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Tag: venture capital

  • Electric motorbike startup raises another $8 mln

    Electric motorbike startup raises another $8 mln

    Vietnamese electric motorbike startup Dat Bike has secured $8 million in a funding round, bringing the total since its establishment to $16.5 million.

    The round was led by returning investor, Singapore-based Jungle Ventures, with participation from GSR Ventures, Innoven Capital, Wavemaker Partners, and Delivery Hero Ventures – the investment arm of Foodpanda’s parent firm.

    The startup will use the new round of funding to invest in technology, scale production, product development and hiring talent, said Nguyen Ba Son, founder and CEO of Dat Bike.

    Founded in 2019, Dat Bike says its revenue grew 10 times over the past 12 months.

    The launch of its latest model, Weaver 200, has solved the problems of performance and range as it has a maximum capacity of 6,000W, covering 200 km with a 3-hour charge, Son said.

    The startup has also launched Dat Charge – an ultra-fast charging station for its electric bikes, which allows charge for a 100km trip in 20 minutes and 150km in 30 minutes. This is the highest electric bike charging speed in the country at present, according to the company.

    After four years of operations, Dat Bike has three stores in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi and Danang. It plans to enter other Tier 1 cities, including Quang Ninh, Hai Phong, Nha Trang, Binh Duong and Can Tho, soon.

  • APAC Venture Capital Deals in Decline

    APAC Venture Capital Deals in Decline

    Venture capital deals in Asia Pacific dropped by one-fifth in the third quarter, attributed to a Chinese economic slowdown, but tailwinds await due to upcoming policy reforms.

    Total venture capital deal value in the region dropped to $14.92 billion in the third quarter, compared to $18.61 billion in the second quarter, according to recent KPMG data. The decrease is notably steeper than the 14 percent decline in overall global transactions in the period, which totaled $55.71 billion.

    There is a lot of interest in the Asian market but investors have really slowed down their activity,» said Egidio Zarrella, partner and head of clients and innovation at KPMG China. «They are being conservative, waiting to see where things go from an economic and geopolitical perspective.

    With Alibaba’s $700 million minority stake acquisition of music streaming service NetEase Cloud Music topping the quarterly transactions, no deal surpassed the $1 billion mark compared to four in the first six months. But despite a slowdown from the region’s major contributor – seven of the 10 deals in the region involved mainland Chinese companies (with Indian startups making up the rest) – KPMG remained optimistic about the near-term outlook.

    Despite the challenges in the market, a number of sectors continued to attract investment, including fintech, Autotech and biotech, said Philip Ng, partner and head of technology, KPMG China, who also underlined upcoming tailwinds for insurance, finance, capital markets and healthcare due to policy reforms.

    While the number of funds raised for IPOs have dipped, the number of mainboard deals in the first three quarters is similar to that of last year and Hong Kong remains a top destination for IPOs,» added Irene Chu, partner and head of new economy & life sciences, Hong Kong, KPMG China. «The pipeline of companies applying for IPO in Hong Kong is still very strong – but whether they will go out before the end of the year will depend on changing market conditions.

  • aCommerce serious about their Series B with new recruits and them joining shows confidence in our company

    aCommerce serious about their Series B with new recruits and them joining shows confidence in our company

    Veteran Cross-Border and Logistics Ecommerce Executive Leaves Arvato Bertelsmann to Join aCommerce as Group Chief Logistics Officer

    Mitch Bittermann to strengthen the cross-border and logistics capabilities of the growing end-to-end ecommerce enabler en route to Series B and arrival of ASEAN Economic Community

    Southeast Asia’s leading end-to-end ecommerce enabler confirmed the hire of Mitch Bittermann as their Group Chief Logistics Officer. Mitch joins aCommerce from arvato, where he was the General Manager for the Hong Kong branch and Head of arvato’s APAC Solution and Design team. As the Group CLO, Mitch will build and lead aCommerce cross-border initiatives to fulfill the increasing demand for easy intra-regional transactions in Southeast Asia as well as cross-border logistics with US, Europe and particularly, China. Mitch joins aCommerce at a time when eyes are increasingly on the region for both investment and ecommerce.

    “I’m excited to join the team at aCommerce. They’ve been at the forefront of driving ecommerce innovation in the region and are closely followed by many in the logistics space. The opportunity for cross-border in Southeast Asia is huge, with China outbound cross-border volume rapidly increasing as well as the upcoming ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) integration, the region will be a launchpad for new innovative distribution solutions,” said Mitch Bittermann, aCommerce Group CLO.

    With the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) just around the corner, intra-regional cross-border transaction volume is expected to increase rapidly as it will open borders and stimulate trade and commerce across Southeast Asia through better logistics capabilities.

    Companies like Amazon and London-based ASOS already count Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia as their fastest growing markets in Asia. Only last year, Amazon-owned Shopbop held a successful cross-border Black Friday/Cyber Monday campaign in partnership with Line and aCommerce. AEC will be a force-multiplier for this trend and allow more companies to extend their campaigns to the overseas audience.

    “With ecommerce in Southeast Asia heating up and the region being strategically positioned next to China, the world’s manufacturing and sourcing hub, there’s been a rapid increase in demand for cross-border logistics services across our client base,” said Paul Srivorakul, aCommerce Group CEO. “Having Mitch’s expertise in international logistics, we will be building out our next generation of cross-border logistics products and services to continue accelerating ecommerce in Southeast Asia.”

    Mitch helped set up Arvato’s cross-border operations in Singapore and Hong Kong serving customers in Asia and globally. With more than 10 years at Arvato, Mitch has worked on a multitude of international logistics projects including building up customer service operations in Canada, setting up distribution centers in Thailand and Europe and driving global freight optimization projects.

    En route to Series B fundraising, aCommerce has been strengthening its management team with recent additions of a new CEO and COO for Indonesia. Snorre Larstad (CEO) and Hadi Kuncoro (COO) joined aCommerce earlier last month to drive the next phase of growth of aCommerce Indonesia, which recently became aCommerce’s biggest regional operation in Southeast Asia surpassing Thailand and Philippines with 360 employees.

    “With our long term mission to make ecommerce easy in Southeast Asia, we’ve tackled the in-country logistics bottlenecks with our fulfilment centers, last-mile delivery solutions, and cash-on-delivery platform across Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Our next goal is to make intra-regional transactions as easy as possible too,” said Peter Kopitz, aCommerce Group COO.

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