Philippines
For Kickstart Ventures, investment strategies revolve around the digital ‘new consumer’ [Q&A with Minette Navarrete]
Our investment strategy revolves around today’s new customer, who might be the digital consumer or the digital company. They might be digital natives, or they could be newly digital. In any case, technology plays a bigger, more important, more fundamental role in their daily lives today.
Southeast Asia’s top 50 rising women in tech 2021 [Updated]
More and more venture capital (VC) firms and angel investors are wising up to the opportunity in investing in the region’s female founders. Despite the largely virtual deal-making environment over the past year due to COVID, women-led startups have secured multimillion-dollar rounds across a multitude of sectors.
Philippines to stop accepting digital bank applications for 3 years, caps licenses to 7
The Monetary Board decided to close the window for the submission of applications from new digital banks, including converting banks, starting August 31, 2021. This is in line with the overall thrust of maintaining a stable and competitive environment for banks.
Mom-focused e-commerce platform Edamama raises $5M pre-Series A for automation, logistics & product development
The company was established amid the pandemic by its founder Bela Gupta D’Souza, who saw the pain points of mothers as consumers when purchasing online. She said that it is common for mothers to spend many hours in search of the best products for their children only to end up with inferior quality products from untrusted sources.
Without legacy infrastructure, cloud-native digital banks are faster & more innovative than traditional banks, says UNObank CEO Manish Bhai [Q&A]
Singapore-based FinTech UNObank was granted the first new digital banking license under the Digital Banking License framework of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. Manish Bhai shares insights on how digital-native banks can provide faster and more innovative services to address the needs of the underbanked and unbanked.
Malaysia HealthTech startup BookDoc partners with Childhope Philippines Foundation for CSR collaboration
BookDoc has signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") with Childhope Philippines Foundation, Inc. in relation to corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and promotions.
Social entertainment startup Kumu to scale operations and roll out new features with Series B fundraise led by SIG and Openspace Ventures
Kumu will use the new infusion to scale its current operations, which has seen significant growth over the past year. To date, an estimated 11.2 million registered users around the world watch live streams up to 60 million times per month, with over 100,000 active streamers commanding about one hour of average daily usage for its mostly Gen-Z & Millennial…
10 Financial literacy solutions receive grants and support from PhilDev’s Financial Literacy Innovation Challenge
The Financial Literacy Innovation Challenge is the third and biggest innovation challenge yet by PhilDev. First launched in 2020, PhilDev’s Innovation Challenges seek to discover and support sustainable enterprise solutions in response to operational gaps shared by organizations while fostering a human-centered design approach and mindset among…
Philippines startup Great Deals E-Commerce secures $30M Series B led by Fast Group
Great Deals plans to use its Series B fund to build an automated fulfillment center that will concentrate on tech development. This will be a big help for the company to meet the growing demand for e-commerce in the Philippines.
Philippines ‘buy now, pay later’ platform Plentina raises $2.2M in Seed funding round to accelerate credit access to the underbanked
The FinTech startup plans to use its fresh capital to grow its data science, business development, and customer operations teams.
