Month: March 2017

Philippine-based marketplace PackingDelicious to raise seed fund from Tagcash

PackingDelicious, a Philippine-based marketplace website and delivery logistics service offering specialty products, has recently raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from local fintech firm Tagcash Ltd.

With this investment, Tagcash founder and angel investor Mark Vernon will acquire an equity position of 25 percent at PackingDelicious.

Previously having provided a seed funding in iWantSeats, a bus booking startup in 2016, Vernon notes that he is interested in investing startups which will spread the use of his micropayment platform – Tagcash that will enable online, offline, and SNS payments using a digital wallet.

Established in December 2015, PackingDelicious was founded by present CEO Ramon Dolor III, having been inspired by his previous experience running the former operations of Foodpanda Philippines, as well as being the logistics and customer service supervisor at Lazada Philippines.

“The idea came to fruiting based on wanting to provide a much needed healthier alternative without directly competing with large name companies and the lack of reach of healthy products to the regular consumers. The site was then built but with a challenge of introducing the healthy alternative to Filipinos,” Dolor explained

Looking at PackingDelicious, its business is based on similar fields of marketing and logistics, being a web platform for pre-packaged food. This includes ready-to-eat canned, bottled or frozen goods and health products, ranging from unique local and artisan food retailers.

A variety of food is available on its platform, some of which include ready-made dishes like Garlic Chicken and Ribs Binagoongan from Commissary Kitchen as well as bottled gourmets including the Super Tuyo Fillet which is a dried herring in a garlic-based sauce.

At present, PackingDelicious is in its first quarter with 10,000 likes and followers on both Facebook and Twitter. The company has been doubling in sales each quarter. “We are within our target for sales at least for the beginning of this quarter,” Dolor said.

This investment round comes as the first round of seed funding for the company in which it plans to use the proceeds for marketing strategies.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Baidu said to make US$100 million investment in Chinese electric car startup NextEV

Chinese Internet firm Baidu Inc. reportedly plans to invest US$100 million in smart electric vehicle technology maker NextEV as part of a Series C funding. Details of the deal have not been made public.

Baidu is now betting big on artificial intelligence to spur its future development. As the alliance is an effort intended to boost Baidu’s faltering autonomous driving business that has been witnessing falling profits.

Previously, the internet giant has set up an Institute of Deep learning in 2013, marking the beginnings of its research and development on unmanned driving technology.

However, Baidu has failed to yield concrete results despite its tie-ups with car makers such as BMW and Chery Automobile over the past three years. The exit of its core team members including senior vice president Wang Jin, who was in charge of the autonomous car division, worsened the already muddy prospects.

As the first company tapping into unmanned vehicles in China, Baidu claims that it has no intention to build cars but instead will focus on unmanned driving technology-related software, providing sensor modules and self-driving car brain to its partners. The collaboration with NextEV is in line with such strategy.

It recently established a business unit to focus on self-driving technology and appointed its newly hired chief operation officer Lu Qi as the head of the unit, signaling the importance Baidu is placing on the sector.

Founded in 2014 by Chinese automobile web portal Bitauto’s chairman William Li, NextEV is committed to the research, development, and production of high-performance electric sports cars. The Shanghai-headquartered company has offices in Europe and the United States, with more than 2,500 employees around the world. Last year, it launched the first electric car – the NIO EP9 in London.

The super racing car EP9 was said to be the world’s fastest electric car and the company plans to produce only six vehicles for some of the company’s early backers, including company founder Li, Tencent founder Pony Ma, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun, JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong and two others.

Prior to this, the electric vehicle startup has raised more than US$600 million via three funding rounds since June 2015, having backed by top global investors including Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, private equity giant TPG, China’s Lenovo Group and Sequoia Capital among some.

Following this tie-up with Baidu, NextEV would be able to utilize Baidu’s autonomous driving technology in its mass market electric vehicles. In the near future, the startup plans to launch a mass market electric vehicle priced at about half of Tesla’s Model S, which will start it at RMB620,000 (about US$90,000) in China.

As electric vehicles and unmanned driving technologies have been changing industry rules and profit distribution patterns in the automobile manufacturing sector, an increasing number of startups are joining the commercially viable market said to worth US$87 billion by 2030, according to research and advisory firm Lux Research.

By Vivian Foo, Next Unicorn

Popular video streaming app Bigo Live closes series C round with valuation at US$400 million

Singapore-based Bigo Live, a social video streaming app which allows users to broadcast videos, has recently closed its series C funding round led by China’s Ping An Overseas Holdings, an asset management unit of China’s Ping An Group which mainly engages in insurance and banking.

Other backers of Bigo Live also include the video-oriented Chinese social network YY, Bertelsmann Asia Investment Fund (BAI), Morningstar Capital, and Gao Rong Capital.

The financial terms of the round were not disclosed. But following this series C funding, the aggregated equity funding raised by Bigo Live will increase to US$180 million with a valuation exceeding US$400 million.

Known as a Periscope clone, Bigo Live allows its users to live stream anytime and anywhere, as well as to watch and follow other Bigo users.

According to a statement on its website, Bigo Live highlights: “We focus on video broadcast and VoIP-related product and services all over the world. Our leading mobile video broadcast product in Thailand – Bigo Live has attracted Thailand’s most active young & fashion people together to share their interests.”

The app also features game-like elements – providing users the ability to send digital gifts that can be bought using cash-purchased diamonds. These digital gifts range from tiaras to sports cars, which upon receiving can be converted to beans in exchange for more in-game diamonds or converted to real money.

Since its inception in March 2016, the app has gained a significant popularity among the 18 to 25 years age group. It has built a registered user base of 70 million globally, with an average use time of 40 minutes daily, while monthly active users have reached close to 30 million people.

Additionally, Bigo Live has also been ranked as a leading app on the Apple App Store and Google Play in Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines several times.

Given this traction within Southeast Asia, the firm plans to expand its international footprint beyond Southeast Asia going up against it nearest comparable competitor Periscope, which is backed by NYSE-listed Twitter.

“To support its rapid growth, Bigo Live will continue to scout for great talents across nations and enable local expansions in Europe, United States, India, Russia, the Middle East and some other key countries,” Bigo Live says. The company will also continue to heavily invest in research and development projects to further improve the app.

By Vivian Foo, Next Unicorn

Studio XID secures US$1 million funding from Line and Evergreen Venture Partners

Studio XID, a Korean developer housing interaction prototyping tool known as ProtoPie, has received a US$1 million fundraising from Line Plus Corporation and Evergreen Venture Partners.

The startup founded by designers and developers from Google, Samsung, and Naver, has since its inception in 2014, been expanding its influence overseas, actively representing the rise of Korean startups by participating in events like TechCrunch Top 5, Rising Expo Tokyo, and Startup Nation Worldwide.

Its flagship product ProtoPie is a tool that allows designers to prototype mobile apps minus the requirements of coding and is aimed to facilitate the collaboration between designers and developers.

Besides, Studio XID has also been actively building partnerships with design teams in China, conducting closed beta-testing with firms like Baidu and Alibaba. With its commercial launch on January 5th this year, the tool has also been adopted by designers at major companies, including Google, Yahoo, Slack, Allianz, and Kakao.

Having established this partnership with Line, Studio XID will also be participating in improving Line’s overall mobile app development process, in addition to leveraging Line’s strong network in Japan for market entry.

With the latest capital, Studio XID also plans to enhance the overall functionalities of ProtoPie by working with Cheil Communications, its strategic partner, while leveraging its network to reach new customers globally.

Kim Su, a former Googler and CEO of Studio XID, hopes that the investment will further accelerate the adoption of ProtoPie. He stated: “We are delighted to work with Evergreen, the mobile leader in the Asian market. We will do our best to showcase both the high quality and potential of Korean software in foreign markets.”

According to its founders, the name ProtoPie is derived from the words prototype and the expression of a piece of pie. The application is built on the belief that details in creation will determine the success or failure of its app, a feature that they believe will withstand competition from tools appearing with similar feature sets.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Chinese web TV studio Up Pictures raises US$15 million series A to finance three book-to-film adaptations

Up Pictures, a Beijing-based web TV and film studio made an announcement yesterday that it has raised a series A funding at RMB100 million (about US$15 million) led by Legend Capital with the participation of Beijing-based Junyuan Capital.

This round follows the startup’s angel round led by Beijing-based movie group Huayi Brothers Media Co, within 23 days of its inception in which it claimed to be valued at RMB400 million (about US$58 million).

However, following this latest fundraising round, the company stands at a valuation of RMB1.4 billion (about US$200 million).

Founded in 2015, Up Pictures focuses on the suspense adventure movie genres, involving itself in film production and development, set investment, intellectual property (IP) incubation, artist management, market planning, as well as animation

Its production includes the popular web television series Ghost Blows Out the Light which is based on a fantasy novel series about a team of grave robbers seeking hidden treasure. This series alone accounted for half of the company’s total RMB40 million (about US$5 million) profit last year.

Other productions by the company also include animation series such as 80℃ and Le Roi et l’oiseau (The King and the Mockingbird); movies such as Three Body Problem, New York New York, and Mr. Six; as well as original web series including The Adventures In Wumen.

With the latest fundraising, Up Pictures will use the capital to finance three book-to-film adaptation by Tianxia Bachang including The Freak Neighbour, A Date With Fate, and Bing Jia Mi Jue (The secret of the soldiers).

This comes as the second web TV and video producer to raise venture funding within a week after Le Yong Pictures, a video firm established by LeEco founder’s wife raised its US$174 million series A.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

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