Quest Ventures’ senior analyst Jasmine Toh represented Singapore at the ASEAN-China Young Entrepreneur Forum held in Cambodia. Jasmine was the head of the Singapore delegation.
Cambodia’s Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation H.E. Luy David presided over the ASEAN-China Young Entrepreneur Forum organised in Siem Reap province from Sept. 3 to 5 under the theme “Role of Emerging Youth and Women Entrepreneurs in Economic Development.”
Quest Ventures’ venture partner Jeffrey Seah has joined Gravity4 (G4), a marketing cloud platform specialising in artificial intelligence and big data. Seah will join the company’s advisory board, which is now focused on developing blockchain technologies to eliminate ad fraud.
Seah said that blockchain has the ability to address the “unwieldy and opaque supply chain” in marketing and advertising technology. Through the technology, the company aims to establish transparency and trust by creating a central and secure way to record, review and execute deals.
“With Gravity4 heavily investing in blockchain, we’ll be able to eliminate ad fraud and provide personalised experiences to eliminate the need for ad blockers, a solution the industry desperately needs,” Seah said.
Untuk mengembangkan aplikasinya, Selasa (1/8) lalu Hapz mendapatkan pendanaan senilai US$ 501.200 dari sejumlah investor. Yakni, Cocoon Capital, Quest Ventures, TinkBig Venture, dan SPH Media Fund, serta seorang investor malaikat (angel investor) yang tak diungkap namanya.
Hapz memang butuh banyak suntikan dana untuk mengembangkan platformnya. Soalnya, persaingan di bisnis tiket online di kawasan Asia Tenggara terbilang sengit.
The Startup Cities Index found Singapore to have outperformed 84 of the 85 ranked cities in five areas – startup ecosystem, salary, social security and benefits, cost of living and quality of life.
James Tan, managing partner of venture capital firm Quest Ventures, didn’t buy all the findings. For starters, he said, the number of vacation days – one of three indicators of social security and benefits – are “irrelevant” to startups.
He said: “To founders, there is often no concept of weekends or public holidays. In comparison to their multinational corporation competitors, startups neither have the luxury of time nor money. So they need to move fast. If they work one Saturday more than the large companies, these startups would have done 20 per cent more work.”
James also added that safety, often overlooked for the sake of opportunity, ought to be a key driver for people. “Our multi-cultural, multilingual and multi-religion environment creates a comfortable base from which everyone from around the world should feel welcome to start the next big thing.”
James Tan, Managing Partner of Quest Ventures joins Vinod Nair, CEO of MoneySmart; Mohan Belani, CEO of e27; Patricia Polizzi, CEO of Startup Autobahn Singapore; and Professor Wong Poh Kam, Director of NUS Enterprise to launch the report.
“Start-up hub Launchpad@one-north has become a dynamic ecosystem, with many start-ups entering and leaving it, as well as an evolving range and profile of start-ups. This was one of the key observations which Professor Wong Poh Kam, Director of NUS Entrepreneurship Centre at NUS Enterprise, shared during TechSG Insights at BLOCK71 Singapore on 2 August.”
JTC LaunchPad @ one-north has matured into a dynamic ecosystem for startups, according to latest research findings by TechSG. For starters, the number of tenants (startups and facilitators such as angel investors, venture capitalists and legal firms) grew 65% to 425 from November 2015 to March 2017.
Interestingly, LaunchPad startups have a higher degree of “ecosystem engagement” compared to tech startups in Singapore. 80% of LaunchPad startups are found to have participated in at least one government funding scheme, versus 64.2% of tech startups. Nearly 40% of LaunchPad startups have received venture capital funding, versus 15.8% of tech startups.
As LaunchPad’s largest private tenant and earliest venture fund, Quest Ventures’ managing partner James Tan was invited to be on the panel to discuss the findings, along with Vinod Nair, CEO of MoneySmart; Mohan Belani, CEO of e27; Patricia Polizzi, CEO of Startup Autobahn Singapore; and Professor Wong Poh Kam, Director of NUS Enterprise.
Rise in startups, angel investors, venture capitalists and legal firms reflects new growth areas globally.
Wong Poh Kam, director of NUS Enterprise, said on Wednesday that a dynamic ecosystem features a high turnover of tenants, a prominence of young firms (aged two and below), a diversity of firms (in size, activity and maturity), and evolving firm profiles.
Event-tech platform Hapz has raised S$680,000 ($499,595) in seed funding from Cocoon Capital, SPH Media Fund, Quest Ventures, TinkBig Venture and an angel investor.
The firm said it will use the proceeds to expand its team and build partnerships with merchants and event organisers across verticals and through the region.
A company representative told this portal that the investment rationale behind this for investors lay in it being a new market, with “no existing player in the S.E.A region who can do cross-border experience booking.”
Event platform Hapz has raised seed funding of $680,000 from Cocoon Capital, SPH Media Fund, Quest Ventures, TinkBig Venture and an angel investor.
SPH Media Fund chief executive Chua Boon Ping said: “We have been involved with Hapz since their early days as it was one of our accelerator start-ups. We like the value propositions that Hapz brings to both merchants and consumers. For consumers, it means getting better deals, powered by Hapz’s dynamic-pricing algorithm. And for merchants, Hapz provides a channel to promote events.”
Have Islamic banking and financial services innovated at the speed they were expected to? Rushdi Siddiqui, mentor at Quest Ventures was invited to comment.
“There are industry insiders who have been making similar arguments for a long time now. Rushdi Siddiqui, who is now Advisor at Wall Street Blockchain Alliance and Mentor at VC firm Quest Ventures, and is an industry veteran, says Islamic finance is deeply linked to oil/commodity prices and hence remains as volatile as price per barrel of oil.
“When oil is $80/barrel, surpluses exist, infrastructure projects are many, banks are lending to SMEs, and non-Muslim countries want part of the petro-liquidity. Conversely, when the price bandwidth is $35-50/barrel, there is a lot of pain for governments, SMEs, banks, and consumerism,” Siddiqui wrote as early as late last year.”