Even the largest landfills in Indonesia are at (or nearing) capacity, and the government has set an ambitious target of 30% waste reduction by 2025. Waste4Change is one of the companies that wants to help by increasing rates of recycling and enabling better waste management. The startup, which currently manages more than 8,000 tons of waste very year, announced today that it has raised $5 million in Series A funding, co-led by AC Ventures and PT Barito Mitra Investama.

Other participants in the round include Basra Corporation, Paloma Capital, PT Delapan Satu Investa, Living Lab Ventures, SMDV and Urban Gateway Fund. Founded in 2014, Waste4Change has seen a CAGR of 55.1% since 2017, and is present in 21 Indonesian cities, where its services are currently used by about 100 B2B clients and more than 3,500 households.

Waste4Change was created by founder and CEO Mohamad Bijaksana Junerosano based on conversations between PT Greeneration Indonesia, an NGO, and waste management organization PT Bumi Lestari Bali (ecoBali) to form a company that reduces the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. Junerosano is an environmental engineer by training and spent 16 years working in the solid waste sector.

Junerosano says that a major opportunity is created by Indonesia’s low recycling rates (about 11% to 12%), which means there is a lot of valuable recyclable material that is being left behind.

“Waste reduction is a top priority, followed by material optimization and recycling which supports the concept of a truly circular economy,” he told TechCrunch.

Waste4Change will use its new funding on expansion and increasing its waste management capacity up to 100 tons per day over the next 18 months, with the target of reaching more than 2,000 tons per day over the next five years.

Waste4Change’s team

Junerosano said Waste4Change differentiates from traditional waste management solutions by providing an end-to-end solution, with a focus on sustainability and zero waste. Part of its strategy includes more digital integration for monitoring and recording the process of waste management and automating its material recovery facilities.

“We see digital integration as a valuable tool to build a sustainable waste management ecosystem,” he said. “The goal is always to create harmony between the environment, the economy and the people.” Waste4Change’s digital integration strategy this year and next include improving its waste journey report and monitoring, which its customers receive after their trash is processed.

To use Waste4Change, customers can ask for a pick-up team to collect their pre-sorted trash or drop it off themselves. The company currently has 108 employees and 141 waste management operators, with plans to add 52 more people to its team and work with 300 informal waste collectors and SMEs. Informal waste collectors include scavengers, waste banks, waste stalls and waste aggregators.

For recycling business partners, including informal waste collectors, Waste4Change is building a platform to help them sell and buy solid waste with the company. The goal is increase the traceability and accuracy of the waste management process. It is also working on a program called Send Your Waste, where consumers can send waste to Waste4Change’s pick-up points. An app tells them what kinds of waste to send, where the nearest pick-up point is and what kind of reward they can receive.

Junerosano says informal waste collectors tend to be selective about the materials they collect, picking out PET bottles, glass and cardboard. But this means less desirable materials like PP plastic, multilayer packaging and styrofoam are often left behind, polluting the environment. To combat that, Waste4Change has started a service called Waste Credit, that gives incentives for picking up certain materials, and also makes it easy for waste collectors to build this businesses.

“Considering the crucial role of the informal sector in improving Indonesia’s recycling rate, we aim to build a waste recycling platform that will keep the system sustainable,” he said. “We are more than happy to bring it to life with a joint venture or joint operation with other industry stakeholders, including those in the informal sector and local Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (3R) temporary waste storage sites.”

In a statement, AC Ventures founding partner Pandu Sjahrir said, “Waste4Change is a pioneer providing an end-to-end waste management solution. Sustainability is the team’s main focus, with a demonstrated commitment to building a better future for Indonesia. The company is proving that it has reached product-market fit and has the potential to scale across the nation.”

Waste4Change is building a circular economy in Indonesia by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Focused on Southeast Asia, Ayoconnect’s APIs make it faster for businesses to launch new financial services, instead of needing to build their own tech infrastructure. It is also licensed by Indonesia’s central bank, enabling it to offer more services. The open finance startup announced today it has closed a $13 million Series B extension round led by SIG Venture Capital, with participation from CE Innovation Capital and returning investor PayU, the payments and fintech business of Prosus. This brings its total raised to $43 million, including the oversubscribed first tranche of its Series B, which was led by Tiger Global and closed in January 2022.

Founded in 2016, with a team of about 250 people, Ayoconnect is currently working toward more financial inclusion for Indonesian consumers and SMEs. It works with regulators and incumbent banks, and was recently awarded a Bank of Indonesia (BI) Payment Service Provider Category 1 license. Ayoconnect says it is the only open finance player in Indonesia to be licensed by the central bank.

Ayoconnect’s new funding will be used for leadership hiring, and on its Ayoconnect’s product and technology, including new solutions for payments, data and banking and new APIs for account opening and card issuing.

The startup recently launched automated recurring direct debit with seven of Indonesia’s largest banks (Mandiri, BRI, BNI, CIMB Niaga, Danamon, Bank Syariah Indonesia and Bank Neo Commerce). This allows Ayoconnect’s clients to use its direct debit API and get the ability to make recurring debits from customers’ savings accounts at multiple banks.

Before starting Ayoconnect, founder and CEO Jakob Rost was a managing director at Lazada. After leaving Lazada, he spent several years living in Indonesia, where he saw how the country could benefit from more digital financial inclusion. For example, it is the fourth largest country in the world by population, but about half of people are unbanked, he said. It also has a complicated geography, resulting in a weak financial infrastructure, fragmentation and less standardization in the banking sector. Furthermore, Rost added, consumer-facing businesses in Indonesia don’t have the digital financial infrastructure to manage their own finances while serving customers.

Ayoconnect raised again so soon after the initial close of its Series B because it was growing rapidly and also secured important strategic partnerships after receiving its BI license. Rost said the new capital will strengthen Ayoconnect’s balance sheet and prepare it for future growth over the next few years.

The platform now serves 200 API customers, including large banks, financial institutions, tech unicorns and fintechs, and offers more than 4,000 embedded finance products. Its APIs are cover two categories: open banking APIs and payment services APIs, with the goal of building the most complete open finance stack in Southeast Asia.

Some examples of financial services that Ayoconnect’s clients have launched include the aforementioned direct debit, embedded finance (it partnered with PT. Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI), the state-owned operator of railways in Indonesia) to launch new ticketing and productivity features in the KAI Access mobile app, which enables users to buy cellphone credits, internet data subscriptions and electricity tokens). It also partnered with Bank Syariah, Indonesia’s largest Islamic bank, to add new digital and mobile capabilities with the goal of greater financial inclusion and economic growth among its customers.

Other Southeast Asian startups in the open finance space include Brick, Finverse, Brankas and Finantier as competitors? One way that Ayoconnect differentiate is by being the only licensed open finance platform in Indonesia, which enables it to offer solutions that aren’t available on the market yet.

“While open banking and open finance are reasonably well-established in Europe and the US, the industry is still very young in Southeast Asia but is growing rapidly. In Indonesia, hundreds of millions are embracing new digital services while many more are still without access to basic financial services like bank accounts,” said Rost.

“As such, there is huge potential for open finance in the region and a ton of opportunities for the sector to grow further. We’ve been really excited to see the activity in the space and to be playing a role in helping to move the ecosystem forward.”

In a statement, SIG Venture Capital’s Akshay Bajaj said the Ayoconnect team “have been running high volume APIs for years and are incredibly well positioned to help customers launch compelling and profitable use cases quickly and securely. As a result of its expanding capabilities, Ayoconnect continues to experience strong and growing demand from banks and API clients. We love their vision and believe they have the potential to transform and enhance the future of payments in Southeast Asia.”

Open finance startup Ayoconnect’s APIs enable financial inclusion in Southeast Asia by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Pillow aspires to be an all-in-one platform that helps even newbie users save, spend and invest in crypto currency. The Singapore-based startup announced it has raised $18 million in Series A financing co-led by Accel and Quona Capital, with participation from Elevation Capital and Jump Capital.

The app currently has more than 75,000 users in over 60 countries. It supports 10 digital assets, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Axie Infinity and USD-backed stablecoins USDC and USDT, and plans to expand to over 50 assets in the coming months.

Founded in 2021 by Arindam Roy, Rajath KM and Kartik Mishra, Pillow is focused on emerging markets like Africa and Southeast Asia. It founders say that since the beginning of the year, it has grown its user base by 300%, with assets under management growing 5x. It also recently expanded into Nigeria, Ghana and Vietnam, among other markets.

Before founding Pillow, Roy and KM explored web3 while working at identity verification and AML software provider HyperVerge, while also holding jobs in the traditional finance industry. During this time, the two started a Discord server on the side to onboard people onto web3, which eventually grew to more than 15,000 people.

“We saw a pattern of problems repeating,” the two told TechCrunch. “People do not know how to pay gas fees, do not know how to bridge across various blockchains, people do not know what transaction they are approving and end up losing funds.”
Around this time, the two met Mishra, who was head of business for Indian delivery startup Dunzo, and started talking about how to solve the onboarding problem at scale.

“Eventually, we realized that the challenge is that crypto transactions today do not fit the mental model of how retail users perceive transactions. You would need a strong technical background to transact seamlessly in crypto,” they said.

As a result, Pillow was born to make crypto usage understandable.

To do this, the Pillow team has to tackle a couple big issues. The first is awareness, since the majority of people still think crypto is just buying and selling Bitcoin, without understanding other use cases. The second is complexity, since using crypto in its entirety means understanding gas fees, blockchain technology and bridging. “A person who just wants to transact is not going to scale this learning curve,” they said.

Pillow solves these problems by simplifying crypto investments and transactions to one click, instant swaps and savings using single-click daily interest savings. It plans to do the same for other crypto services like payments.

To use Pillow for the first time, people sign up using their email accounts, and then provide KYC information, such as live selfie photos and national identity cards. Afterward, they get a short lesson on the potential risks of investing in digital assets before choosing which ones they want to deposit or invest in. Before their initial investment, they are taken through another lesson about that asset’s potential risks.

After that, they can deposit cryptocurrency from their own wallets or another crypto platform by making a transfer to the displayed crypto wallet address on Pillow. In some countries where Pillow has partnered with local, compliant on-ramp service providers, users can also buy crypto with their local fiat currency. Pillow supports deposits and withdrawals with fiat currency through local partnerships in Nigeria, the Philippines and Vietnam, with plans to add more across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America with its new funding.

The startup’s largest user base is in Nigeria, and it also has a major presences in India, Ghana and Vietnam, and growing user bases in Brazil, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. It focuses on retail investors, enabling them to start with investments as small as $5.

Since Pillow’s users are from different geographies, its closest competitors also come from around the world. They include crypto exchange Luno in Africa, multi-asset exchange Pluang (another Accel investment) in Southeast Asia and global crypto savings app Nexo. Pillow’s founders says it differentiates with its goal of becoming a holistic home for digital asset-driven financial services that allows even first time crypto users users to earn, save, spend and invest from the same platform.

Pillow is currently in growth phase and plans on introducing transaction fees as new products, including swaps and tokenized real world assets are introduced. It currently makes profits on returns generated on top of the 5% to 10.42% returns made accessible to users. Pillow keeps a small percentage of the spread generated, and another portion also goes into its yield reserves.

Pillow wants to make crypto saving and investing easy for new users by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Founded 10 years ago, Konvy is now Thailand’s top beauty e-commerce platform. It plans to accelerate its omnichannel and international distribution with a new Series A of $10 million from Insignia Ventures Partners.

Konvy was launched in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneur QingGui Huang, who previously managed fashion e-commerce platforms in China. It now works with more than 1,000 brands, representing SKUs of more than 20,000. Its brand portfolio includes L’Oréal, Shiseido, Sulwhasoo, Eucerin and La Roche-Posay.

“Konvy had the advantage of starting in Thailand when there were no really significant e-commerce players there at the time,” Huang told TechCrunch. “We’ve since leveraged our first mover advantage in Thailand to become a leading e-commerce player in the market.”

Konvy founders Leon Huang, Pornsuda Vangvidhayakul and QingHui Huang

Konvy’s goal is to help local and international beauty brands take advantage of two major trends. The first is that health and beauty purchases are a priority spending category for Thai consumers and the second is that Thailand sees high rates of e-commerce purchases and social media usage, meaning that young people in Thailand spend an average of about two hours and 55 minutes on social media each day.

Huang said he confirmed his assumptions about Thai spending on beauty products through conversations with brands, and that drove his desire to start Konvy.

“This opportunity of health and beauty being a priority spending category for Thai consumers is a function of both demand and supply circumstances favoring this consumer behavior over the past decades,” he said. “On the supply side, Thailand has been a manufacturing hub for a lot of international brands for more than 40 years. This has spawned as well a thriving local industry. On the demand side, we see that Thai consumers are plugged into this mindset of ‘upgrades’ when it comes to health and beauty, that is to say, it’s not just about accessing such products but actually looking for the best products and high willingness to spend on the latest trends.”

Konvy taps into the high rate of social media usage by developing a feedback loop, where engagements on its partner brands’ not only helps Konvy’s existing portfolio, but also helps more brands in the future. For example, as more Gen Z consumers bought products they saw on TikTok during the pandemic, Konvy made itself more present on that channel.

In a statement, Insignia Ventures Partners founding managing partner Yinglan Tan said, “While there may be stronger competitors from horizontal marketplaces in the future, we believe Konvy is best positioned to be the market leader in the online beauty segment given its long-standing brand equity, brand-centric and community-led approach.”

Thai beauty platform Konvy raises Series A for international expansion by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Workmate, a Singapore-based on-demand staffing platform, has been acquired by Persol Asia Pacific, one of the region’s largest HR service providers. Workmate focuses on frontline and essential workers, and the acquisition will allow it to expand its HR solutions throughout the Asia Pacific. Workmate currently operates in Thailand and Indonesia and is expanding operations into Singapore this month.

Persol Asia Pacific is part of Persol Holdings, which is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It is one of the largest human resources companies in Japan and has invested in HR tech companies including Glint.

Workmate’s Thailand team

Workmate was founded in 2016 to help businesses find frontline staff, while ensuring that workers get consistent employment. About 120,000 frontline workers and more than 800 companies are currently on its platform. The company defines frontline staff as essential workers, typically in low- to mid-skilled work, who provide essential services to the public. Sectors include logistics and warehousing, manufacturing, food and beverage, retail and back office roles like admin and customer service.

Workmate provides companies with a pre-vetted pool of workers for both short- and long-term work and uses proprietary AI-scoring algorithms to improve matching quality and attendance rates, worker retention and productivity. The algorithms take into account data points like work experience, location and skills, and combines that with first-hand behavioral data and worker history on Workmate’s platform, like attendance and supervisor ratings.

Workmate will retain its own branding after the acquisition and will run independently with Persol Asia Pacific as its parent company.

Singapore-based staffing platform Workmate acquired by Persol Asia Pacific by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

The proliferation of delivery services give customers many options, but means chaos for busy restaurants that need to manage orders across multiple apps and channels. Many kitchens handle this by juggling several devices at a time, one for each app. Klikit wants to save Southeast Asian food businesses from “tablet hell” by aggregating order information from all apps into one platform. Based in Singapore, the startup just exited stealth mode with $2 million in pre-seed funding.

The round was co-led by Global Founders Capital and Wavemaker Partners, with participation from Gentree Fund, AfterWork Ventures, Reshape Ventures, Nordstar, Pentas Ventures, Moving Capital, Gojek co-founder Kevin Aluwi, NasDaily’s Nuseir Yassin, YouTuber Lazar Beam and Radish Fiction founder Seung-yoon Lee. Strategic angel investors include executives from Gojek, YouTube and Flash Coffee.

Since launching seven months ago, klikit’s SaaS platform, klikit Cloud, has been used to service more than $2.8 million in orders across 150 brands in the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan and Australia.

Users currently include Bistro Group (the Philippine franchisee of TGI Fridays, Hard Rock Cafe and Buffalo Wild Winds, Flash Coffee and ghost kitchen startups MadEats and Just Kitchen.

Klikit was founded in 2021 by Christopher Withers, who has a lot of experience in the on-demand space—he was previously vice president of marketplaces at GoJek, chief strategy officer at Bangladesh ride-hailing platform Pathao and launched UberEats in the Asia Pacific.

During the pandemic, while at GoJek, Withers moved home to Australia to work remotely. He also owned and operated a ghost kitchen.

Withers told TechCrunch he’s always been fascinated by the food delivery space.

“I started my ghost kitchen because I have always wanted to truly experience the difficulties of running a restaurant firsthand, rather than sit hypothesizing on the sidelines or from behind my laptop as I built out many of these super app marketplaces,” he said.

During that time, Withers was overwhelmed by the number and cost of platforms, devices, software, ads and social media he had to juggle. As a result he wanted to find more effective ways to manage them and launch new brands.

Withers explains that existing F&B software aren’t suited for many delivery restaurants and cloud kitchens, and less than 2% of merchants in Asia have integrated their delivery orders with legacy point-of-sale systems. This leaves kitchens and staff managing orders across different apps and devices, which is not only time-consuming but also results in missed orders, errors, confusion and general chaos.

“Many operators refer to this as ‘tablet hell’ and some of our clients had as many as 20+ devices—taking up an entire pantry closet’s worth of real estate—for a single kitchen location!” Withers said.

klikit’s team

Klikit differentiates from legacy POS systems, which were created for single-brand companies, by enabling restaurants and ghost kitchens to manage multiple food brands across locations and channels on a single device. Features include updating menus across delivery apps, which klikit is able to do quickly because it has official API agreements with apps like GrabFood, foodpanda, GoFood and UberEats. It gives on-demand access to historical data analytics (in contrast, many F&B software systems restrict data to time-limited viewings), including daily sales, product mixes and channel breakdown.

Since many restaurants in Southeast Asia often process delivery orders through social media like WhatsApp, SMS or audio messages, klikit also enables these orders to be added to its order dashboard so they are included in its analytics.

If one of klikit’s clients has spare capacity and equipment, they can sign-up for access to its virtual brand partnerships with creators and consumer brands. Klikit is now working with creators who have a combined following of 38 million in the Philippines and Australia to launch two “creator drops” in late 2022. Withers says klikit connected with top YouTubers because they have the clout to compete against fast food giants, marketing-wise.

Klikit’s closest competitors include Deliverect and NextBite, but Withers says he believes a regional startup like klikit will succeed because it can cement API partnerships with major delivery apps.

The startup’s new funding was used during stealth mode to hire 30 people in six countries. It will also use the capital for regional expansion and adding more features by building its engineering team.

In a statement, Wavemaker Partners managing partner Paul Santos said, “We see klikit solving widely unaddressed problems for restaurateurs everywhere, while also creating unique solutions for creators and brands to earn revenue and engage with fans in entirely new ways. Their vision strategically brings together the converging and only growing trends in food delivery and the creator economy.”

SaaS platform klikit saves restaurant kitchens from “tablet hell” by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Una Brands, an e-commerce aggregator focused on brands in the Asia-Pacific region, announced the first close of its Series B round at $30 million today. The funding was led by White Star Capital and Alpha JWC Ventures.

Headquartered in Singapore, Una Brands has a presence in Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, China and the United States, and over 200 employees. It launched in 2021 with $40 million in funding, and has now raised a total of about $100 million.

Over the last year, Una Brands has acquired more than 20 e-commerce brands in six countries, including ergonomic furniture vendors ErgoTune and EverDesk+. After taking over operations, Una Brands expanded those brands into Australia and grew revenue by over 40% in less than a year. In total, Una Brands says it now has annualized revenue of more than $50 million and is expected to achieve group profitability by the end of this year.

While many other e-commerce roll-up companies (like Thrasio) focus on brands that sell on Amazon, Una Brands covers multiple e-commerce platforms to reflect how fragmented the industry is in Asia. For example, it looks for brands on Shopify, Shopee, Lazada and Tokopedia, in addition to Amazon.

Una Brands will use its new funding on more acquisitions in categories like home and living, mother and baby, and beauty and personal care. The capital will also be used to further the development of its proprietary technology for expanding e-commerce brands across multiple channels. Its tech stack includes tools for brand management, marketing, supply chain and accounting, and process automation and advanced analytics.

E-commerce aggregator Una Brands gets $30M to acquire more APAC brands by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

There are multiple messaging apps active in Southeast Asia and most consumers prefer to use them over email when they contact a business. Respond.io serves as a central dashboard for the biggest apps, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Line, Viber, Telegram and WeChat. The Malaysia-based company said today it has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Headline, with participation from AltaIR Capital, Smart Partnership Capital, Sterling Oak Group and Calendula Ventures.

Respond.io is currently used by more than 10,000 companies, including Klook, Decathlon, Abenson, Yoho, Roche, ShareChat and Bigo.

Respond.io’s dashboard, which processes over 140 million messages per month, consolidates all the messages a business gets, so the right person can see them. It also includes marketing, selling and support tools and can perform automated workflows, like building chat menus, drip campaigns, internal pipelines and invoking external actions. One benefit of using a central dashboard is that managers can quickly see if a conversation has been dropped and revive it.

Since its last round of funding in January 2020, Respond.io has grown its revenue 25x. Its latest funding will be used to continue attracting large enterprises by adding more to its suite of integration capabilities, and expanding beyond Asia to the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

Respond.io was launched in 2017 by Gerardo Salandra, Hassan Ahmed and Iaroslav Kudritskiy to serve as an omni-channel messaging inbox. Its product-first strategy means Respond.io develops its platform using feedback from its customers. It has a public roadmap and hundreds of customers can vote for the features they would like to see, helping Respond.io prioritize deployments.

For example, it recently localized Respond.io in Spanish because about 30% of its customer are in Spanish-speaking countries, and a high number voted for the platform to be available in Spanish.

Another example is its Contact Merge tool. Since customers often message from multiple channels, this means their chats were being dispersed across different profiles on the platform, Salandra said. The Contact Merge tool uses an algorithm to identify returning customers, even if they start using a different channel for messages.

Before founding Respond.io, Salandra worked at software companies like Runtastic (which was acquired by Adidas), Google and IBM. He saw that marketing software like Hubspot and Salesforce focused mostly on emails, offering little support for instant messaging, even though that’s what many customers prefer to use.

At Runtastic, Salandra told TechCrunch that “whenever people reached out to us on Facebook Messenger with sales or support inquiries, we’d ask them to email us so we could follow up, but they’d get frustrated and drop off. As a consumer, I understood, I’d been in their shoes. I hated making phone calls to resolve something because I’m from a generation that doesn’t instinctively communicate that way.”

Salandra saw a market for business instant messaging, filling in the gap left by marketing software like Hubspot and Salesforce.

When Respond.io was created, most messaging apps didn’t have APIs yet. The only channel it could connect with was Telegram. “But we were certain this was going to change, we were 100% confident,” Salandra said. “We just need proof of concept.” So the team reverse-engineered a popular messaging app without an API to connect to Respond.io’s platform, and sold it as a solution to early customers, including a major conglomerate. Later on, as messaging channels began launching APIs, Respond.io integrated with them, too.

Respond.io’s competitors include MessageBird, SleekFlow, Trengo, Verloop and Callbell, all of which also consolidate messages from different channels into a single dashboard. Salandra said Respond.io differentiates with its product-led growth strategy and content leadership. “While they tend to be more sales-driven, we concentrated on our product and content. We don’t imitate existing solutions or sell run-of-the-mill products.”

Salandra also noted his company’s pricing structure. Instead of charging by user or seat, it launched Monthly Active Contacts (MAC), so clients are only charged for the contacts they talk to.

In a prepared statement, Akio Tanaka, partner at Headline, “We’re impressed with Respond.io’s growth trajectory, achieved through product-led growth strategy and organic marketing. We see the huge potential behind the Respond.io technology and are proud to support the team on its way to transform enterprise client communication across the industries.

Malaysia-based Respond.io helps businesses juggle multiple messaging apps by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Cryptocurrency transactions in Indonesia hit $60 billion last year, according to the country’s commodities futures trading agency. Crypto exchange and marketplace Reku has been riding the wave with what it says are the lowest fees on the market, and a platform that is aimed at both newcomers and experienced traders. Today, the startup, founded in 2017, announced it has raised $11 million in Series A funding, led by AC Ventures (ACV) with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Skystar Capital.

This is Reku’s (previously called Rekeningku.com) first round of institutional funding. The company generated $3 billion in gross transaction value in 2021 and is profitable. Its founders say that Reku’s five years of operation mean that they know how to scale and endure fluctuations in the market, including the pandemic and this year’s recession.

Reku, which currently has 80 employees, plans to add 50 more positions with the funding. The platform will also continue focusing on security, compliance, efficiency and scalability, said co-founder and CEO Sumardi Fung. Reku recently appointed Jesse Choi, a former private equity investor at Bain Capital, as COO.

Reku’s team

Fung said the company sees “a significant gap in the market for products that actively guide users all the way from the very beginning of their crypto journey until they become experts themselves. Education is one thing, but our vision is to create products that seamlessly guide all users to smart investing.”

Reku makes it platform accessible to first-time traders with educational features. It is compliant with Indonesia’s commodities future trading agency (BAPPEBTI) and emphasizes user safety by offering only well-established cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Before founding Reku, Fung worked in the futures trading sector for 12 years.

“In 2017 and 2018, crypto was not this big but we saw a huge opportunity there. Internet penetration expanded rapidly, then it would lead to a more resourceful community where people would seek simplicity such as a global currency,” Fund told TechCrunch. “The logic behind blockchain always made sense to me and we can definitely see a future where people would demand a more transparent financial system.”

Choi added that Indonesian traders initially saw cryptocurrency as a way to make money, but are becoming more interested in other uses for blockchain. “An example of this is NFTs,” he said. “On a relative basis, there’s a tremendous amount of building activity coming out of Indonesia, not just projects but also infrastructure and tools that address the global market. And in fact, Indonesia is one of the leading countries when it comes to crypto and web3 adoption.”

In a statement, ACV founder and managing partner Michael Soerijadji said, “We are excited to lead this investment into Reku. With an intuitive user experience, the lowest fees in the market, and a great leadership team, we are confident Reku will solidify its leadership in Indonesia’s vibrant crypto industry.”

Indonesian crypto platform Reku is built for both new and experienced traders by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

Fazz, the Southeast Asian digital financial services group created by the merger of PayFazz and Xfers, announced today that it has raised a total of $100 million in Series C funding. This includes $75 million in equity and a $25 million debt facility.

The equity investment came from returning investors Tiger Global, DST Investment, B Capital, Insignia Ventures Partners and ACE & Company, with participation from Ilham Ltd, EDBI, InterVest, Y Combinator managing director Michael Seibel and GGV Capital managing partner Hans Tung. The debt facility is from Lendable.

Fazz will use the round to continue building out its business accounts, which include payment, savings and credit features. The company says that it saw $10 billion in annualized transaction volumes last year. It plans to double its transaction volumes over the next 12 months, and expand its teams in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan from 800 employees to 1,400.

Formerly known as Fazz Financial Group, Fazz’s goal is to close the $300 billion funding gap for MSMEs, which has been exacerbated by the pandemic, and give them the same tools as larger businesses.

In a press release, CEO Hendra Kwik said, “Our technology is our key differentiator—we invest a lot in the tech side of our business to ensure that any business from small family shops all the way to big enterprises can access financial tools to build their business.”

Fazz’s units include Fazz Agen, an agent-based financial app for micro- and small-businesses in Indonesia, Fazz Business, its business accounts, which serves businesses ranging in size from MSMEs to large corporations, Modal Rakyat, a peer-to-peer lending and borrowing services for MSMEs, and payments infrastructure provider Straits X.

In a press statement, Tiger Global partner Alex Cook said, “Fazz provides important financial tools to businesses in Southeast Asia, many of whom lack easy access to digital payments, treasury functions and growth capital. The Fazz platform has been rapidly adopted by both small businesses and larger corporations, and we look forward to continuing our partnership with the Fazz team.”

Southeast Asian fintech Fazz raises $100M Series C to serve businesses of all sizes by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

AC Ventures (ACV), a venture firm focused on early-stage startups in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia, has reached the first close of its fifth investment fund (Fund V). The fund is targeting $250 million and has raised 65% of that capital so far, mostly from limited partners who invested in ACV’s previous funds. Fund V has already made five investments, including SkorLife, IDEAL and Atma.

The last time TechCrunch covered ACV was in December 2021, when it closed its Fund III. (Its fourth fund is focused on Malaysia and run by a separate team).

Founded in 2014, ACV’s portfolio now has over 120 investments in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia. Some noteworthy companies include Xendit, Carsome, Stockbit, Ula, Shipper and Aruna. Its team has grown to 35 people, with most based in Indonesia, but ACV also recently established Singapore and Malaysia offices. Half of ACV’s leadership team are women and across its portfolio that figure is 40%.

ACV recently hired Helen Wong as managing partner. Wong previously worked at GGV and Qiming Ventures and has served on the boards of startups like Tudou and Mobike.

The firm is sector-agnostic, but many of its investments are in fintech, logistics, e-commerce, MSME and consumer technology. Fund V will also focus on new themes including climate tech. The firm’s check size in early-stage companies is typically $2 million, and it reserves a large part of each fund for follow-on investments.

“Broadly speaking, we are investing in the digitization of Indonesia and the Southeast Asia economy,” ACV co-founder and managing partner Adrian Li told TechCrunch. “Last year, Indonesia’s digital GDP was $70 billion and that’s expected to grow to over $350 billion in the next five to six years. Through our experience of investing over past funds, we’ve also developed expertise, particularly around commerce opportunities, fintech and micro- and small enterprises. Each of these thematic areas represent really deep pools of revenue potential and we’re seeing a lot of ways in which digital adoption can truly make things more efficient, cost less and create value for all the stakeholders in these verticals.”

In addition to Southeast Asia, Fund V’s LPs come from North Asia, the United States, the Middle East and Europe. Li said global investors are drawn to Southeast Asia as it continues to show evidence of being a maturing market, with the successful IPOs of unicorns like GoTo and Bukalapak, an increase in later-stage capital and more secondary exits.

ACV managing partners Michael Soerijadji, Helen Wong, Adrian Li and Pandu Sjahrir Image Credits: ACV

With its focus on early-stage companies, ACV is often the first institutional investor in startups.

“Our fund plays on a successful strategy we’ve continued to refine to be early-stage focused,” said Li. “That means backing companies at a point where we can be really valuable in the shaping of a business as they build it, and also at a point where we can be meaningful investors partnered with them. We typically invest in 30 to 35 companies per fund and reserve a deep follow-up ratio, 20-1, to invest in companies that are executing and creating value.”

ACV’s efforts to help founders include several key appointments who will work closely with startups. They are Lauren Blasco as head of ESG, Leighton Cosseboom as head of PR and communications, and Alan Hellawell as a senior advisor and venture partner.

The firm’s value-add includes working with founders to hire key talent and sharing talent operation playbooks. Li said ACV likes to invest early because as teams grow, it can help startups lay down fundamentals for culture, retaining talent and communication. It also helps companies with compliance and governance, like making sure they have functional boards and a good set of advisors.

Another part of its value-creation initiatives are partnerships with conglomerates and business stakeholders in Indonesia that can help startups accelerate the growth of their business. For example, it helps fintech companies work with banks or access capital they can use for lending.

Li said that ACV typically invests in 10 to 12 companies per year across its funds, and that continues despite the global slowdown in venture capital investing. “At times when money is easier, we may try to move a little faster, and at times like this, we may try to move a little slower, but fundamentally what we’re trying to do is underwrite for the right companies, and so we don’t want to be rushed by the timing of how the market is,” he said.

Though valuations across all stages have fallen by about 30% to 40%, Li also sees upsides in the market environment, including in the quality of entrepreneurs.

“What’s great about this type of period is that entrepreneurs are focused much more on quality metrics and product-market fit before starting to scale their businesses,” he said. “I think lats year when capital was easy, probably a number of companies chasing topline growth had scaled prematurely, and that’s never the most efficient use of capital. It’s simply trying to grab market share and get the next round, so I think times like this are good for both entrepreneurs and investors alike.”

AC Ventures reaches first close of a $250M fund for Southeast Asian startups by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch

The Philippines’ e-commerce market now has a gross merchandise volume of $12 billion, a 132% increase from 2020, and is expected to reach $26 billion in GMV by 2025. This obviously good news for online sellers, but it also means more shipping headaches, especially for smaller sellers that need to drop off packages at couriers’ warehouses.

Shipmates wants to save them time and money by consolidating several couriers into one platform. Online sellers can book couriers through its app, who then come to their location and pick up packages. The startup, a Y Combinator and Iterative alum, announced today it has raised $2.2 million in seed funding. The round included Cathexis Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, Taurus Ventures, Capital X and Sketchnote Partners.

Shipmates founders David Marquez and Josh Supan

Founded in July 2021 by CEO Josh Supan and CTO David Marquez, Shipmates’ goal is to become the go-to shipping tool for online merchants in Philippines, while bolstering the country’s shipping infrastructure. Its platform allows online sellers to compare rates between different couriers and book standard or multiple orders.

The platform is currently integrated with 9 courier companies, and the founders say its the only aggregator in the Philippines that has both on-demand and standard couriers.

Supan and Marquez are childhood friends who started an e-commerce enabler in 2017. Supan told TechCrunch they “pivoted from that when we saw that the problem of the merchants wasn’t getting online, it was shipping their online orders.”

Shipmates’ target customers are small- to mid-sized online sellers whose typical basket sizes range from $20 to $50. Supan explained that the shipping process in the Philippines is still manual because couriers aren’t connected to e-commerce platforms, and rely on business owners to physically drop off packages at a hub or warehouse.

As a result, many online sellers need a day to send out orders. Shipmates, however, reduces that process to less than 10 minutes, Supan said. The platform also automates waybills and address validations.

Shipmates monetizes by charging 30 cents for every order booked through its platform. Supan says its revenue has been growing 30% month-over-month since launching its platform last December.

Shipmates makes order fulfillment less tedious for the Philippines’ online sellers by Catherine Shu originally published on TechCrunch