Hi, everyone. Taro here.
With social distancing rules slowly being relaxed, I have been having many more in-person meetings in the past few months, with Public Izakaya in Singapore getting heavy patronage. It has been interesting to see that conversations about tech often lead to musings about Web3 and the possibilities that are starting to become clearer. While the technology is still far from mature, the seed of a new era in tech has definitely been sown. What this may look like by the end of the year is still unknown, but it is an exciting area to monitor.
Tomorrow is the inaugural Alibaba Cloud Startup Day, with a number of leading Chinese startups and Southeast Asian VCs taking part. There will be in-person satellite events running in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. If you are interested in attending the Startup Day, please register here.
Open Run
Startups to watch in Asia. This week, we’re looking at startups in the portfolio ofVertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India.
Location: Singapore
Speedoc is a virtual clinic and healthcare solutions platform that allows users to seek medical care and services from the comfort of their home. Services include house visits by doctors or nurses, video consultations, and hospital-level care at home. Speedoc now has a presence in five cities in Singapore and Malaysia. It has facilitated more than 110,000 visits and serves more than 75,000 patients.
Location: India
Founded in 2020, Proactive For Her is a women-focused healthcare startup aiming to provide judgement-free, progressive, body-positive, queer-affirmative, and trauma-informed healthcare services and solutions. Currently, services are offered online via teleconsultation, as well as offline via its clinic that recently began service in Bengaluru. Proactive for Her aims to serve 100,000+ women through their various products, services, and community engagement initiatives in 2022.
Location: Indonesia
Aruna is an end-to-end supply chain aggregator that helps Indonesian fisherfolk sell to enterprise-scale buyers across eight countries in Southeast Asia, East Asia, North America and the Middle East. Aruna was founded by Farid Naufal Aslam, Indraka Fadhlillah, and Utari Octavianty.
Location: Singapore
Dedoco is a decentralized digital document and workflow management platform that provides customers from a range of sectors with trusted, verifiable, and connected documents that can integrate with existing platforms. Dedoco’s robust technology ensures the integrity, immutability, and security of records. The startup has onboarded corporate customers spanning diverse sectors—governments, banks, financial institutions, real estate developers, professional services, and technological platforms.
Location: India
Kuku FM is an audio content platform featuring audiobooks, podcasts, radio talk shows, and more. The platform is headquartered in India and recently raised USD 19.5 million for its Series B round. Founded by Vinod Kumar Meena, Lal Chand Bisu, and Vikas Goyal, Kuku FM provides content creation tools to its users, enabling them to create, develop, and post original content.
Nothing But Net
Recent Startup Wins
- Edtech startup Doyobi announced that it is partnering with Ninja Van and Glints to design courses in its metaverse to teach children “21st-century skills” that involve critical thinking, leadership, creativity, and technology literacy.
- Smart access startup Igloocompany announced a USD 12 million Series B1 funding round with Purpose Venture Capital taking part. The round involved existing investors Kickstart Ventures, Wavemaker Partners, and Insignia Ventures Partners.
- Equatorial Space has been selected for the Techstars Los Angeles Accelerator Spring 2022 Cohort.
- B2B fisheries marketplace FishLog announced it had closed a seed round led by Insignia Ventures Partners.
- Deloitte Tohmatsu Venture Support will be expanding its monthly Morning Pitch event for startups and investors by launching a platform to run events across multiple markets concurrently.
Pick & Roll
Interesting Drops From the Week
- TikTok has become a heavily used platform for misinformation regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with over 30.5 billion views generated for videos related to the ongoing crisis. [via The Guardian]
- Plano, an eye health tech startup that helps parents monitor and limit children’s screen time via a mobile application, aims to prevent myopia through early intervention.
- The US Federal Trade Commission has won a case that accused WW International of illegally collecting personal data from children. The company has to “destroy any algorithms derived from the data, and pay a USD 1.5 million penalty.” [via Protocol]
- Crypto miners who were initially attracted to Kazakhstan due its friendly regulatory environment are being pushed out after taking the blame for ongoing power shortages. [via Rest of World]
If you are a startup that is raising funds, or have an interesting story or lead, and want us to feature it in this newsletter, please fill out thisform.