EventX CEO Sum Wong
Hong Kong’s event management solutions platform EventX bags US$8 million in Series B+ round
EventX, an Asian-focused event SaaS company providing event lead generation and event management solutions, announced it raised an additional US$8 million led by GL Ventures, bringing the company’s total fundraising in Series B to US$18 million.
The new funding will be channelled to develop new offerings, finance potential acquisitions, strengthen its international operations and expand the company’s presence in Asia, particularly in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
Founded in Hong Kong in 2014, EventX’s virtual event platform serves companies to generate leads through engaging and interactive events with smart features such as all-in-one CRM management, event analytics, interactive exhibition halls, online registration forms, and email sending tools to streamline invitations.
So far, it claims to have provided solutions for high-growth event organisers across 100+ cities and now has served more than 5 million attendees.
Coinbase, Grab’s execs back GameFi startup Ethlas’s US$2.7M seed round
Singapore-based game finance (game-fi) blockchain startup Ethlas announced that it has secured US$2.7 million in seed funding from a slew of investors.
They include Sequoia Capital India, Yield Guild Games Southeast Asia, Global Blockchain Innovative Capital, Venturra Capital, Play It Forward DAO, Blockchain Space, Genesis Fund, Deus Ex DAO and Hustle Fund.
Executives from Grab, Coinbase, Switcheo and CoinMarketCap, also joined.
Ethlas is founded in November 2021 by four tech veterans, including American Gennady ‘Ari’ Medvinsky and Singaporean Elston Sam, who have stints in top tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Grab, and Airbnb. To date, its team comprises more than 20 blockchain engineers, game developers, data scientists, cybersecurity experts and designers based out of Singapore, the Philippines and the United States.
Serving as a free-to-play, play-to-earn platform, Ethlas helps amateur players win and exchange cryptocurrency by participating in simple, easily-understood casual games such as the likes of Think Tetris, Candy Crush and Bubble Popper.
Ethlas said that its gamers only need to install MetaMask, a software crypto wallet or link their wallets, and start playing in the Ethlas metaverse on a PC or mobile phone’s browser without complicated onboarding rules or requirements to sign up with a hefty subscription fee.
The startup is going to mint its first series of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) called Komos to benefit both free-to-play gamers and crypto natives.
As of end-January 2022, the Ethlas GameFi metaverse, built on the Polygon blockchain, claims to have clocked over 100,000 crypto-wallet users globally and some three million gameplay on its platform.
Also read: How play-to-earn is fueling the next wave of blockchain adoption
Riverr raises US$1M seed round to verify health and vaccination data for SEA maritime
Riverr Co-Founders Martin (CPO), Kristina (CEO), William (CTO)
Riverr, a Singapore-based digital platform providing tools to verify health and vaccination data, announced to have secured a US$1 million seed financing round led by Kuok (Singapore) Limited’s venture arm KSL Maritime Ventures, which is dedicated to the incubation and commercial success of maritime technology startups.
Enterprise Singapore’s SEEDS Capital also participated, as part of a S$50 million (~US$37.15 million) co-investment scheme for maritime startups supported by Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore.
Launched in 2020, Riverr simplifies how health data can be verified across organisations and governments while maintaining the privacy of individuals. Its tools include patient booking, health records and payment gateways, which can be white-labelled and embedded into existing systems.
Furthermore, its online trust management platform is able to verify all 10 data standards for health records recognised worldwide and bridges the interoperability between different systems.
Riverr is introducing its platform to sectors with a higher frequency of cross border people movements, starting with maritime. The industry is said to lack secure tools to digitally verify the health information of seafarers on a single ship with multiple nationalities, vaccination and medical records.
With Riverr, a seafarer’s trail of medical and vaccination records can be instantly validated by ports authorities and necessary industry stakeholders, without needing them to hold or store the data themselves, Riverr noted.
The fresh funds will enable Riverr to accelerate its go-to-market roadmap with healthcare providers across Singapore, the Philippines, India and Indonesia.
The firm said that leading health clinics and labs with the likes of Acumen Diagnostics, Eurofins Clinical Diagnostics, Healthway Medical Group, Minmed Group and MiRXES, are also relying on its solution to securely manage the end-to-end process of verifying health data and records, which has witnessed a spike in attempted cyberattacks during the pandemic.
Also read: How data is enhancing digital security solutions at airports post-COVID-19
Bangladesh-focused OTA GoZayaan acquires Pakistan travel-tech platform FindMyAdventure
South Asian travel-tech platform GoZayaan has expanded its operations in a new market by acquiring Pakistan travel-tech platform FindMyAdventure.
This arrangement will support the collective ability of FindMyAdventure and GoZayaan to improve the region’s travel and tourism infrastructure with rapid technology adoption and improved access to travel.
Founded in 2017 by CEO Ridwan Hafiz, GoZayaan aims to make travel more convenient by creating an end-to-end holistic online travel booking solution for flight, hotel, inter-city bus and even tour booking.
The startup recently closed an undisclosed round backed by existing investors, Nordstar Partners, Saurabh Gupta, Partner at DST Global, and Alexander Rittweger, Founder of PAYBACK.
FindMyAdventure is a travel-tech platform specialising in adventure tours for the local market in Pakistan.
Pakistan and Bangladesh consist of 5 per cent of the world’s population and are equal to almost 60 per cent of South East Asia’s population, opening a huge opportunity for growth and market penetration.
Go-Ventures backs Indonesia jobs platform KitaLulus’s seed round
Indonesian-based professional networking and jobs platform KitaLulus announced to have scored an undisclosed amount of seed funding led by Go-Ventures.
Angels including Phil Opamuratawongse (CEO and Co-Founder Shipper), JJ Chai (CEO and Co-Founder Rainforest), Aldi Haryopratomo (previous CEO GoPay), YC Ng (Partner AC Ventures) and Abhinay Peddisetty (CEO and Co-Founder BukuWarung), also co-invested in the round.
KitaLulus will utilise this funding to expand its product and engineering team, as well as enhance its position in the Indonesian market, in which it has covered six metropolitan areas thus far.
Founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneurs Stevien Jimmy and Wei-Chuan Chew, KitaLulus aims to address the lack of access to the right networks and unequal access to opportunities for workers, as well as the mismatch between candidates and employers.
Through KitaLulus’s mobile app, members can take online courses to prepare themselves for government and professional exams (upskill), join relevant communities according to their educational and professional background (network), as well as create user profiles, view available jobs, take a short screening test and make direct contact with their potential employer via Whatsapp (find jobs).
To date, the platform claims to process one million job applications per month and facilitate over 20 communities for discussions, polls and experience sharing.
KitaLulus expects to enjoy strong tailwinds driven by the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the expanding working-age population in the archipelago over the next five to ten years.
Also read: Workers are switching jobs now more than ever: Why upskilling matters most post-pandemic
Insurtech bolttech acquires AVA Insurance in Singapore
Singapore-headquartered insurtech startup bolttech announce to have completed the acquisition of AVA Insurance Brokers and AVA Insurance Agency, a Singapore-based insurance intermediary and specialist broker.
The acquisition follows bolttech’s completion of its US$247 million Series A last year, with strategic investors including Singapore’s EDBI.
The acquisition of AVA will accelerate the deployment of bolttech’s insurance exchange in Singapore, connecting insurers, distributors and customers, making it easier and more efficient to buy and sell insurance.
With a suite of digital and data-driven capabilities, bolttech works with insurers, telcos, retailers, banks, e-commerce and digital destinations to embed insurance into their customer journeys at the point of need.
Since its inception in 2020, bolttech boasts of having served customers in 30 markets across North America, Asia and Europe.
The change in ownership is said to have no impact on AVA’s service to its partners or customers, and the existing AVA team remains intact post-integration.
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Image Credit: Riverr, KitaLulus
The post Funding Roundup: EventX bags additional US$8M; Coinbase, Grab execs join Ethlas’s US$2M round appeared first on e27.