For the Southeast Asian venture capital field, 2022 may be a particularly meaningful period.
From the scale of financing to the number of new unicorns, after a record-breaking 2021, Southeast Asia clearly bears more expectations from the outside world. However, with the continuous downturn in the global technology market since the second quarter, this year, Southeast Asia, which has been incorporated into the global technology startup landscape, has not been able to survive the cold winter sweeping the world alone. And at the same time, the more expectations it carries are bringing this land that has been “neglected” for too long to another unknown.
As we can see, this year, for a long period of time, the venture capital field in Southeast Asia has not shown the same kind of enthusiasm as last year. However, no matter whether it is a financing winter or a wave of layoffs, no matter whether it is a start-up company in the early stage or in the growth stage, in addition to the so-called accidental and inevitable, this unknowable development trend also includes some measurements that allow the outside world to better understand Southeast Asia. scale, as happened in 2021.
Next year, will the Southeast Asian venture capital field get better? Or, in the new year, what kind of mentality should we continue to examine this ever-changing emerging market? Here, the author hopes to briefly review the start-up companies that have left their footprints in the Southeast Asian venture capital field in the past year-they may not have the shining title of unicorn or become the protagonist of the local market, but Based on the “footnotes” on them, we can also add more “known” traces to this “unknown” Southeast Asia.
Well, without further ado, let’s get into this topic. (The following companies are ranked in no particular order, and are only sorted according to the time of financing within the year. You can directly click on the company name in the title to browse our financing report on the company)
PayMongo— $31 million, Series B
Founded in 2019, PayMongo is a digital payment service provider focusing on B2B business to help customers access digital payment methods more quickly. PayMongo says that while its clients include businesses of all sizes, the company primarily serves SMEs in the region. As background, in the case of the Philippines, MSMEs in the region account for about 99% of the total number of companies in the Philippines, and most of them usually use traditional non-digital payment methods (the Philippines had less than 10% is done by digital payments).
According to PayMongo, since the last round of financing, the scale of merchants served by the company has increased by 300%, and the monthly transaction volume has also increased by 4 times. To date, the company’s total funding has reached nearly $46 million.
Reason for selection:When the country’s first unicorn company was ushered in from the financial technology field last year, some media once said that the emergence of this Philippine unicorn will help “shift the focus of such financing in Southeast Asia to the Philippines—the A place that had been neglected for far too long.” Now, we are witnessing the arrival of this phenomenon.
Pitik— $14 million, Series A
Launched in mid-2021 by serial entrepreneurs Arief Witjaksono and Rymax Joehana, Pitik aims to provide farming support to poultry farmers in Indonesia. The company noted that it is building the largest community of poultry farmers in Indonesia, thereby providing end-to-end solutions for these farming groups, from technology to financing to supply chain.
It is understood that in Indonesia, poultry farms are facing serious problems in terms of breeding efficiency, operation and management, poultry harvesting and financial payment, and the poultry mortality rate may even be 5 to 8 times higher than the global average. As another manifestation of this situation, the average farm suffers up to 2 billion rupiah (approximately US$135,000) in lost income due to poor growth management of poultry. It is against this background that Pitik was established.
Reason for selection:In 2022, when venture capital institutions pay more attention to Web3, Metaverse, and AIGC, the emergence of a Southeast Asian company that takes agricultural and sideline products farming as its business entry point may appear a bit different. But from another point of view, this kind of “down-to-earth” enterprise also means a kind of announcement-telling people that technology and venture capital can play a role in both cutting-edge technology and inconspicuous fields in real life. play a role that cannot be ignored.
Jago— $2.2 million, Pre-A round
Jago was founded in 2020 by coffee chain Common Grounds co-founder Yoshua Tanu and his relative Christopher Oentojo, who was formerly vice president of product at Gojek. Unlike most coffee chain brands that operate in stores, Jago is a “mobile” coffee brand that operates on electric carts.
As an advantage of this kind of mobile coffee stand, Jago once said that in Indonesia, the cost of opening a new cafe (including rent and decoration) is about 800 million rupiah (about 374,000 yuan), and the location of the store There will also be certain restrictions. Based on its electric carts, the cost of opening such a store can drop to around $2,500 (approximately 18,000 RMB). In addition, in terms of operations, Jaro also emphasized that in addition to reducing water and electricity costs, this model can further reduce management costs for the company-the rider of the cart also plays the role of a coffee blender. Each rider You only need to sell a few cups a day to break even.
Reason for selection:You may think that Jago is just a coffee shop with the concept of “motorcycle cuisine”. But through Jago, it is not difficult to find that Indonesians love coffee-this may be an experience that is expected to be available all the time or anytime, anywhere. Of course, to a certain extent, Jago also reflects a unique local “urban management culture”. At least for Jago, there seems to be no concern about illegal operations in Indonesia.
Xurya— $11.5 million, Series A additional investment
Founded in 2018, Xurya’s main business direction is to deploy solar power generation facilities on the roofs of commercial/industrial buildings for enterprises through leasing mode to help them obtain additional power energy. In addition, Xurya will also provide equipment installation, operation and related maintenance services to these lessors.
According to Xurya, the company’s business scale has tripled in the past year. Currently, Xurya has operated solar power solutions on more than 60 buildings, involving manufacturing plants, warehouses, hotels, shopping malls and other building types, and provided installation services for more than 40 other buildings.
Reason for selection:While the new energy revolution in Southeast Asia/Indonesia represented by the electric vehicle industry is in full swing, there are gradually more trends in the field of solar energy. The start-up companies represented by Xurya not only reflect the incomparable advantages of these low-latitude tropical Southeast Asian countries in developing the solar energy industry, but more importantly, they also reflect the development of clean energy in the fourth largest country in the world. Energy, profound determination to deal with global climate change issues.
FastCo— S$4.7 million, Series A
FastCo operates two job search platforms, FastJobs and FastGig. Among them, FastJobs was launched in 2015 (FastCo was also established in this year), mainly targeting labor and service personnel groups in Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, and providing them with jobs in industries such as retail, catering, and logistics through its recruitment platform. FastGig was launched this year, focusing on job hunting for gig jobs. According to reports, the total number of registered users of FastCo has reached more than 4.4 million, and there are 500,000 monthly active users every month. In addition, FastCo also revealed that since its launch this year, FastGig has helped job seekers connect nearly 500,000 hours of work.
Reason for selection:FastCo is a good reflection of the characteristics of the working class in Southeast Asia, namely the large labor pool and the expanding gig economy. And it is worth mentioning that, based on FastCo, local start-ups that use EWA as their business entry point will also appear much “reasonable”.
Kristal— Over $10 million, Pre-B round
Founded in 2016, Kristal is a digital private wealth management platform that mainly provides clients with investment portfolio advice on investment products, private wealth, and private equity markets. Kristal said that in addition to Singapore, the platform is currently licensed to operate in Hong Kong and India, and is also in the process of applying for a license in the UAE.
According to reports, Kristal currently has more than 50,000 users from more than 20 countries and regions, and has handled more than US$1 billion in consulting and asset management needs. In addition, Kristal also further pointed out that as the background of this financing, as of August this year, the assets under management of the platform have tripled, and the platform users have also increased by more than 50% compared with the previous year.
Reason for selection:Not just Kristal, since this year, investment in Singapore’s wealth technology sector has obviously become more active. But these phenomena are not accidental. Behind these large-scale financing events is the result of the rapid development of the local wealth technology field in recent years. According to data, the scale of investment in this field has increased from US$23 million in 2017 to more than US$161 million (as of September this year). This significant growth is mainly due to the rapid growth of the local high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) and ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) groups. At this point, the ADDXs have clearly become the epitome of this special period in Singapore.
Base— $6 million, Series A
Founded in 2019, Base is a personal care and beauty brand that focuses on the DTC model, and mainly promotes personal care products based on the vegan concept (vegan). According to Base, its online and offline sales channels have covered the whole of Indonesia. Base pointed out that in Indonesia, the beauty industry has shown good trends during the epidemic compared with other industries. As a reflection, the company’s revenue has shown a 10-fold increase in the past year.
Reason for selection:Compared with the DTC model that has flourished in recent years, the vegan concept advocated by Base may be a major entry point for the outside world to quickly understand the Indonesian market—out of Indonesia’s population of over 270 million, 231 million people are muslim believer. Therefore, for Indonesia, while treating it as a country with a large population in Southeast Asia, please don’t forget that Indonesia is also the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, and this is exactly what Base is telling the outside world.
Teleport— $50 million, growth capital
Established in 2018, Teleport is the logistics department of Capital A (formerly known as AirAsia Group), mainly providing air logistics solutions to B2B customers of all sizes in Southeast Asia, including global freight forwarding, e-commerce air transfer, and next-day delivery of international parcels Three major business segments. At present, the company has launched business in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines, India, Singapore and China.
Reason for selection:Compared with Teleport itself, Capital A behind it may be more worthy of attention. As we have seen, earlier this year, the business was placed on the list of financially distressed companies, when it was one step away from bankruptcy. Subsequently, Capital A’s loan approval for a total of 500 million ringgit (approximately US$120 million) guaranteed by the local government last year also fell through. But just like other Southeast Asian startups in this difficult period this year, Capital A has “survived” by virtue of its own perseverance-such as Teleport, which we are seeing now with a $50 million capital injection. Therefore, in a sense, the story that Capital A is experiencing is somewhat equivalent to the current experience in the field of venture capital in Southeast Asia.
Paywatch— $9 million, Pre-A round
Founded in 2020, Paywatch is a salary management platform that focuses on the concept of Earned Wage Access (EWA/Earn as you earn, which can be roughly understood as flexible settlement of wages). According to reports, as its biggest feature, Paywatch claims that the company has reached a partnership with banking institutions (including Asiana), and the company is the only EWA solution provider in Malaysia that has reached this relationship with the local central bank.
Based on this cooperation, Paywatch stated that in addition to allowing migrant workers to obtain/manage their wages before payday through the EWA solution, the platform is also connected to the banking system, which can serve as a bridge to those who do not have access to banking services. Users directly provide banking services (such as microfinance for salary purposes).
Reason for selection:The significance of Paywatch is that in the face of a lack of bank accounts/services or as a local labor group that is often easily overlooked by traditional financial institutions, it is a good example of how a start-up company rooted in Southeast Asia should cut into this relatively unique area. different market areas. And at the same time, in 2022 when the economic situation is more turbulent, this flexible salary payment model can also help companies improve employee satisfaction and retention rates as much as possible on the premise of ensuring normal business operations, thereby promoting continuous productivity growth. Improve the overall healthy development of the company.
Quqo— $1 million, seed round
Founded in 2018, Quqo is a company dedicated to helping local offline stores (tap hoa/cửa hàng tạp hoá, mom-and-pop stores, including pharmacies and retail stores) B2B e-commerce platforms that connect consumers through digital means (B2B e-commerce platforms and SaaS software). According to reports, the company entered the Vietnamese market in 2020 (the company is also headquartered in Vietnam), and has now cooperated with more than 40 distributors to provide services for more than 5,000 offline stores in Ho Chi Minh City. Quqo pointed out that, so far this year, Quqo’s GMV has increased by 11 times.
Reason for selection:Through Quqo, a small Vietnamese start-up company, what we can see is the development status of Vietnam’s huge offline stores, which is the same as that shown by warungs and sari-sari in Indonesia and the Philippines. The scene: In Southeast Asia, although the digitalization process in recent years has brought great changes to the daily behavior patterns of local consumers, for the main pillar of the retail industry in these countries – small offline stores, this speed But it didn’t show much in them. Of course, since this year, start-up companies that help these small offline stores undergo digital transformation have also become more active. So from this point of view, even if Quqo is only a company in the seed round, what it shows is still a big enough picture.
