Chinese co-working space startup UrWork has raised its Series B round of financing worth RMB400 million (about US$58 million) from Tianhong Asset Management Co. Ltd, Junfa Real Estate Group, and a number of other Chinese companies.

Other investors also include Chinese property firm Dahong Group and Tianming Shuangchuang Technology, both based in Henan province, as well as Shanghai-based Chuanghehui Fund.

Founded in 2004, Tianhong Asset Management is the mutual fund unit under Alibaba Group’s financial services unit Ant Financial, providing services to users of Alibaba’s Yue’ebao product. As of June 2015, Tianhong has managed RMB948 billion (about US$138 billion) serving over 220 million individual investors.

UrWork, on the other hand, is founded in April 2015 by ex-senior VP of Wanke Enterprise Mao Daqing and aims to become China’s co-working space leader, providing co-working space to individuals and small companies. It is also often said to be a China’s equivalent of the world’s largest co-working space provider, US-based WeWork.

Since its inception, the company has so far raised six rounds of funding with a total venture fundraising of over RMB1.2 billion (about US$175 million). Its last round, prior to this, was three months ago when it completed a RMB200 million (US$31 million) financing round from Gopher Asset Management Co., Ltd., and others.

Its earlier backers also include Sequoia Capital China, Zhen Fund, Sinovation Ventures, Yintai Land and Zhongrong International Trust Co., Ltd.. After the completion of its Series B financing, the company now faces a valuation of nearly RMB7 billion, that is 45 times from its previous valuation of RMB150 million, making it the country’s first so-called unicorn in the domestic sector.

UrWork currently provides 16,535 desks in 40 co-working space locations across 12 cities in China, in which half of the sites are located in Beijing and the remainder spread across eleven other cities. Rather than owning properties, UrWork signs long-term leases of 10 to 15 years to remain asset-light.

With this latest proceeds, the company will use the capital to improve and simplify domestic and oversea UrWork factory layout, innovate internal service ecosystem as well as to standardise the service output model.

Besides, investments will also go to personnel training and investment projects to enhance the team’s overall professionalism as well as the mobile terminal and intelligence hardware in UrWork.

In addition, URWork also plans to open 36 locations across 16 cities in China, with 120,000 square meters of office space with 20,000 desks this year, in addition to seeking expansion overseas, with planned new sites in Singapore, New York, London and Taiwan.

In early December, the company has signed an agreement with International Enterprise Singapore and CapitaLand Limited, hoping to help Chinese and Singaporean small firms to enter the global market.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Human resource technology company, Ekrut on Tuesday announced that it has raised an undisclosed seed investment from East Ventures, an Indonesia-based early stage VC which has recently opened its fifth fund for Southeast Asian startups.

With the latest proceeds, the Jakarta-based HR firm will continue to expand its business, as the company announced that, “Ekrut has managed a strong revenue growth at 100 percent month-on-month and will aim to disrupt the headhunting industry in the region.”

Launched in September 2016 by Steven Suliawan, Ardo Gozal, and Anthony Kusuma, Ekrut is a curated marketplace which facilitates the headhunting process between employers and qualified talent.

Before establishing Ekrut, the founders – Suliawan was an entrepreneur in residence at East Ventures, who used to run a loyalty-programme startup, Gozal was the owner of a toy marketplace startup and a headhunter at Monroe Consulting, while Kusuma previously worked in digital marketing and product development for various companies and startups, he also had experiences conducting some headhunting process with previous employers.

It is based on these past experiences that the three first saw the need for a platform like Ekrut. That is a platform that automates headhunting processes, beginning from making search requests, searching potential candidates, delivering talent profiles, and setting interviews, eliminating back and forth email with delayed responses.

Besides, Ekrut allows employers to get high caliber talent during their hiring process. With the aid of technology, Ekrut’s platform is expected to make the whole process of headhunting shorter and quicker.

“Traditionally, in headhunting, the whole process until an offer is sent takes about eight weeks. Using the right technology and marketplace model, offer letter delivery can be reduced to about four weeks,” said Suliawan, the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Ekrut.

With a 17-member team, Ekrut services more than 30 technology-based companies including Tokopedia, Go-Jek, and Orami. Within five months, they have curated more than 1000 talents in their database and direct network.

While Indonesia’s digital boom has offered plenty of opportunities for investors, the investors or employers still face various challenges in getting the right talent.

“There are tons of engineers in Indonesia, but the real good ones are scarce. This leads to the high competition for the skilled engineers. This is why we curate our talent pool in Ekrut, to ease the pain of our client in finding skilled candidates,” said Ardo Gozal, the COO and co-founder of Ekrut.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media

Vietnamese e-commerce startup LeFlair has secured a US$1 million pre-series A funding round from a comgregation of investors led by Hong Kong-based Caldera Pacific Ventures.

Other participants in this pre-series A also include Italian VC firm AME Ventures and Korean VC firm Nextrans.

Prior to this, the partners at AME Ventures were early backers of yoox.com, a global leading online fashion retailer that places emphasis on luxury brands. The YOOX group which acquired Net-a-Porter.com last year in a billion dollar deal has successfully completed its IPO in November 2009.

“We found LeFlair very attractive because of its very experienced team and its focus on a segment, fashion online, that we know well. Vietnam is a high growth and underserved country, while the platform can eventually be expanded to the neighboring countries adding scalability to the model,” said Michele Appendino, the chairman at AME Ventures.

Founded in 2015 by Loic Gautier and Pierre Antoine Brun, LeFlair is one of the pioneers to provide branded fashion and beauty products at steep discounts. The two French founders have local e-commerce experience over the past three years in the Southeast Asian country through their work in Lazada before it was acquired by Chinese giant Alibaba.

“The company has been successful selling premium brands available at shopping malls but at much lower prices and also through bringing new brands to Vietnam,” said Loic Gautier, the CEO of LeFlair.

With the latest proceeds, LeFlair will enhance its operation to serve the regional market by offering a wider range of foreign brands which are difficult to acquire locally.

“Part of the new financing will be used for cross-border operations, which will help deliver orders from overseas brands and distributors directly to the end-users in Vietnam,” Gautier adds. “The business opportunity in Vietnam must not only be defined by the current, and relatively small market size but also the exploding demand that is not satisfied by the limited offering.”

Besides, LeFlair’s approach and focus on brands allow it to grow at a fast pace with reasonable marketing expenditures without compromising on the quality of the products or customer service, as well as to work on its long-term vision.

“We are more profitable than the other e-commerce players because we don’t compete with them. Selling brands in this region is not just about funding but about building trust and reputation. Not being in a constant state of price war against other players allow us to generate the adequate margins to sustain our operations and focus on the bigger plans,” Gautier further explains.

Based in Ho Chi Minh, LeFlair has around 80 employees and currently operates its own production studio, warehouse and fulfillment centre, where orders are shipped across the country.

Although the company’s business traction was not disclosed, but Gautier said the company had an average monthly growth rate of 23 per cent in revenues and had delivered about 40,000 orders in the first year of its operation.

In May 2016, LeFlair has received an undisclosed amount from 500 Startups Vietnam fund.

By Vivian Foo, Unicorn Media