Grab expands initiative to bring SMEs online
The crux: Grab Financial Group (GFG) has announced the expansion of its ‘Grow with Grab’ suite of products and features to empower small and medium enterprises (SMEs) across Southeast Asia.
With this, the financial arm of Southeast Asia’s tech unicorn aims to tap on the regional e-commerce market opportunity that is expected to reach US$172 billion in 2025.
As per a press note, this is in line with GFG’s move to be more merchant-centric in its offerings and support its merchants’ business growth across the region.
Expanding GrabMerchant Commerce
In May, Grab Financial Group launched webstore builder platform GrabMerchant Commerce to boost sales and reduce operational work and payment risks. Since the pilot programme’s launch in Singapore, over 500 merchants in the apparel, furniture, F&B and artisanal products categories have signed up. GFG says these firms averaged a 6x increase in sales from when they first started their online businesses, with 83 per cent of them activating GrabPay.
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More than just a webstore builder, the GrabMerchant Commerce platform enables small businesses to scale by offering tailored support in areas such as marketing and brand development, as well as advanced operations such as automation, CRM, inventory, and logistics.
With the pilot programme’s success, GrabMerchant Commerce will be scaled up, with more opportunities for merchant-partners to generate sales. By October-end, selected GrabMerchant Commerce merchant-partners can be accessed via the ‘Shopping’ icon in the Grab app, exposing them to millions of Grab users across Southeast Asia.
GrabMerchant Commerce will be rolled out in Malaysia and the Philippines in 2022.
India’s ID verification startup IDfy raises US$11.5M
The crux: IDfy, India-based ID verification and onboarding solutions company, has raised an investment of INR 86 crore (US$11.5 million) in its Series D round of funding.
Lead investors: TransUnion and Blume Ventures.
Plans: IDfy plans to use this funding to strengthen its product offerings and expand the business and operations.
More about IDfy: Run by Mumbai-based Baldor Technologies, IDfy builds technology products and solutions that accurately authenticate entities. This helps businesses prevent fraud and engage with verified entities with the least amount of friction.
During the last six months, IDfy claims to have helped companies in Southeast Asia and the Middle East onboard verified merchants and customers in sectors such as payments, e-commerce, and mobility.
IDfy says it has performed more than 70 million verifications for 500-plus clients.
Zilliqa names Ben Livshits as new CEO
The crux: Blockchain platform Zilliqa has appointed software tech industry leader Dr. Ben Livshits as its new CEO, effective 11 October 2021.
In this role, Dr. Livshits will be driving Zilliqa’s global strategy, growing its footprint within the crypto space and increasing the market penetration from East to West, as new markets across the world establish themselves as crypto-friendly economies.
He also plans to establish initiatives that expand the capabilities of blockchains to new areas of finance, such as the DeFi sector, digital content creation and distribution, and new ways to connect Zilliqa to real-world applications such as high-value NFTs.
Also Read: Zilliqa launches US$5M fund to back startups building on its blockchain platform
Who is Livshits?: Throughout his career, Dr. Livshits has spent over two decades at tech giants such as Microsoft and Netscape. Before joining Zilliqa, Dr. Livshits served as Chief Scientist at Brave, the company behind the Brave browser. He built and led the company’s research division from the ground up, leading a multidisciplinary team across the globe to help create the world’s first practical privacy-preserving ad targeting and delivery system as well as a number of other technologies based on cryptography and machine learning.
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