Sea Group’s venture fund to invest US$1bn in tech startups; Sea Capital will be headed by Chief Investment Officer David Ma; Ma is founder of Composite Capital Management, a Hong Kong-based global investment management firm which has recently been fully acquired by the group. More here

SEA-focused VC firm Asia Partners’s maiden fund hits US$384mn final close; Its LPs include the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and Germany’s DEG; It has already invested US$90mn+ across its first 3 investments, which collectively have operations across every major economy in SEA. More here

AirAsia rides into Singapore’s food delivery scene; According to a report, AirAsia Food will initially feature about 80 restaurants, including popular outlets like No Signboard Seafood, The Shepherd’s Pie; About 300 other restaurants are set to join the platform; At least 50% of Singaporeans eat out every day, with the country seeing a staggering 2.7mn active online food delivery users in 2020. More here

AppWorks raises US$114mn for fund III to back Series A and B startups in SEA, Taiwan; The new fund, with a target corpus of US$150mn, will seek to invest in AI, IoT, blockchain and decentralised finance; To date, AppWorks has invested in 395 startups. More here

Indonesian payments infra startup Xendit raises US$64.6mn in Accel-led Series B; Xendit is the first Indonesian company to go through Y Combinator’s accelerator programme; Xendit works with businesses of all sizes, processing more than 65mn transactions with US$6.5bn in payment value annually. More here

Indonesia’s Payfazz invests US$30mn into Singapore’s payments infra company Xfers; Both firms will be part of a newly-formed financial entity Fazz Financial Group (FFG); With this investment, Xfers will serve as the B2B arm of FFG — focussed on connecting external merchants to the payment infrastructure and user network amassed by the group. More here

Symbo secures US$9.4mn Series A, acquires digital health platform Vivant; Investors include CreditEase fintech investment fund (lead), Think Investments, Insignia Ventures, and AJ Capital; Symbo supports agents, third-party administrators, brokers, corporates and insurers in the purchase, distribution and administration of insurance across India and SEA. More here

Manabie secures US$3mn funding to bring Japan’s “high-quality” education to Vietnam; Investors are Do Ventures, Genesia Ventures and Chiba Dojo; This follows a US$4.8mn in April last year from Genesia Ventures (lead) and angels including professional soccer player Keisuke Honda; Besides a mobile app, Manabie also runs 5 learning centres in HCMC for students to receive guidance from individual counsellors. More here

Indonesian SaaS supply chain solutions startup Advotics raises US$2.75mn; Lead investor is East Ventures; Advotics provides end-to-end integrated supply chain solutions to a variety of clients ranging from SMEs to international companies; It has 9 SaaS products that provide solutions across production, warehousing, and distribution. More here

MyMy joins forces with Sukaniaga to bid for Malaysia digital banking license; This comes fresh off MyMy’s raising of US$2.4mn from Koperasi Tentera in Sep. 2020; As per BNM’s digital banking framework, 40 parties are reportedly eyeing the five licenses that will be issued by Q1, 2022. More here

Vietnamese online real estate startup Citics raises US$1mn; Investors are Vulpes Investment, Nextrans and TheVentures; Its first product is a Data-as-a-Service offer that banks use to validate the value of real estate employed as collateral for loans; Previously, the startup has raised US$700K in angel funding. More here

AI foodtech startup Easy Eat raises funding from ex-Uber CPO, Silicon Valley veterans; The money will be used to ramp up its operations in Malaysia, where it sees ‘great adoption and engagement’ for its products among F&B outlets; Easy Eat digitises all customer-facing interactions in restaurants — from browsing menu, ordering and tracking to payments. More here

Indonesia’s next-day grocery delivery startup Dropezy bags pre-seed funding; Investors include Taurus Ventures and Kopi Kenangan; Dropezy will also introduce a ‘pay later’ feature for its customers, as part of a company-wide strategy to scale up its business. More here

‘More conglomerates are embracing digital disruptions as they’re undergoing transitions between generations’: Emtek’s Andya Daniswara; Although Indonesia is constrained by fiscal limitation, the government has worked quickly to facilitate and regulate digital innovation happening in the country. More here

Autonomous drones developer for maritime logistics F-drones raises funding; Investors include Eastern Pacific Shipping (lead), Schulte Group, SEEDS Capital, EF; The firm’s mission to provide 24×7 commercial Beyond-Vision-Line-Of-Sight drone deliveries to ships; It is also developing a fully-electric and autonomous proprietary drone, capable of delivering 100kg payloads over 100km. More here

InVent invests in Datafarm, Swift Dynamics to accelerate growth of 5G in Thailand; Both the companies will play a crucial role in supporting corporates to strongly step into the fully-digitised 5G era; Datafarm is a cyber security company whereas Swift Dynamics is an IoT management provider which connects multiple devices of clients to the cloud. More here

Indonesia’s Eden Farm raises pre-Series A; Investors include Investible (lead), AC Ventures and Corin Capital; Eden Farm focuses connects farmers and communities upstream with F&B businesses, including restaurants, street food vendors and central markets; The capital will be used to expand operations to Java and Sumatra. More here

Neuron Mobility expands operations to Seoul; The Singapore-based e-scooter rental operator will deploy 2K Korean-spec e-scooters, which are fitted with the world’s first app-controlled helmet lock, which electronically secures a safety helmet for every e-scooter. More here

Digital wallets to overtake credit cards by 2024 amid e-commerce boom: report; Digital wallets such as GrabPay and DBS PayLah! are expected to account for 27% of the Singapore market by 2024, in line with global trends, said the report by Worldpay from FIS; BNPL is on track to grow to 13% of the online payment market in 2024, from just 3% currently. More here

Sea’s 2020 gross profit doubles on e-commerce, gaming boom; Total adjusted EBITDA stood at US$107mn, compared with a loss of US$178.6mn in 2019; Net loss, though, widened from US$1.46bn in 2019 to US$1.62bn in 2020; E-commerce proved to be the major growth propeller, with GAAP revenues for the unit grew 159.8% to US$2.2bn from last year. More here

Sea Group eyes LatAm e-commerce in potential battle royale against incumbents; Banking on the success of its hit game Free Fire, the group has seemingly set its sights on conquering LatAm’s e-commerce, beginning with Brazil and Mexico; Just over a week ago, Shopee launched with an app in Mexico. More here

Ant group boss tries to quell employee discontent with promise of eventual IPO; In a post on Ant’s internal website, Executive Chairman Eric Jing said the management is reviewing its remuneration and incentive policy and working on a “short-term liquidity solution” for employees that would take effect in April. More here

Ho Chi Minh City zeroes in on becoming regional AI hub; The city has set a target of concluding projects on building digital infrastructure and AI-related policies and establishing centres for AI research, technology transfer, and human resources between 2021 and 2025. More here

Indonesia’s e-commerce scene could change forever with the gojek-Tokopedia real; The e-commerce market has witnessed accelerated growth ever since pandemic restrictions charged up the demand for e-services; Indonesia has the fastest-growing internet economy in SEA, a region with nearly 650mn people and an expected internet economy revenue of US$300bn by 2025. More here

Amazon, Google vie for piece of India’s digital payments market; The companies are part of four consortia preparing to apply for licenses to operate retail payments and settlement systems in the country; The contest is fierce as regulator Reserve Bank of India is expected to give just one or two licenses. More here

Photo by Quinton Coetzee on Unsplash

The post Ecosystem Roundup: SEA gets new US$1B startup fund, AirAsia eyes a slice of SG’s food delivery pie appeared first on e27.



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