Daily Briefing: Foodtech VC Sirius Venture co-leads $3m funding in Hargol; TikTok parent firm on a hiring spree in Singapore

And StarHub services 'fully restored' after hours of disruption.

From DealStreetAsia:

Sirius Venture Capital, a Singapore-based food tech and logistics-focused venture capital firm, has co-anchored a $3m funding round in Hargol Foodtech, an Israel-based startup that produces alternative protein sources from grasshoppers.

Sirius was joined by other existing investors, including the Netherlands-based SLJ Investment Partners and Israel-based Trendlines Group in the latest round of investment. UK-based Agriline also participated.

The latest deal is Sirius Venture’s follow-on investment in Hargol, with the firm also investing in the startup’s pre-seed and seed rounds.

The funding will be used to expand Hargol’s production capacity, including a new production facility and the launch of a new product line.

From eFinancial Careers:

Singapore is likely to be one of the main overseas beneficiaries of ByteDance’s 2020 hiring spree, which is taking place despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chinese tech company behind the wildly successful short-form video app TikTok has 10,000 open positions. A vast majority of these are reportedly in China, but Singapore is one of the key foreign locations for hiring, with “more than 100” roles up for grabs.

There are already 85 Singapore jobs on ByteDance’s external careers site—about 11% of the 779 global vacancies that have been advertised externally.

ByteDance is now reportedly set to move into a larger office in One Raffles Quay, and Singapore is under consideration as a global headquarters for its TikTok brand as the firm attempts to shake off its Chinese image.

From Channel News Asia:

StarHub users across Singapore reported issues with their Internet service on Wednesday, with frustrated customers taking to social media to complain of an outage.

The disruption began at about 11am and services were "fully restored" as of 8.20pm, said the telco.

StarHub had said in an earlier statement that the disruption was due to a network issue with one of its Domain Name Servers that handles Internet traffic routing, adding that there was no evidence pointing to a cyber attack.

The disruption came at a time when many people were working from home, as part of enhanced COVID-19 circuit breaker measures. Most workplaces are closed, and schools have moved to full home-based learning.

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