Indonesian-based payment platform Xendit recently announced that the firm has raised $300-million in fresh funding. The company hit unicorn status in its last round of funding in September 2021 but did not disclose the company’s valuation after the recent funding round. 

The funding round was led by Coatue and Insight Partners with participation from investors such as Accel, Tiger Global, Kleiner Perkins, EV Growth, Amasia, Intudo, and Justin Kan’s Goat Capital. 

The latest funding round has seen the total funds raised by the company since 2015 to $538-million. 

The latest funds raised will be used to bring fresh capital to continue the expansion of the firm’s digital payments infrastructure across the region. According to the company, part of the funding will be used to expand into new markets, like Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The company which bills itself as “the Stripe of Southeast Asia” also plans to add value-added services in addition to payments, like working capital loans. 

Xendit claims it has more than 3,00 customers including the likes of Samsung Indonesia, GrabPay, Ninja Van Philippines, Qoala, Unicef Indonesia, Cashalo, and Shopback. 

Over the last year, the company tripled annualized transactions from 65-million to 200-million and increased total payments value from $6.5-billion to $15-billion. The company recently invested in Bank Sahabat Sampoerna, a private bank in Indonesia that focuses on micro and SME business, as well as banking-as-a-service for technology-enabled businesses. Additionally, the company complements its expansion into the Philippines by making strategic investments in the local payment gateway, Dragonpay. 

Xendit was founded in 2015 by chief executive officer Moses Lo and chief operating officer Tessa Wijaya. 

Southeast Asia is a compelling backdrop for investing, innovation and disruption, with 61% of 670-million people under 35 years old. The next generation of entrepreneurs is quickly moving online and the surge in growth is creating higher living standards and increasing consumer demand, especially in e-commerce, fintech, travel, and transportation. 

Tessa Wijaya also went on to explain why the payment landscape in Southeast Asia is different than in the US. Wijaya stated that “ while the U.S. builds everything around credit cards, you just cannot do that in Southeast Asia. Credit card penetration is extremely low, especially in countries like Indonesia, so we have to help merchants offer alternative payment methods.” 

Xendit was the first Indonesian tech startup to pass through the acclaimed incubator YCombinator and is the top Southeast Asian company on the YCombinator Top 100 list. 

Go1, an Australia-based corporate education hub for on-demand training and resources, announced on Monday that it has raised over $100-million in its latest funding round closed in May. 

The round saw the company’s valuation increase to over $2-billion with the company’s total funding now at over $400-million. 

The recent funding – which closed in May was co-led by AirTree Ventures and Five Sigma, with participation from the likes of SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Salesforce Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Larsen Venture, Scott Shleifer, and John Curtius from Tiger, TEN13, M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund), Madrona Venture Group, SEEK, and Y Combinator also participating. 

Online education continues to get a lot of attention in the wake of Covid-19 and the paradigm shift that it brought to change traditional means of education. Go1, being one of the rising stars in the world of enterprise learning, is at the forefront of this shift from traditional channels of education. 

Go1 has also recently seen the appointment of a few top executives such as Marc Havercroft as president, Ashleigh Loughnan as chief people officer, Ben Allen as chief marketing officer, Antony Ugoni as chief data officer, and Jared Goralnick as senior vice president of product management. 

The firm is also looking to expand its reach and scope by acquiring Coorpacademy to enter the European market and its expansion into Southeast Asia with offices in Malaysia and Singapore. Additionally, the Australia-based platform also bought professional workshop provider Education Changemakers. 

Go1 said that the new capital will help Go1 accelerate its journey to reach a billion learners with upskilling, reskilling, and knowledge tools that empower workers across the globe. 

Chief Executive Officer of Go1, Andrew Barnes said in a statement that “Leading organizations are recognizing the need to future-proof their workforces by providing comprehensive learning and development opportunities. The incredible team at Go1 has made huge strides in expanding our capabilities and offerings to ensure users have access to education that supports their growth. These recent investments allow Go1 to build on that momentum to explore new content and resources, enabling our platform to meet the needs of every organization and employee, and brings us closer to our goal of supporting one billion learners globally.” 

Another area where the firm would like to use its investment is to bring more technological innovations into the Go1 platform. One of these is likely to be more technological innovations in the Go1 platform. One of these is likely to be more VR-based learning. Additionally, another direction of the company is to build out more live streaming to complement the existing catalog, which is based today around asynchronous content. 

Digital payment processor Opn, which was formerly known as Synqa, said it has raised $120-million in a Series C+ funding round, earning itself a unicorn status. 

Some investors that have participated in the funding round include government-backed JIC Venture Growth Investments, Mitsubishi UFG Financial Group, and tech investors Mars Growth Capital which has brought Opn’s total raised capital to date to $222-million. 

Opn, which has its registered headquarters in Tokyo and operational headquarters in Bangkok, said that the fresh capital will support the firm to continue developing services and product line-up while also pushing further into Southeast Asia as it rides the growth of digital payments in the region. 

The company while targeting to expand its geography also targets Japan, where digital transformation is a buzzword in government circles and companies are looking for help in processing cross-border payments. Jun Hasegawa, Opn founder, and CEO stated that: “They need a one-stop solution…that’s something we can provide.”“We are extremely excited and proud to bring on board this high-quality investment, allowing us to accelerate the development of our core payment solutions, while also expanding into new territories within our core markets of Southeast Asia and Japan and beyond,” as stated by Jun Hasegawa.

He also continued to state: “As we approach 10 years since we started as a payment gateway company, and now customized fintech solutions to help businesses grow, we have continued to obsess over how to make payments ever more seamless for both businesses and the people they serve. Through our fintech solutions, we are realizing our vision of enabling access to the digital economy for everyone.” 

Opn, was founded in 2013 in Bangkok by Jun Hasegawa and co-founder Ezra Don Harinsut. The company is one of Japan’s five unicorns, including news app operator SmartNews and biotech firm Spiber. Japan has a growing number of startups and foreign investors are becoming more common in funding round. However, it still lags behind countries like South Korea and Singapore with 12 and India which has more than 60 unicorns.