March 25, 2024
Articles

Diverse startups secure impressive funding this week

Diverse Range of Startups Celebrate Significant Funding Achievements.

A week of noteworthy VC investments saw startups in telehealth, reseller ecosystems, embedded fintech, insurtech, and Web3 securing funds This week marked a significant milestone for a variety of innovative startups as they successfully secured substantial venture capital funding. From a telehealth pioneer to an insurtech disruptor and a Web3 wallet innovator, these companies are poised for growth and development.

Let’s delve into the details of the investments that are driving their future endeavours.

Good Doctor

Founded in 2018, Indonesia-based telehealth startup Good Doctor allows customers to consult doctors online, buy medicines from Health Mall, and book offline doctor appointments at hospital partners.

The company boasts partnerships with over 2,500 doctors and 4,500 healthcare facilities, including pharmacies, hospitals, clinics, and official health laboratories. These partnerships serve a customer base of over 2,500 companies and 15 million users in both the B2B and B2C sectors.

This week, Good Doctor raised US$10 million in a Series A funding round led by MDI Ventures, with participation from existing investor Grab.

Circular

Founded in Singapore in 2021 by Nick Ramsay, George Oliver, Pantha Roy, and Yaniv Bernstein, Circular is a subscription service focused on high-end consumer electronics. It offers customers subscriptions on a wide range of premium tech devices with free damage protection that covers up to 90 per cent of the repair cost.

Through a flexible and affordable monthly subscription, the startup allows customers to sustainably access the latest tech gadgets at a fraction of the cost. Adding to its core categories of phones, tablets and laptops, Circular recently began offering popular gaming products as part of its Singapore catalogue.

This week, it secured US$7.6 million in funding from YC Continuity Fund, Global Founders Capital, Partech Ventures, and January Capital.

Ejen2u

Founded by Sheikh Ezaiddin, Imran Hadi, and Taufiq Zakir, Ejen2u provides a reseller digital ecosystem in Malaysia. It helps micro, small and medium enterprises — including brand owners, stockists, agents, and drop-shippers — increase their business. Its offerings include a cloud-based reseller management platform, reseller education platform, reseller-based venture builder, and several fintech solutions.

Ejen2u bagged an undisclosed sum in a pre-Series A funding round led by Gobi Partners through the Gobi Dana Impak Ventures fund, with participation from Artem Ventures.

WORQ

Founded in 2017, WORQ is a Malaysia-based coworking and flexible space provider. It aims to make real estate more accessible by offering office spaces designed like Google’s, making real estate available to users through a space-as-a-service approach.

In 2023, the company claims to have achieved an 80 per cent revenue growth while maintaining mid-teen net profit margins. The firm said the demand for flexible office space is on the rise, with growing interest not only from its traditional clients like tech startups and SMEs but also from global companies expanding into the region.

This week, the startup closed an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series B funding round from Phillip Capital and the Leong family office of property developer Mah Sing Group.

Phasio

Founded by Harry Conor Lucas (CEO) and Raman (CPO), Phasio provides a manufacturing interface tailored to address existing friction points between manufacturers and customers throughout the standard process. The company claims its software tackles the end-to-end workflow between these stakeholders — from instant quotations to collaborating on designs to managing personalised order experiences via a digital storefront.

Each tool featured on Phasio’s manufacturing interface is designed to streamline product development in a way that’s intuitive to the manufacturer-customer workflow. For instance, when collaborating on designs, Phasio’s interface enables the manufacturer and customer to view the design on the former’s website and leave comments on the parts in 3D. This means a single engineer can scale up their workflow from an average of two projects to ten at a time.

This week, the Singapore- and Berlin-based startup secured US$2.5 million in seed funding led by Airtree Ventures, with participation from 500 Global, Entrepreneur First, and Michael Sorkin’s Gattaca Ventures.

LUNA

Launched in late 2019 by Abdullah Lewis (CEO), Patricco Baron (CTO), and Irianto Siah (COO), LUNA is an Indonesian embedded fintech and vertical SaaS platform for retailers and MSMEs in Indonesia. It offers an Operating System for merchants to improve their operations, payments, accounting, access to financing, supply chain, digital marketing, customer relationship, loyalty programmes, HR, legal and compliance.

This week, it raised an undisclosed round of financing led by TNB Aura through its TNBA Scout initiative. Seedstars and existing investors 1982 Ventures, Century Oak Capital, and Prasetia Dwidharma also participated.

Eazy Digital

Eazy Digital is an insurtech startup built by serial entrepreneurs and insurance veterans Harprem Doowa (CEO) and Maethavee Sukul (COO). A SaaS platform, it empowers agents and brokers to automate their insurance sales and processes in Thailand.

Eazy Digital leverages technology to help insurance intermediaries break free from manual and legacy processes. The insurtech platform is built to handle millions of transactions with features such as an automation campaign builder to launch data-driven and personalised campaigns to boost sales efficiency. Agent request management that connects to a workflow system allows agents to request claims, amendments, quotations, and cancellations.

This week, Eazy Digital raised a US$1 million seed round led by M Venture Partners, with participation from returning investors Wavemaker Partners, OneDegree, Ascend Angels, and Orvel Ventures.

Account Labs

Founded in 2023 following the merger of Keystone and UniPass, Account Labs is a Web3 startup based in Singapore. The company offers a smart contract wallet, UniPass, which does away with complex 12-word seed phrases to log in. Wallet owners can use their Google account to set up and log into their wallets, with no Web3 familiarity required. Users can also top up their wallet directly with cards, Apple Pay, or GCash in the Philippines. Users can then send stablecoins directly to other Web3 wallets.

This week, the company raised US$7.7 million from Amber Group, MixMarvel DAO Ventures, and Qiming Ventures.

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Written by

Sainul Abudheen K

Editor, e27