First China, now Starbucks gets an ambitious VC-funded rival in Indonesia
Posted by Mansour Wakim | alibaba, alibaba group, Android, Apps, Asia, carsharing, China, East Ventures, funding, Fundings & Exits, go-jek, Google, grab, Indonesia, Insignia Ventures Partners, internet access, Jakarta, JD.com, managing partner, mcdonalds, online food ordering, online marketplaces, pizza hut, Singapore, Southeast Asia, starbucks, temasek, Tencent, United States, WeWork | No Comments
Asia's venture capital-backed startups are gunning for Starbucks .
In China, the U.S. coffee giant is being pushed by Luckin Coffee, a $2.2 billion challenger surfing China's on-demand wave, and on the real estate side, where WeWork China has just unveiled an on-demand product that could tempt people who go to Starbucks to work or kill time.
That trend is picking up in Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country and Southeast Asia's largest economy, where an on-demand challenger named Fore Coffee has fueled up for a fight after it raised $8.5 million.
Fore was started in August 2018 when associates at East Ventures, a prolific early-stage investor in Indonesia, decided to test how robust the country's new digital infrastructure can be. That means it taps into unicorn companies like Grab, Go-Jek and Traveloka and their army of scooter-based delivery people to get a hot brew out to customers. Incidentally, the name "Fore" comes from "forest" — "we aim to grow fast, strong, tall and bring life to our surrounding" — rather than in front of… or a shout heard on the golf course.
The company has adopted a similar hybrid approach to Luckin, and Starbucks thanks to its alliance with Alibaba. Fore operates 15 outlets in Jakarta, which range from "grab and go" kiosks for workers in a hurry, to shops with space to sit and delivery-only locations, Fore co-founder Elisa Suteja told TechCrunch. On the digital side, it offers its own app (delivery is handled via Go-Jek's Go-Send service) and is available via Go-Jek and Grab's apps.
So far, Fore has jumped to 100,000 deliveries per month and its app is top of the F&B category for iOS and Android in Indonesia — ahead of Starbucks, McDonald's and Pizza Hut .
It's early times for the venture — which is not a touch on Starbuck's $85 billion business; it does break out figures for Indonesia — but it is a sign of where consumption is moving to Indonesia, which has become a coveted beachhead for global companies, and especially Chinese, moving into Southeast Asia. Chinese trio Tencent, Alibaba and JD.com and Singapore's Grab are among the outsiders who have each spent hundreds of millions to build or invest in services that tap growing internet access among Indonesia's population of more than 260 million.
There's a lot at stake. A recent Google-Temasek report forecast that Indonesia alone will account for over 40 percent of Southeast Asia's digital economy by 2025, which is predicted to triple to reach $240 billion.
As one founder recently told TechCrunch anonymously: "There is no such thing as winning Southeast Asia but losing Indonesia. The number one priority for any Southeast Asian business must be to win Indonesia."
Forecasts from a recent Google-Temasek report suggest that Indonesia is the key market in Southeast Asia
This new money comes from East Ventures — which incubated the project — SMDV, Pavilion Capital, Agaeti Venture Capital and Insignia Ventures Partners, with participation from undisclosed angel backers. The plan is to continue to invest in growing the business.
"Fore is our model for 'super-SME' — SME done right in leveraging technology and digital ecosystem," Willson Cuaca, a managing partner at East Ventures, said in a statement.
There's clearly a long way to go before Fore reaches the size of Luckin, which has said it lost 850 million yuan, or $124 million, inside the first nine months in 2018.
The Chinese coffee challenger recently declared that money is no object for its strategy to dethrone Starbucks. The U.S. firm is currently the largest player in China's coffee market, with 3,300 stores as of last May and a goal of topping 6,000 outlets by 2022, but Luckin said it will more than double its locations to more than 4,500 by the end of this year.
By comparison, Indonesia's coffee battle is only just getting started.
Chat app Line's games business raises $110M for growth opportunities
Posted by Mansour Wakim | anchor equity partners, Apps, Asia, Fundings & Exits, game publisher, Gaming, Indonesia, Japan, Kakao, korea, line, line corp, messaging apps, Nintendo, north america, Software, taiwan, TC, Thailand, Ticket Monster | No Comments
Messaging app firm Line has given up majority control of its Line Games business after it raised outside financing to expand its collection of titles and go after global opportunities.
The Line Games business was formed earlier this year when Line merged its existing gaming division from NextFloor, the Korea-based game publisher that it acquired in 2017. Now the business has taken on capital from Anchor Equity Partners, which has provided 125 billion KRW ($110 million) in financing via its Lungo Entertainment entity, according to a disclosure from Line.
A Line spokesperson clarified that the deal will see Anchor acquire 144,743 newly created shares to take a 27.55 percent stake in Line Games. That increase means Line Corp's own shareholding is diluted from 57.6 percent to a minority 41.73 percent stake.
Korea-based Anchor is best known for a number of deals in its homeland, including investments in e-commerce giant Ticket Monster, Korean chat giant Kakao's Podotree content business and fashion retail group E-Land.
Line operates its eponymous chat app, which is the most popular messaging platform in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan, and also significantly used in Indonesia, but gaming is a major source of income. This year to date, Line has made 28.5 billion JPY ($250 million) from its content division, which is primarily virtual goods and in-app purchases from its social games. That division accounts for 19 percent of Line's total revenue, and it is a figure that is only better by its advertising unit, which has grossed 79.3 billion JPY, or $700 million, in 2018 to date.
The games business is currently focused on Japan, Korea, Thailand and Taiwan, but it said that the new capital will go toward finding new IP for future titles and identifying games with global potential. It is also open to more strategic deals to broaden its focus.
While Line has always been big on games, Line Games isn't just building for its own service. The company said earlier this year that it plans to focus on non-mobile platforms, which will include the Nintendo Switch among others consoles.
That comes from the addition of NextFloor, which is best known for titles like Dragon Flight and Destiny Child. Dragon Flight has racked up 14 million users since its 2012 launch; at its peak it saw $1 million in daily revenue. Destiny Child, a newer release in 2016, topped the charts in Korea and has been popular in Japan, North America and beyond.
Line went public in 2016 via a dual U.S.-Japan IPO that raised more than $1 billion.
Note: The original version of this article was updated to clarify that Lungo Entertainment is buying newly issued shares.
Indonesian fintech startup Moka raises $24M led by Sequoia India
Posted by Mansour Wakim | Android, Asia, East Ventures, eCommerce, fenox, Finance, funding, Fundings & Exits, Indonesia, moka, PayPal, softbank ventures korea, Southeast Asia, Vertex Ventures | No Comments
Indonesia's Moka, a startup that helps SMEs and retailers manage payment and other business operations, has pulled in a $24 million Series B round for growth.
The investment is led by Sequoia India and Southeast Asia — which recently announced a new $695 million fund — with participation from new backers SoftBank Ventures Korea, EDBI — the corporate investment arm of Singapore's Economic Development Board — and EV Growth, the later stage fund from Moka seed investor East Ventures. Existing investors Mandiri Capital, Convergence and Fenox also put into the round.
The deal takes Moka to $27.9 million raised to date, according to data from Crunchbase.
Moka was started four years ago primarily as a point-of-sale (POS) terminal with some basic business functionality. Today, it claims to work with 12,500 retailers in Indonesia and its services include sales reports, inventory management, table management, loyalty programs, and more. Its primary areas of focus are retailers in the F&B, apparel and services industries. It charges upwards of IDR 249,000 ($17) per month for its basic service and claims to be close to $1 billion in annual transaction volume from its retail partners.
That's the company's core offering, a mobile app that turns any Android or iOS device into a point-of-sale terminal, but CEO and co-founder Haryanto Tanjo — who started the firm with CTO Grady Laksmono — said it harbors larger goals.
"Our vision is to be a platform, we want to be an ecosystem," he told TechCrunch in an interview.
That's where much of this new capital will be invested.
Tanjo said the company is opening its platform up to third-party providers, who can use it to reach merchants with services such as accounting, payroll, HR and more. The focus is initially on local services that cater to SMEs in Indonesia, but as Moka targets larger enterprises as clients, he said that it will integrate larger, global solutions, too.
Moka offers services beyond point-of-sale, but the core offering is turning any smart device into a cash machine
Moka itself is expanding its capabilities on the payment side.
Indonesia, the world's fourth largest country based on population and Southeast Asia's largest economy, is in the midst of a fintech revolution with numerous companies pioneering mobile-based wallet services aimed at ending the country's fixation on cash-based transactions. That's mean that there are a plethora of options available today. Tanjo said Moka is working to support them all in order to help its merchants grow their businesses and consumers to have easier lives.
There are so many wallets here in Indonesia," he said. "There are more than 10 right now and maybe in the next few months there'll be 15-20, we want to be the platform that works with all of them."
Already it works with the likes of OVO, T-Cash and Akulaku, and e-wallets including DANA and Kredivo. The startup is also working in another area of fintech: loans.
As an extension of its platform, it has tied up with SME loan companies who can reach out to Moka businesses using its platform. With the merchant's consent, Moka can provide business data — including revenue, profit, etc — to help provide data to assess a loan application. That's important because the process is particularly challenging in Southeast Asia, where few organized credit checking facilities exist — it makes sense that Moka — which has built its business around encouraging business growth and management — uses the information it has access to help its partners.
Tanjo said the company takes an undisclosed cut of the loan in cases where it has successfully connected the two parties. He said that he doesn't expect that to initially become a major revenue stream, but over time he anticipates it will help its customer base grow and become a more important source of income for the startup.
Sequoia India has some experience in POS startups having backed Pine Labs in India, which recently landed a big $125 million round from PayPal and Singapore sovereign fund Temasek. Still, there are plenty of local players across various markets in Southeast Asia, including StoreHub, which is backed by Temasek subsidiary Vertex Ventures, and Malaysia's SoftSpace.
While those two competitors have established a presence in multiple markets in Southeast Asia, Tanjo — the Moka CEO — said there are no plans to venture overseas for at least the next 12 months.
"We're still scratching the service," he said. "So [it] doesn't make sense to expand too soon."
Chat app Line gets serious about gaming with its latest acquisition
Posted by Mansour Wakim | Apps, Asia, computing, Facebook, facebook messenger, Fundings & Exits, Gaming, Indonesia, iPhone, iTunes, Japan, line, messaging apps, Messenger, Nintendo, payments, ride hailing, social media, Software, taiwan, Thailand, WhatsApp, world wide web | No Comments
Line, the company best-known for its popular Asian messaging app, is doubling down on games after it acquired a controlling stake in Korean studio NextFloor for an undisclosed amount.
NextFloor, which has produced titles like Dragon Flight and Destiny Child, will be merged with Line's games division to form the Line Games subsidiary. Dragon Flight has racked up 14 million users since its 2012 launch — it clocked $1 million in daily revenue at peak. Destiny Child, a newer release in 2016, topped the charts in Korea and has been popular in Japan, North America and beyond.
Line's own games are focused on its messaging app, which gives them access to social features such as friend graphs, and they have helped the company become a revenue generation machine. Alongside income from its booming sticker business, in-app purchases within games made Line Japan's highest-earning non-game app publisher last year, according to App Annie, and the fourth highest worldwide. For some insight into how prolific it has been over the years, Line is ranked as the sixth highest earning iPhone app of all time.
But, despite revenue success, Line has struggled to become a global messaging giant. The big guns WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have in excess of one billion monthly users each, while Line has been stuck around the 200 million mark for some time. Most of its numbers are from just four countries: Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. While it has been able to tap those markets with additional services like ride-hailing and payments, it is certainly under pressure from those more internationally successful competitors.
With that in mind, doubling down on games makes sense and Line said it plans to focus on non-mobile platforms, which will include the Nintendo Switch among others consoles, from the second half of this year.
Line went public in 2016 via a dual U.S.-Japan IPO that raised over $1 billion.
Understanding Line, the chat app behind 2016's largest tech IPO
PAYFAZZ wants to build a network of distributed bank agents in Indonesia
Posted by Mansour Wakim | Airbnb, fintech, Indonesia, Mobile, PAYFAZZ, Startups, TC | No Comments
Hendra Kwik is hoping to tap into the excitement of on-demand companies like Uber and distributed workforces — except instead of ridesharing, he's hoping it will work for banking. That's the theory behind PAYFAZZ, which coordinates with banks to create a distributed network of bank agents that can operate from wherever — even their own homes. Once that person is… Read More
P2P mobile payment app Tapp raises $9 million to tap into the cash economy in Southeast Asia
Posted by Mansour Wakim | 1Pay, africa, Apps, Asia, Ayannah, Column, Finance, Indonesia, malaysia, Mobile, momo, Myanmar, Pagatech, Singapore, Tapp, TC, vietnam | No Comments
Mobile phones have emerged as the dominant alternative payment method to cash for buying and selling goods and services in emerging markets. And with a service akin to alternative payment providers like M-Pesa and Pagatech in Africa and a slew of alternative payment platforms in Southeast Asia, Tapp's technology is one that the region understands well. Read More
Google To Test Mobile-Optimized Web Pages In Indonesia
Posted by Mansour Wakim | Android, Google, Indonesia, Mobile, mobile phones, search results, TC | No Comments
Google announced today that it will begin running tests of a new way to deliver search results to mobile users with slow connections. The company's pilot trials will initially take place in Indonesia, a country where the Internet is playing a greater role in people's lives – especially among younger users – but is still plagued by slow mobile connection speeds, which… Read More