Rising Giants Newsletter - N.26 Saing Sab, Co-Founder, Selendra
Max & Dom chatting with the boldest and most inspiring entrepreneurs and investors in Cambodia 🇰🇭. Turn on 💡, Tune in 📻, Keep up 🚀
Welcome to the Rising Giant's Podcast Newsletter by Max Thornton and Dominic Kalousek.
If you enjoy our content, please subscribe to our post-interview newsletter as we share our most recent podcast episode, Southeast Asia startup and venture capital news, venture deals, entrepreneur resources, and job opportunities in the region!
▶️ This Weeks Episode Recap
In this week’s episode, we had the pleasure of speaking with Saing Sab. Saing is the Co-Founder of Selendra, Cambodia's first full-scale blockchain, which has been in development and prototyping since 2016. As Selendra now has opened its technology to the world and is beginning rolling out its mainnet over the next 6-12 months, Saing is taking the lead with technology development and expanding use cases. Saing is also the CEO of Bitriel, which is a crypto wallet that plays a key role in the Selendra ecosystem. Prior to Selendra and Bitriel, Saing worked in various computer science roles for leading financial institutions in Cambodia.
We get into:
🧱 Why the application of blockchain technologies can play a key role in the development of emerging economies like Cambodia.
📈 What makes Selendra unique; micro-transaction capability, interoperability, jungle development, regional use case applications.
🏆 Why investing in people is the most important aspect of any successful business.
🧠 Want to learn more about Selendra?
Saing has a great personal webpage where he shares his writings and perspectives on blockchain technology.
Here is Selendra’s GitHub page where you can do a deep dive into their activities and connect with other team members.
If you’re interested in joining the Selendra community and signing up for free airdrops, click the link here to register.
🎧 Find us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Play, and Anchor!
📝 Venture Capital Deal Flow Highlights in Southeast Asia
Loship, the Vietnamese on-demand e-commerce platform that started as a reviews app, announced it has raised $12 million in pre-Series C funding, bringing its valuation to $100 million. Founded in 2017, Loship offered one-hour deliveries for a large range of products and services, including food, ride-hailing, medicine and B2B supplies. The company says it has more than 70,000 drivers and 200,000 merchants.
Singapore-based Nektar.ai, a B2B sales productivity startup that wants to help sales teams by reducing the amount of time they spend on manual data entry announced it has raised $6 million in seed funding, led by B Capital Group. The company says this is one of the largest seed rounds ever for a SaaS company based in Asia. Nektar.ai’s workforce is remote-first and the company says half of its team are women.
Malaysian digital wallet BigPay has raised $100 million in financing from South Korean conglomerate SK Group. The fintech arm of AirAsia Digital will use the funds to support its digital banking expansion in Southeast Asia. Established in 2017, BigPay provides money transfer, microinsurance, bill payment, and budgeting services on top of offering a prepaid debit card that works with Visa- and Mastercard-compatible portals. The company currently has operations in Malaysia and Singapore, with the goal of setting foot in Thailand and then other Southeast Asian countries.
📰 Frontier Market Start-Up and Venture Capital News in Southeast Asia
🇰🇭 A Cambodian startup looks to success with local alternative to Nutella.
🇮🇩 Indonesia’s Traveloka reportedly seeking $400 Million for SPAC deal to go public.
🇻🇳 Vietnam to be third largest startup ecosystem in Southeast Asia, says Golden Gate Venture. (Bonus: Check out how Vietnam is emerging as SEA’s next fintech battle ground!)
🇧🇩 7 Bangladeshi startups to receive investment funding from Startup Bangladesh LTD.
🇳🇵 Nepalese Young Entrepreneurs Forum (NYEF), a non-profit organization under the Federation of Nepalese Chambers of Commerce and Industry, is organizing the NYEF Kathmandu Startup Awards with the aim to facilitate developing a business ecosystem in Nepal.
🇵🇭 Building Bridges: Philippines - Silicon Valley startup cooperation opens opportunities in the US and Southeast Asia.
📚 Knowledge Base: Entrepreneur and Investor Learning Resources
In this week’s resource, we want to share with you a great initiative called “Startup Stories” by Sabay in Cambodia. This initiative (presented in Khmer) is “a program that will showcase the many experiences of Cambodian businessmen” in the country. Having released 3 episodes to date, we look forward to seeing this channel grow and hearing the stories from their guests.
Additional Resources To Check Out:
🔎 Perspectives on the industrial revolution taking place currently.
😊 Reasons for optimism in the years ahead.
🔥 Defining good vs great leaders.
👨🏼💻 Frontier Market Job Opportunities
Belt Road Capital Management is hiring a Social Media Strategist in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
The Heineken Company is hiring for a Head of Innovation & Digital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
DA&G is hiring for multiple positions to help serve their clients in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
EY is hiring for a Process Project Manager/Coordinator in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Angkor 500 is hiring for Program Trainer and Mentor in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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🧐 What is Rising Giants?
The Rising Giants Podcast was created in November 2020 by Max Thornton and Dom Kalousek after realizing that there were a limited number of resources available for insight into the local startup and investor ecosystem in Southeast Asia.
Our mission is to talk to entrepreneurs and investors in the world’s most rapidly evolving frontier markets to help understand what it takes to have bold ideas and build the business disruptors of tomorrow. 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”.