Tag: Funding round

Manila, Philippines – Singapore-based fintech Volopay has successfully raised US$29m in its latest series A funding, which they aim to fuel their expansion into the Philippines. Said investment round was made possible by JAM Fund, the Winklevoss Capital Management, Rapyd Ventures, Accial Capital, fintech veteran and angel investor Jeffrey Cruttenden, CEO of Acorns. 

Other investors present include Access Ventures, Antler Global, and VentureSouq.

Volopay’s foray into the Philippine market aims to tackle two of the most pressing problems that SMEs and startups face: high Forex (FX) charges incurred for international payments and the lack of a uniform platform to access all spend data. 

Through the market expansion, Volopay provides companies with multi-currency wallets to hold money in PHP and any major currency – USD, SGD, EUR, GBP – and subsequently use it for payouts, eliminating exorbitant amounts of FX charges levied on international payments.

Rajith Shaji, co-founder and CEO at Volopay, said, “Volopay is an ambitious project. To build an alternative to Volopay, you would have to launch five different startups. We are building the control centre for modern companies for all their financial management needs. Our platform is as easy and seamless to use for a five-person company, as it is for a 500-person company. We want to take our vision of a unified spend management platform to all companies across the world after our initial markets of APAC and MENA.”

Through constructing their own infrastructure, Volopay will enable their global clients to eliminate the need for integration with multiple third-party financial services platforms, delivering a consistent and delightful customer experience regardless of the region they are operating in.

Meanwhile, Rajesh Raikwar, co-founder and CTO at Volopay, commented, “With APAC & MENA making a big wave on the global stage by churning out several unicorn level enterprises every year, accelerating their growth requires an efficient expense management tool that is simple yet scalable, something that Volopay has always aimed for.”

Part of Volopay’s Series A funds will be put towards their forthcoming market launches, building and innovating new technologies to complement their existing product, in addition to enhancing integrations with leading enterprise software and project management applications. The company is also hiring aggressively for key positions in each of its markets. 

Volopay aims to disrupt traditional business banking and aims to be adopted as the single and only solution growing, global businesses need for their cards, invoice automation, and bill payments along with the added bonus of a multi-currency business account without the hassle and limitations of a traditional bank.

Singapore – BuzzAR, the first woman-led metaverse startup in Southeast Asia, has recently raised US$3.8m in funding in a bid to create a more inclusive metaverse through family-friendly games, virtual reality (VR) and GameFi projects.

Said funding was led by venture ecosystem F50 Elevate in Texas, USA, regional venture capitals, angel investors including former Marina Bay Sands executive Ian Wilson, IP & Brand Protection expert, Peter Hlavnicka, former Google executive, among others.

BuzzAR’s ambition is to scale the metaverse business globally, after gaining accelerated growth in Southeast Asia, with A-list venues signing multi-year contracts, featuring the most exquisite venues to the global audience.

For Bell Beh, co-founder and CEO at BuzzAR, said that their startup is poised to be the first SEA metaverse startup that have fully scaled the enablers of the metaverse, including virtual reality and Avatar engine.

“In 2022, BuzzAR is launching the last 2 enablers, which are Web3 games and Social Networking (2022). The company is launching 3 GameFi projects, riding on BuzzAR’s HappyToon avatar engine, where 2 million avatars have been generated by users from 163 countries. There are investors in the pipeline to raise its first 8 figures funding to scale the vision of building an inclusive metaverse,” Beh stated.

Meanwhile, BuzzAR’s Co-Founder and CTO, Ken Lim, has published 20 games and amassed 20 million players without VC funding. Now, he joins BuzzAR with all the profitable business assets from Play Spirit Games, including The Cooking Game VR.

Singapore — RIMM Sustainability, a sustainability platform based in Singapore, has raised a total of US$3m in its pre-series A round led by venture capital fund BEENEXT. Notable key investors who have backed RIMM in this round are tech investor Mamoru Taniya, and the Aswani family of the conglomerate Tolaram Group and Atlas Asset Management. 

The platform disclosed it will utilize the fund in its quest to make sustainability accessible and actionable to SMEs and to develop and launch RIMM’s enhanced v2 platform, and release new features and expand the team. 

RIMM’s automated platform, launched in 2021, was built to address the needs of SMEs for simplified and affordable sustainability guidance and solutions. Since its v1 launch, RIMM has secured key clients and partnerships, as well as being awarded a USD$1m Green Finance grant by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and a grant from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. 

Hero Choudhary, managing partner, BEENEXT, commented, “RIMM has an excellent product and team. We invested in RIMM because we believe in its ability to transform the state of sustainability for SMEs. The sustainability space is dominated by opaque solutions and expensive consulting driven models, RIMM’s easy-to-use platform is perfectly poised to disrupt this trend and help all companies, whether big or small, make a real impact.”

The RIMM platform, created and simplified by experts, provides SMEs with a simple yet actionable way to start their sustainability journey. The user-friendly platform has intelligent tools that enable sustainability management, reporting and optimization. 

Ravi Chidambaram, CEO and co-founder, RIMM, said that they are delighted to have closed the pre-series A round, the pedigree of the participating investors were a testament to their team, their platform and their roadmap.

“This is a great step towards our goal to become the world’s largest sustainability platform and create an ecosystem where companies, citizens and stakeholders can engage to identify and solve the most pressing sustainability problems of today and tomorrow. The success of microfinance is based on banking the unbanked. At RIMM, our success as a sustainability platform will come from serving the unserved,” Chidambaram added.

Singapore – Wootag, a visual marketing SaaS company, will be using its latest series A funding worth around US$1.7m to enhance its AI capabilities of the in-video interactivity of its technology. Said funding was led by Cornerstone Venture Partners Fund (CSVP), with further backing from existing investors Wavemaker and SEEDS Capital.

In addition, the funding will also fuel Wootag’s expansion plan to scale in Asia-Pacific markets and empower the recent launch of their ‘Creative Automation’ product, where brands can showcase the product collections within videos.

Raj Sunder, CEO and founder at Wootag, said that the new investment will support them in providing marketers a platform to drive in-visual interactions, conversions and insights. He added that participation from new and existing investors shows confidence that Wootag is one of the top visual interactive players in Asia-Pacific.

“The visual marketing sector is growing exponentially year-on-year, and it is continually evolving with new developments occurring all the time. Digital marketers are exploring ways to adapt around this latest market development. To date, more than 1 billion viewers across the globe have watched and interacted with videos that have been Wootagged,” Sunder said.

The company launched Wootag Signal in 2021, empowering marketers to utilize real-time conditions, including weather conditions and football matches, as a trigger to engage with audiences and deliver marketing messages. In-video interactions can be generated at various points of the video without leaving the video ad, including purchases, sign-ups, participation in polls, receive promotions, view product catalogs, make bookings, view store locations, to name a few.

New York, USA – Cybersecurity company HUMAN, formerly known as White Ops, has announced a US$100m growth funding round led by WestCap with additional investment from NightDragon and other current investors to support the company in its next phase of growth.

For Tamer Hassan, co-founder and CEO of HUMAN, said funding will help expand their leadership position as a cybersecurity firm to build a more secure and more human internet.

“HUMAN plays to win through collective protection by verifying the humanity of 15 trillion interactions per week, enabling us to defeat attackers–changing the odds to the side of the good,” Hassan said.

Some of HUMAN’s efforts to solve enterprise-wide pain points include its product offerings MediaGuard for Ad Security that protects digital media and advertising from fraud and abuse, BotGuard for Applications that protects sites and applications from digital fraud and abuse, and BotGuard for Growth Marketing that protects digital marketing investments from fraud and abuse.

Some of the cybersecurity endeavors HUMAN had executed include taking down PARETO—a sophisticated CTV botnet—in cooperation with Roku and Google and disrupting botnet 3ve, bringing together the FBI, Google, Facebook and many others in the industry.

Meanwhile, Dave DeWalt, founder and managing director at NightDragon and vice chairman of the board of HUMAN, commented that since they have engaged with HUMAN over the past year, they have proven to the industry that they are best positioned to stop these cybersecurity threats by stopping attacks at the source.

“Through our experience in engaging with hundreds of enterprises and their cybersecurity teams, we know that automated attacks on applications and websites creating fraud and abuse is a critical point of risk to every enterprise,” DeWalt concluded.

Tokyo, Japan – Virtual reality (VR) startup HIKKY has announced that it has successfully raised US$57m or around ¥6.5b during its recently-concluded series A funding round. Part of the funding will be used in developing and operating a new open metaverse project using the company’s Vket Cloud, a browser-based VR engine.

The company will also use said funding to help expand their virtual reality services both domestically and abroad, as well as to strengthen their organizational foundation.

The Vket Cloud is used to create metaverse content that users can access with a link click, without a dedicated computer or mobile application. It also supports multiplayer mode, and users can enjoy communicating with others in the same space with voice or text chat.

According to Yasushi Funakoshi, CEO at HIKKY, they will be accelerating their metaverse business with the help of communication infrastructure, research institutes, and global networks of the Japanese mobile phone operator NTT DOCOMO, which is under the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Group.

“We will continue to provide NTT DOCOMO with XR services, technologies, and content production as per our strengths. We are extremely grateful to all the creators who have supported us, as well as the visitors and companies who have taken part in Vket events,” Funakoshi said.

HIKKY is known for hosting a VR-based event called Vket, where thousands of artists, many international corporate sponsors, and millions of users visit these events. For this year, Vket 2021 will run from 4 to 19 December this year.

Singapore – Consumer data and analytics startup Milieu has recently raised US$5m in funding, which will be used in bolstering product innovation and accelerate the development of new SaaS-oriented consumer insight offerings.

The funding was led by MassMutual Ventures (MMV) Southeast Asia, with participation from OSK Ventures International Berhad, Genesis Alternative Ventures, as well as several private investors.

The company had previously raised funding in 2019, and has since then expanded their commercial operations to cover six markets, including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. 

Funds raised from this current round will be allocated to expand Milieu’s reach beyond Southeast Asia.

Milieu has recently launched several new products, including an automated brand tracking solution, as well as a programmatic activation offering known as ‘Milieu Activate’, which enables advertisers to target mobile ads more effectively.

Gerald Ang, founder and CEO at Milieu, said, “As consumer preferences and behaviours evolve rapidly, we see a tremendous opportunity to revolutionize market research to better meet the needs of business leaders today. These funds will help us develop more exciting, innovative products and fuel our expansion. We have demonstrated sustained growth and this is a testament to the resilience in our business model.”

Statistics-wise, Milieu has been growing their mobile app user base from 500,000 users to more than two million in 2020, as well as increasing their customer base by 300% from 45 enterprise customers at the start of 2020 to 180 in October 2021.

“COVID-19 has accelerated the rise of the digital economy and we will continue on with our mission to use technology to empower organizations to connect with consumers at a deeper level. In time, we hope to inspire change globally by sparking meaningful conversations between brands and their customers around the world everyday,” Ang concluded.

Manila, Philippines – Mynt, the fintech company under telecommunications company Globe, has recently raised US$300m in funding, therefore valuing the company now at US$2b. Said funding has been led by investors Warburg Pincus, Insight Partners and Bow Wave.

Mynt has been at the forefront of the digital transformation among Filipinos as the ‘go-to’ payment and financial services solution to over 48 million users, nearly half of the national population. 

With the continued relevance of the app among its users, Mynt is on track to reach ₱3t of gross transaction value, 3 times more than last year’s record number. The company has also recorded peak daily app log-ins and daily active transactions of 19 million and 12 million, respectively.

For Martha Sazon, president and CEO of Mynt, this is further proof that their growth and achievements have not gone unnoticed. 

“We have been able to continuously expand by introducing game-changing innovations while improving our profitability profile. We are excited about our new partnership with Warburg, Insight, Itai Tsiddon and Amplo, as they each bring strategic value to our team in the pursuit of our vision towards finance for all,” Sazon stated.

Meanwhile, Ernest Cu, chairman of the board of Mynt and president and CEO of Globe, commented, “Their investment in Mynt and GCash further validates the strides the company has made in providing access to innovative financial services to more Filipinos and highlighting the Philippines to the global investor audience. Together with the continued support of Mynt’s existing shareholders, we are confident of furthering Mynt’s market leadership and creating positive and transformative disruption in the Philippine financial services sector.”

Mynt offers a full array of financial services, spanning credit, savings, insurance, loans, and investments. Assets Under Management (AUM) for its GSave product has grown to over ₱9b, from ₱5b in 2020, while its GInvest product has already captured 70% of the domestic market of total UITF accounts. GInsure, GCash‘s microinsurance offering launched in 2020, accounts for 1/3 of all new insurance policies issued in the Philippines.

In addition, GCash’s GCredit disburses over ₱1b worth of loans each month, with ₱15b worth having been disbursed as of June 2021, and boasts the best repayment rates locally with the lowest past-due and non-performing loans. Mynt also piloted GLoan, a cash loan product that allows qualified users to borrow as much as ₱25k, with repayment spread over 12 months.

Singapore – Global customer experience (CX) platform yellow.ai has announced the conclusion of its Series C funding, which has raised around US$78.15m, which brings the total funding raised so far by yellow.ai to US$102.15m.

The company aims to use the funding to strengthen its leadership in more than 50 countries including India, Southeast Asia, UK, Middle East, and Latin America, as well as establishing a strong presence in the U.S., adding 70 employees to its more than 500 global headcounts.

Said funding was led by WestBridge Capital along with Sapphire Ventures, and Salesforce Ventures, as well as renewed participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners.

For Raghu Ravinutala, CEO and co-founder at yellow.ai, the company has ‘broken out’ of the crowded virtual-assistant market with its automation-first with a human-assist model, to deliver a higher customer satisfaction and incremental revenue growth to it’s enterprise clients. 

“With our rapid client and revenue expansion in Singapore and across the world, we’re geared to becoming the global leader in the CX Automation space and are bullish on building our product, partnerships, teams, and community to truly democratize AI in the near future,” Ravintula stated.

With the fresh infusion of capital, yellow.ai will deepen investments towards global expansion, hiring top talent across regions, and applied research and development (R&D) in hyper-automation. Currently, the company’s AI-powered bots deliver automated CX on more than 35 chat and voice channels, across more than 100 languages, handling billion interactions every quarter. 

According to yellow.ai, one international financial services company was able to leverage its virtual assistants to generate US$100m in upsell revenue in three years.

As part of this large endeavor and to support the global war against COVID-19, yellow.ai also launched ‘yellowAI Cares’, a CSR initiative to empower organizations with COVID-19 help-related omnichannel chatbots. With no prerequisites or conditions attached, any NGO, hospital, support group or business in SEA can get an AI chatbot built by yellow.ai to drive crisis efforts.

yellow.ai will provide access to an omnichannel chatbot on any text platform for COVID-19 related use cases. These could support real-time services like providing medical information related to plasma donation, oxygen/hospital bed availability, vaccine registrations, scheduling appointments, collecting patient data, mental health assistance, handling insurance queries and more.

When designed and deployed effectively, chatbots may help prevent misinformation, aid in symptom detection, engender infection-limiting behaviors, encourage positive health impacting behaviors, while reducing psychological damage caused by fear and isolation.

Singapore – Customer engagement platform MoEngage has announced that it has successfully raised US$32.5m in funding, which will be vital for the company’s acceleration of their global growth strategy, particularly for the greater benefit of their proprietary platform.

Said funding was led by Multiples Alternate Asset Management, with participation from current investors Eight Roads Ventures, F-Prime Capital and Matrix Partners.

In addition to their visions of global growth, MoEngage aims as well to use the funding to further strengthen the product’s AI and predictive capabilities.

For Raviteja Dodda, co-founder and CEO of MoEngage, their recent funding speaks to the continuous growth of the company, noting that they have seen rapid global adoption of insights-led customer engagement. 

He also added that their customer base and recurring revenue has doubled in the last 12 months and our business growth in the U.S. and Europe has tripled in the first half of 2021 as compared to the second half of 2020, hence this funding will help their company to further accelerate global growth and product innovation.

“Our rapid growth can be attributed to investments in the areas of product innovation and customer success. Over the last two years we have made significant investments in Sherpa, our AI engine, to add a layer of intelligence. Today, our AI engine delivers actionable insights to determine users who have a propensity to churn, the best performing customer journey path, most preferred channel, ideal frequency, and the right time to communicate. We will continue our investments to extend our lead in this space,” Dodda said.

He added, “As the digital space becomes competitive, we envision brands shifting from a rule-based tool to an intelligent platform that empowers marketers and product owners with AI-driven insights and optimization.”

As part of this funding round, MoEngage also completed an Employee Stock Option Plan (ESOP) buyback of US$1.5m for its current and former employees to acknowledge their belief in the vision and contribution over the years. This is the first ESOP buyback by the company or its investors.