Southeast Asia
Generation Prime launches to make fertility services more accessible in Asia
Generation Prime, a startup that wants to make IVF and other fertility services more accessible to patients in Asia, is launching its first two clinics in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur.…
Indonesia’s Skorlife gets funding to give Indonesians power over their credit scores
Skorlife, the fintech that wants to give Indonesians more transparency into their credit scores, has raised $4 million in seed funding. The round was led by Hummingbird Ventures, with participation…
Singapore-based BandLab Technologies raises $25M at $425M valuation
Updated with more information from BandLab Technologies’ CEO. Correction also made to the valuation amount in headline. Singapore-based BandLab Technologies, the parent company of social music creation platform BandLab, has…
Insurtech bolttech gets $196M at $1.6B valuation from investors like MetLife
Embedded insurtech is still hot, as the $196 million in funding landed by bolttech proves. The company, which started in Singapore but now has operations around the world, said it…
Singapore’s Ora takes a vertically integrated approach to telehealth
According to the founder of Singapore-based telehealth platform Ora, 90% of its patients are less than 39 years old and have not been treated for their conditions offline. That puts…
Jenfi raises more funding for its ‘growth capital as a service’ platform
Jenfi, a “growth-capital-as-a-service” platform, can provide online businesses with revenue-based financing in as little as a day. The Singapore-based startup announced today it has raised $6.6 million in pre-Series B…
Backed by Sequoia Southeast Asia, SquareX protects web users with disposable browsers
Much of our computer time is spent in a web browser, where we check emails, create documents, transfer files, carry out online banking, shop or stream entertainment. This leaves us…
Praktis lands $20M to help Indonesian D2C brands handle their supply chains
Small to medium-sized enterprises contribute 60% of Indonesia’s gross domestic product. But companies in the D2C space still struggle to compete against bigger brands. Praktis wants to put them on…
Many employee engagement and retention tools were created with the assumption that workers spent most of their time at desks. But the majority of the global workforce is deskless, meaning…
eBay appoints new head of emerging markets, covering regions like Southeast Asia and India
eBay announced today that it has appointed Vidmay Naini as its general manager for global emerging markets, a role that covers the company’s growth in Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe,…
Featured Article
Muslims come into the frame in Southeast Asia’s fintech boom
Founded in 2014, Blossom Finance was first intended for Muslim entrepreneurs in the United States. The microfinancing platform connects investors with small businesses using mudarabah, a shariah-compliant profit-sharing agreement. But founder Matthew Joseph Martin soon realized that the startup, backed by investors like Boost VC and Tim Draper, was serving a relatively niche market in…
ZEBOX, an incubator for supply chain startups, launches its Asia hub in Singapore
ZEBOX, an international accelerator network founded by shipping conglomerate CMA CGM to introduce more tech innovation into the supply chain industry, announced today the launch of its APAC headquarters. Based…
Betterdata, a Singapore-based startup that uses programmable synthetic data to keep real data secure, announced today it has raised $1.55 million. The seed round, which it says was oversubscribed, was…
Edtech MindX wants to build ‘little Silicon Valleys’ across Vietnam
Founded in 2015, MindX was created to address the lack of coding in Vietnamese school curriculums. The startup’s goal is to create “small Silicon Valleys” across Vietnam, with educational centers…
Jakarta-based cloud kitchen startup Legit Group gets Series A to take over the rest of Indonesia
Legit Group, a cloud kitchen brand operator based in Jakarta, has its eyes on the rest of Indonesia after raising a $13.7 million Series A. The round was led by…
Temasek’s Sheares Healthcare backs Asia-focused mental health startup Thoughtfull
Thoughtfull, a digital mental health platform focused on Asia, has raised $4 million in a pre-Series A round led by Sheares Healthcare Group.
The funding landscape in Southeast Asia is still wintery, but one fintech managed to land a major round. Kredivo Holdings, which offers credit services to underbanked consumers in Indonesia and…
Indonesia’s Broom builds out automated asset-backed lending for used car dealers
The Indonesian used car market is on a course for growth fueled by a number of trends: the increasing digitization in used car sales; a larger variety of finance options; and…
Medigo’s app makes prescription deliveries available 24/7 in Vietnam
Over the last three years, Ho Chi Minh City-based Medigo has grown to 500,000 active users by providing 24/7 one-demand prescription delivery services. Now it’s planning to grow its telehealth…
E-commerce aggregator Una Brands lands $30M just five months after its Series B
Una Brands, a Singapore-based e-commerce aggregator, has raised $30 million in pre-Series C financing just five months after announcing its $30 million Series B funding that was raised in September of…
Singapore-based Transcelestial uses lasers to build affordable internet networks
Transcelestial is on a mission to make the internet more accessible by building a network of shoebox-sized devices that send lasers to one another, creating a fiber-like network. Today,…
Singapore-based neobank Aspire raises $100M from Lightspeed and Sequoia SEA
Aspire, the Singapore-based neobank that wants to become the financial operating system for SMEs, has raised an oversubscribed $100 million Series C round. Investors included Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital SEA,…
Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia backs cross-border payments startup Tazapay
The rise in open banking and payment services like India’s UPI and Singapore’s PayNow means lower costs for businesses, as well as new payment options for hundreds of millions of…
The solo GP behind iSeed SEA launches his second fund for Southeast Asia
If you follow Southeast Asia funding, you’re probably familiar with iSeed SEA. Some of the startups the fund has invested in since it launched in 2020 include Dat Bike, Skuad…
Sequoia Capital India backs Freightify’s vertical SaaS platform for freight forwarders
For freight forwarders, procuring pricing data for their customers usually involves going to multiple sources, and then consolidating information into spreadsheets. That’s time-consuming and complicated, especially since pricing data constantly…
MUFG, Japan’s largest bank, launches $100M fund for Indonesian startups
MUFG, Japan’s largest bank by market cap, announced today the launch of a $100 million fund focused on Indonesian startups. The fund, a collaboration between MUFG subsidiaries MUFG Innovation Partners,…
Southeast Asia farm-to-table startup Secai Marche raises Series A
Secai Marche, a farm-to-table fulfillment platform serving farmers in Japan and Southeast Asia, announced today it has raised 210 million Japanese yen (about $1.6 million USD) in Series A funding.…
Eazy Digital helps Southeast Asia’s small insurers digitize their operations
Founded by two insurance industry veterans, Eazy Digital wants to give small insurance companies in Southeast Asia the same advantage as their larger competitors. Its SaaS platform lets insurers digitize…
Good Meat approved to sell serum-free cultivated meat in Singapore
Good Meat announced today it has received regulatory approval from the Singapore Food Agency to use serum-free media for the production of its cultivated meat. The brand, which is the…
Locad lands Series A to expand its “logistics engine” across Southeast Asia and Australia
When Constantin Robertz was working at Zalora, he was involved in moving warehouses six times as the e-commerce company outgrew its logistics infrastructure. This inspired him to co-found Locad, a…
