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reflections on the SEA tech ecosystem at the end of the year
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Wow, where did 2019 go and more importantly is that really the end of the decade? For all but the first two years of that decade I’ve been working with tech startups and VC funds in Southeast Asia. Fast forward to 2019 and the Kindrik Partners team have become permanent fixtures in the startup ecosystem.
A lot has changed. Back in 2010 ride hailing apps were still being dreamed up. Now we’re debating whether we really have super apps in the region. One thing for sure is that VC activity has exploded in Southeast Asia and we expect deal flow to increase as more VCs set up shop – intrigued by the growth opportunities that young digital economies like Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam offer.
2019 saw plenty of activity for the team. Deals tended to take slightly longer to close reflecting the fact that some of our clients have grown fast and are now raising growth capital (series B and above). But we also saw plenty of seed financings for startups springing out from accelerators and the universities.
We tend to publish our transaction numbers in the new year, so for now just some brief highlights:
- launched our newly-designed website for Southeast Asian tech companies and startups
- advised on notable corporate deals including:
- Alodokter on its USD33million series C
- Lifetrack Medical Systems on its series A round led by UOB and Phillips
- C88 Financial Technologies on its acquisitions of Optus and IDX
- Bambu on their USD10million Series B round
- interviewed VCs and put out a successful ‘Ask a VC’ blog series – by the end we had VCs contacting us due to FOMO!
- spoken at startup events hosted by accelerators and incubators across the region, including Found8, Trive, CyLon, Block71 in Jakarta, and more
- exhibited at Echelon and Tech in Asia Jakarta, which we expect will be a regular thing going forwards
Best wishes for 2020. Here’s hoping we see lots of term sheets!
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Kindrik Partners advised VC firm Illuminate Financial on its investment in Singapore-based AI-driven data processing and automation company bluesheets. Illuminate led the US$6.5 million series A round. Other returning investors included Insignia Ventures Partners, Antler Elevate, and 1982 Ventures.
Illuminate invests in B2B fintech and enterprise software companies that build solutions for the financial services industry. Backed by global financial institutions such as Citi, JP Morgan, Barclays, Jefferies, Singapore Exchange Group, and BNY Mellon, Illuminate uses its extensive network and industry knowledge to help their portfolio companies achieve their full potential in addition to providing capital.
bluesheets offers AI-driven data processing and workflow automation software that helps businesses digitise and automate their bookkeeping processes. It plans to use the funds to further enhance its AI capabilities and accelerate growth in key APAC markets, including Singapore, Thailand, ANZ, and Hong Kong.
We’re happy to have advised Singapore-based synthetic data company Betterdata on an oversubscribed seed round of $1.65 million, led by Investible.
The company was founded in 2021 by Dr. Uzair Javaid and Kevin Yee and allows clients to share data faster and more securely in compliance with stricter data privacy regulations being introduced around the world. Betterdata uses generative AI to convert real data into synthetic data that looks, feels, and behaves like real datasets. These synthetic datasets retain the structure and correlations of the original data while eliminating the privacy and security concerns that come with holding and sharing sensitive data.
Betterdata plans to use the funding to publicly launch its product, hire more staff as the company scales, and improve its technology stack, with the aim of providing support for single-table, multi-table, and time-series datasets. The company also plans to expand across the Asia-Pacific region over the next two years.
