Retail News CRM

Tag: fund

  • Bo’s Coffee plans big expansion ahead

    Bo’s Coffee plans big expansion ahead

    Filipino cafe chain Bo’s Coffee plans to more than double its store network within four years and is also eyeing expansion into the Middle East. In an interview, founder Steve Benitez says the ambitious growth plan has been fuelled by strong local demand. With 103 cafes currently, Benitez is targeting between 200 and 250 by 2022.

    “Our job is to make sure that we are able to popularize coffee and be able to supply so much, not only in the Philippines but globally,” he said.

    In its home market, Bo’s Coffee, which was founded in 1996, will be targeting Luzon, especially given the brand has “only scratched the surface” there to date.

    In the Middle East, Bo’s Coffee plans to open a second store in Qatar shortly, followed by three more within two years. Other markets in the region are now in its sights.

    The expansion plans will be accelerated following an investment by Philippine-focused Navegar Fund which was attracted to Bo’s Coffee by its efforts to support local coffee-growing communities.

    “Seventy to 80 per cent of our coffee beans are sourced locally,” said Benitez. “We were trailblazers. We started featuring Philippine coffee and the other shops followed after.”

    Bo’s Coffee recently opened a 300sqm flagship store in Cebu which supports social enterprises by partnering with local micro-small entrepreneurs in their store interiors, products, and merchandise inside.

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  • Bukalapak Joins Hands With Tanamduit to Sell Mutual Funds Online

    Bukalapak Joins Hands With Tanamduit to Sell Mutual Funds Online

    E-commerce platform Bukalapak has partnered with online investment platform Tanamduit to introduce mutual fund products to first-time retail investors. The partnership will see local asset management firms Bahana TCW Investment Management, Batavia Prosperindo Asset Management and Sucorinvest Asset Management offer five new investment products, ranging from equity to fixed-income funds, on Bukalapak’s mutual funds platform BukaReksa.

    At its launch in January 2017, BukaReksa only featured money market fund products offered by CIMB Principal Asset Management and Mandiri Manajemen Investasi.

    But to capture a larger market, Bukalapak joined hands with finance marketplace Bareksa in December 2017, adding four more asset management firms, Kresna Asset Management, Syailendra Capital, Ciptadana Asset Management and BNP Paribas Investment Partners, to the platform

    BukaReksa now features nine asset management firms offering 21 investment products, compared with Bareksa, which has 31 asset management firms offering 160 investment products.

    “We hope our partnership with Tanamduit can boost financial literacy and investment in the country,” said Destya Danang Pradityo, head of payment and financial services at Bukalapak.

    Through the BukaReksa platform, customers can invest from as little as Rp 100,000 to Rp 1.5 million ($7-$104) in mutual funds.

    Destya said BukaReksa has at least 120,000 registered customers, with around half of them active investors from across the archipelago.

    “We believe online investment will become part of our lifestyles. Our collaboration with Bukalapak forms part of our mission to educate people on the benefits of investing,” said Muhammad Hanif, business development director at Tanamduit.

    With rapid technological development and the growth in online transactions, e-commerce players see opportunities to provide various services, including financial and investment products. This has seen the emergence of fintech startups offering mutual fund investment has been a trend over the past three years.

    Aside from Bukalapak, other online marketplaces also joined hands with Bareksa, such as Tokopedia, which in April this year launched Tokopedia Reksadana, offering mutual funds through local asset management firm Syailendra Capital.

    Another fintech startup, Invisee, has also been offering mutual fund products online in partnership with various asset management firms since last year.

    According to Halim Haryono, deputy director of investment supervision and development at the Financial Services Authority (OJK), the number of people investing in mutual funds increased 16.25 percent year-on-year to about 930,000 by October this year, due to the rise of online mutual fund marketplaces.

    Only about 400,000 people invested in mutual funds in 2016, Halim said.

  • Palo Alto sets up VC fund for security applications

    Palo Alto sets up VC fund for security applications

    Palo Alto Networks is forming a $20-million security venture fund to provide early stage investments to fuel development of security applications for the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Security Platform.

    The fund will be aimed at seed-, early- and growth-stage security companies with a cloud-based application approach.

    These companies can accelerate their routes to market for their respective technology by developing cloud-based applications built upon the Palo Alto Networks platform and the new Palo Alto Networks Application Framework, easily engaging the tens of thousands of Palo Alto Networks customer deployments.

    The fund expects to collaborate with Greylock Partners and Sequoia Capital to identify and evaluate innovative security applications for potential co-investment.

    By providing capital, the fund aims to enable entrepreneurs and security vendors to focus on developing high-value functionality for customers, instead of developing the infrastructure and data stores necessary to effectively deliver their applications and establish a foothold in the market.

    The investments in entrepreneurial security companies are designed to accelerate the development of new security applications for the Palo Alto Networks platform.

    Such applications will help customer organizations more easily access, evaluate, and adopt new advanced security capabilities and activate cloud-delivered security applications from different providers as their security needs change.

    “This new fund represents an essential part of our mission to help organizations prevent cyber breaches by inspiring and accelerating a groundswell of security innovation in a model that can be easily accessed and deployed by customer organizations,” Palo Alto Networks.SVP for business and corporate development Chad Kinzelberg said.

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  • Japanese-Bruneian fund seizes investment opportunities in Indonesia

    Japanese-Bruneian fund seizes investment opportunities in Indonesia

    SBI Islamic Fund (Brunei) Limited, a joint venture between Brunei Darussalam’s Ministry of Finance and Japan’s Strategic Business Innovator (SBI) Holdings, is looking for opportunities to invest in Indonesia.

    SBI Islamic Fund (Brunei) Limited CEO Amran Mohammad said the fund would build fish processing factories in Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, and in Aceh. The facilities would be used to process tuna to be exported to Japan.

    “The one in Aceh will be much bigger than that in Maumere. We are sealing the agreement for [the project in] Aceh,” he told The Jakarta Post during the 3rd IDB Member Countries Sovereign Investment Forum in Nusa Dua on Tuesday.

    The investment for the development of the two facilities would come from its second sharia fund totaling US$60 million.

    Both Brunei’s Ministry of Finance and SBI Holdings contributed $25 million each to the fund, while the remaining $10 million comes from the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).

    SBI Islamic Fund (Brunei) Limited’s first sharia fund worth $75 million was created three years ago and invested in Indonesia’s logistics firm Pandu Logistics, among other investments.

    However, Brunei Ministry of Finance deputy permanent secretary for investment Khairuddin Abdul Hamid said the fund was still looking for another $40 million from private investors.

    “We have already talked with some prominent parties during this forum and are still waiting for the reply,” he said.

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  • Apple to invest $1b in SoftBank tech fund

    Apple to invest $1b in SoftBank tech fund

    Apple has revealed plans to invest $1 billion in Japanese telecom behemoth SoftBank’s $100 billion technology venture capital fund.

    Apple will join a list of investors that are also expected to include Foxconn Technology Group and Oracle chairman Larry Ellison. Companies including Qualcomm have already committed to the fund.

    The $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund will invest in strategic technology areas such as the IoT and AI as part of efforts by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son to help the company capitalize on emerging opportunities.

    The report quotes a market analyst as stating that that the investment could be aimed at helping Apple’s core smartphone business stay competitive as the IoT market expands, and could also reflect the company’s increasing interest in partnering with other companies for growth.

    Apple does not have a track record of investing in venture capital funds, but the company has been changing its investment strategy recently to reflect evolving market dynamics.

    This change in strategy and growing interest in partnerships was reflected by the company’s $1 billion investment in China’s home-grown Uber alternative Didi Chuxing last year.

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  • Goldman Sachs enters Singapore retail fund market

    Goldman Sachs enters Singapore retail fund market

    Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM), the asset management arm of Goldman Sachs Group Inc, is making its foray into the local unit trust industry with the launch of 13 retail funds in 1Q 2016.

    The new GSAM unit trusts, previously available only to private banking and institutional clients, will consist of fundamental and quantitative equity funds as well as those that invest in fixed income and multi-assets, according to the fund house which manages assets in excess of US$1 trillion ($1.4 trillion).

    These 13 Goldman Sachs funds approved for retail sales in Singapore include the Goldman Sachs Asia High Yield Bond Portfolio, Asia Portfolio, European Equity Partners Portfolio, European High Yield Bond Portfolio, Global Core Equity Portfolio, Global Equity Partners Portfolio, Global High Yield Portfolio,

    Global Income Builder Portfolio, Growth & Emerging Markets Broad Equity Portfolio, Growth & Emerging Markets Corporate Bond Portfolio, India Equity Portfolio, Japan Portfolio and US Real Estate Balanced Portfolio.

    “The global market volatility we are seeing right now underscores the need for world-class investment solutions that deliver highly differentiated strategies with real diversification benefits. We look forward to meeting the needs of Singapore retail investors through this range of funds,” says Sheila Patel, who is Singapore CEO of GSAM, in a statement.

    Singapore is GSAM’s Asia regional investment hub. The fund house’s team of Singapore-based investment professionals has been providing investment and advisory solutions to institutions including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and financial intermediaries in the city state and across Asia since 1991.

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  • Rel Cap arm to launch fund in South Korea

    Rel Cap arm to launch fund in South Korea

    Aiming to bring in more foreign funds into India, Reliance Capital Asset Management (RCAM), the funds management arm of Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Capital, is launching a fund in South Korea for retail and institutional investors in the South Asian country that will invest in the Indian market.

    This is the seventh fund that RCAM is launching to attract foreign money into India, with a target to top $5 billion worth of assets in the next three years, a company source said.

    RCAM is launching the India focused fund in Korea along with its Korean partner Samsung Asset Management. The fund will directly invest in the stocks of Indian mid and small cap companies with long term potential. The fund will be managed by Samsung Asset Management while RCAM will be the advisor to its Korean partner. Samsung Asset Management is the fund management arm of Korean conglomerate Samsung Group, globally known more for its presence in the mobile and electronics space.

    At present RCAM has three India focused funds in Japan, in which the aggregate assets under management is about $1 billion. It also manages two India focused funds in Singapore and one more in Mauritius. Most of its assets are managed under the three Japanese funds. Nippon Life, one of the largest life insurers in the world, holds 49% stake in RCAM. The Korean fund management firm, however, does not hold any stake in RCAM but has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Indian funds management major.

    Currently RCAM manages assets worth more than Rs 2 lakh crore spread across mutual funds, pension funds, managed accounts and offshore funds.

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  • Hong Kong fund sales slide by 50%

    Hong Kong fund sales slide by 50%

    The Hong Kong fund industry saw net sales drop by almost a half in the first six months of 2015, new figures reveal.

    The Hong Kong Investment Funds Association (HKIFA) published data on Wednesday which cited a sharp fall in funds to $3.71bn (£2.38bn, €3.34bn).

    Bruno Lee, the chairman of HKIFA, blamed the decrease in sales on global market uncertainty, particularly around China mainland’s A-Share market, the Greek debt crisis, and the potential US interest rate rise. He said volatility in the global currency market was also to blame.

    “Retail investors should review their investment position regularly to ensure their investment strategy is aligned with their long-term personal financial objective and seek for professional investment advice if needed,” Lee said.

    Though net sales fell dramatically, gross sales saw a rise of 14% to $47bn in the first half of 2015, after hovering at $7bn in the first quarter, soaring up by more than $10bn in April, and then dropping back to $7bn towards the end of the second quarter.

    HKIFA said China-related and European equity funds were the key sectors which contributed to the surge in gross sales in the second quarter of this year.

    “The moderate growth in gross retail fund sales and higher equity fund sales percentage indicate a higher risk appetite amongst retail investors,” said Lee.

    HKIFA members are comprised of 82 fund management companies.  It also has 43 associate members, including lawyers, accountants, trustees and other professionals that are involved in the creation and administration of funds.

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