Philippines
Komunidad, a Philippines-based environmental intelligence platform, lands seed round
The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with geography that makes it vulnerable to typhoons, floods, volcanos, earthquakes and droughts. While working in IT, Felix…
Apps to reach record highs in Q3 of 36B downloads and $34B in consumer spending
A new forecast on the state of the app economy indicates the third quarter will see record-breaking revenues spent on apps and games. According to App Annie, consumers worldwide will…
Facebook revamps its business tool lineup following threats to its ad targeting business
Facebook today is announcing the launch of new products and features for business owners, following the threat to its ad targeting business driven by Apple’s new privacy features, which now…
Financial comparison super app Jeff raises $1.5M seed extension
Financial services, especially those for people who don’t have access to traditional bank accounts or lines of credit, are proliferating in Southeast Asia. Jeff App wants to give consumers a…
Spotify expands its radio DJ-like format, Music + Talk, to global creators
Last fall, Spotify introduced a new format that combined spoken word commentary with music, allowing creators to reproduce the radio-like experience of listening to a DJ or music journalist who…
Singapore is home to fewer than six million people, making it one of the smallest ASEAN countries, in terms of population. It is a young country as well — having…
E-commerce logistics startup Locad gets $4.9M seed round led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge
E-commerce is booming in Southeast Asia, but in many markets, the fragmented logistics industry is struggling to catch up. This means sellers run into roadblocks when shipping to buyers, especially…
PayMaya owner Voyager Innovation raises $167M from KKR, Tencent and IFC, to launch digital bank in the Philippines
Voyager Innovations, the Manila-based owner of PayMaya, one of the Philippines’ most popular payment and financial services apps, announced today it has raised $167 million in new funding to launch…
GrowSari, a B2B platform for small stores in the Philippines, adds investors like Temasek’s Pavilion Capital and Tencent
Sari-sari stores are neighborhood stores in the Philippines that usually sell daily necessities and sometimes serve as community hubs, too. Today GrowSari, a startup that is digitizing sari-sari stores with…
Android announces six new features, emphasizing safety and accessibility
Android shared information today about six features that will roll out this summer. Some of these are just quality of life upgrades, like starring text messages to easily find them…
Apple’s new encrypted browsing feature won’t be available in China, Saudi Arabia and more
Apple announced a handful of privacy-focused updates at its annual software developer conference on Monday. One called Private Relay particularly piques the interest of Chinese users living under the country’s…
Philippine e-commerce enabler Great Deals raises $30M Series B led by logistics firm Fast Group
Founded in 2014, Great Deals is an e-commerce enabler that helps brands like Abbot, L’Oréal and Unilever build their online retail operations in the Philippines. The startup announced today that…
Led by ex-Amazonians, Acquco raises $160M to buy and scale e-commerce businesses
There has been a flurry of investments in startups focused on acquiring third-party sellers on Amazon and helping them build their businesses. The latest is Acquco, which aims to stand…
Philippines ‘buy now, pay later’ startup Plentina raises $2.2M seed round
E-wallets are rapidly gaining popularity in the Philippines, overtaking credit cards, which have a penetration rate of less than 10%. Fintech startup Plentina is leveraging that trend with buy now,…
A grand jury has indicted a California resident accused of stealing Shopify customer data on over a hundred merchants, TechCrunch has learned. The indictment charges Tassilo Heinrich with aggravated identity…
Google starts trialing its FLoC cookie alternative in Chrome
Google today announced that it is rolling out Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC), a crucial part of its Privacy Sandbox project for Chrome, as a developer origin trial. FLoC is…
Jeff raises $1M to build alternative credit scoring and other fintech products for Southeast Asia
According to the World Bank, more than one billion people in South and East Asia lack access to a bank account. For many, this makes it difficult to secure loans…
Featured Article
Indonesian payments infra startup Xendit raises $64.6M in Accel-led Series B
Fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, digital transformation is happening all over the world. And Southeast Asia is no exception. Indonesia’s Xendit, a startup focused on building digital payments infrastructure for the region, has just raised $64.6 million in a Series B led by Silicon Valley heavyweight Accel. The funding brings the total amount raised by…
ErudiFi raises $5 million Series A to give students in Southeast Asia more education financing options
ErudiFi wants to help more students in Southeast Asia stay in school by giving them affordable financing options. Headquartered in Singapore, with operations in Indonesia and the Philippines, the startup…
How Roblox’s creator accelerator helps the gaming giant build new platform opportunities
As Roblox eyes what could be a historic debut on public markets in the coming months, investors who have valued the company at $29.5 billion are certainly eyeing the gaming…
Launched in the Philippines, social commerce startup Resellee wants to recreate the success of Pinduoduo, one of China’s fastest-growing e-commerce companies, in Southeast Asia. A major part of Resellee’s business…
‘The Real Facebook Oversight Board’ launches to counter Facebook’s ‘Oversight Board’
Today a group of academics, researchers and civil rights leaders go live on with ‘The Real Facebook Oversight Board’ which is designed to criticize and discuss the role of the…
Philippines payment processing startup PayMongo lands $12 million Series A led by Stripe
Stripe has led a $12 million Series A round in Manila-based online payment platform PayMongo, the startup announced today. PayMongo, which offers an online payments API for businesses in the…
Tonik raises $21 million to launch digital bank in the Philippines
A wave of digital banks, or neo-banks, has flourished in recent years in Western nations as people begin to flee megabanks. While most of these startups are yet to prove…
Maria Ressa, founder of Filipino independent media site Rappler, found guilty in cyber libel trial
Veteran journalist Maria Ressa, the founder of Filipino independent news site Rappler, was found guilty on Monday of cyber libel charges by a Manila court. She faces up to six…
Philippines-based home services platform GoodWork gets $1.6 million to expand in Southeast Asia
GoodWork, a Philippines-based booking platform for home services, has raised a $1.6 million seed round it will use to expand into new Southeast Asian markets. The funding was led by…
Instagram Lite, the two-year-old version of the Instagram app aimed at emerging markets, has quietly disappeared. The previously highly ranked app vanished from the Google Play charts on April 13…
Oriente raises $50 million to continue building its infrastructure for digital financial services
Oriente, a Hong Kong-based startup that develops tech infrastructure for digital credit and other online financial services, has raised $50 million for its ongoing Series B round. The funding was…
Igloo raises $8.2M to bring insurance to more people in Southeast Asia
Singapore-based Igloo, formerly known as Axinan, has raised $8.2 million as the insurance-tech startup looks to broaden its foothold in half a dozen Southeast Asian markets and Australia. InVent, a…
Filipino live streaming app Kumu raises $5 million Series A led by Openspace Ventures
Kumu Holdings, a live streaming startup based in the Philippines, announced today it has raised about $5 million in Series A funding, earmarked for new features and growing its operations.…
