A Recap on What Happened This Week: Asian Startup News Overview (22nd January- 27th January)

By: Asia Business Outlook Team | Friday, 27 January 2023

Asian entrepreneurs are investigating what is possible with the upcoming wave of technological advancements to address the evolving needs of the region's internet population. Many people desire to contribute to resolving persistent social, economical, and environmental problems. They frequently concentrate on areas where technology hasn't advanced as quickly as it has in the more developed sectors of the digital economy. At the same time, the impact of COVID-19 has created greater demand for new digital services that startups are ideally-placed to build. While there is plenty of capital available for Asian companies, we are aware that the region's founders require much more support than just financial. Maintaining compliance with legislation gaining access to infrastructure or technologies, and raising the present low proportion of female entrepreneurship are common obstacles faced by businesses in the region.

This week, funds came in buckets! As we saw, Addie's, an agrifoodtech company, receives $10 million, while Dell buys cloudify for $100 million. So let's briefly review everything that happened this week.

Addie’s

Adie's, which also raised $10 million, opened the first drive-thru grocery store in the United States in Massachusetts. Breakthrough Energy Ventures, led by Bill Gates, invested $12 million in methane-reduction technology in the agtech sector, while AgFunder led a $3 million round for CommonGround, a farm real estate marketplace. In the meantime, one company that sells cultured meat has become kosher.

Cloudify

Dell is making an acquisition to strengthen its cloud services business, specifically its DevOps offerings: Cloudify, an Israeli startup that has developed a platform for cloud orchestration and infrastructure automation, is being acquired by the company. Cloud architects and DevOps engineers use Cloudify's tools to manage containers, workloads, and other resources across hybrid environments.

Dell did not officially announce the acquisition, but after receiving information from sources, we discovered that Dell had filed documents with the SEC pertaining to some of the share awards for Cloudify employees. A spokesperson for has now confirmed the purchase.

"Dell Technologies announced the completion of its acquisition of Cloudify," a spokesperson said. "Through this transaction, Dell will be able to continue to innovate our edge offerings."

Hawker Delivery Platform

WhyQ, a Malaysian and Singaporean hawker food delivery startup, has raised an additional RM4.6 million (S$1.4 million) in an extension of their Series A2 funding round. According to a press release issued on January 26, the Kairos FoodTech Fund of Kairos Capital Group led the round.

Delivery Hero, Chope, Angel Central, and RB Investments led the startup's initial Series A2 round of RM11.8 million (S$3.6 million), which closed in 2021.

WhyQ, which began as a hawker food delivery service in 2017, will use the funds to expand its digitalisation platform, which assists MSMEs in building digital infrastructures.

"SMEs are Southeast Asia's economic backbone, accounting for more than 90% of all companies and driving social mobility," said Eric Cheong, co-founder and managing partner of Kairos Capital Group.

iSeller

iSeller, known as the "Shopify of Indonesia," provides an all-in-one solution with a fully integrated ecosystem for businesses to digitise sales and operations, including POS, digital payments acceptance, inventory management, instant online stores, marketplace integration, and food delivery integration, assisting sellers of all sizes and skills to go digital. iSeller has rapidly expanded in the last year, gaining significant traction in merchant adoption and payment processing.

The company has grown to cover 30 cities in Indonesia and is trusted by over 100,000 businesses, including SOGO, OMNILUXE, Jiwa Group, GK Hebat Group, Agung Sedayu Group, Damn! Among many others, I enjoy Indonesia, Sinarmas, IT Gallery, Es Teler 77, HopHop, Lemonilo, and Peripera.

Landeed

Landeed, a proptech business with offices in Bengaluru, has raised $8.3 million in finance, including participation from Draper Associates, Y Combinator, and Bayhouse Capital.

With the new funds, Landeed plans to develop its technology foundation, hire staff, and create a complete property title search engine.

In order to achieve product-market fit, the business also intends to invest in creating for as many people as possible. In addition, it intends to bring on 10 more software developers to assist it in supplying infrastructure as a service (IaaS) for all real estate transactions.

“As India’s real estate market is expected to reach a size of $1 Tn by 2030, this funding presents the startup with a huge opportunity in the proptech market,” the startup said in a statement.