Pepper, a friendly humanoid robot designed for use in stores, is now also a Buddhist monk presiding over funerals. This is in Japan, of course.

Source: Japan Times

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Indonesia’s Go-Jek started out with motorbikes, then added cars later. Photo credit: Go-Jek.

Chinese ecommerce company JD has invested in Indonesia’s Go-Jek, an Indonesian rival to Uber, the Beijing-based company confirmed to Tech in Asia today.

The undisclosed investment in Go-Jek was signed this week, but no other details are available, said a JD representative.

It comes three days after rumors of the funding were published by The Information.

CEO Nadiem Makarim. Photo credit: Go-Jek.

Go-Jek is said to be working on US$1.2 billion in funding – including from China’s Tencent – to add to the US$550 million the startup pocketed in August 2016 so that it can battle both Uber and Grab on two and four wheels. JD’s input this week is likely a part of that blockbuster deal.

Aside from transportation, Go-Jek has a variety of on-demand services – such as meals, groceries – plus a digital wallet.

Go-Jek shifts into top gear:

• March 2017: Go-Jek now lets users send cash to each other
• June 2017: Go-Jek is beating Uber and Grab, claims CEO Nadiem Makarim
• August 2017: Go-Jek acquires ticketing startup

Chinese tech giants turn to Southeast Asia:

• June 2017: Alibaba spends $1b to boost Lazada stake to 83%
• July 2017: Didi and Softbank to invest $2b in Grab
• August 2017: Alibaba leads $1.1b investment in Indonesia’s Tokopedia

This post China’s JD confirms Go-Jek funding appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Here’s our newest round-up of the featured startups on our site this week. If you have startup tips or story suggestions, feel free to email us. Enjoy this week’s list!

1. Snapask | Hong Kong (Startup Profile)

Snapask is like uber for homework, it provides instant on-demand academic support, made possible by a team of verified tutors. The startup currently serves over 350,000 students in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan with 20,000 tutors.

2. Circledoo | Indonesia (Startup Profile)

Peer-to-peer learning and social networking platform Circledoo aims to help users exchange skills, expertise or ideas through offline meet-ups. It’s platform is equipped with an online payment system, making it easier for users to monetize their talents and skills.

3. SumoStory | Singapore (Startup Profile)

SumoStory is an affordable public relations firm that serves startups. The startup offers two six-month packages at drastically lower prices. It keeps prices low by using a scraper to extract information about journalists. An algorithm then matches the startup to the right reporter, who then receives a pitch from SumoStory.

Startup lists

4 – 8: 5 rising startups in Japan

9 – 13: 5 rising startups in India – Aug 23, 2017

14 – 17: These startups will redefine business productivity for you

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• How this American founder went from Wall Street to China

• This rock star built a ‘Tinder for musicians’ and is bringing it to Asia

• SparkLabs unveils $50m early-stage fund for Korea and Southeast Asia

• Brief: AI company gets $5.8m injection to push Singapore’s Smart Nation bid

• Tech in Asia City Chapters(Seoul) – B2B Startups in Korea(Panel)

• Workplace chat app Eko gets $2m pre-series B investment to target new segments

• How this Japanese founder created smart LED shoes and is planning to scale it

• Billionaire founder returns to helm troubled IT giant after CEO quits

• Brief: JD said to back Go-Jek in latest $1b round

• Grab will pour $100m into Myanmar as it faces off with Uber

• Discuss: Founders are making a mistake by using financial metrics to gauge startup health

• Opinion: To understand Alibaba’s Tokopedia investment, look at Paytm

Like RSS? There’s always our Asia startups RSS feed!

This post 17 startups in Asia that caught our eye appeared first on Tech in Asia.

The eccentric billionaire Masayoshi Son presides over his US$88 billion Softbank empire. Here’s what you need to know about Japan’s visionary techie.

This post Video: Here’s what you need to know about Masayoshi Son, Japan’s most visionary techie appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Go-Jek.

JD invests in Go-Jek and eyes Thailand expansion, Grab earmarks Myanmar growth, and Amazon Prime Now is dethroned as Singapore’s top shopping app. Here’s some of the big news from Southeast Asia’s tech and startup ecosystem over the last seven days.

Indonesia

Pundi-Pundi payment QR code displayed at one of its merchants. Photo credit: Pundi-Pundi.

JD invests in Go-Jek. The Chinese ecommerce giant confirmed that it invested in the Indonesian ride-hailing company last week. Go-Jek is said to be working on a funding round worth about US$1.2 billion, with Tencent among the reported participants. (Tech in Asia)

Supreme Court throws out ride-hailing rules. The country’s highest court ruled that key parts of the recently introduced regulatory framework for ride-hailing services conflicted with existing laws concerning small businesses and the transportation sector. The ruling will come as a relief to the likes of Go-Jek, Grab, and Uber, which were faced with having to significantly revise their operations to achieve compliance. (Tech in Asia)

Alipay-style platform gets $4m funding for regional expansion. Jakarta-based mobile-payments and micro-loan startup Pundi-Pundi disclosed US$4 million in pre-series A funding from an unnamed Chinese tech company. It offers a scan-to-pay service similar to Alipay’s, as well as a micro-credit system that lets its users keep a balance of under US$40. (TechCrunch)

Singapore

Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan (L) and Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (R). Photo credit: Razer, Jim Mattis. Montage by Tech in Asia.

Wish overtakes Amazon Prime Now as top shopping app. Mobile app ranking data indicates that Prime Now has lost its crown as Singapore’s top shopping app, after leading the rankings since its launch in the city-state last month. Direct-from-manufacturer retailer Wish – itself rumored to be an Amazon acquisition target, valued at US$10 billion – is now in the top spot. (Tech in Asia)

Uber in partnership talks with Singapore’s biggest taxi company. The US ride-hailing giant is negotiating a tie-up with ComfortDelGro that could make over 15,000 taxis available through its app. A number of other local taxi companies have already teamed up with Grab, Uber’s main rival in the country. (Tech in Asia)

Prime minister and Razer CEO network over Twitter. After tweeting about Singapore’s need for a unified online payments system, the country’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong got a reply from Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan who said his company could roll out a solution within 18 months. Lee said that he would study any proposal seriously. (Tech in Asia)

Myanmar

A taxi driver in Yangon. Photo credit: rolf52 / 123RF.

Grab commits US$100 million to invest in its Myanmar business. The ride-hailing company said it would spend the money over the next three years to expand its services in the country beyond its largest city, Yangon. Grab’s arch-rival Uber launched its Myanmar operations in May. (Tech in Asia)

Thailand

JD delivery drones like this one could be flying in Bangkok skies sometime soon. Photo credit: JD.

JD plans joint venture with Thailand’s Central Group. The Chinese company is considering a US$500 million investment to create a new ecommerce and financial services-focused business in the kingdom. The move would represent one of JD’s biggest ventures outside of Indonesia, where it supposedly missed out on acquiring a stake in local ecommerce player Tokopedia. (Tech in Asia)

This post Here’s what you might’ve missed in Southeast Asian tech appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: gregorylee / 123RF.

Mobikon is a Singapore-based marketing and customer engagement platform for restaurants. The startup announced today that it has raised US$7 million in funding to scale up its business in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

Competitors: Punchh, Stampfeet, Squirrelsystem, Inquirly

How it compares to competitors: Mobikon provides restaurants with a single dashboard for a range of services, including customer engagement, marketing, analytic and business tools for ordering, reservations, feedback, and payment.

Traction

Mobikon claims to have served over 3,400 restaurants globally, including about 2,000 in India. The platform is currently available in six countries, and is looking to branch out to new markets such as the UK and Australia in the next 18 months.

Funding details

Amount raised: US$7 million
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investors: Sistema Asia Fund, C31 Ventures, Qualgro
Other investors: Jungle Ventures, SPRING Singapore
Investment type: Equity
Purpose: Scaling up in India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East
Total disclosed funding to date: US$12 million

This post Brief: Singapore’s Mobikon gets $7m funding for restaurant dashboard appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Pixabay.

“India is on the brink of a massive surge in consumer consumption, but not until the underlying payments infrastructure is securely in place,” said Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of Social Capital, while announcing a US$16 million funding round for fintech startup Ezetap.

Ezetap is among a bunch of rising startups that raised funding to make the most of the increasing consumer power in India. Their domains range from payments to healthcare and travel.

Ezetap

In India, most mom and pop stores and other small merchants used to accept only cash payments until a few years ago when smartphones became widely popular and helped startups innovate with mobile payments. Ezetap was one of the first startups to do that.

Launched in 2013, Ezetap came up with its own gadget that attaches to a smartphone and allows retailers and merchants to process credit card transactions on their phones. This helped a lot of ecommerce companies, restaurants, and service providers to take the card payment option to customers’ doorsteps. It also offers its payments software as a service, with which merchants can support a digital transaction via any device or interface, including biometric, SMS, or digital QR code.

Ezetap claims to process US$135 million in transactions monthly with more than 15 million consumers having transacted on its platform so far. It has announced a fresh funding round of US$16 million led by JS Capital Management, the investment firm of Jonathan Soros. Ezetap’s existing investors Social Capital and Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures upped their stakes by pitching in the latest round.

Ezetap is “like a combination of Stripe, AWS, and Android, built for the complexities of the Indian market,” Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of Social Capital, said while announcing fresh investment.

See: India’s PM launched a stripped-down app for mobile payments

Curefit

Cure.fit coaxes users to adopt healthy habits with food, exercise, and meditation. It has three products – eat.fit, cult.fit, and mind.fit – for holistic wellness. Cult.fit and mind.fit offer workouts and meditation sessions offline as well.

The company announced funding of US$25 million from existing investors Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, IDG Ventures, and UC-RNT fund.

Curefit was founded by India’s fashion ecommerce leader Myntra’s co-founder Mukesh Bansal and former Flipkart executive Ankit Nagori in 2016. The company has made three acquisitions so far: a1000yoga, Cult, and Tribe fitness centers.

See: A dark data startup you haven’t heard of is spilling secrets to Starbucks, McDonald’s

Alienadv

Travel startup Alienadv focuses on unusual adventures around the world – hiking Kilimanjaro on foot to a martial arts training camp in Thailand. It claims to have partnered with over 300 verified local operators in 110 destinations across 11 countries.

The startup, which launched its portal in mid 2016, recently announced raising an undisclosed amount to scale up and said that it was already profitable. The activities space is the last dinosaur standing in the travel market, according to Alienadv co-founder and CEO Ankit Jaini.

An avid traveller himself, Jaini feels there are three key issues in the adventure travel industry that Alienadv tackles:

• There is a lot of information asymmetry currently with multiple prices offered for the same activities across operators.
• Adventure travel involves putting yourself out there with the elements of nature. You need an assurance of safety.
• It’s difficult to trust local tour operator websites which ask you to wire US$2000 to their bank accounts halfway across the world to book.

See: Reflections of a travel startup that didn’t reach its final destination

Indiez

Indiez is a community platform to recruit tech talent for short-term projects. Founded by Nitesh Agrawal, Ishan Shrivastava, Archit Kejriwal, and Amrose Birani – batchmates at IIT Bombay – in 2016, Indiez helps companies put together a virtual team and ensures that work gets done by matching tasks to those with the right skill sets and experience. It has a network of around 300 freelancers across 30 countries.

“The clients will be signing a contract with Indiez and we will ensure that high-quality delivery happens. This fully managed experience is something which is missing on most of the [freelance] platforms. When delivery is our responsibility, we have to ensure that things happen as they were supposed to happen, and that quality and timeliness are maintained,” Agrawal tells Tech in Asia. The startup claims to have a thorough verification process for all the freelancers it onboards. It checks over 20 data points ranging from skills and proficiency to time zones, past record, and whether the person is a solo player or team member, Agrawal says.

The company recently announced its seed funding round of US$500,000 from Haresh Chawla, Partner at True North (India Value Fund), and an unnamed investor.

See: Looking for funding? Here are the 10 most active investors in India

Mobikon

Mobikon helps restaurants with marketing and customer engagement tools. Founded in 2012, the startup claims a client-base of 700 restaurant brands with 3,400 outlets. It gives them tech tools to capture data, get feedback, and perform analytics, to improve customer service, marketing, and therefore, revenue.

Now, Mobikon wants to expand further and hire teams in its existing markets such as India, United Arab Emirates, Philippines, and Singapore as well as new markets such as the United Kingdom and Australia. To aid the scaling up, the company has raised US$7 million in its series B round of funding. The investment was led by a three-member investor consortium – Sistema Asia Fund, C31 Ventures, and Qualgro – with participation from Mobikon’s existing investors, Jungle Ventures and Spring Singapore.

Mobikon has raised a total funding of US$12 million so far, and has made two acquisitions over the last two years: marketing tools trii.be and MassBlurb. It has also made a strategic investment in alcohol and coffee gifting portal Hipcask.

• Converted from Indian rupees at the rate of US$1 equals INR 63.90.

This post 5 rising startups in India – Aug 28, 2017 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Bluzelle co-founders Neeraj Murarka (L) and Pavel Bains. Photo credit: Bluzelle.

Blockchain technology is such a buzzword that it’s hard to know what to pay attention to these days. A big bank is just as likely to be working with the tech as a small startup – but what that means in each case is sometimes open to interpretation.

Part of the problem is that the technology has so many potential applications. “The blockchain is a protocol, just like the internet is a communication protocol,” says Pavel Bains, co-founder and CEO of Singapore-based startup Bluzelle.

Bluzelle builds middleware for the blockchain – applications and tools for enterprises. Its reasoning is, current legacy systems used by companies like financial institutions and insurance providers are inefficient and costly to maintain. Examples of what it could provide include real-time payment systems, identity management, and so on.

“All you care about as our customer is simply the web application – you don’t have to think about all the plumbing underneath it,” Bains tells Tech in Asia.

More recently, Bluzelle started work on a decentralized database network. The concept involves producers (like people who mine for Bitcoin by making their computers part of the transaction validation process) renting out their hardware resources to the network. Then, consumers (like software developers) can use the network for their applications.

For this to work, Bluzelle wants to use its own cryptocurrency. Consumers will pay with tokens to access the database services and producers will earn those tokens for lending their resources to it. In October, it’s planning a token sale of its Bluzelle tokens.

The startup hopes this network will enable applications and systems for developing countries. “Data needs to be managed in a secure, efficient, and low-cost way,” Bains says. “Bluzelle provides a key part of the infrastructure needed to power those applications.”

Fueling up

The startup just raised its series A worth US$1.5 million from venture capital firms Global Brain, LUN Partners Capital, and existing investor True Global Ventures. The funding will be used to develop the decentralized database infrastructure, cultivate a community around it, and boost its enterprise offerings.

The investors can help Bluzelle scale to new markets, Bains says. Global Brain’s expertise in fintech and gaming, and its Japan connections are a big asset for the startup, while LUN can help it market and sell to Chinese customers. True Global, meanwhile, has a network of financial companies in several cities worldwide.

The startup hopes to tackle Southeast Asia and Japan this year with its enterprise offering. For the database service, it will focus on Southeast Asia and the west coast of the US and Canada – Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco.

The funding gives Bluzelle breathing room for 18 to 24 months, Bains says. He declines to share details on the startup’s revenue and customers.

From Canada to Singapore

Bluzelle started out in Vancouver in 2014, founded by Bains and CTO Neeraj Murarka. The duo decided to move the company to Singapore in January 2016, after determining there would be more demand for its blockchain offering.

“We’re building blockchain applications for financial services, banks, and so on. And you have a higher concentration of those in one regional area,” says Bains, adding that it’s easier to reach potential clients. Plus, target markets like Indonesia and India are a stone’s throw away.

We’re painting lines on the road and putting traffic lights up. But the world is expecting full-on self-driving cars on it.

Bains, a finance and digital media professional with experience at Disney Interactive and a number of independent video game studios, met Murarka in Vancouver while trying to kickstart his fintech idea. Murarka had previously worked for companies like HP and Google.

“I had a passion around finance and technology, especially around developing countries,” Bains says. “It all came together as blockchain technology caught up, with applications like bitcoin, leading me to think about what we could do with financial inclusion.”

In Singapore, Bluzelle struck a partnership with KPMG, which helped open a line of communication with large corporates. “Us being a startup, we don’t know what it’s like working directly with these banks and financial institutions. And a lot of them don’t know how to manage us,” he explains. KPMG helped facilitate those interactions for the startup.

In June, Bluzelle was included in the World Economic Forum’s 30 Technology Pioneers for 2017, which awarded companies for their potential to “significantly impact business and society through new technologies.” The Forum has previously awarded companies like Airbnb, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Spotify, and Twitter. Bluzelle shared the 2017 honors with companies like Singaporean-Japanese satellite startup Astroscale and self-driving car company Nutonomy.

Bains is excited for Bluzelle’s future but is conscious of the hype around blockchain tech at the moment. “There’s just so much unknown about it,” he says. “But it ended up moving too fast. Guys like us came from this world – we know the roads are built, and we’re painting lines and putting traffic lights up. But the world is expecting full-on self-driving cars on it,” he adds.

This post They moved from Vancouver to Singapore to help build applications on the blockchain appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Girish Mathrubootham is one of India’s most respected startup founders. Photo credit: Freshworks.

US$7.5 million in funding within months of starting up. Big backers like Matrix, Sequoia, and Accel. Hundreds of customers. And yet an acquisition by Freshworks was the best option left for Zarget just a year after exploding on to the SaaS scene.

This could seem like a marriage made at birth at first sight. But Freshworks’ founder Girish Mathrubootham explains the hard business logic of it to Tech in Asia in a candid chat. It offers a glimpse into the challenges a young SaaS company can face even when it is well-funded and acquiring lots of customers. It also brings out the conundrum for investors pumping big money into early stage SaaS companies that appear to have great products.

First, the backstory.

Mathrubootham was the product head at pioneering SaaS company Zoho in Chennai when he interviewed a spunky engineering grad, fresh out of college – Arvind Parthiban. “I learned nothing in college,” Parthiban told his interviewer brashly because in his mind, Zoho was just a stopover until he found a job abroad. Mathrubootham laughed and gave him the job.

Parthiban learned the ropes of software development, marketing, and SaaS at Zoho, and was hooked. Just as Mathrubootham was, who quit to start Freshdesk, which recently rebranded as Freshworks. Parthiban knew he too would follow suit.

“I told Girish back then that I will start a company some time soon. That’s why I didn’t join Freshdesk right away,” Parthiban told me when we first spoke early last year.

When Parthiban and his friends from Zoho – Naveen Venkat and Santosh Kumar – started Zarget in 2015, Mathrubootham and some of his teammates at Freshdesk were the angels who gave them funds to get off the ground. By then, Freshdesk was the best-known face of Indian SaaS and was well-funded by Accel Partners, Tiger Global, CapitalG (earlier known as Google Capital), and Sequoia Capital. Mathrubootham’s vote of confidence was enough to pique the interest of top investors who were eager to know more about Zarget.

Parthiban was reluctant to talk to investors before he even had a product. “Not now, maybe later,” he recalled telling Mathrubootham. But within two months of its inception, in April 2015, Zarget signed term sheets with Accel Partners and Matrix Partners for seed funding of US$1.5 million. It just had a prototype of its marketing toolkit ready back then. A few months later, Sequoia too joined Accel and Matrix to pump another US$6 million into Zarget.

“We exited the startup but didn’t make any money in the deal as I didn’t want any conflict of interest whatsoever. We only received our initial investment, without covering the cost of legal fees and so on because we didn’t want to risk our reputation in any way,” Mathrubootham told Tech in Asia, in response to a question on whether an exit had been planned at an early stage of Zarget.

“The only reason we invested in Zarget was because we believed in the founders’ ability to build a great product,” he said. “And they did it. The fact that Zarget managed to get over 400 customers within eight months of launching its product is proof.”

See: Q&A: SaaS superstar Girish Mathrubootham on ambitions, fears, and secret strategies

Zarget co-founders Arvind Parthiban (center), Naveen Venkat (left), and Santhosh Kumar. Photo credit: Zarget.

Why the acquisition, then?

Zarget’s cloud-based marketing software suite combines a set of tools like A/B testing, heatmaps, funnel analysis, polls, and feedback loops to help businesses increase the chances of visitors becoming customers or taking some desired action – conversion rate optimization, in tech jargon.

Zarget is the ninth startup that Freshworks acquired for an undisclosed amount.

“From the day we launched Zarget, we have been seeing 200 percent growth month-on-month. Zarget has over 1,000 clients in 12 countries around the world,” Parthiban told me, while announcing Zarget’s funding round of US$6 million in November last year.

Here’s when it ran into its first big hurdle – the business challenge of retaining a customer, or the churn rate. This is one of the biggest problems for SaaS products.

There might not be a dearth of customers who sign up for trials and subscribe to the software, but a chunk of them leave after trying out the product for some time. The churn rate or the rate of attrition is the percentage of subscribers who discontinue their subscriptions within a time period.

Marketing software has a higher propensity for churn, especially at the lower end of the category where ticket sizes are smaller but customer acquisition costs are not, Mathrubootham said.

So while a martech company might be acquiring more and more customers by the front door, there could be many who were leaving by the back door after spending a few hundred dollars on the software for some time.

Even a five percent monthly churn rate can be detrimental for a business. “Having five percent monthly churn means if you started January with 100 customers, you’d have 54 customers left at the end of December,” analyst Lincoln Murphy explains.

SaaS companies depend on annual recurring revenue (ARR) to become sustainable. The high cost of acquiring customers, mostly small businesses, coupled with the churn rate made things untenable for Zarget, according to industry sources.

Zarget had a couple of options on the table. It could build another product that would complement its marketing suite as it had enough money in the bank to do that after raising a total of US$7.5 million from marquee investors. It had already built a good product, was acquiring customers, and its investors hadn’t lost faith in the team’s abilities.

The other option was to take the acquisition route.

“It made better sense to join Freshworks, which already has over 120,000 paying customers,” Mathrubootham explained.

“A growing number of our customers have been asking us to help them in their marketing initiatives. Today, our software powers customer engagement across every aspect of the customer journey, from customer acquisition to customer support. Acquiring Zarget will enable Freshworks to support customers with the pre-acquisition journey as well,” Mathrubootham said.

Currently, Freshworks has five products: Freshdesk, Freshservice, Freshsales, Freshcaller, and Freshteam – all designed to “work together to increase collaboration and help teams better connect and communicate with their customers and co-workers.”

See: Secrets to scaling up globally from Freshworks

The martech conundrum for VCs

In the first half of 2016 alone, there were more than 204 mergers and acquisitions worth a total of close to US$7 billion in the marketing software industry.

While there’s a lot of doom-and-gloom talk about the crowded marketing SaaS space, it is far from “martech apocalypse,” argues Scott Brinker, president and CTO of conversion optimization software-maker Ion Interactive.

“There are a significant number of martech companies that have taken large amounts of VC funding, their burn rate is much greater than their revenue, and the exponential growth curve that their VCs expected of them is flattening out,” he says. “Many of them are great companies, with amazing products and happy customers, continuing to grow. But not at the pace that supports the VC math of a 10x return.”

According to him, winter is not coming for martech, but only for martech VCs.

In the case of Zarget, “all institutional investors will get Freshworks shares in lieu of their Zarget shares,” Freshworks spokesperson Roopesh Balakrishna told Tech in Asia. The valuation at which this will be done has not been disclosed.

See: New trends in SaaS, and how Indian startups are grabbing those opportunities

9 acquisitions in 2 years

Freshworks did not disclose how much it has spent to acquire Zarget. The company has raised venture capital of US$94 million in total.

Zarget is the ninth startup that Freshworks acquired for an undisclosed amount. Its other acquisitions are:

• 1Click.io
• Frilp
• Konotor
• Framebench
• Airwoot
• Chatimity
• Pipemonk
• Joe Hukum

“The co-browsing feature that we acquired 1Click.io for has been integrated. The Airwoot machine learning tech has been integrated into Freshdesk and will be launched before the end of the year. Konotor has been relaunched as Hotline. The chat infrastructure from Chatimity and the NLP tech have been integrated into our chat product,” Balakrishna told Tech in Asia, citing those as examples of how Freshworks’ earlier acquisitions have turned out.

Zarget’s acquisition will not affect its customers, says Freshworks. “There will be no impact on their services and Freshworks will continue to support them.”

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Synergo CEO and co-founder Domenico Tukiman (L) and CTO and co-founder Rhapsody Budiono (R). Photo credit: Synergo.

Jakarta-based Synergo develops a cloud-based employee performance management system. It allows employees and employers to align their development goals, provides a structure for appraisals, and enables data analysis.

Competitors: Cornerstone OnDemand, SAP SuccessFactors, WorkDay, others

How it compares to the competition: These systems typically come at a high upfront cost, meaning they are out of reach for many smaller businesses in Asia. They tend to charge costly installation fees and can require long onboarding processes. Co-founder and CEO Domenico Tukiman tells Tech in Asia that Synergo’s solution aims to combine the best features from these competing providers while meeting the specific requirements of Asian companies. It is subscription-based, allowing smaller businesses to pay as they grow.

Traction

Synergo is currently onboarding several small and medium-sized businesses from multiple industries. Tukiman says the company is aiming to raise follow-on funding before the year ends, which it will use to hire more team members – including engineers – and further develop its educational features by partnering with universities and other startups.

Funding details

Amount raised: Undisclosed
Funding stage: Seed
Lead investor: East Ventures
Investment type: Equity
Purpose: Product development and marketing initiatives, such as free trials, free training sessions, discounts, etc
Total disclosed funding to date: None

This post Brief: Indonesian HR software startup gets seed funding to take on SAP and WorkDay appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Kata’s founding team. (L-R) Wahyu Wrehasnaya (CFO), Reynir Fauzan (CMO), Irzan Raditya (CEO), Ahmad Rizqi Meydiarso (CTO). Photo credit: Kata.ai.

Kata.ai, a Jakarta-based startup that develops Indonesian-language chatbots, has raised a US$3.5 million series A round led by the Taiwanese Trans-Pacific Technology Fund (TPTF).

In today’s release the firm says it’ll use the capital to launch in new markets, starting with Taiwan and other Southeast Asian countries. This makes Kata one of a few Indonesian startups to tackle international expansion early on. The startup in its current form is less than a year old, though its predecessor, a virtual assistant called Yesboss, started in 2015.

Investors in this round also included Korean-based Access Ventures, Indonesia-based Convergence Ventures, and MDI Ventures – the venture capital arm of Indonesian state-owned telco Telkom, as well as VPG Asia, Red Sails Investment, and angel investor Eddy Chan. TPTF principal Barry Lee has joined Kata’s board of directors.

Kata.ai uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to create digital personas that can engage in conversations, helping businesses to understand their customers better and automate the support process. As part of its international expansion, Kata will learn to handle more languages, including Mandarin Chinese.

One bot in the Indonesian market is Jemma, which Kata created in partnership with Unilever. Jemma, a female persona, befriends people through the messaging app Line and chats about things like fashion and relationships. She asks customers for data like their names and birthdays and in return sends out horoscopes and tips.

Another bot Kata created is called Veronika. Developed for Telkom’s mobile carrier subsidiary Telkomsel in partnership with global consulting firm Accenture, she helps users top up their prepaid phone credit, purchase data packages, or book appointments at the nearest Telkomsel service stores. Veronika launched a few days ago and is available through Line, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram.

WhatsApp will be a game changer

Chatbot technology is still in its infancy. An experiment by Microsoft in 2016 turned sour when chatbot Tay, which was designed to learn from the people it had conversations with, started picking up racial slurs.

There’s also criticism that texting with a bot is not a desirable user experience because it takes too long. Bots will be more useful once voice control for devices becomes mainstream, these critics say.

Kata co-founder and CEO Irzan Raditya has counter arguments. Voice control is still a few years away from taking root in Indonesia, he admits, because devices are pricey and local language recognition is not yet advanced enough. However, he tells Tech in Asia that Indonesians don’t seem to mind texting. “On average, 4.2 messaging apps are installed on any given smartphone in the archipelago, where 97 percent of people use messaging apps multiple times a day,” he says.

To avoid making the same mistake as Microsoft with Tay, the bots Kata designs are narrower in scope and converse along a variety of pre-determined topics. They nudge people towards taking certain actions, like completing a purchase or submitting information.

Despite current constraints, there’s little doubt chatbots will eventually reach a stage of maturity where they contribute to the efficiency of enterprises and make life easier for their users.

Kata is seeing signs of success. Its chatbot Jemma has befriended more than 1.4 million Line users, it says. One of the longest chat sessions lasted for two hours, while the average lasts around four minutes. Overall, since Kata launched eight months ago, the total number of people who have engaged with its chatbots has reached 6 million.

Some messaging apps already let developers build chatbots for their platforms – Line, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram are some of them. WhatsApp – currently the most popular app in 44 countries, including Indonesia – has yet to open itself up to this type of interaction. “This will be a game changer for bots,” Raditya says.

Kata currently builds custom bots for enterprise clients, but it’s soon launching a web-based software that lets developers use Kata’s tools to build their own bots. This service is currently being tested by some clients, including Accenture, which Kata also worked with on Veronika.

Other local startups experimenting with business models around chatbot technology are Bang Joni and Sale Stock. Bang Joni is a virtual concierge bot developed for Line. He helps customers purchase things like flight tickets online. Sale Stock is a fashion-focused ecommerce company that’s working on chatbot technology that lets users make purchases without leaving the messaging apps they already use daily.

This post With fresh funds, Indonesian chatbot platform starts international expansion appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Check out the latest data & analytics jobs on Tech in Asia. This list will feature exciting career opportunities that have recently opened up from companies on Tech in Asia Jobs.

Interested in any positions below? Click to find out more and apply away!

Data and Search Analytics at MetroResidences

MetroResidences is an online property management firm that styles chic fully furnished corporate apartments without the serviced apartment markup, making the business stay more affordable. The company values innovation and fresh ideas.

• Work Location: Singapore/Full-time
• Requirements: Have at least 4 – 7 years of experience in data and marketing analytics. Someone with experience in SEO, SEM and analytics
• Skills: SEO/SEM, data analysis
• Salary Range: SGD 4,000 – 6,500
• More jobs at MetroResidences

E-commerce Data Analyst at Cybersprout

Cybersprout is a web technology and solution provider that aims to help small and midsize companies to quickly implement IT and e-commerce solutions effectively and professionally. The company strives to bring the best out of their people through training and development.

• Work Location: Singapore/Full-time
• Requirements: At least 1 – 3 years of experience working in e-commerce. Must have good knowledge on Google Analytics, SQL and predictive analytics
• Skills: MySQL, Google Analytics, Email marketing
• Salary Range: SGD 4,000 – 5,000
• More jobs at Cybersprout

Senior Data Scientist at Sunday Ins

Sunday Ins aims to be a fully-integrated, end-to-end, technology-driven for non-life insurer in South East Asia. The company aims to engage consumers and help them live a safer and healthier lifestyle.

• Work Location: Thailand/Full-time
• Requirements: At least 4 year of experience in data and analytics. Must be able use machine learning, data mining and statistics to innovative models for predictive learning
• Skills: data analytics, data science, machine learning, SQL, Spark, Hadoop,
• Salary Range: THB 84,000 – 120,000
• More jobs at Sunday Ins

Senior Data Engineer at Tremor Video DSP

Tremor Video is a demand side platform that serves trading desks, agencies, and brand marketers who seek brand ad effectiveness and video buying efficiencies at scale. The company highlights collaborations, learning and rewards.

• Work Location: Singapore/Full-time
• Requirements: At least 3 years of experience in software development. Someone who has experience can in developing, deploying and maintaining multiple microservices.
• Skills: Java, Spring, AWS, SQL, Tableau
• Salary Range: SGD 6,000 – 8,000
• More jobs at Tremor Video DSP

Business Intelligence Analyst at GuavaPass

GuavaPass offers members access to a community of fitness studios and healthy-living experts, offering the latest advice on a multitude of wellness aspects as well as unlimited classes at premium fitness studios in your city.

• Work Location: Singapore/Internship
• Requirements: Has at least 1 – 3 years of experience in data analysis and statistical analysis. Ability to perform complex SQL queries.
• Skills: business intelligence, data analysis, business analysis, data science, data visualization, databases
• Salary Range: SGD 3,000 – 4,000
• More jobs at GuavaPass

Join our mailing list here to get the best jobs in Asia’s tech scene on a weekly basis.

This post 5 latest data & analytics jobs on Tech in Asia appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Gogovan.

Hong Kong now has its first startup unicorn. Gogovan, an Uber for deliveries that started up in 2013, has just hit billion-dollar status after this morning announcing a merger with a Chinese logistics company.

While Gogovan and its new buddy, 58 Suyun, did not reveal the terms of the deal, a Hong Kong newspaper reports the new entity is worth more than US$1 billion. Gogovan founder Steven Lam is the CEO of the new business.

Here’s a potted history of Gogovan’s road to unicorn-dom:

July 2013: Fresh hope

When Steven Lam started Gogovan, he was just 26 and out of UC Berkeley Haas School of Business three years prior.

Photo credit: Gogovan.

In an email pitch to Tech in Asia in late 2013, he described the startup as “a mobile application to help Hong Kong people to hire a cargo van for logistic purposes, including moving furniture, goods, and package delivery.”

It later expanded far beyond that remit – both in terms of services and their geographic reach.

The problem Lam wanted to solve was that hiring a van was a pain for consumers, businesses, and actual truck owners, dominated by slow and inefficient middlemen, kind of like taxi dispatch centers. The entrepreneur wanted to make the whole process simpler and quicker, just like how Uber was shaking up city transportation.

By the end of its first year, Gogovan had signed up 4,000 cargo vehicles and their drivers, and was seeing transaction volume double every two weeks

August 2014: Revving up with series A funding

Gogovan soon found itself a formidable rival in the form of Lalamove – or Easyvan, as it was known at the time.

Both startups had pan-Asian ambitions, so the continent was big enough for the both of them.

At this point, Gogovan raised US$6.5 million in its first major investment. It helped with the team’s recent expansion to Singapore, plus its planned move into Taipei, Melbourne, and Sydney.

Now Gogovan had 18,000 vehicles in its network.

November 2014: China challenge

Lam and his team pocketed yet more cash just a few months later – this time US$10 million for its series B.

Photo credit: Gogovan.

The money, from failing Chinese social network Renren, helped the Hong Kongers make a move into the wild, wild east – mainland China.

January 2015: Uber rolls in

In a surprise move, Uber charged into Gogovan’s territory like…

With the launch of UberCargo exclusive to Hong Kong, it seemed Uber wanted a slice of the Lalamove and Gogovan action. Uber’s service, however, used smaller vans, so it was initially unclear if it was aimed at people moving apartments, or intended for the much larger market in business deliveries and logistics that the local startups were tackling.

June 2015: Serious momentum

By now, two years after starting up, Gogovan counted 70,000 vans in its army marauding across six territories: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and mainland China.

Undaunted by Uber’s arrival, the startup nabbed “series B-plus” funding worth US$10 million.

May 2016: Alibaba mamma mia!

The team got a huge vote of confidence when Jack Ma’s Alibaba was among the investors in its series C funding.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma. Photo credit: Alibaba.

The amount was not disclosed, but was described as “a decent amount for future business expansion.”

May 2016: Recognition

That same month, Lam was included on Forbes‘ Under 30 hit-list of young entrepreneurs.

“I always tell my team: I’m the bottleneck of the company, because the company is growing much faster than I am,” he said onstage at a Forbes event.

August 2016: Uber waves the white flag

A year and a half after launching UberCargo – which had soon changed its name to UberVan – the American startup shut down its little experiment so as to focus on cars.

January 2017: Rival hits new heights

Alongside Gogovan’s rise, Lalamove was also shifting into top gear. It secured US$30 million with the objective of more than doubling its market presence during the course of 2017.

It aims to be in 100 cities across the continent by the end of the year.

“There are lots of huge cities in China. Up to 150 cities are big enough to sustain the model,” said Lalamove’s Blake Larson.

August 29, 2017: Crouching tiger, hidden unicorn

Aaaaaaaand that brings us back to today. With the merger, Gogovan gets a powerful new mainland China ally at a time when its arch-rival has more cash than ever for expansion. Its merger-mate, 58 Suyun, is the freight unit spun off from Craigslist-style site 58 Daojia.

Gogovan now has 180,000 registered drivers with their vehicles on its network.

This post What you need to know about Hong Kong’s first unicorn appeared first on Tech in Asia.

American rock band Green Day famously beseeched the world to only ‘wake [them] up when September ends’, but you might want to hold off on following them into autumnal hibernation if you’re in any way involved with the startup industry.

That’s right, Tech in Asia Tokyo is back with a bang and slated to take place from September 27-28 next month. You’ll want to be fully alert for all the informative talks and workshops we’ve got lined up, which will include sessions by these four exciting speakers.

Anne Marie Droste, Director, Entrepreneur First

Anne Marie will be speaking on Day 1 of the Main Stage. Hear from her as she shares how Southeast Asian startups have jumpstarted the region’s digital economy and inspired billions of VC funding.

Photo credit: SGInnovate

Why should you attend their session?
Entrepreneur First was founded in 2011 to enable top technical talent to create the startup of their dreams. Over 100 startups worth US$400 million have since benefited from their expert guidance, including Magic Pony Technology, Tractable and StackHut.

About the speaker
Following an eclectic educational career spanning half the globe, Anne Marie uprooted herself from her native Netherlands and moved to Singapore, where she is now based. She has consistently worked in roles that aim to build strategic partnerships between Europe and Asia, including as a founding board member of the Netherlands-Asia Honours Summer School.

In her current position at Entrepreneur First, Anne Marie anchors the company’s first international office in Singapore.

Masanori Hashimoto, Founder and CEO, Nulab

Join Masanori on Day 2 of the Main Stage as he discusses Nulab’s journey thus far and unveils his next move.

Why should you attend their session?
Under Masanori’s august leadership, Nulab has evolved from a humble three-employee outfit to a leading purveyor of collaborative software worldwide. Their diagramming tool Cacoo.com reached a landmark 2 million users in 2016.

About the speaker
Masanori is one of the trailblazers in the Japanese startup scene, having founded Nulab way back in 2004 before widespread governmental support was available.

Still based out of his hometown in Fukuoka (where Nulab is also headquartered), Masanori is passionate about fostering the city’s local startup community, as well as that of Japan as a whole. He frequently organises seminars and networking events for other startups at Nulab’s headquarters.

Hiro Maeda, Managing Partner, Beenext

You can meet Hiro at one of the Startup Strategy Workshops on Day 1, where he will be speaking about conducting user interviews as a part of developing and improving products.

From the left: Beenext managing partners Teruhide Sato, and Hiro Maeda Photo credit: VentureBeat

Why should you attend their session?
BEENEXT is an early stage venture capital firm with investment interests in India, Japan, the US and Southeast Asia. Some of their notable investments include Tokopedia, Instacart, Qiita and Everlane.

About the speaker
Since graduating from Bucknell University in 2009, Hiro has been at the epicentre of Japan’s burgeoning startup scene. He co-launched Japan’s first startup accelerator, Open Network Lab, in 2010 before joining eCommerce firm BEENOS Inc. as the head of their investment division. He was also named to Forbes’s 30 under 30 Asia list in 2016.

Natalie Fleming, Co-Founder, Fintech Association of Japan

Natalie will be leading a panel discussing how Japanese fintech firms fit into the international finance world on Day 2 of the Main Stage.

Natalie Fleming speaking at Tech in Asia Tokyo 2016

Why should you attend their session?
The Fintech Association of Japan (FAJ) was established in 2014 by local and international ecosystem players, and now boasts nearly 200 members. Its main activities include sponsoring networking events and researching emerging fintech trends in Japan.

About the speaker
Bilingual in English and Japanese, Natalie has leveraged her unique capabilities to launch a successful career in financial services. After stints at Citibank and Rakuten Bank, she moved on to become director of banking and regulatory relations at mass-payout firm Payoneer. Natalie is also a founding board member of the FAJ.

Don’t snooze and lose!

Got your attention now? Then set your alarms for 27-28 September, where all of the above speakers will be present at Tech in Asia Tokyo 2017! From just US$147 for startups before discounts, soak in one of the year’s premier tech conferences along with 2000 other attendees. Pitch to investors, gain valuable insights from talks, and network with your peers – the world (ok… event) is your oyster.

If you book anytime from now till 8 September, 2359hrs (GMT +9), you’ll also be able to shave 10 percent off cover prices with the promo code “tiatokyo10”. Be sure to wake up before September ends to take advantage of this deal!

This post Up your game with insights from these 4 speakers at TIA Tokyo 2017 appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Wobb.

Wobb is a Malaysia-based jobs app that offers users a peek into what they will likely experience in their new workplace. The company aims to help job seekers discover companies with great culture before sending in their applications.

Competitors: Refersjob.my, Jobstreet, Scoot, Jobi, TribeHired, Startup Jobs Asia, Wowintro, MauKerja

How it compares to competitors: Unlike other job portals that only give limited information about the companies that are hiring, Wobb says job hunters on its app are able to view office interior and even get a closer look at their future coworkers.

Traction 

Wobb currently has a database of around 60,000 job seekers. The company also claims to have generated more than US$469,000 in revenue since its 2016 inception. 

Funding details

Amount raised: US$398,300
Lead investor: Cradle Fund, a Malaysian government agency investing in startups
Other investors: Crowdfunding participants on PitchIN
Investment type: Equity
Purpose: For scaling up Wobb’s business in Malaysia and further product development
Total disclosed funding to date: US$398,300

Converted from Malaysian Ringgit. Rate: US$1 = MYR 4.27.

This post Brief: Malaysian job search app raises six-figure sum via crowdfunding appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Appier’s team in Taipei. Photo credit: Appier.

Artificial intelligence startup Appier today revealed that it has secured US$33 million in series C funding from investors such as SoftBank, Line, and Singapore’s EDBI.

The Taipei-based company said in a statement that it will use the investment to hire new team members – particularly in engineering and research and development – as it looks to grow its global presence, which already covers Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, and several Southeast Asian countries. Some of the capital will also go toward expanding its product portfolio and enhancing its functionality.

We’ve already developed a solution in the marketing space, and one in the data intelligence space, and now we plan to enlarge.

Appier offers a number of products built around technology which tracks an individual user’s activity across all of the web-connected devices they own – be it smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer – enabling advertisers to better target their campaigns.

The startup’s Programmatic Platform uses behavioral and device ownership information gathered by its AI technology to make decisions on which audiences to target at particular times, and on what type of device. Its second product, Aixon, uses artificial intelligence to analyze app and website user data from Appier’s database to derive marketing insights.

Appier co-founder and CEO Chih-Han Yu tells Tech in Asia that the startup currently serves over 1,000 companies around the world. Audi, Tokopedia, Estee Lauder, Minute Maid, Taj, and HK Express are a few of the widely recognised brand names that Appier has worked with.

“Our goal is to provide various enterprise solutions, for a range of business challenges,” says Yu. “We’ve already developed a solution in the marketing space, and one in the data intelligence space, and now we plan to enlarge.”

Appier co-founder and CEO Chih-Han Yu. Photo credit: Appier.

The money raised in its series C round will be a big help in this regard. But aside from the funding, the investors themselves also bring expertise and market clout to the table. “For this round, our investors include some of the most visionary internet companies in the world,” says Yu. “Also, they are Asia-focused and going global – just like us.” Yu adds that Appier and its series C backers could collaborate on product development and find other synergies between their respective offerings, such as technology integration.

Big name backers

This latest funding comes after a “series B2” injection back in December last year, when it received US$19.5 million from investors including Pavilion Capital – part of Singapore state fund Temasek – WI Harper Group, FirstFloor Capital, and Qualgro.

UOB Venture Management and MediaTek Ventures are among Appier’s previous backers. The startup’s US$6 million series A round was led by Sequoia Capital, making it the first Taiwanese investment for the US VC giant.

Clearly, Appier has had its fair share of corporate investors – and today’s series C round adds significantly to that list. Alongside investment firms EDBI and AMTD Group, Line, Naver, and SoftBank have also pumped capital into the startup on this occasion.

Photo credit: moovstock / 123RF.

The participation of SoftBank is particularly noteworthy. The Japanese company’s CEO Masayoshi Son – who predicts that the Technological Singularity will occur within the next 30 years – has highlighted artificial intelligence as a key growth area, and it is one of the main themes of SoftBank’s biblically proportioned US$93 billion Vision Fund (though Yu confirms the Appier investment comes from SoftBank itself).

Since the start of this year, SoftBank or its affiliates have invested in a host of artificial intelligence startups, including digital avatar creator Oben, online lender Kabbage, cybersecurity business Cybereason, and robot intelligence company Brain.

Hold the line

Japanese messaging app Line is another notable investor in Appier’s series C. Artificial intelligence is likewise high on its agenda. Line CEO Takeshi Idezawa earlier this year described artificial intelligence as “our most important project at Line,” representing “a paradigm shift as dramatic as the rise of the smartphone a decade ago.”

Additionally the company – which has been hemorrhaging users in several of its key markets – has been eyeing increased M&A activity following its IPO last year. Idezawa said in an interview last year that part of the US$1.3 billion Line raised from its New York float would go toward acquisitions that could take it beyond messaging and mobile gaming into areas such as food delivery, job searches, and travel bookings. Idezawa said that Line was “open-minded about the size and geography” of potential takeover targets, so long as they are “the right fit” in business model and talent terms.

This post SoftBank and Line further AI ambitions by joining this startup’s $33m series C appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Want to emulate Jack Ma? This would be a great place to start.

This post Video: One thing Jack Ma says before every speech appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Paying for food with a messaging app in China. Photo credit: McDonalds.

The news (extracted from Today):

• Ninety percent of Singaporeans surveyed by online payments giant PayPal say they prefer to use cash as their primary mode of payment, with only a small percentage using online payments regularly.
• The preference for cash in Singapore was followed in popularity by other traditional payment methods such as bank transfers or internet banking at 74 percent, with 61 percent saying they prefer credit cards.
• Despite these preferences, only 43 percent use cash regularly, citing problems such as having insufficient cash on hand and long queues at ATMs.

Why it matters:

• The Singaporean government has emphasized going cashless as one of the key pillars of its “Smart Nation” initiative, but the PayPal study suggests the country has some catching up to do.
• The study surveyed consumers in China, where only 25 percent use cash regularly. On average across Asia, 57 percent of consumers use cash regularly.
• In his National Day Rally speech earlier this month, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that when visitors from China find that they have to use cash in the city-state, “they ask: How can Singapore be so backward?”

This post Brief: Singapore lags behind in online payments appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: Pixabay.

Hong Kong-based hedge funds Ward Ferry Management and Karst Peak Capital have checked into Indian online budget hotel chain Treebo, leading a series C funding of US$34 million. Existing investors SAIF Partners, Matrix Partners India, and Bertelsmann India Investments, who had earlier invested US$23 million across two rounds, participated in the series C round as well.

Treebo’s biggest rival is Oyo Rooms, which has raised around US$200 million so far, mainly from Japanese giant SoftBank. The two startups differ in their primary business model.

Treebo launched in 2015 with a full inventory-based model as a counter to Oyo’s partial inventory approach.

Oyo, which started earlier in 2012, mainly takes over the marketing of some rooms in client hotels with its branding – that is, it’s a partial inventory. The idea is to assure customers of a standardized experience, but this can be hard to ensure on the ground with a wide variety of budget hotels in multiple cities. The line between Oyo and non-Oyo rooms in these hotels can get blurred, too.

Treebo launched in 2015 with a full inventory-based model. It takes over the running of its partner hotels, which operate like franchises. This gives it more control over the quality of customer experience, while compromising on the speed of scaling up as compared to the aggregator model of Oyo.

More recently, Oyo too has moved towards an inventory-based model, and launched its own chain of fully managed hotels. But it reported a whopping US$77.5 million loss in the last financial year, 25 times larger than its losses during the previous year, according to regulatory filings.

And earlier this year, India’s largest homestay portal Stayzilla shut down amid mounting losses and lack of follow-up funding.

See: Why Stayzilla backed by Matrix and Nexus shut down

Treebo, which has 300 franchises compared to Oyo’s engagement with thousands of hotels across the country, posted a modest loss of US$4 million in the financial year ending March 2016, and hopes to move towards profitability with its new investors from Hong Kong who are experienced in the hospitality space. “We are glad that our approach of building a sustainable business resonated with them,” says Sidharth Gupta, Treebo’s co-founder.

A twist in the tale is that Ward Ferry is also an investor in India’s leading travel portal MakeMyTrip, which has been aggressively building up its budget hotel offers. It has also been reported to be in talks with FabHotels, another competitor to Oyo and Treebo, for an investment and partnership. This could widen the scope for airline and hotel booking packages on the portal.

This post Treebo raises $34m from HK funds, fights SoftBank-backed Oyo in budget hotels appeared first on Tech in Asia.

Photo credit: think4photop / 123RF Stock Photo.

Grab announced today that it has received funding as part of a strategic investment by Toyota Tsusho, a general trading company within Japanese automotive giant Toyota.

The investment – made through Toyota Tsusho’s Next Technology Fund – makes the Japanese company the latest confirmed participant in Grab’s current funding round.

As earlier reported by Tech in Asia, lead investors Didi Chuxing and SoftBank are together contributing up to US$2 billion to the round, which Grab is aiming to close at US$2.5 billion – a figure that would make it Southeast Asia’s largest ever venture financing.

The amount of Toyota Tsusho’s investment was not disclosed.

Grab simultaneously announced a partnership deal with Toyota Motor, Toyota Financial Services Corporation, and Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance. Grab will share data on driving patterns from 100 Toyota cars in its fleet with its partner companies. Toyota will perform analyses on this data and use this to recommend its connected car services – including user-based insurance, car financing, and predictive maintenance – to Grab drivers.

Toyota rival Honda made a strategic investment in Grab back in December last year. That deal also featured a partnership arrangement, under which the companies agreed to collaborate on driver education programs around issues such as motorbike safety, traffic congestion, and environmental protection.

This post Toyota funds Grab appeared first on Tech in Asia.