Daily Briefing: MPs call for firms to be more transparent on foreign hiring; e-games startup Potato Play raises $2.38m

And Intrepid Group secures undisclosed pre-series B funding.

From ChannelNewsAsia:

The government should do more to address job competition from foreigners amid mounting concerns among Singaporeans on the issue, Members of Parliament (MP) said during the debate on the President’s address.

This was a key theme on day one of the debate, with MPs touching on strengthening the "Singaporean core".

Suggestions raised in the House include having companies prioritise Singaporeans for jobs beyond considering them fairly, ensuring that firms grow their local workforce, as well as mandating that companies are transparent about their selection criteria and foreign workforce.

Under the Fair Consideration Framework introduced in August 2014, employers are required to advertise openings on a government job portal before submitting their EP applications. This does not apply to job positions with salaries of $20,000 and above.

Firms found to favour hiring foreigners over Singaporeans will be barred from applying for new work passes for a period of between 12 and 24 months, and will not be allowed to renew their existing work passes.

Read more here.

From e27:

Singapore-based mobile games publisher, Potato Play has raised $2.38m (US$1.75m) in a seed funding round led by Beenext, according to an announcement.

Play Ventures, which invested $679.94k (US$500k) in the gaming startup’s pre-seed in January, besides Atlas Ventures, also participated in the latest round.

The startup plans to use the funds to scale its sourcing and marketing operations, as well as to invest in technology assets.

“The hyper-casual trend has peaked. Hybrid-casual games that combine the simple mechanics of hyper-casuals with the deeper monetisation and long-term retention of hardcore games are the next big wave,” said Potato Play CEO Vincent Low.

Potato Play helps mobile games created by Asian developers to take their titles to global markets through its “unique” game-sourcing and evaluation process, and an embedded platform SDK, marketing and monetisation capabilities.

Read more here. 

From e27:

Singapore-based e-commerce services provider Intrepid Group has raised an undisclosed sum in pre-Series B financing, co-led by SGX-listed Thakral Corporation, and existing investor Sun SEA Capital.

This round comes less than 10 months after the company received the series A funding led by Kairous Capital.

Founded by co-founders of Lazada, Intrepid Group offers both enterprise-grade SaaS and end-to-end e-commerce management to brands and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to accelerate their growth on platforms such as Lazada and Shopee.

The firm claims its monthly revenue grew four times year-on-year with a rapid expansion of its geographical footprint across Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and more recently Malaysia.

In Q2 2020, Intrepid launched the latest version of its multi-channel management SaaS product ‘PowerSell’. The software is now used by close to 10,000 brands and SMEs with almost one million orders processed every week, it further claimed.

Read more here.