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The implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals has been celebrated as marking out a roadmap for global prosperity to be achieved by the year 2030.…
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Nigerian on-demand e-delivery startup Metro Africa Express – MAX – had been named runner-up at London’s startup competition Startup Battlefield.
The Startup Battlefield took place this week in London at the TechCrunch London conference, and saw 15 startups from Europe as well as international markets present their businesses to a panel of industry experts for the chance to take home the Disrupt Cup, and GP£30,000.
Four finalists were then selected to pitch head-to-head in front of the panel of judges; with three of this year’s finalists hailing from the UK, and one from Nigeria.
London-based artificial intelligence music composition technology Jukedeck was crowned winner of the competition.
Nigeria’s on-demand delivery startup MAX was named the runner-up.
MAX is an on-demand delivery service currently operating in Lagos. Customers request to have their package delivered online; and the startup guarantees delivery within three hours or five hours of the order being placed depending on the customer’s delivery choice.
Delivery is executed by the startup’s team of motorbike-riding “MAX Champions”.
The judging panel at Startup Battlefield comprised Eileen Burbidge, partner at Passion Capital; Suranga Chandratillake, general partner at Balderton Capital; Alex Depledge, founder of Hassle; Fred Destin, general partner at Accel Partners; Cristina Fonseca, founder of Talkdesk; and Matthew Panzarino, editor-in-chief of TechCrunch.
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Image provided by Ruangguru
Indonesian education tech startup Ruangguru announced today that it has raised a seven-digit series A funding round. The round was led by Venturra Capital, a venture capital fund investing in companies in Indonesia and Southeast Asia. East Ventures, which led the startup’s seed round in 2014, participated as well.
As in the seed round, the series A funding amount is undisclosed. Ruangguru also did not disclose if it has immediate access to the funding and if it will be used solely for company growth.
“We have experienced running the company and selling the product and services both in bootstrapping and seed investment stage – and we have built the company to be where it is now within these limited circumstances. We believe that it is the time for us to scale,” Ruangguru CEO and co-founder Iman Usman tells Tech in Asia. He adds that the startup has been encouraged by the significant growth of other tech companies this year, and believes that this forward momentum will continue into the next.
Iman says Venturra managing partner John Riady has been a friend of his for some years and both of them are part of the of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers. However, Ruangguru was introduced to Venturra through “mutual friends.” In a separate statement, Iman explains that Venturra’s affiliation with Indonesia’s powerful Lippo Group is “beneficial as we are already planning strategic partnerships with their big-name businesses, including Pelita Harapan Education Chain, Berita Satu Media Group, and many others, to significantly scale up our reach nationally.”
The Ruangguru team. Image provided by Ruangguru
With the funding, Iman says the company is looking for talent across several roles, especially in technical, business development, education development, and digital marketing. Additionally, the team will be launching a new product at some point early next year, as well as looking to expand geographically, although Iman would not share more details than that.
Ruangguru launched in April 2014 as an online platform connecting tutors to students. Lessons offered include school subjects, music, sports, foreign languages, and more. Ruangguru boasts high-quality tutors, picking them among top university students and experienced teachers. It currently has over 23,000 registered tutors. Ruangguru would not comment on number of customers, however.
In 2015 the startup debuted an online test preparation tool called tes.ruangguru.com. On it, students can find test questions that fit Indonesia’s educational curriculum, as well as data analytics features that can help them keep track of their progress and performance when preparing for a given test. The program was recently pilot tested by the Department of Education of Jakarta to prepare teachers for the National Teachers’ Competency Exam (UKG). In a further win for the startup, the Faculty of Medicine of University of Indonesia also decided to use tes.ruangguru.com for its online tryouts for university entrance exams in the country.
Ruangguru also just launched a tutor development program called Guru Hebat, which it’s currently rolling out in the Greater Jakarta area. The idea is for the startup to maintain high standards among its tutors and support them through in-person and online training and study materials. At the moment, Guru Hebat covers the subjects of English and math, Iman explains.
“We see [Ruangguru co-founder Adamas] Belva and Iman as strong and dedicated founders who are passionate about making significant impact to the education sector in Indonesia, and with their leadership, we believe that Ruangguru has the potential to dominate the online education space in Indonesia,” says Rudy Ramawy, managing partner of Venturra Capital, in a statement.
This post Edtech startup Ruangguru raises series A round from Venturra Capital appeared first on Tech in Asia.
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RECSI-GROUP est le premier cabinet de recrutement par affinités. A la croisée d’un site de rencontre par affinités et d’un cabinet de recrutement spécialisé en informatique, cette startup a pour ambition de créer le couple employé / employeur idéal.
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The C4DLab incubator at the University of Nairobi (UoN) has accepted four Kenyan startups into the first cohort of its Africa Technology and Innovation Accelerator (AfTIA) programme, offering them training, mentorship and funding.
Disrupt Africa reported in June on C4DLab’s launch of AfTIA, claiming it to be “forward-looking and radical”, with the incubator using Nairobi Innovation Week to open applications.
The AfTIA programme will run pre-incubation, early-stage acceleration, and growth -stage acceleration programmes, supported by innovation ecosystem partners and faculty.
The four selected startups for the first programme are agriculture data startup FarmDrive, real-time learning platform Learnmine, social networking platform Vospine, and intelligent traffic device Silicon Savannah.
“The goal of AfTIA is to be the global reference point in developing scalable IT-based enterprises for sustainable development. A call for the startups was made during the launch. More than 60 applications were received and after a rigorous selection process, four startups were selected for the acceleration program,” C4DLab said.
The acceleration programme will run for five months and has officially launched. The startups will graduate at the end of March next year.
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As Asia continues to be a dynamic and diverse place for Internet businesses to flourish, e27 brings another awesome list of companies that are looking for talent. This time, it’s for aggregators that are making sense of various market verticals. If you or someone you know who might a good fit, do apply and spread the word!
Let’s look at who’s hiring!
Hate it or love it, Rocket Internet-backed Lazada continues to experience growth in its industry, citing that the number of third-party sellers has increased dramatically from 478 in November 2013 to close to 8,000 in November 2014.
In terms of raising rounds, Lazada has raised more than US$430 million to fuel its growth in Southeast Asia, investing in supply chain, logistics, warehousing, mobile commerce, regional network of e-commerce services, localisation, hiring, and marketing. As its main strength is in operations, it’s no wonder that Lazada is searching for more associates in that department to join it.
Open Positions:
Based in Singapore, Passport Asia is a mobile app that allows users to pay a single monthly fee and will be able to access 50,000 classes from 300 gyms and studios. In a July interview with e27, Passport Asia’s CEO Gene Yap revealed that the team previously raised US$220,000 with more than 11,000 paying subscribers.
Passport Asia is currently live in these cities: Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Sydney and Melbourne. With a credible team that has collectively served in advisory roles for over 20 startups, Passport Asia seeks to hire several individuals who will fit in the growing company.
Open Positions:
Also read: You cheat sheet to recruiting programmers in the Philippines
Job Forward, Singapore’s online social recruitment platform, also makes it on this list. It’s a platform that optimises social media to distribute job vacancies so that more people can reach out to both active and passive job listings.
Earlier this year, Job Forward also recently launched Startup Essence, a service that empowers startups and SMEs to engage the right talent through social recruiting. In a way to bridge both social media and online recruitment, Job Forward helps break down society’s traditional mindset towards recruiting potential employees. In order to further improve the platform, Job Forward is searching for a front-end web developer on its team.
Open Position: Web Developer (HTML, CSS, JS)
Headquartered in Singapore’s famous Block 71, 99.co is a property search portal that aims to prioritise users with unbiased search results with already over 100,000 authentic listings sorted by robust algorithms. The company currently monetises through a subscription model for agents, who will pay either US$28 a month or US$280 a year to use the service. On the other hand, the site will be completely free for the consumer.
99.co has also been backed by well-known venture capitals and investors, such as 500 Startups, Sequoia Capital and Facebook Co-founder Eduardo Saverin. In order to grow the company even further, 99.co is opening up several positions for interested applicants, with some focussing on freelance and others full-time positions.
Open Positions:
Don’t see a particular job that you like? Try exploring the e27 jobs platform at e27.co/jobs and find the right tech company for your career. Using the same link, you can also post company job openings as well.
Lead image credit: Techno Vectors/Shutterstock
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At first glance, Amar Bank looks just like any other bank. Upon entering its branch office in Central Jakarta, we see a counter with two officers behind it, desks for customer service officers and a security guard watching the door.
But once e27 talks with Director Vishal Tulsian, we find out what makes it different.
“We aspire to become the first fully-digital bank in Indonesia,” he says.
“[The] banking model is changing. In today’s world, people are no longer required to visit branches with the advance of technology. The last time we visited a banking branch must have been a long time ago,” he adds.
Owned by Toleram Group, Amar Bank’s core services consist of transactions, money deposits and loans, which go under the brand Tunaiku.
Tunaiku is a fintech product that offers individual unsecured loan for the middle-class segment in Indonesia. Through a website, customers can apply for loans at their convenience. The company has also developed its own algorithm that allows speedy responses to assess applications and disperse loans.
“In today’s market, the available loan services cater to either those under IDR2 million (US$142), or those beyond IDR10 million (US$714), while there is a huge gap for the market between those two,” Tulsian explains the target market that Tunaiku is aiming.
Tunaiku holds a unique position in Amar Bank’s organisational structure. The easiest way to define Tunaiku is as a ‘startup within a large organisation’.
The decision for this model was taken when Toleram Group founders noticed the gap between startups and large organisations – how come startups succeed in disrupting market while large organisation, with all their resources, fail?
“Startups focus on opportunity gaps, while large organisations tend to focus on performance gaps … Startups build their success based on their failure, while larger organisations usually have their own standards to maintain,” Tulsian explains.
“This is why Toleram Group assigned a completely separate set of people with a startup mindset to run this part of the business, in order to fulfill that gap between startups and large organisations … Startup is more than just an ‘outfit’, it is more of a mindset,” he adds.
Vishal Tulsian, Director of Amar Bank
Also Read: Ruangguru raises undisclosed Series A from Venturra, East Ventures
How does one operate a startup within a large organisation?
There are several characteristics that become a startup’s advantage compared to large organisations, with two of them being experimentation and risk-taking.
In order to achieve that mindset, Tunaiku began by building a company culture that resembles a startup’s. Aside from hiring employees aged between 25-35 years old, and implementing an open-office plan, especially for Tunaiku’s division in the building, it also encourages taking challenges and risks as a way to grow.
The company’s Human Resource officer Ratna Julia Sahlan even holds the title of ‘Culture Champion’, incorporating fun element in fostering growth.
“On birthdays, instead of just giving employees cakes, we also challenge them to do something that is good for themselves, but they have always been afraid to do. [Things] like doing stand-up comedy for an employee who fears public speaking,” she explains.
The team also holds routine book club meetings and sharing sessions where employees share non-work related skills such as self-defense or scuba diving.
New employees also have to do a role-play performance to describe the company’s values.
“On the first day, companies usually explain their values to their new hires, but this rarely sticks. When they do it in a role-play, they can have a better understanding of these values,” Tulsian explains.
“We also discover that they can be more creative than we thought,” Sahlan adds.
In relation to funding, Amar Bank is the sole investor in Tunaiku.
Also Read: Socialgiver and OTTO win Singtel-Samsung mobile app challenge
Apart from Jakarta, Tunaiku and Amar Bank is also available in Surabaya, where the company was first started.
In the city, they are doing a partnership with local companies by setting up a desk in their factories where workers can easily learn about Tunaiku’s services.
“For a certain market, having a person that they can talk to … it is a necessary step to take in order to introduce this service,” Tulsian explains.
Tunaiku is also looking to diversify its fintech service.
“We are also developing a second fintech product for small and medium enterprises,” he says.
“Enjoy 2-for-1 tickets to Echelon Indonesia 2016 now. Do not miss out on Indonesia’s biggest international tech conference!”
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Citing a ‘corporate’ decision making process that left the company slow to respond to the competition, Rovio, the company behind the Angry Birds franchise, has announced that CEO Pekka Rantala is to step down after just one year. Current Chief Legal Officer Kati Levoranta is to take over as new CEO from the beginning of 2016. Read More
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Business reimbursements can suck. If you’ve ever owned a business that has to cover employee expenses like gas or travel, or even if you’ve used these services yourself, you understand that it’s a task that can quickly turn from convenient to a nightmare due to a delay or a misplaced receipt.
A Bangalore-based company is working to change that. Happay cuts down the paper trail and number of staff members required to handle employee expenses. Instead, the service consolidates them into a Visa card that allows the reimbursing company to remain more in control of their expenses than if it had used a card obtained through a bank.
“All over the world, people have been trying to force consumer payments on the consumers,” explains Varun Rathi, COO, who co-founded the startup alongside CEO Anshul Rai. Both found that the needs of businesses were changing to become more complex and distributed. They required more customizable payment programs that fit specific businesses’ needs.
The SaaS startup operates much like US company Bento for Business, which allows spending to be approved by a boss over a mobile app, and Karmic Labs, which offers an unlimited number of Mastercard credit cards for businesses to distribute to employees in the US.
Varun says that although Happay offers a service that’s also offered by banks, they don’t compete with them. It provides more of an intermediary service that eases the process for companies, so banks look at the startup as a partner rather than a competitor.
Founders Anshul Rai (left) and Varun Rathi (right)
Varun and Anshul began Happay in 2012 with the idea of working toward making a whole payment platform that worked in real-time for companies. They began by working on employee payment customization and are expanding to try to become the one-stop shop for all of a company’s business expenses. Anshul focused more on tech aspects of the job, while Varun focused on sales, marketing, and the startup’s presence.
2012 was a rough year. Both founders were fresh out of university with only two years work experience. Working on the startup meant going two years without a salary for both founders, and to add to the madness, Varun was getting married around the same time. I bring up that it must have been difficult, and Varun shrugs it off. That’s just part of starting a company, he says. It was even more difficult for the duo’s startup because it’s trying to crack the payments market in India, which is hard to predict. However, their minds were set.
“In India, there are a lot of strict terms and regulations, and any startup will start [planning a] payment with [a] product,” Varun says. “That’s where most of our challenges [were]. We tried partnering with the banks [with a] bottom-up approach. All the people in the banks liked the product idea, but it never went to the top management, so we always got stuck.”
Varun and his team headed back to the drawing board and decided to get smaller players on their side instead of banks, going for a product aimed at regular consumers. The project worked, and the resulting payment app was about 200,000 users strong, but they weren’t really seeing a profit. They went back to the drawing board.
So they were thinking, “Are we in the right domain? Are we with the right customer?” recalls Varun. Around the same time, they began making better connections with investors that allowed them to partner with the banks. They were finally able to transition into the enterprise-oriented product that Happay is today.
The process was hard, and the founders’ parents were worried, but Varun’s ambition kept his efforts alive. “We always wanted to start something of our own and saw a big point, which was using technology – not just creatively but making a business out of it,” he tells Tech in Asia. “That’s what we focused on from the beginning.”
Besides, the other option was for both founders to go back to their corporate jobs. They definitely didn’t want to do that.
When we last talked about Happay in April, it had caught our attention by raising US$500,000 in a seed round from Indian venture capital company AngelPrime.
Varun’s optimistic about Happay’s future and is looking to scale it across India before setting its sights on Southeast Asia.
Happay takes care of all employee expenses that are submitted to the service. Varun’s goal is that it takes care of all the expenses flowing out so that a business’ staffers do not have to log into any bank account.
Though Happay’s just three years old, Varun notes that a day in the office for him has changed a lot from when he first started.
“I always look forward to coming to the office now. It’s very different – we’re much more organized, and there is a proper office and [work times].” Varun adds that he used to work from home, which was a round-the-clock kind of deal. “More than anything, I look forward to meeting all the people who are here, and […] at the end of the day, I just feel: why is the day so short?”
This post After 2 years with no salary, this duo got their startup idea right appeared first on Tech in Asia.
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Image Credit: Jirsak, Shutterstock
Both Wired and Gizmodo published reports yesterday, one after the other, claiming to have uncovered the identity of the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, known only as Satoshi Nakamoto.
The stories were followed by rapid-fire media prancing on the lead (we’re calling ourselves out on this) — and while many on the sidelines scrutinized what they saw as an eagerness for press to jump on unsubstantiated claims — the story itself is compelling.
Both pieces offer significant and painstakingly-researched evidence pointing fingers at an eccentric, Australian man named Craig Steven Wright.
Is this elusive Australian businessman Satoshi Nakamoto, and does it matter?
The reports have led to immediate actions: Wright’s home was raided by more than 10 police personnel, The Guardian reported this afternoon. Notably, the Australian Federal Police were quick to say that the raids were not related to the Bitcoin articles.
Also Read: Why Bitcoin’s success story has only just begun
“This matter is unrelated to recent media reporting regarding the digital currency Bitcoin,” police officers said in a statement.
Many took to Twitter to voice their discontent with the way the story and subsequent action was handled. Wikileaks tweeted, “Bitcoin ‘co-creator’ police raid: example of vulgar Australian “tall poppy syndrome”? Already pushed by AU journos:”
In any case, this story is divisive in raising not just opinion over the already contentious and misunderstood currency (and story behind it), but also what warrants as good reporting in an age where sensationalist headlines and claims — well-researched or not — sell.
Meanwhile, Hong Kong is currently playing host to Scaling Bitcoin, an academic workshop for Bitcoin developers and members interested in the technology to discuss and present how Bitcoin can scale.
It seems the B-word has again surfaced, so e27 thought it might be an appropriate time to ask some members of the community their thoughts.
“The only thing I can say is that media should not focus that much about who Satoshi is. Given the open source and decentralized nature of bitcoin, the identity of its creator is not important for the reliability of the system. Especially since it is not proven yet [who] Satoshi actually is.
“Yet this media craze shows once again how widely known Bitcoin has become over the past few years. And, obviously, for common people who are not familiar with open source or decentralised protocols, putting a face on the creators will probably be an element of comfort, which is reflected by the ongoing price hike.” — Aurelien Menant, Founder of Gatecoin
“I am finding it deeply disturbing that member[s] of the media are going this far. First we saw Dorian Nakamoto harassed relentlessly because of the assumptions made by Newsweek. I have to ask: What is next? If this trend continues, I fear fellow crypto enthusiasts will get hurt.” — Matthew A Ventura, Ventura Investment Group LLC
“If Craig Wright wanted to show he’s Satoshi, all he needs to do is sign a message proving he is Satoshi.” — Larry Salibra, Pay4Bugs and organiser of Scaling Bitcoin
“First, does it really matter who the founder or founders are, seeing as it has already progressed from the original documentation? The technology is out in the wild for all to use, so really there is no one creator anymore.
“Second, the media comes up with a new suspicion of who’s the creator, but there’s never real or legitimate proof. For me, it’s pure sensationalism that is making this news,” —Maxine Ryan, Co-Founder Bitspark
“I think we will only know with certainty who the real Satoshi is when she or he chooses to identify themselves. The creator went through great trouble to hide themselves, and the immediate raid of Wright’s home shows why.
“I don’t think we came closer to finding out who Satoshi was, but we came closer to putting together the puzzle of Bitcoin’s early history. Wright seems to be an important part of that and it’s relevant in a historical context. But nothing more.” — Leonhard Weese, President of BitcoinHK and organiser of Scaling Bitcoin
Also Read: 5 reasons why Bitcoin price has hit a new high this year
The post Who ‘Satoshi’ is doesn’t matter: Hong Kong Bitcoin community appeared first on e27.
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