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Posts Tagged ‘Singapore’

What it’s like to take a vacation in Singapore’s Changi Airport

Singapore's Changi Airport is rated the #1 airport in the world by most entities that rate airports. It has theme parks, free movies, a retro video game arcade, hiking trails, and much more. Stephanie Rosenbloom took a 27-hour vacation there with her husband and wrote about it for The New York Times. I was ...

Brankas wants to bring Southeast Asia’s banks and e-commerce into the digital era

Fintech continues to be among the biggest topics driving startups and investment in Southeast Asia. The region’s ‘internet economy’ is forecast to grow massively as its 600 million people increasingly come online — already Southeast Asia more internet users (350 million) than the U.S. has people but developing a robust payment landscape underpins those heady ...

Samsung Ventures’ first investment in Southeast Asia is HR startup Swingvy

Samsung Ventures, the VC arm of the Korean electronics giant, has made its first investment in Southeast Asia after it backed HR startup Swingvy. Singapore-based Swingy’s service provides HR services, payroll and insurance for SMEs on a freemium basis. The company announced this week that it raised $7 million that was led by the Samsung ...

Grocery startup Honestbee makes layoffs and cuts costs as it prepares to raise more money

Asia Pacific grocery delivery startup Honestbee has confirmed it is suspending business in half of the eight markets it operates in and laying off 10 percent of its 1,000 staff. The cost-cutting appears to be part of belt-tightening ahead of a planned new injection of funding, TechCrunch has come to learn. According to a statement ...

Jungle Ventures hits $175M first close on its third fund for Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem is set to get a massive injection of funds after Jungle Ventures reached a first close of $175 million for its newest fund, TechCrunch has come to learn. Executives at the Singapore-based firm anticipate that the new fund, which is Jungle’s third to date, will reach a final close of $220 ...

FT parent Nikkei confirms it has acquired new media startup Deal Street Asia

It’s official: Nikkei, the Japanese media firm that owns the FT, has confirmed that it has acquired Singapore-based new media startup Deal Street Asia. (The Nikkei announcement is buried behind a paywall — make of that what you will!) The deal is undisclosed, but the announcement does confirm a TechCrunch report from last month which ...

Grocery delivery startup Honestbee is running out of money and trying to sell

Honestbee, the online grocery delivery service in Asia, is nearly out of money and trying to offload its business. The company has held early conversations with a number of suitors in Asia, including ride-hailing giants Grab and Go-Jek, over the potential acquisition of part, or all, of its business, according to two industry sources with ...

Go-Jek brings in Misfit co-founder and ex-Facebook head to lead Vietnam business

Ambitious ride-hailing startup Go-Jek’s Southeast Asia expansion plan suffered a blow when it lost the leadership team behind its business in Vietnam, but now it has replaced them with the former head of Facebook in the country. Christy Trang Le, who led Facebook’s business in Vietnam for nine months before quitting for family reasons in ...

Resurgent HappyFresh raises $20M for its online grocery service in Southeast Asia

It’s been a tricky past few years for HappyFresh, the startup seeking to bring Instacart-like grocery deliveries to Southeast Asia. It’s been through a series of rebuilding measures, but there’s light at the end of the tunnel after it announced a $20 million Series C. Launched in 2015, HappyFresh quickly raised $12 million to expand ...