The company has completed over $10m worth of deals in the eight months to end of 2017.

When Banama Corporation was seeking financing to pay suppliers to meet rising customer demand, it had limited options due to its negative shareholder equity position with losses in its last two financial years. It did not help that Banama was in the coal mining industry, which has been in the tough cycle in the past few years, making the prospect of lending to Banama unattractive to most financial institutions. But not to Minterest, a Singapore-based digital peer-to-business lending platform, which connects small businesses to investors.

"Due to historical financials they were unable to secure bank financing and had to rely on family support," said Charis Liau, CEO and co-founder of Minterest, of the predicament that Banama faced - and the kind of challenge that their platform was made to overcome. Minterest was able to complete a deal with Banama and established a repeat lending relationship. "The client has returned to do three more deals with interest rate reducing as it builds a track record with the members on the Minterest platform," said Liau. "Subsequent loan requests were taken up at an increasing pace, the last being fully subscribed in 13 minutes."

Through its unique approach to deal structuring and the guidance of a management team that has more than 125 years in banking and finance, Minterest has completed over $10m worth of deals in the eight months to end of 2017, according to Liau, which established the startup with two other veteran former bankers, Ronnie Chia and Loo Wei Choong. And the platform is looking to further build momentum leading up to a strong fundraising milestone next year.

"The initial response was very encouraging with deals completed quickly for borrowers while delivering good, attractive returns to investors,” she added. “Funding for Minterest is currently from founders and seed investors. Together with strategic investors' funding, Minterest has enough runway for its expansion plans before undertaking a series A round in 2019.”

Proprietary credit scoring system
Liau credits Minterest’s key strength to the way it processes deals. The lending platform has developed a proprietary credit scoring system, called MintGrade, to assess deals, taking into account the business and financial risks of each borrower and their respective financing requirements. “We utilise not only quantitative data, but also qualitative observations obtained during the due diligence process,” the co-founder said. “More than 200 data points are processed through our proprietary model to generate a MintGrade rating. Only deals that pass our criteria are listed online for members to invest in.”

The easy application process also serves to attract more borrowers and investors. After signing up online and submitting verification documents, as well as completing a know-your-customer, or KYC, process, investors can start topping up their e-wallets and participate in business loans offered by the SME borrowers. The platform matches investors with borrowers where loans are made, and present investment options from as low as $1,000 with interest rates that range from 12% to 18% per annum, and tenure of up to 12 months. Investments can be monitored real-time on a dashboard, whilst loan documentation is uploaded online for easy safekeeping.

For SME borrowers, Liau said Minterest promises the efficient raising of financing, and quick securing funds within two weeks. A combination of automatic screening and face-to-face meetings enables the platform to better understand the SME’s financing requirements, debt sizing and repayment capability. KYC and MintGrade credit assessments are made, then the startup prepares a loan request fact sheet detailing the borrower’s profile, management, financials, repayment capabilities and additional loan terms. This is then listed so investor members can participate. A portfolio management team monitors repayments after loan imbursement.

“There is a very large credit gap in the market which traditionally banks are not serving,” said Liau. “We aim to fill that gap. And provide our investors with well-structured, risk-mitigated transactions they can invest in, so as to build a diversified portfolio over time.”
 

They generated the amount after putting 165 million tokens for sale within 24 hours.

Decentralised database provider Bluzelle closed its three-day Initial Coin Offering (ICO) in January with $19.5 million in fresh funding.

Bluzelle's ICO veered away from "Fear of Missing Out" or FOMO tactics and instead gave buyers 24 hours to purchase the 165 million tokens made available for sale.

The 165 million tokens sold is 33% of the 500 million generated by Bluzelle.

Amongst the database provider's investors include Kenetic Capital, Hashed, Kryptonite 1 and 8 Decimal Capital.

The Singapore-based firm's decentralized database is a pioneer in data storage and management systems for the decentralized internet. It solves dApp developers' need for data storage and management systems that are flexible enough to allow fast and simple data queries on decentralized internet.

Bluzelle Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Pavel Bains says the funding gained made from the ICO will be used to further develop its decentralised database technology.

“Selling out the crowdsale is a huge milestone in the growth of our company and our journey to deliver a product that will be a key component of the new, better Internet," he says.

"We have been into this technology for years and the CEOs and CTOs we work with are just as enthusiastic as us about the product, technology and the future," says Bains. "With this funding, we will now be able to bring our decentralised database to everyone.”

Bluzelle's ICO came just a month after the blockchain-based database company appointed several new advisors to its board.

Among the firm's new advisors include Alex Leverington, one of the original Core Ethereum developers, Ryan Fugger, the original creator of Ripple, Brian Lio and Matt Chwierut, co-founders of leading blockchain and cryptofinancial analyst firm Smith + Crown, Antoine Cote and Lionello Lunescu, co-founders of engineering consultancy Enuma Technologies, and Dr Michael Egorov, former LinkedIn engineer, and current co-founder and CTO of distributed systems encryption company NuCypher.

Leverington is expected to provide insight on decentralised infrastructure and crypto technologies for Bluzelle.

“The infrastructure of peer-to-peer technology has always been important for me and I am fascinated to see how Bluzelle develops its solutions in this vital area,” says Leverington.

Similarly, Egovrov, who works as an encryption specialist, will lend his expertise to boost Bluzelle's security design.

"Bluzelle is working on what I think is the most practical approach to decentralised databases, building a vital component for the future decentralized internet," says Egorov. “I am excited to play a role in the company’s very bright future.”
 

It also partnered with oBike which boosted its userbase to over 5 million.

SpherePay, a homegrown mobile payment app from Singapore, has completed a US$10-million funding round from unnamed investors.

The capital infusion comes after the OPG Asia Pte Ltd-developed app announced it is seeking to expand to Indonesia and Thailand last December.

Now, with the completion of the funding round, SpherePay says it will rapidly expand its services to cover the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia by the second quarter of this year.

SpherePay, in December 2017, forged a strategic partnership with oBike, which saw its number of users spike to over 5 million.

oBike is Southeast Asia's biggest bike sharing company.

"Our completion of the recent fundraising coupled with the strategic partnership with oBike, are testament to the commitment and rapid development of SpherePay. This partnership with oBike saw an immediate acquisition of over 5 million users in South East Asia and we are putting together new features that will bring even greater benefits to all our users." says SpherePay Chief Executive Officer Joseph Chen.

The SpherePay-oBike integration is expected to be completed by March 2018.

The partnership will allow users to access both firms' services on either app.

For SpherePay, this means being able to support all of oBike's services, including its geofencing feature and crowdsourcing delivery service, oBike Flash, in its app.

SpherePay users will also be able to scan, unlock oBike bicycles, and even book for deliveries via SpherePay.

With the recent developments, SpherePay is in a good position to be one of the top payment platforms in Southeast Asia.

"Since our inception last year, we have been making good progress to ensure that SpherePay will be one of the most highly utilised mobile payment apps in the region," adds Chen.

Boasting over 10,000 merchants, SpherePay is also expected to roll out a merchant deals listing which uses Location Based Services (LBS) this year.

This will enable SpherePay users to be notified of merchant deals happening near them via the app.

The initial token sales drew 1,900 users.

When Indorse launched an initial coin offering or ICO in September, the Singaporean start-up racked up $10m in funding. Its user base also grew to a solid 1,900 users helping the blockchain-powered professional network attract cryptocurrency users who would form its initial user base.

Indorse is a blockchain-based social network for professionals. By utilizing blockchain technology, Indorse aims to build a social network where the user is in charge of their own data. Other users can verify and ‘indorse’ a certain users’ skills. In return, the Indorse platform ensures that users are rewarded for their role in growing the network with a portion of the advertising revenue going back to the user base.

Unlike traditional social media platforms, where users can make any claim about themselves which are often taken as the truth, Indorse verifies and validates the claim, and rewards users for endorsing the skill sets of others - a process the startup has coined as 'indorsing."

To do this, a user has to attach a proof for other members to verify every claim they make on Indorse. "If someone is an expert in NodeJS, they put up a claim and attach proof such as their GitHub repos," said David Moskowitz, co-founder and CEO at Indorse. "Other members in the same domain on Indorse verify it. Based on the consensus, the claim is either 'indorsed' or flagged."

Indorse uses internal rewards, called Indorse Rewards, and a reputation system, coined as a user's Indorse Score, to incentivise members to add their own skills and accomplishments, as well as 'indorse' the skills and accomplishments of others.

The full Indorse platform is scheduled to go live by mid-2018, and the incentive of earning tokens through the platform should help with user retention.

Turning to tokens
"Token sales allow ventures to reach out to and directly build their community. The people who purchase the tokens will also be our users of the platform, so we wanted an incentive mechanism for the people who are purchasing tokens to actually be users of the platform," said Moskowitz.

He said the token sale was a key initiative to bootstrap the Indorse professional network, whose minimum viable product, or MVP, was recently launched. The MVP allows users to to build professional profiles on the platform, import their existing LinkedIn profile, and view a skills visualizer to track specialties and accomplishments.

The token sale also creates an incentive for people to keep using the platform, said Moskowitz, since they can earn token rewards for performing certain actions in the network. Currently, Indorse has attracted over 1,900 users who have registered and created accounts, and the co-founder projects this to rise to 3,000 users by the end of the year, and to 200,000 to 300,000 users within the next two years.

"In many social networks, there is a big problem with daily active users which is one of the fundamental challenges that we need to solve," said Moskowitz, which the Indorse team plans to overcome through the use of blockchain technology to disrupt traditional professional networks. The idea is to give more control, transparency and personal reward to users joining a network.

"We hope to see Indorse being the go-to-tool for employers and employees alike, as well as freelancers looking for their next gig, or even an opportunity to share their expertise and grow their network. With the explosion in online activity and social networking comes a very real need for authentic, credible and transparent interactions," said Moskowitz.

Decentralised network
At the heart of Indorse are the decentralised application and professional network that Singapore-headquartered startup is building through the funds raised in its token sale. Moskowitz said Indorse not only solves the issues linked to using traditional professional networks, but also adds a new dimension of greater ownership and personal reward.

"There is a fundamental problem with traditional professional networks, primarily the fact that you are handing over your data to these networks and you are no longer in control of it or being rewarded for it," the co-founder said.

"You aren’t benefiting from the revenue that stems from the growth of the network as your data is monetized. We saw a real opportunity for blockchain technology to give people a financial reward in this professional system," he added.

Using the funds raised from the recent token sale, Indorse's team of developers is building out the platform in two different parts: The first is an protocol layer that allows for a a decentralised application to be built and upon which the team can create rewards and reputation mechanisms. The second is an application layer which allows the team to build the decentralised professional network that allows people to post their skills and get rewarded for their activities on the platform.

Verification and validation
Part of the business model involves advertisers purchasing space on the platform with cryptographic Indorse Tokens, or IND tokens​. Moskowitz said a portion of these IND tokens are shared with the members who created the content. 

"In a nutshell, members are finally able to receive rewards due to their data, instead of watching passively as the revenue goes to companies holding their data," he said.

Blockchain technology brings a host of other benefits to the Indorse platform, according to Moskowitz, including a more secure management of the data. "There is no single point that is vulnerable," he said. "Additionally, our goal is to make Indorse completely autonomous, where no one is in control, and lastly, by utilising blockchain technology, Indorse can be transparent with the community and the users."

The co-founder said Indorse chose to use Ethereum as its compute engine, since provides the infrastructure of native Smart Contracts and the token economy. It also employs decentralised storage systems such as BigChainDB and Inter Planetary File System as the storage mechanism.

The idea for Indorse arose when Moskowitz, and fellow co-founder and CTO Gaurang Torvekar were working together at Attores, a company which enables data and documents to be shared securely using smart contracts and blockchain technology. A pilot project with Ngee Ann Polytechnic to put diplomas on the blockchain led the pair to envision a future skills developed outside of the classroom to be validated in a new way.

Moskowitz foresees the mainstream acceptance of blockchain technology as a key driver for the Indorse platform. "We believe the use of blockchain will go mainstream in the next two years,” he said. "Indorse envisions a serverless, decentralised future, where the users will build their profiles and profit from their reputation and from sharing their skills and activities on the platform via reward tokens.”
 

They have raised US$1.5m in a seed round led by Aurum Investments in November.

Imagine working in an apartment with complete strangers and ending up with a potential spouse soon after. Hmlet’s platform has made this possible for a French guy who rented one of their shared spaces, where he was matched with people who had the same interests and personality. Now engaged to a girl he met at the space, this client expressed that he will always remember how Hmlet has made co-living meaningful for him and his fiance.

Launched in 2016, Hmlet is Singapore’s first ever tech co-living space where young professionals can share rooms and apartments at an affordable price on a monthly basis. Yoan Kamalski, CEO, Hmlet, said that Hmlet is the only organised, tech-powered provider of space as a service model. The platform uses changes in technology, demography, and urbanisation to collectively drive a shift towards a more flexible, entrepreneurial and collaborative living style.

In November, this co-living rental startup Hmlet has raised a US$1.5 million in a seed round led by Aurum Investments, a sister company of co-working space Collision 8.

Kamalski said that people nowadays are looking for a curated place that can empower them and make them want to achieve more. With this trend seeing increased growth in Hong Kong and Singapore, Kamalski and his colleagues discovered a sweet spot with an unmet need.

“Urban housing was not adapted to our evolving demands for technology, services, and flexibility. Technology has been integrated into every facet of our lives, except our apartments. It was time-consuming, solitary, inflexible, and inaccessible. Hmlet solves these problems,” Kamalski said.

Together with Hmlet’s current chief technology officer Zenos Schmickrath, Kamalski first launched Opscotch, a property management startup that maintained a portfolio of share houses in Singapore and Tokyo. Opscotch then evolved into Hmlet when Kamalski and Schmickrath decided to shift the focus to co-living spaces. Since Opscotch was profitable when they started, it helped in funding the initial capital necessary to launch Hmlet.

“Hmlet is a tech co-living company that offers rooms and full apartments for rent in the heart of the city. We want to simplify housing for people from all around the world relocating or living in Singapore, Tokyo and very soon Hong Kong. Hmlet caters to international and local talent, helping them balance their lifestyles, finances and natural desire to connect. At Hmlet we want to revive communal and meaningful interactions in a way that amplifies creativity and empowers our members,” Kamalski said.

Kamalski brought immense experience in large scale real estate project management, having worked on the development of the Singapore Sports Hub stadium. Since childhood, he has had an entrepreneurial mindset which has allowed him to grow deep interest in real estate and technology. Meanwhile, Schmickrath, who is responsible for technology and sales strategies, has worked for several startups prior to Hmlet. He has been a technical founder for several companies with focus on web technology.
 

They create 360 degree virtual tours where viewers can explore properties from their computers.

When Ray Teo, the founder of Absolute Division in PropNex Realty, was looking to create a virtual tour for his Good Class Bungalow listing, he found the only service provider of 360 virtual tours in Singapore to be quite costly and out of sync with his desired delivery timeline. He then turned to Panoleh, a new maker of virtual tours in Singapore, who was able to meet his exact specifications of a quicker turnaround and within budget.

“He found us and subscribed to our service and created his own virtual tour, at a fraction of the cost,” recounted Jackson Chong, co-founder and CEO of Panoleh, a property technology, or PropTech startup.

Banking on its speed to create virtual tours in less than five minutes and lower price points, Panoleh has attracted close to 900 active users since the service began in October 2016, with 99% being real estate professionals such as Teo. The startup is now casting a wider net in the market through collaborations with real estate agencies in Singapore as well as property portals to feature its virtual tours. It is also planning to set up an office in Jakarta, Indonesia as it looks to expand beyond to foreign markets.

Chong said Panoleh’s key advantage is that it delivers on all the bells and whistles that property agents have come to expect from virtual tours, while also freeing up their time and marketing budgets.

“Besides solving the problem of the poor quality of listings, Panoleh helps agents save time, money and increases their productivity,” he said. “As for consumers, they can shorten the list of properties that they actually want to view and foreign buyers could also view the virtual show of flats at the comfort of their homes.”

Chong explained that realtors are now looking to create personalised virtual tours in an easy way so they can give potential property buyers a comprehensive and convenient house-hunting experience.

“The virtual tours are completely interactive so viewers can click around the property, view pictures and explore the area from their computer screens and mobile devices,” he said.
Virtual tours creates a remarkable improvement in the selling strategies of agents and buying experience of customers, argued Chong, who had worked as a real estate agent himself. He recalled two years ago when the idea for Panoleh sprung after he saw the poor quality of listings in property portals and the prevalence of duplicate and fake listings.

“This has negatively affected consumers' experience and also resulted in an adverse perception on the professionalism of real estate agents in Singapore,” he said, but noted that the options for making virtual tours were financially unattractive at the time. “Agents who want to create a virtual tour for their listings will have to engage a professional photographer for a cost of between $100 to $300, depending the size of the properties. And more often than not, the lead time for the appointment is at least 3 days."

This pushed Chong, and co-founder and CTO Randy Png, to establish Panoleh, a startup that focuses on nurturing a platform where realtors can create their own 360 tours at a lower cost and accelerated speed.

The startup is 100% bootstrapped with the founders putting in $5,000 for operating expenses, but it had worked out as they programmed the platform in-house and within four months were able to roll out the minimum viable product, or MVP.

“As we are fully bootstrapped, we go to great length to manage our cash flow. My CTO spent countless nights in the office to save in transport. And I’m driving Grab part-time at 6am every morning till office hours,” said Chong.

But with Panoleh’s notable take up in clients and a market expansion on the horizon, the hard work the pair has put is starting to pay off. The co-founder is also convinced that once more property agents and foreign buyers start to know more about the 360 virtual tours that the startup provides, it will become an indispensable part of the property dealmaking process.

“Besides hoping to increase productivity and reducing marketing costs for realtors, we would also like to educate property buyers and sellers
that virtual tours are readily accessible, bringing convenience and saving time in their house buying and selling process,” said Chong. 

“Right from the comfort of their own home thousands of miles away, it makes sense that 360 virtual tours would allow these buyers to make much more informed shortlists or decisions.”

The fund will be used to invest in a more feature-packed, all-in-one Chope platform.

Singapore-based restaurant discovery and booking platform Chope recently raised $13m in funding backed by Asia-Pacific investment firm Square Peg Capital and joined by C31 Ventures and Moelis Australia, as well as existing shareholders including NSI Ventures, Susquehanna International Group, DSG Consumer Partners, and SPH Ventures.

Arrif Ziaudeen, CEO of Chope, said, “Chope looks forward to our next stage of growth with this new capital and strategic partnership. With these resources, we are positioned to invest significantly in our USPs of user experience and customer service, while deepening our reach into our markets across Asia.”

Ziaudeen noted that more than 1 million diners are using the Chope app to book restaurants.

Whilst that is a heartening number, the startup is now seeking to grow its business scope by increasing new product and technology investments, and hiring more staff. This means restaurants can look forward to a more feature-packed, all-in-one Chope platform for their business needs.

“We’re looking to tap on the potential to touch numerous other facets of those diners’ user journeys,” he said.

 “As for the specifics, we’ll share more as the features are released but at high level, it’s about building more ways for users to discover, book, and interact on Chope, better use of the huge amounts of data we have to personalise the experience, and a larger team to better service our clients and users.” Ziaudeen explained that constantly adding utility is a natural extension of Chope’s vision to provide a holistic experience and increasing value to diners and restaurants.

One-stop destination
Ziaudeen continues to hold its big dream for Chope - to make it a one-stop destination for discovery, deals and bookings - six years after the Stanford-educated founder quit his career in private equity and consulting to solve the frustrating inefficiency of reservations on both sides of the transaction.

He himself had encountered similar problems of calling for reservations, having to wait until restaurants opened to reserve and unanswered calls. To top it off, other activities such as booking airline flights, hotel accommodations and movie tickets could already be done online.

Seeing the need for more efficient reservation and the potential to revolutionise the restaurant industry with technology, Ziaudeen began tackling the issue by launching the first version of the Chope reservations platform with just nine restaurants.

The founder risked his savings and sought financial help from his family, and in the first few years this bootstrapping approach meant Chope could only support a lean team and sparse marketing. Fast forward to today, and the startup is making bolder moves to expand in other countries, including last year’s acquisition of an Indonesian booking app to enter the local market and increase its coverage to eight cities.

“One of our aims was to keep costs low so Chope's early days was spent operating out of Orchard Towers,” recalled Ziaudeen fondly. “Besides having some of the best Vietnamese noodles around, the building also had a somewhat deserved reputation for being a hotbed of seedy activity.”

“Our office was right smack in the middle of the action, which made life...interesting. We can't say we miss it much, though.” 

They use virtual reality to for a complete visualisation of properties.

This Singaporean VR start up helped a Malaysian property development firm to sell 92% of its units through a virtual reality showroom. Berhad Dato’ Ghazi, CEO of Malaysian property development firm Thriven, challenged the team behind woobaVR: they had to help Thriven sell 10-15% of its new development at 1% of the physical gallery cost.

woobaVR did far more than that, eventually devising a virtual reality showroom solution that would enable Thriven to sell 92% of units without having to build an expensive physical show
unit. Fariz Rashid, CEO at woobaVR, explained that for the longest time, people have relied on showrooms, pre-rendered images, and physical models to assess whether they would purchase property or not. “We look at an artist’s impression or visit a showroom and then try to imagine ourselves living there,” said Rashid of the traditional experience without virtual reality.

“Now technology helps to fill this gap, especially for those with a lack of visual imagination. Virtual reality and augmented reality helps buyers and sellers have a new way to pre-experience a space they may want to own or sell,” said Rashid.

He argued that virtual reality renders represent the home more accurately than a still image, and the technology provides home-buyers with added customisation and convenience.

“Outside of a showroom as well we have the additional functionality of adjusting the themes and overall interior design environment of the property. Certain showroom designs may appeal to certain buyers and that can be deceptive in nature,” he said. “The mobile functionality as well allows them to view the unit at their own convenience as well as share it with other members of the family,” he added.

A new standard for visualisation
Rashid also noted details on two of its products in the pipeline. The first is an automated virtual reality rendering platform for architects and interior designers,
which will be a SaaS model. It is currently in alpha testing stage and the startup is targeting a launch in the first quarter next year.

The second is a model for companies to showcase their home furnishings, with a live demo already available for limited viewing. The startup manages to keep prices at a fraction of an interior design or architectural firm’s rendering budget through the use of proprietary automated systems.

Rashid was determined to dispel the notion that virtual reality is an expensive technology that only big firms can afford. “You won’t need a high-end PC or expensive head mounted displays like the Oculus Rift to run our content,” said Rashid.

Their products include an onboarding app and a data-driven performance appraisal platform.

When Damien Cummings was made redundant at his role as global head of digital at Standard Chartered Bank, he went on to work for a few other companies where he discovered a business practice sorely in need of improvement: Many companies, he thought, had poorly implemented people management and employee welfare programs that made them predisposed to layoffs and retrenchments.

Using his personal savings and turning down a half-a-million-dollar-per-year job offer commensurate to his marketing expertise, Cummings founded the cloud-based HR software startup Peoplewave and as the current CEO now leads its “mission of making work fair and putting people first in people management.”

Peoplewave’s products, which include an onboarding app and a data-driven performance appraisal platform, were designed to address common HR pain points in employee development and people management. The technology approach adds a layer of ease that overworked, compliance-driven and acquisition-focused HR departments desperately crave.

The startup has found a thirst for its products in Singapore, and has led to a successful $500,000 seed round from a series of angels and aligned companies in the HR field that is expected to close on November 10. This follows an initial $100,000 pre-seed funding shelled out by founders, which also include CTO Phil Aldrige, an IT leader based in Hong Kong who has mentored startups across Asia and is the chair of the British Chamber of Commerce’s startup committee.

Damien is an Australian who has lived in Singapore for the past 10 years. He's recognised thought leader in the marketing and digital space, while Phil is a leader in technology.

Putting people first
“We have a simple goal, to put people first in people management,” said Cummings. “We do this by championing transparency and data-driven decision-making through our onboarding, performance review and employee analytics products.”

Peoplewave’s banner product is First 100 Days app, which the CEO said provides a more structured new hire onboarding and addresses the crucial issue of probation periods. A second product is Performance Wave, a data-driven platform that provides greater transparency during performance reviews through the use of a proprietary algorithm, which the company calls “formula of performance.”

“Peoplewave was born out of a deep frustration: Many smart and good people have become victims of corporate restructures, biased decision-making or been unfairly treated,” said Cummings, on why these two products are finding appeal among Singapore companies that want to avoid losing top talent due to poor onboarding and unfair performance appraisals.

He reckoned HR departments play a big role in reinforcing these organizational weaknesses in post-hire processes. Many HR functions make acquiring top talent their utmost priority, which takes focus away from effective post-hire management. It also does not help that HR teams fail to train line managers how to effectively nurture the same top talent that the former worked so hard to sign.

“The sad truth is that most managers are poorly trained in people management or have simply been thrust into these roles without guidance, mentoring or adequate support. At the same time, Human Resources teams often don’t play an active role in managing employees,” said Cummings.

But the CEO is hoping that with Peoplewave products, the tides will shift towards a more attentive onboarding of fresh hires and fairer evaluation of all staff.
 

This new marketing innovation creates flyers with exclusive offers that come with QR codes.

Whilst most people see flyers and brochures as something of an annoyance, Ridzwan and Zainul found an opportunity in the wastage and launched Hangover Coupons, a hybrid advertising company designing attractive marketing materials that could be easily hung on doorknobs. The company employs a “trident effect” principle, which Ridzwan describes as a three-point offline and online marketing mechanism to maximise response and increase clients’ revenues.

The first marketing mechanism point is also the company’s major attraction: the door hanger coupon. According to Ridzwan, the door hanger coupon has a compilation of eight different businesses, the concepts of which are developed, designed, and printed by Hangover Coupons itself. The materials are not only easy to see and pleasing to the eye, they also have irresistible and exclusive offers with QR codes on them.

“We produce our Hangover Coupons on high quality, full bright colored, premium art card with perforation lines so customers can easily tear off the coupons which will then be distributed to 20,000 homes within the geographical area of the businesses. That’s creating social awareness for respective businesses,” Ridzwan added.

The second and third marketing mechanism points are both online, where social media influencers and local celebrities promote and give away Hangover Coupons to their followers as well as provide reviews of the businesses and their products or services. Furthermore, Hangover Coupons boasts of a lead capturing software that enables businesses to track redeemed Hangover coupons, monitor sales, and extract the leads for further marketing through e-mail.

Ridzwan’s inspiration for the idea comes from the United States, where a lot of Americans use coupons to save money through discounts and great deals. Hangover Coupons is Ridzwan and Zainul’s way of familiarising Singaporeans with the use and benefits of coupons. Once they had pooled their savings together, the two founders established Hangover Coupons in April 2017.

“Now with Hangover Coupons, there is no better way for local business owners to go the extra mile by creating the first impression to their potential customers at their front door. We strongly believe that people still appreciate presentable, tangible and valuable coupons if business owners make that effort. To top it off, when people return home from work, they would rather see a colorful variety of coupon offers that have real value rather than ‘in-your-face' low-quality flyer ads that can lead to a cluttered mess in front of their homes to then throw it in the bin,” Ridzwan said. 

Smartly has a series of articles, videos, and quizzes to boost financial literacy among its users.

Singapore-based Estonian entrepreneurs Artur Luhaäär and Keir Veskiväli aimed to make investing easy with a digital solution that provides high quality financial advice and promises full transparency and low fees. Built to utilise AI-drive software and targeted for Gen Y users, Smartly is a robo-advisory platform that can optimise asset allocation, automate tax-loss harvesting, and offer real-time analytics at a much cheaper price than the average cost for financial advisors. Smartly helps users customise their portfolios through smart algorithms that make investing simple and accessible.

“At Smartly our core mission is to build a platform through which the average person can understand where their money is, as well as having the freedom to withdraw it without hidden penalties if they wish to do so,” Luhaäär said.

Smartly has also taken financial advisory further up in terms of financial education with a series of articles, videos, and quizzes to boost financial literacy among its users. Once Smartly’s clients access the education platform, they can also unlock weeks of free portfolio management--a way to encourage their users to learn financial principles and strategies for themselves.

“The core basics of investing are not rocket-science and can be understood by anyone. We’re not talking about being able to identify great companies to invest into, but rather to help users understand the most important things to look out for when investing their money,” said Artur.
Smartly was made possible through the support of VCG Partners Pte Ltd, the Singapore subsidiary of Vietnam-based asset manager VinaCapital Group, which currently has over USD1.8b in assets under management. VCG Partners provides the robo-advisory platform, while Smartly is on top of the core technology. Luhaäär said that it is crucial for Smartly to work in tandem with seasoned industry players such as VCG Partners, who shares a similar vision and values in making the investment market a better place for the average investor.

“One way Smartly differs from other available products is that we want to tell you exactly where your money is going and how much it costs. This is how we create trust, with full transparency. You can log in anytime to see how your investments are doing, how much in fees you’ve paid, etc,” Luhaäär added.
 

It is an ai-powered recruiting assistant that can conduct first stage screening and interviews.

From heaps of paperwork to countless hours of interviews, the hiring process has always proved to be difficult work on top of a company’s regular operations. Executives continue to expect to snap up the best talent, however as Singapore’s job market grows increasingly complex and competitive, they are also finding it more difficult to handle both candidates and hiring managers at the same time.

With this challenge in mind, impress.ai chief executive officer and co-founder Sudhanshu Ahuja and his colleagues teamed up to find a way to provide a fantastic candidate experience at scale and give every candidate a proper structured interview, all while minimising human bias in hiring. Ahuja describes impress.ai as an artificial intelligence powered recruiting assistant that can conduct first stage screening interviews by itself, thereby generating significant cost and time benefits for the enterprise and also enhancing candidate engagement and experience.

Ahuja’s team initially funded impress.ai using their earnings from Ideatory. Afterwards, they joined Zeroth.ai, an accelerator in Hong Kong, to help them create the first working version of the product. Recently, impress.ai received funding from Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund, the process of which was very smooth, according to Ahuja. Javelin Startup-O continues to work closely with impress.ai through the Venture Building program. “We are capturing Singapore very fast. Southeast Asia and India are very next on our list. The client demand is very strong for our product. We have recently tripled our team size to serve this demand,” Ahuja adds.

When one company’s CEO started receiving e-mails from candidates that the talent acquisition team was not being responsive, impress.ai configured their platform to be the virtual recruiter for the candidates. Ahuja says that they do not only do the first round of interviews anonymously, they also provide hiring updates and answer candidates’ questions.”While not completely a ‘personal’ experience, 76% of the candidates we surveyed reported that they like it better than ATS based application processes,” Ahuja adds.

Ahuja, an alumnus of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore, has several years of experience in both drafting market policy and working on sales and strategy. He founded impress.ai with chief operating officer Amrith Dhananjayan and chief technology officer Vaisagh Viswanathan. Dhananjayan has a Ph.D. in Engineering in design of complex systems and human/machine understanding from NTU and four years of experience in managing large-scale projects. Meanwhile, Viswanathan has a Ph.D. in Agent Based Simulation (sub-field of AI) from NTU and was a research fellow for modelling and simulation of complex systems at TUM CREATE.
 

They offer solutions for wireless broadband connectivity.

When Whizpace co-founder Pankaj Sharma began showing his friends some initial TV White Space deployments across Singapore, his wife spotted that the product failed to carry a label and a brand. The white box had already been deployed at Gardens by the Bay, Sentosa, and China Town, and Sharma and his CEO, Dr. Oh Ser Wah thought that maybe, the time had come to get the ball rolling.

When Whizpace was selected for investment by Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund, it was still in the very early stage of its entrepreneurship journey. It was eventually shortlisted after 5-6 rounds of intensive online interviews with various experts on the platform. “This helped us develop a solid business roadmap, gave us access to a strong network of industry experts and investors and expedited our fund raising process,” adds Sharma.

Officially born in 2016, Whizpace operates on the license exempted band of TVWS and offers solutions for wireless broadband connectivity to an unconnected population of roughly 3-4 billion (O3B) and IoT communication to connect 50 billion potential devices in the near future, without congestion and at a much lower cost. Sharma says that their technology has the ability to propagate over longer distances and has a high throughput and better penetration through obstacles and thick foliage.

“We are the only TVWS company which has the solutions to address the connectivity needs for back-haul, middle-mile and last mile using various Whiz brands. Similar to other sharing economy models such as Uber and Airbnb our products utilise the valuable resource in a dynamic manner, thus greatly improving spectrum utilization rates,” Sharma adds.

Sharma and Dr. Oh were already in the middle of their scientific careers at A*STAR, Singapore’s national research organisation, when they developed the core technology of Whizpace. Since then, the two have been receiving support from various agencies in Singapore to further develop their technology, license the IPR, and widen market reach, among others. Whizpace also bagged the grant from Spring Seeds for product development and subsequently received the investment from GreenMeadows Accelerator (GMA) & SPRING Seed Capital co-matched investment.

Whizpace has not only deployed its equipment in Singapore, but has also piqued interest in developing countries like India and the Philippines, where there a huge chunk of the populations are still offline. So far, Whizpace has raised an investment of around S$1.2m as pre-A stage and a grant of S$500,000 from Spring. They are currently open for the second round of S$2m.
 

They aim to make e-commerce data management a breeze.

When a Hong Kong women’s clothing brand found its sales stagnating, it turned to e-merchandising analytics start-up Inncee for a way to re-ignite its revenue growth without having to throw thousands of marketing dollars at the problem.

“They knew about the importance of merchandising but so far has only applied it to improved site design and smooth checkout flows. Using data to analyse product performance and optimise product line ups was not something they had considered before,” recounted Jamie Liu, founder, and CEO at Inncee.

After a few meetings, Liu presented the brand with a solution: Inncee’s platform would optimise their catalogue of more than 300 merchandise items based on key product segments like “best sellers”, “slow sellers”, “rising stars” and “newcomers.”

The automated platform would analyse the clothing products and assign them into product segments. Brand executives would then be able to make better merchandising decisions without having to do all the heavy data searching and crunching.

“During the weeks before the new set of designs are set to be released, the client uses the products Inncee discovers under the “Rising Stars” segment, which features products with low page views but very high conversions, and runs ads showcasing these products,” said Liu.

“And once a month, they would run a flash sale featuring products found in the “Slow Sellers” segment, which are products with high stocks that have seen no sales in the last 3 months.”

The merchandising optimisation plan worked and the women’s clothing brand saw a rise in sales. Emboldened by such success stories and two years spent refining the platform, Inncee pushed through with its public launch in February. It is now looking to forge new tie-ups and improve their service to existing partners.

“We will be partnering up with some up and coming e-commerce platforms to provide merchandising analytics exclusively to their users and we’re also releasing new integrations for WooCommerce soon so users of that platform will be able to install Inncee in their stores,” said Liu.

Inncee has raised around $150,000 in funding since Liu and two other partners, business development director Desmond Tan and CTO Mark Lau, started the start-up two years ago.

At the end of 2015, the start-up won a competition in Brunei and won US$10k in prize money. Then in early 2016, it garnered a $50k cash grant from iJam. Most recently, it was selected as one of the final 9 startup graduates of the DBS Pre-accelerator Program and earned $29k in seed money.

The successive capital infusions have helped grow the platform, but Inncee did not start as a merchandising analytics platform from the get-go. It was only when the team saw the large amounts of data e-commerce generates and the rising popularity of e-commerce platforms that they went all in to become a merchandising analytics solutions provider.

“E-commerce seemed like the right fit business wise,” said Liu. “We knew from customer interviews as well as Desmond himself, who used to sell online, about the challenges and complexity of analysing data and getting timely, useable information that retailers can act on.”

At its core, the Inncee platform is geared towards smaller e-commerce retailers who are great at running their businesses, want to improve their performance, cannot really afford to hire merchandising specialists and do not have the in-house analysts to work with available data.

“Online merchandising is an area that is still very much a manual process for many retailers, limiting their ability to execute,” said Liu. “We want to be able to change that through our intelligence platform, and help give these businesses a boost through effective analytics.”
 

They aim to multiply their clients ten times in the next year.

When Redmart employees thought it was already enough of a shock to hire five IT talents within a span of just five weeks, it definitely underestimated what data analytics could do. The Redmart team was even more surprised to find out that their freshest recruits were hired from top companies in the IT industry. Through employing the services of Hackertrail, Redmart avoided the traditional rigorous talent search and found the best candidates in the highly-competitive IT industry.

Dubbed as a curated marketplace for IT talent, Hackertrail uses clever technology and gamification to source, engage, curate and connect the right candidates with the right job opportunities. Tech industry veteran and Hackertrail founder Tushar Tejuja says that his startup transforms a candidate’s into a set of data points which are objectively aligned to each available role in the market.

As with most other startups, Tejuja brought his idea to life with his own money, engaged an angel investor, and delivered a product. As one of the startups supported by Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund, Hackertrail is able to gain access to a growing network of experts with multi-dimensional incentives. More importantly, Javelin Startup-O pegged the round and the terms for Hackertail, allowing them to get more investors on board.

“Using technology, we take the human bias out of recruitment. Once we understand the employer’s brand and their recruitment needs, we automate the sourcing, engaging and curation of candidates without the employer having to lift a finger. This allows them to focus their energy on the best candidates. We help companies step outside old school recruiting practices and hire the right talent using an end to end technology solution, without human bias. As a recruitment platform, we’re location agnostic in our search for top talent,” Tejuja says.

Tejuja shares that to make Hackertrail a clear reality, he had to understand the pain of recruitment as well as a candidate’s mindset. “I became a pseudo career counsellor for a number of months helping techies with their resume and helping them connect with people from my network to get them a job. There was a time when random people were calling me frequently just so I can straighten out their resume,” he says.

At the present, Hackertrail is fundraising for their seed round, looking to raise a total of S$900,000. Tejuja says that in the next twelve months, they aim to multiply their clients ten times and their market twice.

They offer financial advice targeted at those who are not amongst the ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs).

When their friends kept complaining that investing is a such as big hassle, founders of crowd-wisdom investing platform Advantedj realised the urgent need to come up with an innovative solution. They identified a huge gap in the market for high-quality advice targeted at those who are not ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWIs), and thought of a way to leverage common financial wisdom while providing expertise to busy professionals.

Kelvin Goh, chief executive officer and founder of Advantedj, says that although his friends know that it is important to invest and grow their savings, their jam-packed schedules do not permit them to diligently catch up on trends and invest by themselves. “At the same time, they are sufficiently astute to know that when they go to a bank, they face significant conflicts of interest, and high fees. They also get frustrated with junior relationship managers who often don’t know any more than the customer themselves. They hear about hedge funds and private equity, but they don’t have enough money to get in – those are reserved only for UHNWIs,” Goh says.

Goh and his colleagues at Advantedj thought there must be a balance somewhere, and that the usual response to opt-out and put savings in passive investments is not the best solution. With a lean budget, their fields of expertise and some technical help from Rainmaker Labs, Advantedj’s four founders embarked on a startup journey to bring investing closer to everyone.

“We make investing simple, by tapping into the wisdom of the community to uncover insights and themes. These are expressed as an investible mini-portfolio of relevant stocks, which we call an Edj (pronounced “edge”). To improve the signal-to-noise ratio, our team of professional financial analysts vet each Edj for quality, so that you receive only the best curated advice,” Goh adds.

Advantedj provides a win-win situation for both its clients and contributors. It is especially unique from other platforms in that it allows its clients to invest with zero conflicts of interest with any financial institution, 100% transparency, and fair and affordable pricing based solely on performance. Meanwhile, their contributors can build their track record, reach out to a wider audience, and earn additional income.

Not only that, Goh and his colleagues have gone the extra mile to be involved in the process. In fact, to verify the challenges and problems faced by the target users of Advantedj, each of the team members would play the role of a bank client at different banks at different locations. They would walk into each bank branch and inquire about investments into bonds, stocks, unit trusts and structured products. This way, their product also gets to have a boost.

“We are currently in discussions with various brokerage firms to offer execution services. The collaboration will lead to savings and convenience for Advantedj subscribers, who will be able to identify, subscribe for, and implement the Edj investment strategies on a single platform seamlessly. Meanwhile, Advantedj will expand to include stocks traded on the exchanges of Hong Kong, London, Paris and Frankfurt, and also expand to include FX trading strategies,” Goh adds.

There are 100 condos and a growing number of SMEs presently using the platform.

Imagine booking a tennis court, paying condo dues, and applying for carpark labels all in one application. Reserv founder Sandeep Menon came up with a rough idea of this kind a couple of years ago when he was having difficulties finding an up-to-date and reliable aircon service provider for his home. Now, Menon has made his idea tangible with Reserv, a cloud-based SaaS platform and fully integrated marketplace, with value propositions for both the demand and supply sides.

From using his savings and some help from friend and family to start Reserv, Menon is now a grantee of recent funding from Javelin Startup-O Victory Fund. Reserv describes its experience with Startup O as brilliant and seamless. “When it comes to fund raising, as most startup founders will tell you - the first few rounds are extremely crucial - as you are not just hunting for capital, but also looking for investors who are strategic and share your vision for the long term growth of the company. Right from my initial conversation with Anuj, the philosophy of Startup-O resonated with what we were looking for,” Menon adds.

With over 100 condos and a growing number of SMEs presently using the platform, Reserv has found its place in the heart of the booming Singaporean startup scene. Menon says that Reserv’s users find real value in the software and apps that their startup provides, from smarter living to automated operations to increasing productivity. For instance, Riddance Pest Control chief executive officer Sylvia Chan says that before Reserv, their SME was spending 3-4 hours a day in manual work and that using Reserv helped boost productivity by 40%.

“Most home owners and residents recognize that their living experience, especially when it comes to their home, are stuck in the 1990’s and are looking forward to making it better. Reserv brings simplicity, convenience and a resident focused experience to apartment living that we are becoming used in the age of Uber - and like the best things in life, for residents - it’s absolutely free,” Menon adds.

Menon’s startup story begins with his journey to Singapore from India on a junior college scholarship in computer engineering. Now 37 years old and a first generation Singaporean, Menon brings to the table a rich consulting experience across industries such as banking, telcos, government agencies, and resource companies all over the region. According to him, this experience enabled him to see how big businesses work at scale and gave him an appreciation of making things happen.