Rising Giants Newsletter - January 2022 Edition
Welcome to Rising Giants - Cambodia’s #1 business & entrepreneurship podcast! 🇰🇭 Turn on 💡, Tune in 📻, Keep up 🚀
Welcome to the Rising Giant's Podcast Newsletter by Max Thornton and Dom Kalousek.
▶️ Rising Giants Recap
N.41 Chef Nak, Rotanak Ros 'Chef Nak', Cambodian Chef, Culinary Author, and Entrepreneur
Rotanak Ros, AKA Chef Nak, is Cambodia's first female celebrity chef whose mission is to celebrate, develop and preserve the art of Cambodian (Khmer cuisine) and bring its unique flavors and rich culinary culture to the world's stage. As a passionate cook, successful entrepreneur, healthy lifestyle advocate, loving wife and mother of two, she shares her knowledge in the form of books, online cooking shows and tours. She is also in the process of creating Cambodia's first culinary center, located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh.
N.42 Parth Borkotoky, Founder & CEO of Azaylla
Azaylla is solving bottlenecks in the agricultural supply chain in Cambodia: at one end, they help farmers get better prices and ensure consistent demand and on the other end, they help retailers/buyers source fresh vegetables and fruits at competitive prices directly from farmers. Parth has been interested in agriculture from an early age, receiving an MS degree in Agricultural Economics from Universiti Putra Malaysia. He is originally from India and has been based out of Cambodia since 2017, working in the agritech space and founding Azaylla in 2019. Azaylla is also one of the most recent startups in Cambodia to secure funding - from the VC impact firm Uberis Capital.
📝 Venture Capital Deal Flow Highlights in Southeast Asia
Cambodian-based tele-health startup MeetDoctor received pre-seed investment from IG Group. This pre-seed investment will support MeetDoctor to achieve the vision of building health technology and health care system innovation in order to improve the health and well being of the Cambodian population, along with the support of healthcare providers in health technology.
Indonesia-based eFishery which provides feeding devices, software and financing for fish and shrimp farmers, got a $90 million Series C co-led by Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Sequoia Capital India. The funds will be used to scale up eFishery’s platform and expand into the top 10 countries for aquaculture, including China and India. (Link here.)
Indonesia-based q-commerce platform Astro has closed a $27 million Series A funding round led by venture capital firms Sequoia Capital India and US-based Accel. Astro has plans to use the fresh funds to expand its services across Indonesia and hire more people this year. Launched in September last year, Astro currently offers more than 1,500 products on its app and operates over 15 hubs across Jakarta. It promises the delivery of groceries and essentials within 15 minutes over 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (Link here.)
Indonesia-based investment app Pluang announced that it has raised $55 million Series B follow on led by Accel. The funding will be used to make Pluang available in more Southeast Asian countries, increase its asset classes and on hiring. Launched in 2019, Pluang started with gold and has since grown its range of asset classes, so investors can diversify their holdings and decrease risk. Investments can start as low as IDR 10,000 (or less than $1 USD) in gold, indexes, mutual funds and crypto assets. (Link here.)
Vietnamese social commerce platform Mio raised an $8 million Series A, less than a year after announcing its seed round, led by Jungle Ventures. The funding will be used to expand its logistics and fulfillment system, enter new areas in Vietnam and add new product categories like fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and household appliances. (Link here.)
Philippine “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) BillEase announced it has raised an $11 million Series B round led by BurdaPrincipal Investments. BillEase launched in 2017, with shopping marketplace Lazada as its first merchant partner. It can now be used at more than 500 merchants, including consumer electronics seller Kimstore and Philippine Airlines. The new funding will be used for customer acquisition, developing new products and hiring. (Link here.)
GrowSari, the Philippine-based startup that helps small shops grow and digitize, announced that KKR will lead its Series C round with a $45 million investment. The funds will be used to enter new regions in the Philippines and expand its financial products. Founded in 2016, GrowSari is a B2B platform that offers almost every kind of service that small- to medium-sized retailers, including neighborhood stores that carry daily necessities (called sari-saris), roadside and market shops and pharmacies, need. (Link here.)
📰 Start-Up and Venture Capital News in Southeast Asia
🇰🇭 Khmer Enterprise and OBOR aim to lower lending risk for SMEs in Cambodia (Cambodia Investment Review).
🇮🇩 Indonesia payments startup Xendit takes on Southeast Asia after unicorn status.
🇻🇳 Why Vietnam is set to become Asia’s startup hub.
🇧🇩 Making a case on why we will see “a couple of unicorns in Bangladesh over the next few years”.
🇵🇭 How this Philippine fintech startup firm hit $2 billion valuation.
🇹🇭 Learn about how this Thai startup is working on a COVID vaccine using tobacco leaves.
📚 Knowledge Base: Entrepreneur and Investor Learning Resources
In this week’s resource, we want to share with you a Selendra, Cambodia's first full-scale blockchain, which has been in development and prototyping since 2016. Selendra now has opened its technology to the world and is beginning rolling out its mainnet over the coming months. To learn more, click the here to read the team’s whitepaper. You can also listen to our previous episode with Saing Seb, Co-Founder of Selendra here!
Additional Resources To Check Out:
🔎 5 Metaverse Startups from Asia to Watch in 2022.
🤝 The case against killing time.
🧠 A small list of compounding skills to set you apart.
🔥 What to watch for in Crypto this year.
👨🏼💻 Frontier Market Job Opportunities
Mekong Strategic Partners is hiring for an Investment Analyst in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Chip Mong Group is hiring for a Manager, Investment Analysis and Planning in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The World Bank is hiring for a ET Consultant in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Sabay Digital Corporation is hiring for a Financial Analyst in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Grab is hiring for an Associate, Partnership Acquisition in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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🧐 What is Rising Giants?
Rising Giants was created in 2021 by Max Thornton and Dominic Kalousek after realizing there were limited outlets for gaining insight into the startup and investment ecosystem in the Cambodian and Southeast Asia markets.
Rising Giants serves as an upbeat medium for entrepreneurs and investors to share their experience working and living in some of the most dynamic and positively evolving countries in Southeast Asia.
Our mission is to talk to entrepreneurs and investors to help understand what it takes to have bold ideas and build the business disruptors of tomorrow, in the most challenging, but highest potential markets of the region.
Through our personal exploration of these landscapes, we dive deep in our interviews with inspirational individuals learning about their career journeys, ideas, and insights into the markets of developing startup ecosystems, and expanding on why they see their business and the region as a "Rising Giant”.