Malaysian point of sale (POS) startup StoreHub is on a mission to help businesses execute better, through innovative technology and great design.

Wai Hong Fong, StoreHub CEO and co-founder, recently talked to us about his company and how he has found working with Kindrik Partners on their Series A capital raise.

the storehub story

Wai Hong refers to himself as an accidental entrepreneur. Most of his family are professionals and he says that it was a combination of kind of stumbling into opportunities plus being frustrated with a problem and wanting to solve it, which led him to where he is today.

After completing his BA in arts, media and philosophy at the University of Melbourne, he co-founded and became Managing Director at OZHut a lifestyle online retailer, where he did everything from writing code, web development and design, search engine optimization and even running the packing tables at the warehouse.

After 5 years at OzHut, he moved to China to study Mandarin and met a friend running a small retail store who asked him to look at his POS given Wai Hong’s e-Commerce background. He realised how terrible it was and not only wanted to help his friend fix this but other small to medium businesses that required offline and online sales support.

Wai Hong knew that the iPad POS was taking off in the US but there were no alternatives in Asia. With the belief that it was time for technology to revolutionise the traditional POS industry in Asia, and to help build better businesses, he co-founded StoreHub in 2013, along with current Chief Technology Officer, Congyu Li.

In the first 12 months of development, they bootstrapped the company then received a small investment from an angel investor, as well as a grant from Malaysia’s Cradle Fund. Wai Hong says that this initial funding allowed them to grow their product quickly and we’ve been cashflow positive and profitable since late 2015.

StoreHub is now a cloud-based iPad POS with inventory management, reporting and CRM, accessed via a mobile responsive backend, with over 850 retail stores paying a monthly subscription and customers in Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.

In addition to the POS product offering, StoreHub supports its product with exceptional customer service based on the business to consumer experience which is not commonly offered by the industry.

In 2016, StoreHub announced a partnership with Malaysia-listed payments giant GHL Systems to deliver a fully integrated mobile point of sale (mPOS) credit card terminal and iPad POS solution. They also secured USD$850k in their Series A capital raising round from 500 Startups, as well as investors in China, Singapore and Malaysia.

Wai Hong says that StoreHub now plans to grow at least another 5 times its current size in the next year, add complementary products to their core offering and also enter new South East Asian markets, such as Thailand and Philippines.

challenges

Wai Hong notes that the biggest challenge for StoreHub is hiring and managing people, especially on a shoestring budget, talent acquisition and management is key.

The POS market is also highly competitive however StoreHub manages to differentiate because of their broad offering and leveraging their customer service focus which is generally seen as an afterthought in the industry. Being product and tech obsessed has also helped them stay ahead of the pack.

working with Kindrik Partners

Wai Hong primarily dealt with lawyers for the angel investment which involved local lawyers but it unfortunately turned out to be a painful and expensive experience.

He was then introduced to Kindrik Partners partner Lee Bagshaw through former Kindrik Partners lawyer, now investment analyst at tech VC Monks Hill, Lucy Luo. Lee supported StoreHub through the Series A capital raising, including drafting all of the documents which is unique for a deal like this, as investors usually provide the first round of documents.

Wai Hong says that it was our first serious cap raise and it was a refreshing experience given the angel investment round, knowing if I had an issue I would be getting sound advice. It made a huge difference that Lee thoroughly understood the South East Asian venture capital landscape, particularly as they had to negotiate with the investors.

Given Lee really understood StoreHub’s business, Wai Hong would work with him again on further corporate governance work like an Employee Share Options Scheme. He has also recommended both Kindrik Partners and Lee to a whole bunch of startups.

He says not only was Lee fast at delivering the work which helped StoreHub maintain their professionalism with investors, but he gets the space, market standards and provides valuable industry insights. Wai Hong thought Lee’s wealth of experience showed specifically when he advised on the all important term sheet, his advice and guidance was spot on.

Wai Hong also thinks that the Kindrik Partners Templates are also pretty cool, providing good information and learning points, and are a good starting point for legal work.

summing up

StoreHub’s growth is a testament to the company’s commitment to building a product and providing outstanding customer service. Kindrik Partners can’t wait to see what Wai Hong and the team have planned for their ambitious next steps.

Explore StoreHub.

[Note: The firm’s name was changed to Kindrik Partners in July 2020 and references to the firm’s previous name have been updated.]

Singapore company CardUp is an online platform that lets individuals and SMEs pay for expenses like taxes, rent, or even payroll, using their credit card – even if the recipient doesn’t accept cards.

Cardup raised a seed round lead by top tier venture firm Sequoia Capital in late 2017. We spoke to founder Nicki Ramsay about Cardup’s journey so far.

story

Nicki got the idea for CardUp while working at a major credit card provider in Singapore. She saw that a lot of big ticket items (like tax and rent) could not be paid for with a credit card, because the recipients were not willing to go through the hassle and fees associated with the setup process. This meant that card holders were not getting benefits from these big payments such as being able to access their credit facility or earn loyalty reward points. In addition, banks were losing out on the fees that would be linked to an increase in credit card spending.

CardUp solves this by flipping the existing card processing model, acting as the middleman between cardholders that want to use their card in more ways and recipients who don’t accept card payments. CardUp users benefit from using the credit line on their card to extend the payables period for these expenses, as well as earning credit card loyalty points and rewards. In addition, the recipient does not need to have a CardUp account to receive credit card payments.

Finding the initial capital and relevant expertise needed to get a company off the ground is a challenge for a lot of the founders that we work with. This is particularly common for solo founders like Nicki, as they are not able to draw on the financial resources and connections of their co-founders. In Nicki’s case, she decided to join The Finlab (United Overseas Bank’s Singapore fintech accelerator), which was a great way to access mentorship and exposure to a wide investor community.

While at The Finlab, Nicki spent a lot of time talking to financial institutions, to get them on board with cardholders using the platform. CardUp has since secured partnerships with many of Singapore’s major banks to promote CardUp’s services. The company also promoted the platform to individuals and SMEs through its online marketing content. The focus of this material was to educate users on the platform’s benefits and how the platform works.

the financing deal

As CardUp gained more users, the company needed to raise some money to further develop its platform.

Nicki pitched to a wide range of VCs in Southeast Asia. Sequoia was a natural fit as they are deep in the payments space, and CardUp is disrupting traditional payment processing models.

Other investors included SeedPlus, who were originally introduced to Cardup by The Finlab.

The company completed its ~US$1.7m seed round in late 2017. The investment has allowed the company to triple the size of its team in just a few months.

working with us

Nicki told us that Kindrik Partners’ depth of knowledge on VC deals in Southeast Asia was a massive help throughout the capital raising process:

Kindrik Partners added a lot of value for us during the negotiation with Sequoia as they have vast experience with startup and VC deals in the region and are very familiar with the different permutations of VC term sheets. Also, because they have acted for a lot of startups taking investment from Sequoia, they saved us time and cost by telling us which points Sequoia would likely be open to negotiating.

Overall, Nicki said that the Kindrik Partners team were extremely knowledgeable, and professional to deal with.

Having worked with Nicki, we are now certain that it won’t be long before everyone will be using their credit card for important payments, like their legal fees!

Explore CardUp.

[Note: The firm’s name was changed to Kindrik Partners in July 2020 and references to the firm’s previous name have been updated.]

Singapore based and venture backed food technology startup Grain has fed thousands of happy customers delicious and wholesome meals, delivered in a few simple clicks.

Yi Sung Yong, Co-founder and Head of Product, recently talked to Kindrik Partners about his company and how he has found working with Kindrik Partners on their first capital raise.

the grain story

With backgrounds in management consulting and previous experience in IT startups, the 4 founders of Grain (Sung, Rifeng Gao, Isaac Tam and Ernest Sim, all recently named in the Forbes Asia 30 under 30 list) wanted to start a new and ambitious business in 2014, so they settled on changing the future of food delivery.

Since its recent beginnings, Grain is now described as a restaurant in the cloud and Uber for food in Singapore. It provides a convenient web and app delivery service for affordable and tasty food that is also good for you, offering 4 different meals each day which rotate weekly. Customers in the busy Singapore areas don’t pay for delivery and have no minimum spend.

After securing significant Series A funding, they now have major plans to offer more meals, improve operational efficiency by adding mobile distribution hub vans, increase headcount namely on the developer side and eventually to expand the business into China, including Hong Kong, and also Indonesia.

challenges

Sung says that given the diversity of food and size of the global industry, competition in the food market is building but there is still plenty of opportunity in the market. Whilst food delivery giant Food Panda largely dominates the South East Asian food delivery scene, acting as a middleman between restaurants and hungry consumers, Grain differentiates itself by offering a complete full stack food service. The entire supply chain is produced and controlled by them from one Singapore site, from the website and app business to cooking and delivery.

He also notes that whilst establishing a business and raising funds can be stressful, post-funding, hiring, onboarding and ongoing people management is their biggest challenge as they continue to grow.

working with kindrik partners

Sung’s previous experience of lawyers was that they were slow moving and traditional type lawyers that did not understand the pace of startup life.

For their first capital raise, Grain were referred to Kindrik Partners partner Lee Bagshaw through 500 Startups managing partner Khailee Ng, along with another Singaporean law firm. The referral happened on a Thursday, Lee got in touch immediately via WhatsApp and the term sheet was ready to go on the Friday. Grain did not receive a response from the other firm until the following Monday at which point the deal was well and truly on its way.

Sung says that it was Kindrik Partners’s speed and execution, WhatsApp versus long emails, moving like a startup that impressed him the most.

Kindrik Partners went on to assist Grain implement several convertible notes to secure short term bridge financing and raise of SG$2,500,000 for their Series A funding round, including investment from NSI Ventures, 500 Startups, Digital Media Partners and Ivan Lee (who founded and sold Thai Express in Singapore).

In addition to maintaining the startup pace and charging extremely reasonable legal fees, Sung really appreciated that Kindrik Partners drafted the documents from a founder’s versus lawyer’s perspective, ensuring the documents reflected Grain’s commercial motives without overkill on the legal jargon; Lee just got everything we thought we required and also pointed out the things we didn’t know we needed.

summing up

Given Grain have already delivered over 100,000 meals to ravenous Singapore residents alone, it’s looking likely that this startup will continue to eat up the market. Kindrik Partners will certainly be ready to move at speed for what seems like an inevitable growth and success.

Explore Grain.

[Note: The firm’s name was changed to Kindrik Partners in July 2020 and references to the firm’s previous name have been updated.]