A Recap On What Happened This Week: Asian Startup News Overview (20th February- 24th February)

By: Asia Business Outlook Team | Friday, 24 February 2023

The Startup scene never experiences a dull moment in the Asian continent, new strides are being made every day, breathing fresh new and reinvention of lot of business ideas and concepts, this week was no different, various startups across Asia from all sectors achieved important milestones in their journey, proving there is no end to innovation.

This week we saw a startup which aimed to make youngsters interested in science and teach various concepts via coding. With environmental concerns hanging over everyone, one particular startup is taking measures to combat them, they utilize electric cars in their ride-sharing platforms, all these prove the world of business is resilient and will counter any challenges. Gaming is making major milestones in the Web3 ecosystem.

GetGo Technologies

Tres, a family-backed investment group, has announced an SGD20 million ($14.98 million) investment in a Singapore-based carsharing platform.

GetGo said in a statement that Tres' investment will allow it to accelerate the growth of its electric fleet, with a goal of 10,000 greener vehicles by 2030, as well as strengthen its technology and operational platform.

GetGo, which launched just two years ago on February 25th, 2021, now operates over 2,100 vehicles in 1,400 locations, serving over 50,000 users and processing over 150,000 bookings per month.

Strive

Strive, a Singapore-based edtech startup that offers coding programmes for children, has announced a $1.3 million seed funding round led by Y Combinator.

The funding round was also attended by Goodwater Capital, Mastercard Asia, and Soma Capital.

Strive, founded in 2020 by Tamir Shklaz and Pulkit Agarwal, aims to redefine STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education around the world by developing a platform and content to teach math, science, and other subjects through coding.

It provides one-on-one classes to children aged eight to sixteen on topics such as blockchain, data science, machine learning, and app development. Strive claims that its coding school has educated over 1,000 students and trained and employed more than 60 teachers.

Involve Asia

Involve Asia (Involve), a Malaysian affiliate marketing platform, has raised more than US$10 million in a funding round.

Involve, as an affiliate marketing platform, helps brands, affiliates, and influencers increase their revenue through effective online partnerships. Its solutions also enable advertisers to measure, manage, and scale their marketing partnerships.

Bintang Capital Partners Berhad, the private equity arm of Affin Hwang Asset Management Berhad, led this funding round.

According to Jimmy How, the CEO and co-founder of Involve, the marketing tech company has grown revenue at a 132% CAGR while remaining profitable since its inception.

Chronicle

Chronicle, a startup developing a modern presentation format, has raised $7.5 million in seed funding led by Accel.

The funding round was also attended by Australia-based Square Peg and angel investors such as AngelList India partner Utsav Somani, Superhuman co-founder Vivek Sodera, and other unnamed senior executives from Meta Inc, Apple Inc, Google, Slack, Stripe, OnDeck, and Adobe.

Chronicle's product is in the field of information design, attempting to forge a new path for creating impactful, interactive presentations with minimal effort. Creating presentations on Chronicle does not necessitate hours of pixel-pushing and slide-tweaking.

The founders have spent the last decade assisting thousands of people with presentations while working at Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group in product, growth, and management consulting roles.

Kratos Studios

Kratos Studios, founded by former Nazara Technologies CEO Manish Agarwal and Ishank Gupta, has also completed the acquisition of gaming venture IndiGG from Yield Guild Games (YGG) via a token swap, which is an equity swap equivalent for decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs).

IndiGG will use the funds to build a product platform, support gaming teams, build communities, and a global brand through IPs and Web3 e-sports competitions, according to Agarwal.

"Blockchain can fundamentally transform gaming and accelerate growth in emerging markets," said Subrata Mitra, partner at Accel. This team, we believe, is best suited to unlock this value for Gamers."

He added that the entity had 106 games in its portfolio, of which 40-44 are in alpha-beta stage, with the rest of them being in development. “Of the 40-44 games, 15 are live on our platform,” he said.