, food and beverage company Yeo Hiap Seng, entrepreneur and “Blitzscaling” author Chris Yeh and English footballer Dele Alli.

Returning investors include Temasek, which led Next Gen Foods’ original $10 million seed round, announced in February, and K3 Ventures. The first $10 million was already the largest seed funding ever raised by a plant-based food tech company, based on data from Pitchbook, and now the round totals $30 million. Part of the funding will be used to fill 50 roles in the U.S. for its research and development, sales, supply chain and finance and marketing teams. 

Next Gen also announced changes to its leadership team. Co-founder Timo Recker is moving from his chief executive officer position to chairman, while Andre Menezes, another founder, will take over the CEO spot. Former Temasek director Rohit Bhattacharya will join the startup as its chief financial officer. 

Next Gen’s chicken alternative, called TiNDLE, launched in Asia through partnerships with restaurants and is now served in more than 70 locations in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau. Over the next 12 months, Next Gen will take a similar approach as it enters the U.S., working with food services in cities to develop TiNDLE dishes for their menus. Eventually it will expand to other distribution channels, like retail, Menezes told TechCrunch.

To replicate chicken meat’s texture, Next Gen uses a proprietary blend of plant-based fats, including sunflower oils, and natural flavors. This allows TiNDLE products to replicate the aroma and browning of chicken when it cooks. 

In the U.S., Next Gen faces rivalry from plant-based food companies like Beyond Meat, which launched its Chicken Tenders product at about 400 restaurants earlier this week. Panda Express, a popular food chain, is also piloting Beyond Meat orange chicken. 

When asked about the competitive landscape, Menezes said, “We are really glad this sector is gaining traction and we do not see other plant-based companies as our competitors. The only competition we worry about are the companies bringing unsatisfactory products to consumers. Consumers may end up having the wrong impression that plant-based foods compromise in taste and experience even today.” 

He added that TiNDLE is GMO and cholesterol-free, and Next Gen has an asset-light business model that will make it easier to scale into new markets. 

Before launching Next Gen, Recker founded German-based LikeMeat, while Menezes worked at one of the world’s largest poultry exporters before serving as general manager of Singapore food distributor Country Foods. 

In a statement, GGV managing partner Jenny Lee said, “The Next Gen team has one of the strongest founder-market fits in foodtech, having previously developed and successfully launched a plant-based meat product for the European market. The team’s focus on product quality, brand recall and distribution provides a strong foundation for the future growth of the company.”

Syfe founder Dhruv Arora

Investment apps in Southeast Asia are attracting a lot of funding, and now some are raising fast follow-on rounds, too. For example, Indonesian robo-advisor app Bibit raised $65 million in May just four months after a $30 million growth round. Now Singapore-based Syfe is announcing that it has closed a $40 million SGD (about $29.6M USD) Series B, only nine months after its Series A. It also said all of Syfe’s full-time employees will receive equity in the company.

The latest round’s lead investor is Valar Ventures, which also led Syfe’s Series A, marking the fintech-focused venture capital firm’s first investment in an Asian startup. Returning investors Presight Capital and Unbound participated, too.

This brings Syfe’s total raised so far to $70.7 million SGD (about $52.3 million USD) since it was founded in 2019. The startup did not disclose its Series B post-money valuation, but founder and chief executive officer Dhruv Arora told TechCrunch it increased 3.6 times from its Series A. The company also hasn’t disclosed total user numbers, but assets under management have grown four times since January, thanks in large part to user referrals and the launch of new products like Syfe Cash+ and Core portfolios.

“To be honest, we weren’t really looking to raise a Series B,” Arora told TechCrunch. “We saw some of the positive outcomes of resources from our Series A. We really scaled up the team and started launching new products and options for our users.” Syfe probably could have waited another six months to a year to raise a new round, he added, but its investors approached the startup again and offered good terms for another round.

About 50% to 70% of new users each month come through recommendations from existing customers, which keeps Syfe’s acquisition costs extremely low, Arora says. Since the beginning of this year, it has also doubled its team in Singapore to more than 100 people, allowing the startup to explore different kind of distribution strategies and partnerships. The app currently has users in 42 countries, but only actively markets in Singapore, where it holds a Capital Markets Services license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). It has plans to announce a second market soon.

Syfe was founded in 2017 and launched its app in July 2019. Prior to starting Syfe, Arora was an investment banker at UBS Investment Bank before serving as vice president and head of growth at Indian grocery delivery startup Grofers.

While retail investment rates are still low in Southeast Asia, interest has jumped significantly over the past year. One of the reasons most commonly cited is the economic impact of COVID-19, which motivated people to earn returns from their money instead of keeping it in saving accounts.

“Most of my career has been within Hong Kong, Singapore and parts of India. I think culturally we’ve always been told to save, save, save,” Arora says. “It made sense because banks were giving good interest rates, but now the majority of economies are in negative real rate of interest.” Along with consumers’ growing familiarity with online wallets and other digital financial services, this set the stage for investment apps to come in, attracting customers who might not have gone to traditional brokerages.

Arora says he expected people to become more interested in investing, but gradually, over the course of about five to seven years. Instead, that shift is happening much more quickly. “My view is that tomorrow’s saving accounts become smart investing accounts. That’s been my view ever since we started Syfe, but this last year has made it evident that it has to happen and has to happen much bigger. So I think this wave will continue,” he says.

While many investment apps focus on millennial users, Syfe’s target demographic is wider. In the last six to nine months, Arora says there has been an uptick in users aged 50 and above on the platform, and its oldest user is 93 years old.

“The users in that segment have become a bigger percentage and the reality is that they typically have more disposable income. The average customer in their 50s will deploy, in our experience, almost twice the more conventional demographic which might be between 30 to 40,” says Arora.

Out of the many investment apps that have emerged in Southeast Asia, users most often compare Syfe to Stashaway, Endowus and Autowealth when shopping around for a platform. Arora says the space has a lot of room to grow because retail investment in the region is still very low. “I think it’s still super early in the game. There is enough room for multiple players and I think more will come into this domain, because if you can get your acquisition metrics into place, this can be a very profitable business.”

In terms of differentiating, Syfe is focused on new product development and user localization and personalization so customers can create more customized portfolios.

Syfe has a team of financial advisors for users who want person-to-person consultations, but Arora says most of Syfe’s investors rely entirely on its app to decide how to invest. Over the last nine months, it has only added one new advisor to its team, while focusing on making its user interface more intuitive.

“The human touch is optional, but it’s not necessary and in many cases, it’s only needed to help people understand the offering once,” says Arora. “But our goal is always going to be technology company and for the app to become so intuitive that whether you are 18 or 93, you are able to use the offering with very limited guidance.”

In a press statement, Valar Ventures founding partner Andrew McCormack says, “Syfe was our first investment in Asia and we’ve been impressed by its rapid, sustained growth over the past couple of years. The opportunity for the company to meet the saving and investment needs of a burgeoning mass-affluent consumer population in Asia remains significant, and we are confident that Syfe will continue to expand at pace.”

Southeast Asia’s car marketplace wars are going into high drive. Today Carsome Group, one of the region’s largest online used car marketplaces, said it plans to acquire listings platform iCar Asia in a transaction worth more than $200 million.

Carsome has agreed to acquire 19.9% of iCar Asia from Malaysia internet conglomerate Catcha Group. In exchange, Catcha Group will become a shareholder in Carsome Group. Carsome and Catcha Group have also made a joint proposal to iCar Asia’s directors to buy the rest of the company from its shareholders.

Carsome rival Carro revealed one month ago that it raised a $360 million Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, boosting it to unicorn status. A day after Carro’s announcement, DealStreetAsia reported that Carsome is in talks to raise over $200 million in a pre-IPO round.

Carsome hasn’t confirmed the funding, but it has been making moves to expand its reach, including a strategic investment in PT Universal, an offline car and motorcycle auction company that has retail branches in five Indonesian cities. Carsome said its investment in PT Universal will allow it to double its automotive transaction volumes in Indonesia.

Now Carsome says its integration with iCar Asia will create a marketplace that is targeting $1 billion in revenue for this year, with about 100,000 cars transacted annually, more than 460,000 live partner listings and over 13,000 car dealers it its network.

iCar Asia, which is listed on the Australian stock exchange, announced last year that it had received a takeover offer from China-based online auto marketplace Autohome. Catcha Group founder Patrick Grove told the Australian Financial Review that proposal was “one of the casualties of the cold war” between China and Australia.

In a press statement, Carsome co-founder and group chief executive officer Eric Cheng said the deal “is the first step toward consolidation to form the largest digital automotive group in terms of revenue, user base, largest live listing and the best end-to-end fulfilment capacity in the region.”

Staff management platform Vara’s team

If you follow startup news from Indonesia, you know that the country’s estimated 60 million small businesses are a hot target for tech companies. BukuKas and BukuWarung, for example, both recently raised large rounds to fuel their race to digitize SMEs’ operations. Founded in November 2020, Vara is focused specifically on making staff management easier for small businesses and their workers, replacing the notebooks or spreadsheets many relied on to keep track of payroll with an app called Bukugaji.

The company announced today it has raised $4.8 million in seed funding from Go Ventures, RTP Global, AlphaJWC, Sequoia Capital India’s Surge, FEBE Ventures and Taurus Ventures. Founded by Vidush Mahansaria and Abhinav Karale, who met while studying at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Vara is part of the Surge accelerator program’s fifth cohort of startups. It says more than 100,000 small businesses are already using Bukugaji.

The app has features to track attendance, calculate salaries and worker loans and disburse payroll. Mahansaria told TechCrunch that Bukugaji is aimed at companies that have less than 30 employees. Many of them are in retail, food and beverage or labor-heavy service sectors like construction and transportation. Bukugaji has features for specific employee segments, like operational staff who usually work in shifts, or permanent staff whose paychecks are fixed over a specific time period.

“Before downloading and onboarding on Bukugaji, the vast majority of our users utilized notebooks to mark attendance and track payroll,” Mahansaria said. “A small portion used the notes features on their phones or simple Excel sheets.” Bukugaji is designed to be fully self-service, so businesses can download and start using the app on their own. Its main app is mobile only, but the platform also has a web version.

The businesses Bukugaji serves often have workers who are unbanked, meaning they don’t have access to a bank account or traditional financial services. Vara’s founders say many of them live paycheck to paycheck and this means they sometimes have to take out loans from their employers.

“Employees often request cash advances from their employers toward the end of the month, when they need the money the most because sometimes they can’t make ends meet,” said Mahansaria. “This has two outcomes: first, it ties up working capital for the employer. Second, it makes the employee increasingly reliant on the employer to meet emergency needs. It’s hard to break out of this cycle given the current limited accessibility to formal financial infrastructure for this market segment.”

Earned wage access (EWA) platforms are focused on solving this problem by giving employees on-demand access to wages, instead of having to wait for their paycheck. EWA companies are gaining traction around the world, including Wagely and GajiGesa in Indonesia. Vara doesn’t have immediate plans to add an EWA feature to Bukugaji, but it is something the company is thinking about as part of the value-additive services it will build into the platform.

“Owning end-to-end payroll and attendance gives us an information edge that is unparalleled for this labor segment,” Mahansaria said, noting that the data can enable companies to add things like benefits that their employees usually don’t have access to, and in turn give workers a digitally-verified work history.

In the near future, Bukugaji will add time-saving features like automated allowances and overtime, dashboard shortcuts, reminders and customizable reports. It also plans to allow employers to disburse salaries directly through the platform. Over the longer term, Bukugaji will offer data analytics to companies and their workers. For example, employees will also be able to see how their earnings have changed over time. Employers, meanwhile can spot trends in attendance and salary.

Though Vara may eventually expand into markets, Mahansaria said it is currently “razor-focused on Indonesia,” where SMEs account for about 60% of the country’s gross domestic product and employ the vast majority of its workforce.

A Coupang delivery driver in Taipei City

One month after entering Japan, its first international market, Coupang has launched in Taiwan. The South Korean e-commerce giant began offering its service in Taipei City’s Zhongshan neighborhood, allowing people there to order items through its app for on-demand delivery between 8AM to 11PM, charging a delivery fee of 19 NTD (about 68 cents USD).

Coupang is testing its service and will assess different models for its delivery infrastructure in Taiwan. The selection of items is similar to what’s available in Japan–customers can buy food, beverages, daily necessities and pet supplies. In Taipei, Coupang’s most direct competition is currently Uber Eats and Foodpanda, which deliver from some retailers, including drugstores, as well as restaurants. A key difference is that Coupang is currently fulfilling orders directly, instead of sending couriers to stores or restaurants.

As it expands into more product categories, it will also compete with e-commerce platforms like Momo and PChome, which both offer 24-hour deliveries. In South Korea, Coupang’s e-commerce platform offers millions of products. Its other services include Rocket Fresh for perishable groceries and Coupang Eats for meals.

Coupang held a successful initial public offering in March on the New York Stock Exchange. Founded in 2010, Coupang has become the e-commerce market leader in South Korea and also developed an international reputation for “out-Amazoning Amazon” with the speed of its deliveries and dollar retention rate (or how often customers return and spend money).

Coupang invested heavily in its own logistics infrastructure when it launched a decade ago, but now also partners with third-party providers in South Korea. It remains to be seen what kind of fulfillment model it will decide on in Japan and Taiwan. The company hasn’t announced what its next market is, but it has been hiring in Singapore for lead operations, retail and logistics roles.