The AI-based startup makes sure competitive intelligence is not just for established players.

Data accessibility for e-commerce in Southeast Asia, including Singapore, is described as fragmented and limited compared to bigger markets such as China, Europe and the US. Whilst established e-commerce giants already have their own category level data with their brand partners or market research firms, they are reluctant to share this information with smaller players for a competitive advantage.

Addressing this, Singapore-based startup Digital Commerce Intelligence (DCI) built a solution that collects and consolidates commercial data from various sources and processes them to fit customers’ needs.

“Brands were operating almost in the blind with limited access to competitive intelligence. This is actually a common issue in e-commerce, mainly due to the fact that many major e-commerce platforms do not share category level or competition data with their brand partners. Even if they did, brands have to consolidate multiple datasets from each e-commerce channel in order to get a holistic view,” Kyriakos Zannikos, founder of DCI, told Singapore Business Review.

Their clients often require two types of services. One is category level competitive intelligence data which show their market size and potential, helping identify areas of improvement. The other service they offer consolidation and analysis of the e-commerce data they already have, turning them into insights and actionable recommendations.

“We usually marry both, blending and enriching our customers data with our own, whilst helping them visualise and extract meaningful insights from it,” Zannikos shared.

Their platform is offered on an annual subscription basis with varying prices as clients may customise their solution.

“Most of our global competitors have designed their products and services to fit markets like the US, Europe or China, therefore missing certain nuances and requirements that are unique in this part of the world. We have built a customised solution for Southeast Asia and we are offering it at a more competitive price point,” Zannikos added.

DCI raised $1m in a seed funding last April, led by Europe-based venture capital firm Velocity Partners. The AI-based startup will soon launch their first service dedicated to shoppers. 

It built a communication platform made solely for streamlining the merchant-supplier process.

Retail businesses, especially ones that constantly need to keep their shelves and inventories stocked, such as the food and beverages (F&B) industry, are constantly in touch with their suppliers to keep their business afloat. But as simple as it may seem, the process takes time and is also prone to multiple human errors from order to delivery. Tinvio, a communication and commerce startup, has digitised this experience by setting up a platform where merchants can interact and transact with all their suppliers in one interface.

Ajay Gopal, founder and CEO of Tinvio, shared that most restaurant owners take a look around their kitchens, estimate how much they will order and scroll through their Whatsapp in search for different suppliers. The sales representatives of those suppliers will then transfer the details via email into the head offices, before heading into the suppliers’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) system or warehouse management system.

“So it's a process that has multiple human touch points and multiple points for mistakes, and it's completely not traceable. So if tomorrow someone says, ‘Oh, it was a mistake with the order’ and wants to try to figure out whose fault it is, it sort of becomes a goose hunt where you need to look through WhatsApp conversations and figure out what went wrong,” Ajay added.

Tinvio offers a chat-to-order app that replaces this. It also includes a smart feature where a merchant can review past transactions in a data-structured manner so that merchants do not always need to type in their orders. Users will also be able to track their orders and automate their invoices. They can also make a customised report of their orders through the app based on these transactions.

“If you want to place an order, have that clear black-and-white transaction history, report an issue very clearly instead of using a text, let's use a very structured format so that there's always visibility, accountability and transparency,” Ajay said.

He also added that they’re taking a lot of opportunities from SMEs that are looking to digitise their supply chains, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in. Most of Tinvio’s clients are in F&B, medical clinics, retail stops and snack shops. Tinvio’s app is free to use unless their clients request a special, custom workflow.

“We want to convince people to use [social communication platforms] for their lifestyle conversations and to use Tinvio for all of the order experience. That's what we think about as the biggest challenge in terms of convincing people to join in our view,” Ajay stated. “However, we have the benefit of building and designing products that solve a very specific set of use cases for our customers.”

In April, Tinvio bagged $7.65m (US$5.5m) led by Sequoia Capital’s Surge accelerator programme. This brings its total funding amount to $9.04m (US$6.5m) since they started in July 2019. The fresh funds will be used to add more features in their app, addressing more merchant-supplier pain points, such as manual reconstruction of invoices, the use of cash and cheques, as well as the manual search for new suppliers. 

The omnichannel retailer displays real pricing of a product, taking away other costs.

Once a certain product has been released, it typically goes through a very long process where it needs to reach 10 to 20 stages from the manufacturers and distributors before reaching a consumer. With all of this going on, the consumer still has to shoulder the distribution and rental costs incurred, which is said to make up two-thirds of the prices shown in stores.

Disrupting the traditional retail model, retail startup IUIGA Technologies offers products with price tags displaying the real price of a product based on quality by breaking down the ratios of production costs and markup, even as they directly deal with manufacturers.

“Many believe in the notion of What you pay, is what you get. However, as we at IUIGA researched deeper and connected the dots of the original design manufacturer (ODM) business model, we'd noticed a massive gap. More specifically, access to quality products and fairer prices remains limited. It is about nurturing consumers to be more informed buyers," Jaslyn Chan, chief growth officer at IUIGA, told Singapore Business Review.

They also have a 30-day return policy and assure that there are additional return costs or shipping fees included.

Currently, the startup has nine physical stores alongside its online platform. It began with a purely online model but was burdened with pain points such as exchanges and return policies, which was costly for consumers in returning bulky items.

From this, they established a physical store, claiming that customers can still engage exchange products conveniently as with its online counterpart.

“Though it might seem counter-intuitive for a digital-business to open physical retail stores as its next step, it made much sense in reality,” Chan added. “Consumers now get to experience the best of both worlds—the convenience of online shopping and the ability to sample and examine products before coming to a purchasing decision. In my view, the future of retail might be more of a convergence of the online and brick-and-mortar experience, rather than an outright battle between them.”

Last May, IUIGA bagged $10m in a series A funding led by Konimex Technologies, the technology investment arm of Indonesian conglomerate Konimex Group. IUIGA intends to double down its business operations in Southeast Asian markets, with Indonesia as the key focus for 2020.

Edward Setiawan Joesoef, director at Konimex Technologies, says that the startup has a robust business model with its hybrid online-offline integration. “We are very optimistic about the company because we can easily scale the company internationally with a relatively low apple-to-apple competition because of the high entry barrier to replicate the model,” he added. 

Right-Hand Cybersecurity does not only monitor cyber risks, but also educates the users.

Cybersecurity remains a huge problem in Singapore and its circuit breaker period even made it worse as flocks of vulnerable users are exposed to online threats. But despite using various programmes and services to block out these threats, lack of awareness on how to and why they should prevent such problems still pose a threat. To bridge this gap, cybersecurity platform Right-Hand has come up with a solution that not only detects cyber risks but also educates online users.

Right-Hand Cybersecurity provides a SaaS platform to help organisations monitor, measure and mitigate human-induced cyber risks that could lead to a data breach. Theo Nasser, CEO & co-founder of Right-Hand, told Singapore Business Review that some of their customers stated that traditional e-learning videos and on-site training were not effectively influencing positive cybersecurity behavioral change across their workforce because it doesn’t scale across an enterprise; employees wouldn’t take such videos seriously, and it was difficult to measure if the said methods are effective.

“The major pain point we address is one that has plagued the cybersecurity industry for a long time; that people are responsible for roughly 90% of data breaches. Cyber attackers are so sophisticated that traditional perimeter defense layers are simply not enough. Strengthening and leveraging the human (employee) layer of defense has become critical for organisations to bolster themselves against malicious actors.”

The startup offers three products that are each sold as an annual software subscription. One is its ‘Compliance Readiness’ product, which automates the creation and delivery of employee assessments based on a customer’s set of corporate policies (i.e., Data Privacy policy) to determine if a user is compliant or not.

The second product is ‘Phishing Readiness’, which sends simulated and customised spear-phishing emails to identify users who are most susceptible to email attacks, in order to condition them to be more vigilant.

Lastly, their ‘Training Readiness’ product sends customised, gamified and three-minute training modules to educate users on the cyber essentials. “Our Training Readiness product can also be integrated with Phishing Readiness and Compliance Readiness to deliver training modules the moment a user engages phishing email or fails a compliance assessment,” Nasser explained.

Prices are based on the number of email users within the organisation. Nasser claims that their cybersecurity subscriptions are cheaper than an organisation’s annual mailbox subscription to G Suite or Office 365.

In March, Right-Hand raised about $1.42m (US$1m) in a seed funding round led by Atlas Ventures. Nasser stated that they will use it to build two new products in 2020, incorporating machine learning and natural language processing into their existing platform.

Commenting on the funding round, Atlas Ventures’ investment director Maxim Shkvaruk said that they believe Right-Hand’s products will be in high demand in more developed countries, especially in the US and Europe.

“Most companies focus on technical solutions like threat detection systems and firewalls. and neglect to invest in employee cybersecurity awareness. We felt that Right-Hand was in a solid position to fill this large, overlooked gap in the market. The company also showed early signs of product-market fit, closing an enterprise client within months of going live,” Shkvaruk stated. 

Bunker operators are often burdened with changes in the ships’ fuel needs.

Maritime solutions startup Claritecs has created a platform for the bunkering segment, which it believes is underserved when it comes to digitalisation. Refueling ships can be more complicated than it sounds, but the sector typically relies on Excel worksheets to plan the fuel loading and delivery jobs of their fleet of bunker tankers.

Bunker operators are often burdened with the frequent changes in the ships’ arrival times, and the complexities of the types and quantities of fuel needed for each vessel. This is according to Claritecs’ co-founders, CEO Wong Hong Lee, CMO Marianne Choo, and CPO Russell Gomes.

Claritecs’ core service is ‘BunkerMaestro’, a software-as-a-service platform which taps on real-time data sets to monitor movements of ocean-going ships planning to call at their port for fuel or cargo operations. “In layman’s terms, BunkerMaestro is the scheduling solution of fuel deliveries to ships, very much like using Grab and Deliveroo are for food deliveries,” the co-founders said in a joint statement.

The platform uses experience-based algorithms and predictive analytics to help bunker tanker operators auto-schedule their delivery jobs, by matching predicted vessel arrival times, bunker tanker availability, fuel type, and other relevant data. The system will also suggest an alternative bunker tanker when ships are faced with scheduling conflicts.

Any changes in the vessel arrival time can be done through the platform, which sends notifications to each of the parties involved. Bunker operators may oversee their fleet of bunker tankers through the BunkerMaestro’s web portal and generate management reports, with analysis of pumping rates, amount of fuel delivered and other pertinent information.

“Our BunkerMaestro solution has been proven to increase work efficiency by up to 75%, as it reduces the need for manual, repetitive and time-consuming scheduling. With more scheduling transparency, bunker operators may reduce buffer time in between jobs to accommodate potential schedule changes, and take on more jobs,” the co-founders said.

In June 2019, Claritecs secured $850,000 in a pre-series A funding round led by INNOPORT, the corporate venture capital unit of the ship owner and ship management company Bernhard Schulte. It was also attended by a private angel investor from the Singapore maritime industry.

“Their flagship solution BunkerMaestro couldn’t have been launched at a better time.
There has been an increase in the number of fuel types and blends used by ships to comply with international regulations on sulphur content limits in fuels, thereby increasing the complexities of scheduling a bunker tanker fleet to deliver a variety of fuels to meet changing demand,” said Haymon Sinapius, investment manager at INNOPORT. 

The platform reduces the costs of investing by up to 20 times.

Digital asset management platform DEXTF hopes to revolutionise the industry by reducing the cost of opening a hedge fund, and paving the way for the rise of non-traditional asset classes such as wine, art, and IP rights.

“Today if you are a new asset manager, you need at least $100-200m in assets under management in order to be viable. There are entire asset classes that are just the preserve of either ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWI) or institution investors because they require high nominal investment amounts,” said co-founder and President Mario Aquino.

DEXTF’s platform halves the traditional custody, compliance, and back-office costs, and can even reduce expenditure by as much as 20 times. It leverages distributed ledger technology (DLT), which tokenizes both traditional and non-traditional assets.

In turn, these assets can be made available in smaller amounts rather than the high-cost investments available traditionally.

Using the platform is easy, and akin to simply filling out a Google sheet: a fund manager can easily create a hedge fund and specify the assets which the fund will carry. On the other side, an investor can sign up for a fund with just a few clicks and track where their investments are going.

This means that investors using DEXTF’s platform no longer need to transfer ownership of their assets to a third party when entering the hedge fund scene, thus allowing for more accountability and transparency, and making investments safer.

“The asset management industry still largely relies on legacy infrastructure that was built over half a century ago and is highly inefficient, with multiple layers of intermediaries, agents, and in some cases archaic systems that still rely on paper and faxes,” noted Aquino.

Aquino hopes that one day, through DEXTF, anyone can easily become an asset manager once they’ve secured the necessary permits to do so, without worrying about funding.

In November, the company raised $639,110 (US$460,000) in its seed round, led by LuneX Ventures and SGInnovate. The company plans to use the funding for the development and launch of their alpha product.

“Digital assets remain an area of sustained interest for institutional investors and asset managers, yet many see the current investment infrastructure as inadequate. We see a lot of potential in the development of this proprietary infrastructure and protocol by DEXTF, which could provide a solution to a significant industry problem with great market opportunities,” said Pang Heng Soon, head of venture building at SGInnovate. 

Airalo takes advantage of telcos' growing interest in 'embedded SIMs'.

Southeast Asian travellers often complain about long queues on SIM cards stall at airports and know that it can’t always be reliable, particent markets. These still need to be bought outside or shipped, and pocket Wi-Fi devices do not always provide a stable alternative connection.

In response to these issues, Airalo has partnered with a number of telcos in order to provide ‘embedded SIMs’ (eSIMs). Instead of inserting a SIM chip for every telco provider, they can embed a rewritable chip inside a mobile device.

Buyers can freely choose a data plan and download the telco’s information into the eSIM chip, and the platform allows 15 eSIMs to be stored on an eSIM-enabled iOS phone.

“This enables a massive advantage for the traveller as they can keep updating the SIM to connect to local networks using the networks’ own connectivity plans. As we are partnering up with local telcos globally, the eSIMs we sell on our site will hold the same price as what you would pay from the operator’s website or from the stalls in airports,” explained Bahadir Ozdemir, CEO and co-founder of Airalo.

He also noted that eSIMs have less impact on the environment. A physical SIM card has a CO2 footprint of 21 grams, which includes the energy and water consumed in production. Meanwhile, the envelope and paper insert that accompanies each card adds another 10-15 grams of CO2.

Another opportunity up-for-grabs for Airalo is the fact that providers are also looking to include eSIMs in their product roster, Ozdemir added. Airalo obtained 146 eSIMs across the globe to its roster within the first six months of operation.

Airalo secured $2.31m (US$1.65m) in a seed funding round led by VC firm Sequoia last October.

“Airalo has a strong ‘why-now’—a new standard for e-sims that has just started getting mainstream adoption. We believe Airalo has a shot at using the new software e-sim platform to build an asset-light global telecom alternative," said Abheek Anand, managing director at Sequoia Capital (India) Singapore. 

Its platform will shorten the month-long process to a day.

Buying film and TV content rights is a long and painful process for producers and distributors, involving a lot of time and money from face-to-face meetings and contract negotiations. It poses a higher risk of losing money as some distributors do not pay what they owe to content creators.

To solve this pain point, Riaz Mehta, the co-founder and CEO of AllRites, created a platform that can condense a month-long process into a day. A content creator or distributor can list their film/TV shows on the platform by uploading a poster, trailer, an episode along with synopsis and rights availability information.

The buyer can simply go to the website and search for content by genre, language, etc. and check out trailers, screeners and rights availability information. The deal can be negotiated with the seller through the platform and a contract is electronically signed.

AllRites will then take a commission of up to 10% of the deal from the seller.

Traditionally, a film or TV series distributor approaches a potential buyer either via an office meeting or at a trade fair. The distributor usually brings a physical catalogue of 100 film and TV shows and picks a few of them to pitch to the buyer during a half hour or one hour meeting.

Once the buyer expresses interest, the distributor provides additional materials via email and may discuss the availability of the desired rights and determine the price. Then a contract is issued, which goes back and forth between the parties until it is finally signed. Once all of that is done, the distributor will then send materials through a third-party service such as Aspera.

All of this takes a minimum of four weeks and as long as six to 12 months.

In January 2020, AllRites secured $1.54m (US$1.1m) from a seed funding round led by Australian VC fund Artesian. Mehta admitted that this was a struggle for them as there were not a lot of VCs who are familiar with the media industry and that they were hesitant to invest in the startup as it didn’t fall under their investment thesis.

“We believe that the content industry is on the cusp of major disruption,” said Aertesian’s managing partner Tim Heasley and director Melody Zhang. “AllRites is targeting the disruption of long-standing inefficiencies and a lack of transparency in the large and growing industry of video content production and distribution.” 

Photo credit: AllRites official Facebook page

It gives satellites longer lifetimes that conventional thrusters cannot handle.

Banking on the broadening spacetech industry worldwide, spacetech startup Aliena is manufacturing cost-effective technologies that enable satellites to manoeuvre smoothly in space whilst bearing in mind the various constraints, including limited power for the satellites and the real-estate set aside for propulsion systems.

“Aliena’s product line therefore includes engines that are small in form-factor, easily integrable onboard satellites, operate at unprecedented low powers, and are extremely fuel-efficient,” said Mark Lim, CEO and co-founder of Aliena.

Aliena is also taking advantage of the growing accessibility of satellites to companies and commercial entities as a means to acquire and transmit data for terrestrial-based applications, where one of the main interests is in deployment of smaller commercial satellites in space at lower altitudes.

The startup’s systems give satellites longer lifetimes, compared to conventional thrusters that are prone to failure after extended periods of operation. Lim explained that satellites are usually short-lived as the effects of the atmospheric drag are not compensated for.

Lim shared that his startup is a spin-off company from Nanyang Technological University, supported by NTUitive, whose members hold appointments with the university's adjunct faculty and work closely with researchers and engineers from the Satellite Research Centre.

“The business was started in August 2018 when the founders assessed that there was a real market need for advanced propulsion systems that could allow for the company to address operational requirements that would empower and enable businesses to thrive,” Lim said.

In November 2019, Aliena raised $1.5m in seed funding, led by Cap Vista, the strategic investment arm of Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency. It was also attended by Silicon Valley VC – 500 Startups and Australian venture capital Paspalis.

“In general, it’s difficult to raise funds as a ‘space startup’—generally because the runway before revenue generation kicks in may be long, and the high capital investment required for space qualification facilities also adds to the risk that investment entities have to take during early-stage investment,” Lim said.

Aliena plans to use the funds to commission a private jet propulsion test facility and satellite integration/assembly centre in Changi. The company will also launch a 3U nanosatellite platform in space for the first in-orbit demonstration, in partnership with Singapore-based space tech firm NuSpace.

“Aliena is already hard at work with setting up their jet propulsion test facility. This will in turn set them up nicely for a successful in-orbit demonstration. Thereafter, with proven space heritage, they would make a compelling case for all commercial small satellites to re-think propulsion, and be ready to take the space propulsion sector by storm,” said Daniel Tan, head of investment at Cap Vista. 

The platform can monitor the early onset of morbidities of an infant.

In an effort to save infants from the effects of prematurity, healthtech startup Child Health Imprints (CHIL) created a platform based on IoT for neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) by capturing real-time clinical data from the connected devices, laboratory results, and bedside clinical observations.

It then collects and analyses data from the hospital information system (HIS), lab information system (LIMS) and connected medical devices such as monitors and ventilators. The key feature is a surveillance device called NEO, which is able to monitor the early onset of morbidities and length of stay using predictive analytics, as well as prevent medication errors by automating doctor and nursing progress notes.

“Genesis of the team is to find solution of the preterm morbidity and mortality across the globe. The innovation is protected by technology patents, domain expertise encapsulated in the form of deep learning analytics and managing huge data of neonates across regulated and nonregulated market,” said Ravneet Kaur, co-founder and vice president of CHIL.

It can also displays the infant’s post-discharge prescription data and encourages vaccinations until adolescence.

In November, CHIL secured $3.14m in a series A funding led by early-stage venture capital fund HealthXCapital. The startup is also backed by the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, Seeds Capital.

“CHIL holds great potential to be rolled out in tier 2 cities in a hub-and-spoke model to enhance access to neonatal care where we don’t have neonatologists. In its aspired state, CHIL shall enable a neonatologist located in a tier 1 city to manage cases located in tier 2 cities remotely,” said Seemant Jauhari, managing partner at HealthXCapital.

It acts as an “gatekeeper” for authenticity and product condition.

Some people invest in art, others in jewellery, but to some fashion-minded youngsters, a pair of limited-edition sneakers is an investment they want to make. The demand is high even for the most expensive items, like the Kanye West x Louis Vuitton sneakers which go for US$30,000. Costing thousands of dollars, the problem for online buyers is to ensure they really are getting the genuine article, and not a knock off.

Stepping in to solve this issue is Novelship, which acts as a “gatekeeper” for authenticity and product condition, aiming to improve the trust between buyers and sellers. It is an online shopping platform for resellers of authentic sneakers and streetwear, where they check the quality and originality of all products before shipping them. They examine the logo placement, serial numbers, manufacturing codes and inside stitching of the product.

It also acts like an auction marketplace, where buyers can request for a product and state how much they are willing to pay for and purchase it at its lowest asking price. Sellers can also choose which price they want for the item. Buyers can expect packages to arrive seven to nine days after purchase confirmation.

“So far, we have handled over 3000 transactions and have received zero complaints from buyers that products were found to be fake,” said Chris Xue, co-founder and COO of Novelship. In August, Novelship raised $2.79m (US$2.05m) in a seed funding led by Global Founders Capital (GFC).

The startup plans to use the proceeds to install more payment options, such as instalments and non-card payments, and to give better fee structures for sellers.

Success rate of FMCG product launches is less than 10%, incurring a US$40b annual loss globally.

To bolster the success rate of new product launches in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) industry, Ai Palette launched a platform that provides the kind of data manufacturers need in order to better predict consumer preferences.

Ai Palette’s co-founder and CEO Somsubhra Choudhuri stated that the success rate of product launches is less than 10% and failures can incur an average loss of US$5m per product, amounting to a US$40b annual loss globally.

To help businesses solve this, it established a platform dubbed as Foresight Engine, a cloud-based AI platform that harnesses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and computer vision. This shows data on food trends in a particular food category for a country. For example, if a beverage brand in Indonesia wants to understand its market better, the platform can be configured for their specific needs with geography and food category as Indonesia and Beverage respectively.

Another solution of theirs is “Screen Winner”, which screens and validates new concepts based on consumer needs, identifying such needs, motivations and opportunity areas where the company should focus their innovation on.

“FMCG companies traditionally use conventional research methods like Category reports to understand the trends. These reports typically give a static view of category and become outdated very quickly as consumer preferences are now changing very fast; and more often than not the results are affected by biases such as response bias and group-think,” said Ai Palette’s co-founder and CEO Somsubhra Choudhuri.

Choudhuri also added that consumer preferences are now fast-changing due to the emergence of smaller boutique brands.

So far, they have contracts from several FMCG giants recognised amongst the Fortune 500 companies.

In August, Ai Palette raised $1.5m in a seed round led by cross-border VC fund Decacorn Capital. It was also attended by SGInnovate, Silicon Valley and foodtech-focused VC AgFunder.

“What made Ai Palette stand apart from the crowd was the speed with which they could build not just a powerful trend-spotting platform, but also layer it with a comprehensive prediction engine combining cognitive AI, data analytics and a proprietary natural language algorithm which overcomes language barriers in Asia’s diverse terrain, creating early traction with global food and beverage brands, and being in a position to transform the product development process,” commented Abhijit Banerjee, managing director at Decacorn Capital. 

Prices are said to be 70% cheaper than regular ones braces.

Getting braces can be both pricey and a hassle especially when people need to wear it for two to three years. To solve this pain point, dental tech startup Zenyum have released 3D-printed invisible braces.

These braces are said to align teeth within three to five months and is 70% cheaper than regular ones. Customers just have to go through a pre-assessment in its website, to be assessed by their orthodontists and dentists. They can then visit one of the startups partner clinics for a 3D intraoral scan to create a set of customised invisible aligners.

“We have estimated that, based on the current population in Southeast Asia, 29% fall within the consumer’s middle class and within our target age range of 18 to 35. In this segment, we identify 75% as having teeth with conditions that Zenyum can treat,” said Julian Artopé, CEO and founder of Zenyum.

“A direct implication of this study would suggest that we can expect demand for cosmetic dentistry to continue to increase.”

Another pain point that Artopé would like to address the lack of accessibility for teeth alignment treatments from a logistics perspective. He cited Jakarta and Thailand as examples, where people can spend half the day travelling to an appointment.

In late November, Zenyum secured a $18.57m (US$13.6m) in a series A funding round led by RTP Global. It was also attended by Sequoia India, TNB Aura and Enterprise Singapore’s investment arm SEEDS Capital.

The startup aims to expand their product offerings beyond invisible braces into retainers, teeth whitening and more. They will name this new category 'Smile Cosmetics'.

“Smile Cosmetics, and cosmetic dentistry in general, is a field that requires professional input and consultations to ensure success, and we wanted to lead the charge in communicating this to the general public,” Artopé added.

Its nano-filter technology can separate chemical with 90% less energy.

Chemtech startup SEPPURE wants to reduce the Earth’s energy consumption when it comes to separating chemicals by offering a novel nano-filter technology. The firm claims that they provide a greener alternative to thermal chemical separation processes such as evaporation and distillation.

Such methods are being commonly used in industries ranging from food, pharmaceutical, and petrochemical. Its solution can separate chemical without heat and at 90% less energy, which can potentially conserve billions of gallons of water, millions of tonnes in volatile organic compound emissions and billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in a year.

“Not only these processes are operating at massive scale, but also they require immense amounts of energy that account for up to 15% of the planet's entire energy consumption,” Mohammad H. D.A. Farahani, CEO and co-founder at SEPPURE, told Singapore Business Review.

He also shared that their tech can take high temperatures up to 120°C, whilst their filtration throughput (membrane flux) for many organic solvents is much larger than our competitors (5-10X higher).

In a seed funding round, SEPPURE bagged $3.54m (US$2.6m) last August. It was led by SOSV and participated by Entrepreneur First (EF), 500 Startups and SGInnovate. The proceeds will be used to run industrial-scale pilots across other industries.

“They have a unique and patented technology in an area where there is very little competition. The potential impact is huge,” said Duncan Turner, general partner at SOSV. “There is already a huge pipeline of potential customers. Once the technology has been fully commercialised, I expect Seppure to be achieving significant revenues very quickly indeed.

They offer an average monthly cost of $1,700.

Millennial professionals who aren’t yet ready to put the down payment on a condo and also dread the idea of taking a saturday walk around IKEA to furnish a rental can now turn to housing startup Cove, which promises to handle everything from booking a unit to furnishing. Cove says it can offer cheaper prices and also provides an all in fee which includes furnishing, utilities, weekly housekeeping, cleaning supplies and wi-fi connection. What’s more, the average monthly cost it offers as $1,700, which can be 6% cheaper than a flatshare and 45.51% cheaper than a studio apartment.

“The main pain points we're trying to we're trying to solve the main way the question of affordability,” Guillaume Castagne, the co-founder and CEO of COVE, told Singapore Business Review. “People, especially the 20s, cannot afford to buy a house or an apartment anymore. We're trying to solve the affordability crisis, where people will need to actually have now more rent, smaller spaces and more customised to their needs, because potentially they only need room.”

In addition, Castagne shared that renting an apartment takes a lot of time and effort. Finding one in multiple websites and talking to agents could take days, whereas COVE allows buyers to book and pay directly online. They would also take care of the design and furnishings of the place. The platform has 3D tools so that interested tenants won’t have to go outside.

The startup uses a matching algorithm that aids in managing thousands of properties across Southeast Asia.

COVE bagged $2.72m (US$2m) in a seed funding round last September, led by Venturra Capital. VC firms Yuj Ventures, Picus Capital and Investigate.

Raditya Pramana, partner at Venturra Capital, said that COVE fits well with the growing potential in the coliving space.

“Our investment mandate has to always invest in high growth companies all around Southeast Asia. And for COVE, their aspiration is to create a co-living brand that is uniform all around me six major countries in Southeast Asia, starting from Singapore. They will be slowly expanding to the other market very soon,” Pramana said.

It plans to enter partnerships to develop bespoke insurance solutions.

Singapore-based fintech GoBear started out as a meta search engine where users can compare and select insurance plans and financial products. Four years later, the fintech has helped at least 40 million users search for over 1,800 personal finance products and the company is taking this one step further as it delves directly into developing actual products.

“Choosing financial products used to be complicated and dull. We didn’t think that it was fair, and wanted comparing these products to be simple and easy,” GoBear CEO Adrian Chng told Asian Banking & Finance.

Founded in 2015, GoBear has since expanded the scope of services it compares on its platform to credit cards, loans, banking products and financial products, and even expanded to several markets across Asia-Pacific, including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam.

The firm receives an undisclosed token sum from its partners when a successful purchase is made and when GoBear directs consumers to the providers’ webpage, depending on the agreement established with their partners.

Beyond financial comparison, the firm caters to business by providing its partners with access to analytics. Chng cited an instance with a travel insurance firm in Thailand which commissioned their data team to analyse preferences amongst their Thai users on destination, price, coverage and the like. This allowed the insurer to grow its digital sales as well as their digital market share in travel insurance.

In October 2018, GoBear entered a partnership with digital scorecard developer CredoLab to roll out Easy Apply, a mobile app designed to provide credit access to the underbanked in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Powered by CredoLab’s proprietary technology, the app collects and assesses anonymised data from mobile phones to develop an alternative credit scoring for loan and credit card applications.

Easy Apply leverages on CredoLab’s technology to peruse information on incoming and outgoing phone calls, SMS and e-mail messages, internet browser use and geographical position of the mobile device, list of applications installed on the mobile device and the calendar data.

“[It] enables banks, financial institutions and lenders to extend credit to a larger pool of customers while keeping risks in check,” Chng said.

He also observed that, although Easy Apply allows online and offline applications for credit products, about 40% of Vietnamese users have applied for the service online in “a powerful sign that users in Vietnam are open to digital financial services.”

The company has also been hosting initiatives across markets to improve financial literacy. In Singapore, they have been producing GoBearTV, a series of videos explaining financial concepts in a conversational tone. So far, they have discussed about travel insurance, credit scores, credit cards and home loan tricks.

GoBear is still seeking out technology partners, especially in customer onboarding and fulfilment solutions, personal finance management, alternative credit scoring, financial education, and investment platforms. In Q4, they are planning to announce partnerships to develop bespoke insurance products catering to the underserved.

“We will partner traditional players, re-insurers and also outside industry partners to evolve from a metasearch, to a marketplace (supermarket), and eventually a financial services platform,” Chng said.

Its platform matches users with financial products, including insurance, credit cards, and trade financing.

Startup Gobear classifies itself as a financial supermarket. It is a platform that matches users with financial products, with the intention of making such offering easy to understand. Products cover insurance plans, credit cards, loans, broker financing, trade financing, as well as deposits.

Consumers would be able to compare financial products as it details every product available for selection. Furthermore, the company offers its services to the middle-class market which they believe will boost traffic and profitability.

“The comparison space in Asia does not completely resolve the market’s issues. Whilst comparison models mostly began in developed markets like the UK, Asia is a mix of growth economies and therefore has different needs. For many Asian consumers, financial access is a greater priority than the comparison of financial products available in the market,” Adrian Chng, GoBear’s CEO, told Singapore Business Review.

The fintech firm makes money by selling qualified consumer leads to its partners, banks and insurers. Chng said that there were also cases where they follow a cost per acquisition model. This enables its clients to pay them once they have sold a product.

GoBear made the headlines when it raised a total of US$80m to date after having four funding rounds which are all bigger than the last. All of its funding rounds were graced by Dutch venture capital fund Walvis Participaties and financial services provider Aegon N.V.

The proceeds from its latest round last May will be used to enhance its platform’s functionality, user experience, as well as broaden its partner network as part of its expansion plan.

GoBear also plans to fill in key roles and to invest in other tech companies as well. Areas of focus include customer onboarding and fulfilment solutions, personal financial management, alternative credit scoring, financial education, and investment platforms.

“GoBear is interested in investing in or acquiring Asia-based technology innovators which have developed cutting-edge technology that will enhance our technological ecosystem and our ability to improve people’s financial health,” Chng said.

As for its product offerings, GoBear will be setting up its digital insurance broker services, either through partnering with local insurance brokers or by getting their own license to do so. Another product in the pipeline is digital lendering, aiming to team up with traditional players, re-insurers and outside industry partners.

“By having a digital lending product, we expect to accelerate our monetisation of the platform and be part of our users’ entire financial life cycles. We can inform [consumers], using data, which products they may also need, when comparing their peers, or if they can save or should improve their current products,” Chng continued.

“Eventually, GoBear will provide a one-stop solution allowing consumers to experience end-to-end support for loans and insurance on our platform."