When Constantin Robertz was working at Zalora, he was involved in moving warehouses six times as the e-commerce company outgrew its logistics infrastructure. This inspired him to co-found Locad, a logistics provider for omnichannel e-commerce companies that connects its network of third-party warehouses and shipping carriers with a cloud-based platform referred to its “logistics engine.”

Founded in Singapore and Manila by Robertz, fellow Zalora alumni Jannis Dargel and former Grab lead product manager of maps Shrey Jain, Locad announced today it has raised $11 million in Series A funding led by Reefknot Investments, a joint venture between Temasek and logistics company Kuehne + Nagel. Returning investors Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s Surge, Febe Ventures and Antler also participated, along with new backers Access Ventures, JG Summit and WTI.

TechCrunch last covered Locad when it raised its $4.5 million seed round in 2021.

Locad can handle almost every part of the delivery process, from inventory storage and packing to shipping and tracking. So far, Locad has provided order fulfillment for 200 brands, including Havaians, Levi’s Reckitt Benckisder and Emma Sleep. Its customers are spread across Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong and Australia, and typically ship about 25 to 5,000 orders a day. Last year, Locad was used to ship more than two million orders and it claims a 99% same-day order fulfillment rate.

Its new funding will be used to add more warehouses and transport operators to Locad’s network and on hiring in Southeast Asia and Australia, with the goal of building the region’s largest network of warehouses over the next five years.

Robertz said helping Zalora scale up its logistics infrastructure “planted the seed of how a cloud approach to supply chain, with a scalable logistics infrastructure as a service, would be a better way.” During their time at Zalora, Robertz and Dargel also worked with brands that had to set up their own e-commerce fulfillment capabilities and tech stack in order to support multiple sales channels.

Legacy logistics infrastructure, originally created for B2B wholesale distribution, couldn’t keep up with direct-to-consumer brands as their sales channels multiplied. It also meant they could no longer rely on “walled garden” fulfillment networks run by e-commerce platforms, like Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA), as they scaled up.

At the same time, consumers want faster and cheaper delivery, and offering multiple options like same day, next day or economy shipment is important for conversions at checkout. Robertz said that to deliver more quickly without paying more, retailers need to store products closer to customers to enable shorter and faster last-mile deliveries. This requires a network of warehouses and integration between sales channels, warehouses and shipping carriers. That is what Locad’s tech enables.

Locad’s logistics engine syncs inventory from multiple sales channels, including Shopify, Lazada, Shopee and TikTok Shops, and manages storage and delivery through its network of warehouses and shipping carriers. Many of Locad’s customers first approach the startup while phasing out their inhouse logistics operations. Brands often start with one warehouse to consolidate their inventory and order fulfillment across sales channels, before putting inventory into additional warehouses based where its customers are located.

As it expands across Southeast Asia and Australia, Locad also plans to increase the number of warehouses in Tier 1 to Tier 3 cities in the region, with the goal of enabling same-day delivery in all of them.

In a statement about the funding, Reefknot Investments vice president Ervin Lim said, “Locad’s unique operating model of localizing warehouses into the cities ensures that inventory is kept close to the customers thereby enabling significant cost and time savings for both brand and consumer. We believe that Locad’s logistics engine will spur greater participation in the digital economy as consumers outside of Tier-1 cities can now receive their orders 2-3x faster at a fraction of the usual cost.”

Locad lands Series A to expand its “logistics engine” across Southeast Asia and Australia by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

During the pandemic, Tita Ardiati and Bayu Puspito Bhaskoro began developing life coaching content to support employees who were increasingly burned out by working from home. They got a good enough reception that they decided to develop their product into an employee assistance program called Mindtera, which now serves more than 10,000 employees in Indonesia.

Today, the startup announced total seed funding of $850,000 led by East Ventures, with participation from Seedstars International Ventures and angel investors.

Bhaskoro told TechCrunch that the startup is focused on B2B markets, including mid- to large enterprises. It also provides a self-service platform for small- to medium enterprises. Its main sectors are finance, consulting and retail, and its typical client has more than 200 employees.

Mindtera aims to support employees with challenges related to their work, and also in their personal lives like finances, family and relationships. Companies, on the other hand, get insights about what employees want and how to create a more engaged and productive workforce.

Mindtera includes two platforms. The first, called Mindtera Pro, is an analytics dashboard and app with assessment tools to collect employee feedback, which is then used for insights about the well-being and engagement of a company’s workforce. This includes surveys that let employees participate anonymously or use their names. They can provide suggestions, criticism and other opinions about their work and employer.

The second, Mindtera Plus, connects companies to coaching and development consultants for help with management and workplace culture issues. Employers have the option of either subscribing to Mindtera Plus for a continuous action plan, or working with consultants on demand. Mindtera Plus uses internal consultants, external certified consultants and curated partners, who provide strategic program plans and monthly or quarterly progress reports for clients.

Bhaskoro said Mindtera’s main competitors are EAPs based outside of Indonesia, and traditional workforce consulting agencies. The main way that Mindtera differentiates is by giving employers real-time monitoring on how engaged employees are, instead of making them wait for reports. Mindtera Pro also gives them more visibility into spending on activities, vendors or platforms that they use as interventions to improve productivity and performance.

The newunding will be used to expand Mindtera’s B2B platform, with the goal of becoming Indonesia’s top employee assistance program platform.

In a statement about the funding, Seedstars International Ventures general partner Patricia Sosrodjojo, said, “The world has seen a major shift in the understanding of how integral mental health and well-being are for businesses, but there is still much work to be done in order to effectively address this. Mindtera is at the forefront of foundational changes in the workplace and has been able to rapidly expand its reach in Indonesia’s HR space.”

Jakarta-based Mindtera helps companies keep an eye on employee morale by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Indonesia’s PasarPolis is now able to underwrite its own products, making it one of Indonesia’s first full-stack insurtechs. This means PasarPolis will be able to offer new products and work with partners like Tokopedia, Gojek, Traveloka, Xiaomi and IKEA Indonesia to create custom insurance policies. 

PasarPolis is able to underwrite insurance products because of its strategic partnership with Tap Insurance. Tap Insurance received a full license for insurance underwriting from OJK (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, or the Financial Services Authority of Indonesia). 

Cleosent Randing, the founder and CEO of PasarPolis, told TechCrunch that the first products from the strategic partnership will include fire and vehicle insurance. 

Founded in 2015, PasarPolis has raised over $59 million in total to date and is backed by investors like Gojek, Tokopedia, Traveloka, LeapFrog and SBI. Its policies include travel, home content, logistics, electronic devices, life and vehicle insurance. 

PasarPolis’ team Image Credits: PasarPolis

PasarPolis currently has 60,000 registered agents in Indonesia, and partners with 50 insurance providers. It says it has served more than 80 million customers and issued 1 billion policies between 2019 and 2021, partnering with 40 companies to distribute products. 

Distribution partners include Shopee, Tokopedia, Gojek and Xiaomi. Customers can add micro-insurance policies to their purchases from their platform for about 5,000 to 20,000 Indonesian rupiah (or 32 cents to $1.29 USD).

PasarPolis is able to scale because it uses machine learning and data analytics to make the underwriting and claims process faster and more cost-effective. It says that 87% of noncredit insurance claims in 2022 were settled within 24 hours. PasarPolis’ tech includes algorithms that automate the claims approval process, based on data submitted by customers, like photos, chronology and date and time of events. The algorithm then filters information to PasarPolis’ faster “green” channel.

The company’s most recent launches include its Unified Claims Interface (POLI), which lets customers file multiple claims through different channels like email, WhatsApp, SMS and PasarPolis’ mobile app. 

Randing says PasarPolis’ goal is to reduce the cost of insurance and increase penetration in Indonesia, where insurance penetration rate was only 4% as of 2022. 

“We think that inclusive insurance is a vital add-on to basic state social,” he said. “Particularly the health protection in line with the increasing concern of many to protect their families’ health, especially during the pandemic.” 

PasarPolis is now one of Indonesia’s first full-stack insurtechs by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Supermom, a parenting platform with 20 million users in six Southeast Asian countries, offers parents price comparisons, communities and the chance to earn money by completing surveys. For brands, it gives them a way to conduct market research and collect first-party data, which is important as marketers prepare for a post-cookie world.

The Singapore-based startup announced today it has raised an oversubscribed Series A of $8 million SGD (about $6 million USD) led by Qualgro, with participation from AC Ventures. Supermom currently has a presence in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand, and plans to expand into more markets. Over 200 consumer brands use Supermom for marketing research, including Kimberly Clark, Procter & Gamble and Philips.

Supermom was founded by Joan Ong, Luke Lim, Lynn Yeoh and Rebecca Koh, and originally started as a platform in 2013 for community groups and in-person events. “Motherhood is quite a lonely journey and I wanted to support other parents,” said Ong. The next five years were focused on Singapore. Then in 2019, Supermom’s team decided they wanted to scale across Southeast Asia, so they pivoted their focus from community events to digital marketing.

Supermom’s market research platform for businesses lets brands perform market testing with very targeted groups of people. Its backend tracks the demographics of parents in its database, including aggregated data about the age of their kids, their occupations and interests. In addition to writing reviews or participating in surveys, parents can apply to be brand ambassadors through Supermom, and when they do, brands can see their number of followers on social media and what groups they are in.

Qualgro associates Jeremy Soh and Neo WeiSheng, with Supermom founders Rebecca Koh, Joan Ong, Lynn Yeoh and Luke Lim

Lim says that quantitative surveys of about 1,000 people usually takes months to put together, but can be done within an hour through Supermom. Surveys can be launched simultaneously in six countries, with specific users invited to take them. To set up a survey, brands select a country, then filter for specific demographics like age of kids. Supermom’s platform also guides them through the process of writing questions.

In addition to their own surveys, brands also get information like brand indexing, or a ranking of which brands are most trusted by consumers. That data can be broken down by demographic—for example, researchers can see if a brand is used by 50% of mothers aged over 30 years, and then narrow that down by disposable income level.

Supermom will use its new funding on its data and product capabilities, and expansion in Southeast Asia.

“As companies all move into a cookieless world, having direct access to consumers is very, very important,” said Ong. “Because they can no longer do retargeting and use cookies to target consumers. So with the millions of users that we have, we are helping a lot of brands to get this critical first-party data so they can actually access their target audience.”

In a statement about the financing, Qualgro general partner Weisheng Neo said, “We recognize the current gap in brands’ access to reliable, secure data on parents, a large and growing customer segment. Brands will find the Supermom platform to be a treasure trove of insights and first-party data activation.”

Singapore-based Supermom helps parenting brands navigate a post-cookie world by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

E-commerce in Southeast Asia is very fragmented, with consumers having their choice of marketplaces, e-commerce sites and social commerce. Many prefer to buy from large marketplaces, says FLIK co-founder Ahmad Gadi, because those platforms offer promotions and cashback deals. But for direct-to-consumer brands, marketplaces aren’t the best way to get consumer data or foster brand loyalty. That’s where FLIK’s unified payment solution comes in. It saves buyers’ checkout information across retail sites in FLIK’s merchant network, making buying easier and leading to higher conversion rates. For brands, it means more control over consumer data and less platform fees.

Based in Jakarta, FLIK announced today that it has raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from East Ventures, with participation from Init-6, GMO VenturePartners and Saison Capital.

Before founding FLIK, Gadi’s previous startups included Pawoon, a point-of-sale platform that enables businesses to accept digital payments.

FLIK co-founder and CEO Ahmad Gadi

Gadi told TechCrunch that FLIK’s team is experienced in the payments and merchant business, both offline and online. “We thought that checkout is a very strategic area to build products on, because it is actually the point of entry for money into the business,” he said. “As online sellers in this region are becoming more savvy, they would want to be able to optimize their online business more deeply. We see an opportunity to unify checkout experience because this has always been an area that is difficult to solve outside the typical centralized platforms such as marketplaces.”

Because e-commerce and checkout methods are currently so fragmented, it’s hard for brands to consolidate data, Gadi added. By using FLIK, they can gain access to information like potential product upsells that can be offered at checkout based on shoppers’ browsing behaviors, and what types of discounts and promotions they are most interested in.

FLIK works with e-commerce sites built with platforms like WooCommerce and Magento, plus social media channels like Instagram shops and chat applications. It can also be embedded into blog articles to turn them into mini e-commerce sites.

FLIK plans to add more services, including product discovery, price comparison, rewards and post-purchase services like refund and returns processing. Shoppers can download its app to keep track of their purchases and offers.

Gadi says FLIK is currently positioned in a blue ocean space because other players in the D2C enabler space focus on Shopify-like storefront builders. FLIK, on the other hand, focuses on the checkout layer and building a network of shoppers. “Unifying all the fragmented checkout experiences on the web means we could work with all these D2C enablers out there to provide a consistent and optimized checkout layer on top of their existing platforms.”

FLIK’s unified checkout solution gives Southeast Asian sellers more control over data by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Profet AI, a Taiwanese startup that makes auto machine learning software for manufacturers, announced today it has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Darwin Ventures. Returning investors Hive Ventures, AUO and SVTI also participated, along with Harbinger VC and Jensen Capital Management.

Founded in 2018, Profet AI’s customers include Foxconn, Advantech and ASE Group, and it says it doubled its revenue in 2022. The funding will be used on Profet AI’s expansion in Japan, Southeast Asia and China, with plans to sign joint ventures with overseas partners.

Profet AI’s software lets users build prediction models and industrial AI apps for production and digitalization, even if they only have basic knowledge of machine learning.

The company’s flagship products are its AutoML Virtual Data Scientist Platform and Ready To Go Applications. They are intended for use by clients in the semiconductor, electronics, chemicals and textile manufacturing industries.

The AutoML Virtual Data Scientist Platform is a no-code development program that lets users design enterprise AI applications, while Ready To Go Applications are industry-specific AI apps that are ready to be used in public cloud or on-premise environments.

In a statement, Darwin Venture Management partner Kay Lin said, “The AutoML Virtual Data Scientist Platform of Profet AI is based on empowering, which quickly enables digital transformation and intelligent evolution in the manufacturing industry. Darwin is very optimistic about Profet AI’s strengths and will leverage our solid background in the semiconductor and electronics industry to actively assist Profet AI’s market development.”

Profet AI helps manufacturers build prediction models and industrial AI software by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Food waste and food packaging take up a significant portion of the world’s landfills. AlterPacks is tackling both issues with technology that turns food waste into takeout boxes and other containers. The Singapore-based startup has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding led by Plug and Play APAC and Seed Capital, with participation from Earth Venture Capital and angel investor Alice Foo.

The new funding will be used for AlterPacks’ commercialization, including production and supply, in markets like Asia, Australia and Europe.

Founded in 2019 to tackle single-use plastics, AlterPacks’ main raw material are spent grains, a by-product of manufacturing foods like beer. Spent grains are usually used for animal feed, fertilizer or disposed of. Through its manufacturing process, AlterPacks turns spent grains into food containers that can be molded into different shapes, are freezer and microwave-friendly and home compostable.

Founder and CEO Karen Cheah told TechCrunch that she became interested in developing alternatives to disposable containers when she was traveling and saw communities struggling with the amount of plastic containers and food waste thrown away. AlterPacks uses spent grains because they are easily available.

AlterPacks founders Steven Tan, Karen Cheah and Herbin Chia

“The properties of spent grains and the volume of grains available globally were two key factors,” she said. “By upcycling the grains, we are creating new economic value and putting what would have been a by-product disposed as animal feed, or headed to landfills and compost, back into the supply chain as food containers that can be used to replace plastic disposables.”

Cheah explained that the process of converting spent grains into AlterPacks’ food containers is similar to paper pulp manufacturing. AlterPacks can manufacture containers at scale with automated machines that clean raw materials, mix its formulation and then press it into different shapes of containers.

AlterPacks’ containers have been available commercially since December. Its go-to-market strategy is a B2B model and includes working with distribution partners that sell supplies to F&B businesses like restaurants and hotels. AlterPacks containers have been on the market since December. The startup is also in the process of developing bio-pellets as a replacement for petroleum-based resins use in manufacturing machines. They are made out of spent grains, and other agricultural waste like coconut shells.

In a statement about Plug and Play APAC’s investment, managing partner Jupe Tan said, “We got to know AlterPacks while sourcing for relevant startups for the Alliance to End Plastic Waste Innovation Program and they have gained significant interest from the members of the Alliance, which is naturally a signal for us to do further due diligence for investments. We are glad that we managed to tap into our partnership with SEEDS Capital to co-lead and invest in our very first sustainability startup in APAC and we hope this will be the first of many other sustainability investments with SEEDS Capital.”

Singapore-based AlterPacks turns food waste into food containers by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Jakarta-based fintech Akulaku has raised $200 million from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), the largest bank in Japan. This is part of a strategic investment, with startup and MUFG planning to expand into new markets and product together in 2023. Earlier this year, Akulaku raised $100 million in funding from Siam Commercial Bank as part of another strategic investment. Its other backers include Ant Group (Akulaku launched a BNPL partnership earlier this year with Alipay+).

Akulaku, which operates in the Philippines and Malaysia in addition to Indoensia, offers a virtual credit card and installment shopping platform, as well as an investment platform and neobank. Founded in 2016, its target is to serve 50 million users by 2025.

As part of MUFG’s strategic investment, Akulaku has agreed to work with MUFG companies in Southeast on tech, product development, financing and distribution. MUFG is focused on growing its presence in the region, and earlier this year it purchased the Philippines and Indonesian units of Home Credit BV for 596 million euros. Its focus on Southeast Asia comes as homegrown banks, like Singapore’s DBS Group Holdings and Indonesia’s Bank Central Asia gain on MUFG in market cap.

In a statement, Kenichi Yamato, the managing executive officer and chief executive of MUFG Bank’s Global Commercial Banking Business Unit, said “Southeast Asia is key and a second market to MUFG. Our investment in Akulaku will further solidify our commitment in this region to meet growing financial needs of underserved customers.”

Jakarta-based fintech Akulaku raises $200M from Japan’s largest bank by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

In countries where English is not a main language, listed companies not only have to deal with financial disclosure regulations, but make sure their investor materials are available in English for global backers. WritePath make the process faster and scalable by combining its AI tech with human translators. The Taipei-based startup’s clients include Foxconn, ASUS, China Airline, the Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taiwan Mobile.

WritePath announced that it has raised $340,000 in pre-Series A funding, led by Quantum International Corp. CEO Alex Lee. The round also saw participation from angel investors like jobstreet.com founder Mark Chang. WritePath’s previous investors include byUDN.com, a subsidiary of United Daily, one of the largest media organization in Taiwan, and Singaporean translation firm Elite Asia.

TechCrunch first covered WritePath back in 2014 when it was an essay editing service for college applicants, technical writers and academic researchers. Founder and CEO Charles Chen said the company decided to switch focus because essay editing was labor intensive and hard to scale since it had to acquire new clients every year. WritePath originally offered B2C translation services, before its team saw that governments in Asia are implementing more English-language disclosure policies, including for listed companies.

The company’s platform combines tech like Warren, its in-house machine translation engine, with human translators. Warren was trained on a language corpus of several million Chinese-to-English sentences gathered from financial, annual and ESG reports.

WritePath’s team

One of the reason for new disclosure policies is investor activism and the passage of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID II) in the European Union. MiFID II is a legislative framework that calls for more transparency by companies, including regulatory reporting, to protect investors. Its trading rules included requiring brokers to charge funds for research separately from trading fees. Many funds started looking for information from listed companies’ IR and ESG departments, instead of relying on equity research reports.

“As a result, though, small and mid-cap companies may find themselves easily overlooked,” Chen said. “So having their information presented professionally in English helps give them a boost and ensure they don’t fall off the investment radar.” He added that more companies in Asia markets, including Taiwan, China, Korea and Southeast Asian countries, will start publishing disclosures in English as capital markets mature and grow.

Before turning to WritePath, many of its clients used traditional translation agencies or translation services offered by the Big 4 accounting firms to produce English-language reports. Chen said one of WritePath’s advantages is that its technology, including Warren and corpora management system T-Booster, maintains consistency in corporate language and terminology. This means its human translators can focus on the quality of content, reviewing sentences for accuracy.

WritePath also offers a “self-service” solution for material information that needs to be disclosed within 24 hours. This enables clients to order and manage translations through WritePath’s portal. Part of its new funding will be used to upgrade the portal so it can process multiple files and batches that come in at different times, but need to be delivered at once.

Chen said WritePath differentiates from financial printers like Toppan Merrill, R.R. Donnelly and Pronexus by combining human translators with AI tech in its workflow. EQS and MZ are online IR disclosure tools, but require translation help when they publish information in countries that don’t use English as a main language. Another company in the financial disclosure space is Fiscalnote, but it focuses on data, like ESG information, instead of translation.

The funding will used to expand WritePath’s translation services for listed companies and add more verticals, like design and layout for ESG reports.

Taiwanese startup WritePath’s AI tech speeds up financial disclosure translation by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

About 29% of Indonesia’s workforce is in the agriculture sector, but many small farmers face challenges like low access to working capital. Eratani is an end-to-end management system that helps them get financing and supplies, and then helps them sell crops once they are ready. The startup announced today it has raised an oversubscribed $3.8 million seed round led by Singaporean VC firm TNB Aura, with participation from AgFunder, Trihill Capital and B.I.G. Ventures.

Founded in 2021 by Andrew Soeherman, Kevin Laksono and Angles Gani, Eratani is now used by more than 10,000 farmers in Java to manage a total of 8,000 hectares producing 52,000 tons of rice. Its target is to work with more than 50,000 farmers by the end of 2024.

Soeherman’s uncle ran an agricultural supplies business, which gave him a look into the difficulties faced by farmers while he was growing up. He told TechCrunch that most agritech players address farmers’ downstream needs, so Eratani was originally developed to deal with upstream issues, before turning into an end-to-end management platform for farms and goods through the entire production cycle.

Some of the challenges Indonesian farmers face include needing to borrow money in order to purchase agri-input supplies from stores. They pay off those loans after they sell their crops, but interest is about 20% a month, said Soeherman, which means they are caught in a cycle of debt. “In Indonesia, there are 33 million farmers and the majority are aged over 45 years. If nothing changes, within 10 years Indonesia will experience a farmer regeneration crisis.”

Eratani’s team. Image Credits: Eratani

Eratani’s management platform is divided into three parts. The first, Agri Financing, gives farmers access to working capital they need for the planting process. Agri Inputs provides agricultural supplies with usage recommendations from its agronomist teams. Finally, Agri Output is a market price system for use during the crop distribution process.

Eratani also collects field data statistics to increase farmers’ productivity. Through the platform, farmers have access to Eratani’s agronomists who can help them with strategies to increase their crop yield.

The startup currently has several collaborations in place with the Indonesian government. This includes a partnership with the Agricultural Ministry of Indonesia and the Indonesian State Logistics Agency to develop the agricultural ecosystem, with the goal of achieving food independence in Indonesia, and another one with the Agricultural Ministry of Indonesia to increase crop yields and farmer income. It is also part of the Ministry of Communications and Informatics’ Startup Studio Indonesia.

Agritech startups are proliferating in Indonesia and some that have been covered by TechCrunch include B2B marketplace AgriAku, agritech platform TaniHub and “sea-to-table” startup Aruna.

Soeherman said Eratani differentiates by creating an ecosystem for the entire agricultural process, but he doesn’t see other players as competition. “In the agritech industry, we believe that the entire community should come together to support and encourage the Indonesian agricultural industry. Despite having over 70+ agritech companies operating within the space, there is still a long way to go as it is estimated only 3% of Indonesia’s farmers have benefitted from these technologies overall.”

In a statement, TNB founding partner Vicknesh R. Pillay said, “The agritech space in Indonesia has reached an inflection point due to its presently fragmented nature. Eratani has brought to the table a farmer-centric approach along with a strong team and existing partnerships in the space, and we are excited to begin this journey with Eratani.”

Eratani supports Indonesia’s farmers through the entire growing process by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Osome is a corporate “super app” that helps business owners with administrative tasks like payroll, accounting and tax reporting. The company announced today it has raised a $25 million Series B from Illuminate Financial, AFG Partners and Winter Capital. This brings Osome’s total raised since it was founded in 2017 to $51 million.

The company says revenues have doubled since its Series A announced in June 2021. It plans to become cash flow positive within the next 12 months, and recently announced a digital banking partnership with Singapore financial service corporation OCBC.

Osome currently serves more than 11,000 business in Singapore (where it is is headquartered), Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. It also offers business incorporation services in Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, and integrates with e-commerce platforms like Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Lazada, Etsy and Shopee.

Part of Osome’s new funding will be used to expand its operations in Asia by targeting side hustles and micro-entrepreneurs, in addition to its current customer base of SMEs.

Over the last year, Osome has launched an accounting platform to provide tax and financial reports, expenses and invoice management. It also runs a hybrid accounting service, called the Accounting Factory, that combines machine learning with human accountants and is meant to replace accounting software like Xero and Quickbooks. Machine learning is used to collect, extract and categorize financial data and reconcile it with bank transactions. Then Osome’s accountants look at that information and advise customers. Osome currently has more than 100 accountants and bookkeepers, who are full-time employees.

Other startups that offer corporate services include Sleek, Lanturn and BlueMeg. Osome founder Victor Lysenko said its building a competitive moats by providing a “set-up to scale-up service for businesses.”

“What business owners tell us is that they didn’t startup to do their own bookkeeping,” he said. “We take care of the bookkeeping so they can focus on their business. And we grow with them—our pricing model is based around revenue, not transactions, unlike our competitors.”

Singapore-based corporate services super app Osome raises $25M Series B by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

The real estate and infrastructure sectors contribute about 40% of global carbon emissions, and part of solving the climate crisis is fixing how those industries work. Accacia gives large property owners a way to track their carbon impact in real-time by integrating with ERPs and property management systems like Yardi. It’s already been deployed to over 20 million square feet of real estate in Asia and announced today $2.5 million in seed funding that will be used to expand across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, the United States and Canada.

The funding was led by Accel and B Capital. Participants included Blume Ventures, Good Capital, Zerodha’s Rainmatter Fund, Loyal VC and angel investors.

Founded in 2022 by Annu Talreja, Piyush Chitkara and Jagmohan Garg. Before Accacia, Talreja worked for more than 15 years in real estate, with companies like AECOM and Marriott.

During that time, she saw an evolution in how the industry was affected by climate-related events.

Accacia founder and CEO Annu Talreja

“Climate change-led flash floods, hurricanes and forest fires have impacted property prices globally and rising energy costs have necessitated the use of alternative energy sources,” she told TechCrunch. “Unlike many other sectors, the impact of climate change in real estate is ‘here and now’ and as someone who has worked on building design, construction and investments, the combination of my skill sets allowed me to look at this impact in a holistic way.”

Accacia’s target customers are large real estate owners and asset managers, including REITs, pension and sovereign funds, and developers. Most own and manage real estate AUMs of more than $1 billion. Accacia’s platform can track carbon emissions from all investment asset classes, including commercial, retail, multi-family housing and data centers. It is also used by consulting firms that are serving real estate and infrastructure companies that have set net-zero goals.

Emissions tracked by Accacia include Scope 1 (direct emissions), Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchasing generated energy) and Scope 3 (emissions from a company’s value chain) for real estate, including embodied carbon, financed emissions and emissions from business operations.

An example of how Accacia can be used is a commercial real estate fund that has over 10 million square feet of assets. After it deployed Accacia, it was able to cut its direct emissions by 20% within the first six months of using the platform. Another client, a listed hotel company with more than 100 assets, used Accacia to reduce its Scope 3 emissions through the platform’s vendor recommendation engine.

In a statement about the investment, B Capital partner Karan Mohla told TechCrunch, “As an industry, real estate and infrastructure requires a nuanced and focused approach towards climate reporting, adaptation and mitigation. Accacia is taking a leadership role in building a global platform in solving this challenge. A B Capital. we believe in their vision of building a tech-led and scalable SaaS platform to get to net zero targets for real estate owners and asset managers.”

Accacia tackles the real estate industry’s massive carbon emissions problem by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch