Igloo, a Singapore-based insurtech focused on underserved communities in Southeast Asia, announced it has raised a Series B extension of $27 million, bringing the round’s total to $46 million. The first tranche of $19 million was announced in March, and led by Cathay innovation with participation from ACA and returning investors OpenSpace.
The newest round was led by the InsuResilience Investment Fund II, which was launched by the German development bank KfW for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and is managed by impact investor BlueOrchard. Other lead investors were the Women’s World Banking Asset Management (WAM), FinnFund, La Maison and returning investors Cathay Innovation.
Igloo develops its insurance products and then partners with insurers who underwrite their policies. Igloo currently works with 20 global, regional and local insurers across Southeast Asia. It distributes its insurance products through partnerships, and is partnered with over 55 companies in 7 countries. It now offers 15 products, including policies for gig workers, gamers, cars and farmers in Vietnam, and says it has facilitated more than 300 million policies and increased gross written premiums by 30 times since 2019.
Co-founder and CEO Raunak Mehta told TechCrunch that Igloo decided to raise a Series B extension because of investor interest after the first tranche of funds. The extension will give the startup a multiyear runway and will be used for hiring, infrastructure and merger and acquisitions opportunities.
Mehta said that the penetration rate of insurance in much of Southeast Asia is low, less than $100 USD per capita across Indonesia, Vietnam and the Philippines. Igloo was created to make insurance more affordable and relevant to the needs of communities in Southeast Asia. Igloo distributes insurance products that range from 2 cents USD for phone screen protection to $600 USD for comprehensive motor insurance.
Igloo provides the tech stack for its products across Southeast Asia, which Mehta says means the entire insurance value chain, from product discovery to claims, is available on one platform. This makes it faster for it to brings the policies it distributes to market more quickly, and significantly reduce the operational cost of claims.
Mehta said more than 80% of claims are currently managed in an automated or semi-automated way, and that big data management, along with machine learning and artificial intelligence, has enabled it to reduce anti-selection risks, false positives and fraudulent claims. By bringing down the cost of managing claims, Igloo is able to offer lower premium to customers.
An example of Igloo’s insurance policies include ones for gig economy riders that it sells through its partnership with Foodpanda in Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines, and Lozi and Ahamove Vietnam. Its policy for Foodpanda, called PandaCare, includes motor, personal accident and hospitalization income protection for workers.
Another, more recent one, is is Weather Index Insurance product in Vietnam. The policy uses blockchain-backed smart contracts and automates claims payouts by using pre-assigned values for crop losses caused by weather and other natural events. Igloo says the Weather Index Insurance is Vietnam’s first parametric insurance (or a policy that agrees to make pre-agreed payouts based on trigger events like a flood) and its first integration of smart contracts into insurance.
Igloo also provides products that Mehta says directly or indirectly benefits women, through a partnership with Philinsure in the Philippines. They have distributed more than 5 million policies that cover credit default, personal accident, family relief and natural calamity support to women micro-entrepreneurs and their families. In Vietnam, more than 65% of the agents who use Igloo’s Ignite digital platform to sell insurance policies are women, and they are also the main beneficiaries of the Weather Index Insurance product.
The insurtech’s distribution partners include telecoms like Telkomsel, AIS and Mobifone, and e-commerce platforms like Shopee, Lazada, Bukalapak and JD.ID. It also works with financial service providers, like AEON, Gcash and UnionBank, to sell policies for their customer base, and provides products for insuring goods in transit and protecting fleet drivers through logistics platforms like Ahamove, Shippit, Loship and Locad.
There are a lot of talented people, like chefs and musicians, in Southeast Asia who can earn money through their work online, says TipTip founder Albert Lucius. But many of them don’t have the social media clout to attract advertisers. TipTip wants to help them build up followers in their communities using an offline/online strategy, and monetize by selling content instead of relying on advertising algorithms. The Indonesian-based startup announced today it has raised $13 million in Series A funding, just eight months after its $10 million Series A in March.
The latest round was led by East Ventures, with participation from returning investors Vertex, SMDV and B.I.G. Ventures.
TipTip founded in October 2021 by Albert Lucius, whose previous startup Kudo was acquired by Grab in 2017. It serves as a marketplace for creators to connect with fans, and monetize content like videos and documents by selling them to their followers, or hosting live video sessions.
The platform launched in July, and says its revenue has grown 20x since October, with creators earn more than $200 on average within 30 days of being active on TipTip.
TipTip currently has 2,500 content creators and over 30,000 users. Its goal is to recruit more than 30,000 creators and 300,000 users by early next year. It is currently focused on Indonesia, with a presence in 40 cities.
The people TipTip was created for, like local chefs, musicians and painters, still have few followers and need to build their audiences. To enable them to scale and monetize, TipTip uses a hyperlocal strategy in Indonesian cities and towns, helping them host events and activities tailored to their communities.
Lucius says TipTip’s team saw that many people became accustomed to the idea of making money virtually after COVID hit, as interest in consuming digital content also rose. Based on research they sourced from Research and Markets, Digital Journal and Statista, they found that the creator economy in Southeast Asia has a projected CAGR of about 10% to 30%.
But Lucius said many Southeast Asian creators cannot monetize with tools on social media platforms, like YouTube, Facebook, Instagram or Patreon, which are better suited for top creators who already have a lot of followers and views, and can draw advertisers.
Lucius says TipTip differentiate from social media platforms with an end-to-end solution for creators that includes digital content management and distribution, live streaming services, one-on-one interactions and direct tipping. Its platform also helps creators with administrative issues, like audience management, know your customer (KYC), payment systems and scheduling.
“There are many players who are already established as industry leaders in these respective areas. We view them as necessary and complementary to our services. In fact, we rely on our creators/promoters to continue using external platforms to engage their audiences, post updates, advertise their free offerings there and provide links back to TipTip to monetize their premium contents,” Lucius said.
Instead of ads, TipTip provides direct monetization channels through tipping and direct purchases, and takes a cut from every sale on its platform.
An example of the content being shared on TipTip include edutainment in categories such as music. Musicians use the platform to share tips on how to compose better songs, and sometimes accompany that with a live performance. Another example are creators who make multi-segment courses on how to be better public speakers, with a live workshop included.
TipTip also has a network of promoters to help creators sell their content. Lucius says promoters serve as affiliates or resellers, often to their own small communities, and take a commission form each sell. “The analogy is like how Uber Eats helps a restaurant sell more food,” Lucius said. “In our case, promoters help creators sell their digital content.”
To create a pipeline of creators, TipTip uses awareness programs by partnering with its top creators, using above-the-line marketing campaigns and doing a hyperlocal strategy to find key opinion leaders (KOL), or top influencers, in each community.
Part of TipTip’s funding round will be used to recruit more creators, promoters and supporters. It will also create more product offerings, like podcasts, branding deals and personalized requests, so creators have more potential revenue channels, and expand its offline/online presence into 250 cities and towns across Indonesia by the middle of next year.
In a statement about the funding, East Ventures co-founder and managing partner Willson Cuaca said, “We strongly believe in Albert’s leadership at TipTip. His past experience in building and running Kudo before being acquired by Grab in 2017 continues to be pivotal in navigating the turbulent economy as we head into 2023. We expect TipTip to continue its exponential growth trajectory on the back of its hyperlocal strategy which adapts really well to the changing creator and customer behavior in the post-COVID era.”
If you follow #beautytok, #beautytube or any beauty content on social media platforms, you know that popular product trends are hard to keep up with. Summer International stays ahead of the game by identifying the most influential content creators, and working with them to incubate new brands. Founded in Singapore and based in Los Angeles and South Korea, Summer International announced today it has raised a $5 million seed round from investors including GDP Ventures, Teja Ventures, Gushcloud International and Singaporean angel investors Koh Boon Hwee and Shirley Crystal Tan.
NYX founder and Bespoke Beauty Brands CEO Toni Ko will also join Summer International as a strategic investor. NYX was acquired by L’Oreal in 2014 for about $500 million.
Summer International co-founder and CEO Xiaoski Kuik said the company’s goal is to create an ecosystem to help influencers and creators launch and sell beauty brands using consumer data and analytics. It operates in the United States, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia.
The company launched in 2018 along with Gushcloud International, an influencer marketing firm. Since then, Summer International has incubated brands like skincare line Baby Face with Singaporean influencer Jamie Chua, who has over 1.2 million followers, and wellness brands HANJAN, which launched in April at Coachella and recently struck a partnership with singer Nicole Scherzinger.
Kuik told TechCrunch that Summer International looks for creators and influencers who have a strong connection with their audience based on engagement rates, how active they are a video-first platforms and whether they have a strong localized community and global presence.
“Many times, creators seek us out because of our reach and resources,” she said. “We have our own supply chain and we have the power to distribute brands across Asia via our social commerce and live distribution platforms. Our goal is to establish these top influencers as founders of the next-gen beauty, skincare and wellness brands and to provide them with the access and necessary resources they need to break into the market.”
Other companies that also work with creators to launch brands include Pietra and Forma Brands. Ko said Summer International differentiates by owning its own distribution network and it also has a network of live commerce and social commerce distributors, mainly micro influencers based in Southeast Asia.
“It gives us the ability to understand data of what consumers want and would buy and this allows us to collaborate with creators to build brands in a more cost-efficient manner,” Kuik said. Summer International’s live commerce distribution network helps it understand what brands and products consumers from different parts of Southeast Asia want to buy. It also provides data points like pricing and demographics to create new brands and market them.
Summer International brands are sold through a mix of digital and offline channels, including e-commerce platforms, social and live commerce platforms and big box stores. They are also available on Summer.store, the company’s proprietary social commerce network.
Excess inventory, including returned items, from e-commerce, logistics and retail companies often ends up being disposed. Manila-based Humble Sustainability is a circular economy startup that wants to keep it out of the Philippines’ landfills. Since its launch, it has processed more than 150,000 items like clothing, consumer electronics and household appliances that are either resold through Thrift, its Shopee storefront, or passed onto B2B recyclers and resellers.
The company announced today it has raised $750,000 in an oversubscribed seed round led by Seedstars International Ventures, with participation from iSeed Ventures and angel investors including Ula co-founder Alan Wong, Sagar Achanta (who has held product leadership roles at Amazon), Booking.com and Disney+, and investors Paco Sandejas and Richard Eldridge.
Humble will use the funding to expand its network of partners and buyers, and grow its team, including hiring department heads. The company also plans to bring its tech development fully in-house and start work on long-term initiatives like a carbon footprint tracker.
Humble Sustainability founders Niña Opida and Josef Werker. Image Credits: Humble Sustainability
Humble was founded in 2021 by CEO Josef Werker and COO Niña Opida. Werker told TechCrunch that the two met five years ago, after holding leadership positions at different startups, and wanted to see how tech innovation could be applied to the planet. The first version of Humble was a circular trading solution for children’s clothing, before it expanded into other items.
“Neither of us are environmental scientists or sustainability experts at all,” Werker said. “We simply had a love for the earth and spotted an opportunity to apply our little experience of building businesses towards it.”
Humble has worked with 20 companies so far. The process of getting items starts by receiving inventory for assessment, so Humble can see what condition they are in and figure out their value (as the company grows, it will automate parts of the quality control process). Then it decides whether to list items on Thrift, or sell them in bulk to its B2B network. Once their plans are approved, they sign an agreement with clients, who can monitor the status of their items and receive money from their sales. Humble plans to launch a live dashboard on its B2B platform so clients can track revenue, inventory and environmental impact in real time.
Werker says without Humble, unwanted inventory would either go to a traditional liquidator (for higher-value items) or end up in a landfill. There are other solutions like internal employee sales, but those only account for a small percentage.
“With Humble, it’s full consolidated,” he said. “We will take everything, ensuring that nothing ends up in a landfill. The good-quality items are on Thrift and high value is extracted, everything else is properly brought back into circularity through our B2B network and we will extract value that can be passed back to the client.”
All of the investors in Humble’s seed round are actively involved in the business. For example, Seedstars introduced Humble to people its international network that the company has closed deals with, said Werker. Humble is also participating in Seedstars’ three-month growth track program. Wong and Achanta have worked together at different companies, including Amazon, Booking.com and Ula and are guiding Humble with advice on its tech development and long-term roadmap.
In a statement, Seedstars partner Patricia Sosrodjojo said, “We are delighted to support Humble in the journey to reduce waste and promote circular living. Humble is a great fit to Seedstars’ thesis of supporting early-stage companies that can create meaningful impact with an attractive business model.”
Speedoc, a health tech platform that brings hospital care to homes, has raised $28 million in pre-Series B funding. The round included Bertelsmann Investments, Shinhan Venture Investment and Mars Growth. Returning investor Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, which led Speedoc’s $5 million Series A in 2020, also participated.
Based in Singapore, Speedoc was founded in 2017 by Dr. Shravan Verma and Serene Cai. Its services include telemedicine consultations, on-site doctor and nurse visits, virtual hospital wards and ambulance hailing. Speedoc is available in a total of nine cities, including eight in Malaysia.
Dr. Verma told TechCrunch that he became interested in creating an app for on-demand medical services while he was a doctor in an emergency department, and saw how many patients had to wait hours for minor conditions. Cai, meanwhile, wanted to create an easier way for people to get medical help, especially in underserved communities, while her family was caring for her grandmother, who had severe dementia.
Speedoc is currently participating in the Ministry of Health Office for Healthcare Transformation’s Mobile Inpatient Care@Home initiative, and its hospital partners include National University Health System (NUHS), the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. As part of the program, Speedoc plans to expand its virtual hospital program, which includes a 24/7 patient care team.
H-Ward is one of the main ways Speedoc differentiates from other telemedicine platforms, Dr. Verma said, because it standardizes services like telemedicine, remote monitoring and home-based doctors and nurses for continuous care. Patients are able to receive frequent medical reviews, 24/7 nursing, intravenous therapies, blood tests and in-person visits.
“Research and survey findings have shown that given the same medical care and treatment, patients could recover faster at home,” Dr. Sherma said. “We have also been encouraged by our patients advocating for home-based care, and preferences to be admitted at home. Most importantly, on the impact on the healthcare landscape, the thrust towards virtual hospitals will ensure more optimal utilization rates, and more capacity for medical personnel to attend to life-threatening conditions.”
Speedoc will use its new funding to expand in Southeast Asia, especially in cities where there is a shortage of healthcare professionals.
In a statement about the funding, Shinhan Venture Investment (Global Investment) director Jinsoo Lee said, “Healthcare provision and delivery in Southeast Asia is poised for tremendous change in the next decade. We believe the healthcare model Speedoc champions will see greater adoption in meeting the healthcare gap in the region.”
Reuben Lai, executive director at GXS Bank, is leaving the position at the end of this year. The news was first reported by Tech In Asia. Lai was head of Grab Financial Group until May 2022, and then executive director and head of regional strategy at GXS Bank, the digital bank joint venture between Grab Holdings and telecom Singtel.
In a statement to TechCrunch, GXS Bank said, “GXS Bank (GXS)’s executive director and Head of Regional Strategy, Mr Reuben Lai, has decided to leave the Bank at the end of 2022. Along with his resignation as an executive director, Reuben will be stepping down from his appointment as a director in GXS’ board in Singapore. He remains a director on the Board of the digital bank in Malaysia.”
Launched by Grab in 2018, Grab Financial Group has been instrumental in Grab’s journey from a ride-hailing service to super app. Its digital wallet, GrabPay, is now the top digital wallet in Southeast Asia.
During his tenure at Grab Financial Group and GXS Bank, Lai focused on financial inclusion, telling Bloomberg in 2021 that “we know that because of many of our drivers, our merchants come to us and tell us that they want to open a bank account, but they’re not able to. They want to access a working capital loan, but they’re not able to. What we want to do at Grab Financial Group is to make financial services more accessible and more convenient in a very simple and intuitive way to as many consumers as possible.”
ELSA, the English-language learning app known for its speech recognition technology, is launching a new product called the Speech Analyzer. The assessment platform plugs into communication tools like Zoom and analyzes conversational speech to suggest areas for improvement, including pronunciation, pacing and vocabulary. It is meant to act like a language coach to help people prepare for tests, presentations, interviews or just gain more confidence when speaking English.
Like ELSA’s learning app, which has more than 40 million users, the Speech Analyzer provides tutorials, along with projected scores of how users might perform on major English language exams including IELTS.
Founder and CEO Vu Van told TechCrunch the Speech Analyzer was developed after ELSA received feedback that users’ English improved while using the app, but they still felt nervous when dealing with face-to-face conversations and Zoom calls. Corporate users are often encouraged to join speaking clubs or Toastmaster to improve their speaking fluency, but lacked the time.
“Recognizing those major pain points among our customers, as well as seeing the world is gravitating towards a more flexible, hybrid and remote working environment where working professionals spend hours on online meeting platforms, we felt that the need for stronger English spoken skills has become more important,” Vu said. Speech Analyzer was built as an expansion to ELSA’s learning app, to make it easier for people to get access to communication coaching.
Speech Analyzer integrates with Outlook and Gmail calendars, and can be used with Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and other platforms. It only records the voice of the user and voice recordings can also be uploaded to it.
ELSA is based on mid-Western American English as the standard most often used in business, education and everyday settings, Van said, and uses major English speaking exams like TOEFL, IELTS, TOEIC, CEFR and Pearson as benchmarks.
The Speech Analyzer is free to use and monetizes by charging for more advanced features and analysis. It is also available in a premium bundle with an ELSA membership.
2050 is an important year for climate tech, with the Paris Agreement calling for emissions to reach net zero by then. In a conversation with GenZero’s Frederick Teo for SOSV’s Climate Tech Summit, we talked about realistic paths to hitting that goal and how startups can tackle what Teo called one of the most existentialist challenges of our generation.
GenZero is a $3.6 billion investment company that is backed by Temasek, already known for its climate investing. Teo talked about how it gauges companies before investing, supporting nascent technologies and solutions in the space and what startups can tackle in the next two decades. This Q&A was edited for length, and you can watch the full conversation here or at the bottom of the article.
TC: GenZero’s initial commit is from Temasek, which was already a leader in global investing when it announced GenZero in June. It’s a wholly-owned company of Temasek, so why did Temasek decide to start GenZero and what is GenZero doing that Temasek isn’t already?
FT: Temasek, as you know, has already taken a lot of steps in the past few years into making investments into sustainability, as well as clean energy and climate-related spaces. It is important for us to think about how to deploy capital in this space because obviously all of us are aware of the climate emergency, the fact that this is actually likely to be one of the most existentialist challenges of our generation. It is important for us to be able to find solutions that can actually address many of these things like global warming, sea level rises, the challenges of food production in a sustainable way. So we wanted to be able to have a dedicated capability to access some of these decarbonization opportunities, and Temasek decided to park aside a sizable amount of capital to be able to develop a team that would be able to focus on issues like carbon markets, decarbonization technologies as well as nature solutions. So that is the reason why we established GenZero as a separate investment platform company.
In our work we have been looking at technology solutions such as low carbon materials and carbon capture capabilities, nature solutions that seek to protect and restore natural ecosystems, often with a view to generate carbon credits on top of that, as well as to invest into ecosystem enablers in the carbon market space. The reason for that is because we think that in the near term, energy transition would require some form of participation from carbon markets to allow people to gradually execute this transition. But we do need carbon markets to be credible, effective, transparent, high quality, and therefore there is still investments needed in order to be able to improve capabilities and technologies and solutions in that space.
TC: For companies that are curious about trying to pitch themselves to you, what are some examples of your current portfolio companies?
FT: In the technology space, we have invested into both funds as well as companies, so a major fund investment is Decarbonization Partners, and that is basically a climate-focused fund that is a joint venture between Temasek and BlackRock. We are an LP invested in that, and they are very focused on late-venture, early growth opportunities across different areas in the decarbonization space.
We have also invested into a technology company called Newlight, which seeks to be able to produce bio plastics from captured methane. On the nature side, we have been investing into a few forestry projects that generate carbon credits, and then on the carbon market side, we count among our portfolio companies things like South Pole, which is a global leader in providing project advisory, technical advisory solutions and project development for companies seeking to embark on a net zero decarbonization journey, as well as a carbon exchange called Climate Impact X, which is headquartered here in Singapore.
TC: For companies that are curious about potentially getting investment from you, what investment stage does GenZero typically look at?
FT: We are kind of flexible. For very early-stage companies, say around the Series A or just before, we will work with different partners to be able to evaluate and deploy capital to support early-stage companies, but I think it’s important to understand why we need to do this. If we think about the broader net zero decarbonization challenge, everybody talks about this 2050 timeline to get to net zero. But the reality is that if we want to create significant climate impact by 2050, we are looking at new solutions that must already somewhat exist today or are starting to come into being today, because we will need another 10 to 15 years for the technologies and solutions to mature and get to a stage where they could be commercializes, and then probably another 10 to 15 years for it to actually be able to be deployed and create some kind of impact. That basically means that this current cohort of young companies are going to make a difference to the 2050 agenda. That is the reason why we are very excited to participate in this space right now, because the action must take place now in order to have any meaningful difference by 2050.
TC: Considering that, with technology not coming to fruition by them until then, or making actionable results by then, in light of that, what kind of metrics or milestones do you like to see companies bring to the table before you consider them for your portfolio?
FT: I think it goes back to the way we evaluate our performance at GenZero. We have a double bottom line, so our shareholder expects us to be able to obviously achieve some level of financial returns. That’s a given. But we also take the idea around measuring climate impact rather seriously. We try and understand, for example, the kind of climate impact that a solution would be able to achieve if successful deployed. We also look at the kind of carbon yield that the company or solution would be able to deliver. For example, for every dollar invested in capital, how much carbon bang for the buck can we actually get, because obviously many solutions could be practical, cost effective and great.
But for every dollar of invested capital, how much carbon impact can we actually achieve on a per annum or cumulative basis. So that is actually one metric that we think about because capital is going to be finite. We also have a very limited time to be able to achieve a significant amount of climate impact to be able to address the climate change challenge. So it is vitally important for us to understand how to deploy capital into the areas that will make the most meaningful difference.
TC: One of the questions I want to ask in terms of working with startups, especially for the long-term, because I think it’s fair to describe GenZero as an active investor that works closely with startups. Some of their work might take a while to come into fruition, so what kind of value add are you able to bring to startups?
FT: We work with a range of different companies, whether they are very, very early-stage startups or they are slightly further along on the journey. But I think there are a few things where we hope to be able to bring value to our partners, but the first one is a more considered view around how the carbon markets and developments around carbon are taking place around the world. Because at the end of the day, we are solving for a decarbonization challenge or climate change challenge, that understanding how we are underwriting investments, how we are thinking about the movement of carbon price, and how people are thinking about decarbonization strategies, policies, are being introduced will be important, and I think GenZero hopefully will be able to provide a useful perspective on that front.
The second aspect is that GenZero is not alone. We do not profess to be the only game in town. There are many others who are doing great work in this space and we often want to think about how we are able to foster a sense of partnership, a kind of open architecture type of ecosystem in a way that we are able to partner each other dynamically in order to find new and interesting solutions and, more importantly, ways of actually applying them. It is not good enough for us to come up with great ideas. It is much more important to think about how we can actually get those ideas deployed, used and scaled.
Being part of a broader Temasek ecosystem here in Singapore, and globally, we have a network of relationships and contacts that might be quite useful for startups, to either try out solutions, bounce ideas, get some of the solutions implemented and also be able to find other sources of financing and support on their own journey of growth. We have a Temasek portfolio in a range of different industries that could certainly use innovative decarbonization solutions, whether it’s, for example, airlines making sustainable aviation fuel, or some of our utility companies looking at carbon capture capabilities, so there is that opportunity to be able to deploy some of these solution across the network or to make those introductions and get actual practitioners and operating companies to provide feedback on what would be needed for some of these solutions to scale and be effective. Oftentimes, I think we are also talking to a broader network of fund managers and fellow investors, and therefore through that collective understanding of issues, we hope to be able to value add to some of our partners.
TC: For founders that are listening into this, what kind of opportunities do you think there are for startups in climate tech, or what in particular are you excited about?
FT: I think its limitless. The ones we are really watching for in the technology space includes some of the carbon capture and carbon removal technologies, low carbon fuels, low carbon materials and, in particular in the near term, probably things to do with a hydrogen transition that I think would be quite meaningful in terms of being able to push the envelope by around 2030 or so. I think there are also a lot of opportunities in supporting nature solutions. It is a class of investments and opportunities that many investors and corporates might be less familiar with, but nature is as important as technology in trying to solve for near-term decarbonization.
Then finally into the carbon market space, I think we do need a lot more capabilities in the MRV space. These are the ones that are doing monitoring, reporting and verification of carbon project rating capabilities, to be able to improve the transparency, credibility and quality assurance in the carbon market space. But let me end off by just saying one thing. There is always a tendency for us to think about digital solutions and software solutions to be able to solve this and they are vitally important because they seek to optimize, and if you do not digitalize, you cannot optimize energy efficiency and many of those are critical to this decarbonization space. But I will certainly have a shout out and encourage many of our founders in the room to also think about the core engineering, the tougher kinds of solution sets that we need, because at the end of the day, even as we optimize, somebody has to fundamentally do something about taking the carbon out, improving the core underlying engineering efficiency of some of our solution. So that’s tougher to do, I think sometimes maybe depending on your point of view, as sexy or not as sexy. But it is vitally important, and I think therefore, there is space for many of us with varied interests to be able to tackled this climate crisis.
WhatsApp is used by more than two billion around the world, and is an important tool for many small businesses. But as they scale up, even WhatsApp for Business might not be able to keep up with their needs. That’s where WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox) steps in. Built on WhatsApp for Business’ API, WATI has customer sales and engagement tools created for the messaging app. Today the Hong Kong and Malaysia-headquartered startup announced it has raised $23 billion in Series B funding to scale its team and product.
The round was led by Tiger Global with participation from returning investors Sequoia Capital India & Southeast Asia, and new investors DST Global Partners and Shopify (marking the e-commerce platform’s first venture investment in a startup operating in the Southeast Asia region). WATI’s last round of funding was an $8.3 million Series A announced 10 months ago, and its new round brings its total raised to more than $35 million since 2020.
WATI founders Bianco Ho and Ken Yeung began working together in 2016, building Clare.AI, an omnichannel AI digital assistant for large Asia enterprises. In 2020, they launched WATI to give SMBs a self-service, low-code product on the WhatsApp for Business API. The startup currently has more than 6,000 customers in 75 countries, including SMBs in spaces like house cleaning, schools, education centers, edtech, fintech, medical facilities, D2C brands and Shopify stores.
Ho told TechCrunch that while she and Yeung were working on Clare.AI, “our assumption was that only larger enterprises had the resources to deploy a successful digital assistant with artificial intelligence.” After a few years of working with their clients, however, the two realized many were looking for a simpler solution, so WATI was created. Part of the reason for its launch was the digital acceleration caused by the pandemic, as many businesses rushed to get online.
WATI founders Ken Yeung and Bianca Ho
In many emerging markets, and mature markets like Europe, WhatsApp is the preferred communication channel between customers and businesses. WATI helps non-technical businesses scale their customer support, customer engagement and acquisition through its CRM.
WATI’s customer engagement software is built on WhatsApp for Business’ API and lets clients send personalized notifications. The platform includes a collaborative team inbox used by multiple agents, and features like smart routing, canned responses, data tagging and analytics. Interactions can be automated through low-code workflows and chatbots, and connected to e-commerce platforms and CRMs. WATI also has integrations with platforms like Zoho, Shopify and Google Sheets.
An example of how WATI is used is a large e-commerce company that relies on its to manage campaigns like Prime Day. The company usually gets 60 to 100 messages a day from customers through WATI’s team inbox, the majority of which come from its website’s WhatsApp chat, and sends about 30,000 messages every day when campaigns are active.
Another example is an edtech client that has used WATI for almost two years. They rely on about 50 templates a month for lead generation, nurturing, payment reminders and class updates, and send 20,000 to 30,000 messages a day. WATI also helps them get high-quality organic leads through a WhatsApp widget on their website.
Ho said WATI’s closest competitor is the native WhatsApp for Business app, which most SMBs start off using, but WATI is a suitable fit for them as their businesses scale.
Funding will be used on hiring and investing in WATI’s product stack for low-code automation. The company also has go-to-market plans for emerging markets, like Latin America and Southeast Asia
It’s a tough market for venture capital, but Square Peg Capital is plowing ahead with its focus on Australia (where it is based), Southeast Asia and Israel. The firm announced today that it has closed its fifth fund totaling $550 million. This brings its total raised across all funds to about $1.6 billion.
Square Peg has invested in more than 60 companies, and returned over $580 million to its investors across 11 exits at an IRR of 42%. Its counts Australian superannuation funds like Hostplus and AustralianSuper among its backers, and other LPs include new and returning investors from family offices, institutions and endowments.
Part of Square Peg’s new capital will be used for its core venture fund, which invests in seed to Series B startups. It will also invest in the later stages of its best-performing portfolio companies through its Opportunities Fund.
Square Peg Capital partners Tushar Roy and Piruze Sanbuncu
Square Peg has a growing footprint in Southeast Asia, where partners Tushar Roy and Piruze Sabuncu are based. Roy told TechCrunch in April that Southeast Asia is the firm’s fastest-growing geographical footprint. Half of its last $275 million fund, Fund 3, was invested in Southeast Asia. The firm is focused on five key areas in the region: consumer internet, fintech, edtech and the future of work, healthtech and SaaS.
Portfolio companies from other regions include Canva, Airwallex and ROKT in Australia, and Fiverr and AIDoc from Israel.
In a statement, Sabuncu said, “We already know the potential Southeast Asia presents when we look at the basic macro numbers, but the last few years have proven that you can build global businesses from this region, or create new business models that can disrupt the way people access various services—whether it be lending, education or healthcare.”
Singapore-based Skuad helps companies hire employees in different countries while staying compliant with local employment regulations and processing cross-border payroll. The startup announced today it has raised $15 million in Series A funding. Skuad has signed up more than 350 employers so far, mostly from North America, Europe and Southeast Asia.
This funding round, which brings Skuad’s total raised to $19 million, was led by NMVM and two global payments platforms. It also included participation from returning investors Beenext and Anthemis, plus angel investors Jitendra Gupta, Jupiter founder; Pine Labs CEO Amrish Rau; Credit founder Kunal Shah; Alok Mittal, co-founder and CEO of Indifi; Varun Mittal and Rafael Lopez.
Skuad was conceptualized just before the pandemic in 2019 by founder Sundeep Sahi with the aim of simplifying international hiring. Since then, the company’s focus has been on helping employers deal with issues that make building distributed teams challenging, like variations in regulations from market to market, international payrolls and remote onboarding. Skuad also serves as a platform for workers to find employment.
Sahi told TechCrunch that traditional hiring and recruiting methods aren’t sufficient to deal with creating a team of people around the world.
“Building distributed teams or hiring in another country requires you to establish a subsidiary, register as an entity, open local bank accounts, stay up-to-date with local employment laws, as well as hire local HR, legal and payroll teams. This process often takes months, if not years, and requires an investment of thousands of dollar,” he said.
Skuad lets companies hire, onboard and pay employees and contractors in more than 160 countries without needing to set up local entities, and it manages local compliances, well also providing country-specific benefits and insurance packages. Most of its customers are from the tech and consulting industries that employ digital workers in different geographies to fill a talent gap or scale internationally.
The startup now has customers from 34 countries, talent placed in about 94 companies and 3x growth in ARR since January 2022.
One of Skuad’s clients is Indonesian fintech Akseleran, which needed to fill tech openings. It built a strong candidate funnel through a vetted talent portal called allremote.in, social job networks, recruiters and agencies. Skuad serves as the legal employer in India, since Akseleran doesn’t have a legal entity in the country, and manages local compliance for payments, taxes and benefits.
Skuad monetizes through pricing plans that start at $199 per employee per month for payroll and $499 per employee per month for talent found through the platform or 12% of the compensation of the employee, whichever is higher. The company is currently finalizing its acquisition of Codejudge, a data-focused talent assessment platform that automates tech interviews, to expand it hiring and onboarding capabilities.
Some competitors in the remote hiring space include Deel, Remote, Globalization Partners and Multiplier. Skuad serves as a hybrid of talent platforms, like Turing and Toptal, but with a focus on remote full-time jobs that are enabled by its network of local entities that process payroll compliantly, like Deel and Remote do. Sahi says it differentiates with its process transparency and the size of its tech-enabled talent platform, which can be used to manage the entire employment lifecycle.
Cross-border payments startup Thunes is partnering with Visa, in a move that will add more than 1.5 billion new endpoints to Visa Direct’s digital payments network. This enables many more consumers and small businesses to send funds to markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America, where digital wallets are often the default payment method.
Based in Singapore and San Francisco, Thunes is backed by investors including Insight Partners, GGV and Checkout.com, and has raised $130 million in funding to date. Customers of its payments infrastructure include Uber Eats, Grab, MoneyGram, Remitly and Western Union, and it currently processes more than 180 million transactions a year across 130 countries.
One of Thunes’ focuses is emerging markets where there are a lot of unbanked people. Many use digital wallets as an alternative to traditional financial services, since they can top-up cash without needing a bank account or credit card.
CEO Peter De Caluwe told TechCrunch that Thunes was created to fix gaps in payments market’s slow traditional banking infrastructure. He cited research that shows half of the world’s population will use mobile wallets by 2025, but says Thunes believe adoption will happen faster than that, with its network connected to 2.7 billion mobile wallet users by 2022.
“Digital wallets are one of the fastest growing financial instruments for many small businesses and for unbanked individuals in emerging markets,” said De Caluwe. “Three billion people globally are still left out or poorly served by the formal economy. For these unbanked individuals in emerging markets, digital wallets are gaining traction as an empowering first entry point to the financial system.”
The partnership means that about 14,900 financial institutions that are Visa clients can integrate send-to-wallet services for customers, retailers and SMEs through Visa Direct. Visa’s network is now connected to Thunes’ B2B platform, which means Visa Direct can reach more than 1.5 billion new endpoints (for a total of 7 billion) and that the 78 digital wallet providers already integrated with Thunes get a new send-to-wallet capability.
Some examples of how Thunes’ software and APIs are used include connecting Paypal and Paypal Xoom payouts with top mobile wallets in Asia and Africa, including in Bangladesh, Indonesia and Kenya and facilitating payments for digital remittance companies like Remitly, World Remit and Moneygram. Grab used Thunes’ platform to localize payments, enabling it to accept mobile payment options and give on-demand payouts to drivers, which gave it an edge over Uber.
