Hi, everyone. It’s Sara from Jakarta.
In April 2021, I went to a small island in West Sumatra for a short vacation. At the time, this place had limited internet access, and my smartphone was rendered useless. I found out that the island’s residents would travel to other islands whenever they needed stable connectivity. Despite the limited connection, it was interesting to see the way digital adoption was taking place in their lives. The people of this island were shopping on e-commerce sites and using their relatives’ addresses on nearby islands as delivery points.
We at KrASIA have been at the forefront as we observed tech companies of all scales encourage digital inclusion. Forty million new internet users in Southeast Asia came online for the first time in 2021, despite challenges like connectivity issues in rural areas. My colleague, Khamila, wrote about this and more in a review of the events that shaped Southeast Asia’s tech ecosystem in 2021.
As always, if you have an interesting story or lead, want to know more about startups in our network, or just want to say hello, you can drop us a message at [email protected]. If you are a startup and want us to feature your fundraising news in this newsletter, please fill out this form.
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The Post Up
Startups Currently Raising Funds
Country: Singapore
Target: USD 500,000, pre-Series A
DDIY is a subscription service that uses technology to enlist and deploy personnel to deliver a full suite of in-home and lifestyle services, such as dry cleaning, plant care, wifi setup, pet care, and yoga classes. The startup partners with real estate companies to service residential units.
Country: Indonesia
Target: SGD 1 million (USD 732,000), Seed
Jaramba makes public transport more accessible. Its app provides information on the nearest transportation options, best routes, and payment options to make the journey more efficient.
Country: Singapore
Target: USD 1 million, Seed
A reward-based crowdfunding platform that focuses on helping impact businesses locate investors. Launched in 2020, the team will use the seed round to continue to expand its reach in Southeast Asia.
Country: Singapore
Target: USD 250,000, Seed
Big Red Awesome Dodo is building a marketing-as-a-service platform (smart ads) that helps entrepreneurs and busy marketers simplify, automate, and improve the ROI of their digital advertising campaigns through AI and automation.
Nothing But Net
Recent Startup Wins
- GridMarkets and Vika were named winners of the Alibaba Cloud x KrASIA Global Startup Accelerator Online Hong Kong Demo Day after pitching with eight other startups to a panel of judges from Alibaba Cloud, Ondine Capital, and Gobi Partners.
- Plano, an eye health startup based in Singapore, announced that its planoApp is now available on the Huawei Watch GT 3.
- Anymind collaborated with a Singaporean social media influencer to launch a fashion brand called NNCHANTED using its D2C services.
Pick & Roll
Interesting Drops From the Week
- NFTs draw a resounding no from die hard gamers with Ubisoft’s Quartz NFT store selling a mere 15 items. [via Forbes]
- The pushback to gaming NFTs continues with CSC Game World canceling its plans to have NFT elements in its upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 release. The studio killed the idea just 30 minutes after tweeting about doubling down on its plans. [via The Verge]
- A great writeup about the fall from grace for the startup Klout, written by the former CEO, about how quickly things can go south for a business. [via Taking Punches]
- Pitchbook released a report showing VC-backed IPOs are performing weaker than the S&P 500. With Grab performing poorly in the weeks after its debut and a range of startups in Southeast Asia eyeing IPOs, the conclusion must be raising some eyebrows. [via Pitchbook]