Author: Thomas Crown

GetLinks, a Thailand-based startup that offers a job finder app in six countries Southeast Asia and neighboring regions, has closed new funding led by Australia’s Seek group and Alibaba’s Hong Kong Entrepreneur fund.

The size of the investment was not disclosed. GetLinks previously raised $500,000 in 2016, and it later added $150,000 more to that round. GetLinks said Thailand’s SCG and a number of existing investors also took part in the round,

The deal seems highly strategic for the young company given those two lead investors. Publicly listed in Australia, Seek operates employment services in 19 countries, including popular Southeast Asia portals JobStreet and JobsDB. Its interest is centered around GetLink’s digital focus, which includes community events and a mobile app for job-seekers.

Alibaba started its Hong Kong fund, which has a total budget $130 million, in 2015. Its mandate is to support Hong Kong-based companies or ventures led by Hong Kong Chinese founders.

GetLinks doesn’t immediately seem spring to mind — its founder Djoann Fal is French and it was started in Thailand — but the company has an office (and entity) in Hong Kong, while co-founder and chairman Keenan Kwok is from Hong Kong.

The Alibaba fund — which is distinct from Alibaba Group and its e-commerce business — has typically invested in companies that can leverage its massive online retail footprint, but in GetLinks case the two companies are looking to pool their resources around the use of AI and machine learning in education.

GetLinks is planning to expand from recruitment into offering skills and talent training. That, plus is core business, are areas where Alibaba may help with its AI might. The Chinese firm launched a $15 billion initiative into emerging technology, including AI, last year and GetLinks could be one partner to help train its core AI tech and systems.

More generally, Alibaba is also working to build a footprint in Southeast Asia, and GetLinks fits into that focus. Alibaba owns e-commerce firm Lazada, has invested in Indonesia’s Tokopedia and — as we reported earlier this month — it is in talks to invest in Grab. In addition, its fintech affiliate Ant Financial has been busy striking deals across the region.

GetLinks claims to have 500,000 registered job seekers, with 3,000 companies on its platform.

from TechCrunch

Revolut, the London-based fintech that offers a digital banking account and sprawling set of other financial services, is disclosing that it has raised a whopping $250 million in Series C funding, less than three years since launching.

The new round, which gives the company a $1.7 billion post-money valuation — a five-fold increase in under a year, we’re told — was led by Hong Kong based DST Global, along with a group of new and existing investors that includes Index Ventures, and Ribbit Capital. In case you aren’t keeping up, it brings the total amount raised by Revolut to $340 million in less than 36 months.

To put this into context, TransferWise — London’s undisputed fintech darling and on some features a direct competitor to Revolut — recently announced $280 million in Series D investment, giving the company a reported post-money valuation of $1.6 billion. The difference? It took TransferWise seven years compared to Revolut’s three.

That’s testament to how much value investors are now placing on bank-disrupting fintech or perhaps signs of a fintech bubble. Or both. It is also worth remembering that these are private valuations with neither company yet to float on the public markets, even if TranserWise looks increasingly a candidate to do so.

Meanwhile, Revolut says the new round of funding and surge in valuation follows “incredible growth figures to date,” with the fintech now processing $1.8 billion through the platform each month and signing up between 6,000 and 8,000 new customers every day.

It claims nearly 2 million customers in total, of which 250,000 are daily active users, roughly 400,000 are weekly active users and 900,000 are monthly active users. The company says the target is 100 million customers in the next five years.

For a little more context, TransferWise has 3 million customers. I’m also told U.K. challenger bank Monzo now has 630,000 current account customers, of which 200,000 are daily active users, 360,000 are weekly active users and 500,000 are monthly active users. (In both Revolut and Monzo’s case, active users are defined as making at least one financial transaction.)

With the aim of persuading both consumers and businesses to ditch their traditional bank, Revolut offers most of the features you’d expect of a current account, including physical and virtual debit cards, direct debits and money transfer. Its “attack vector” (to borrow Monzo’s Tom Blomfield’s phrase) was originally low exchange fees when spending in a foreign currency, which undoubtedly fuelled much of the startup’s early growth and mindshare, but new features and products are being added at an increasingly fast pace.

Many of these are through partnerships with other fintech companies, and include travel insurance, phone insurance, credit, savings, and cryptocurrency. The latter looks like riding the hype cycle almost perfectly. Revolut is also applying for a European banking license, which would enable it to begin balance sheet lending, too.

To that end, Revolut says the Series C funding will be used to go beyond Europe and expand worldwide, starting with the U.S., Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia this year. The company also expects to increase its workforce from 350 to around 800 employees in 2018.

from TechCrunch

NSI Ventures, the Singapore-based VC firm affiliated with PE firm Northstar Group that invested early in ride-sharing unicorn Go-Jek, is going independent after it announced it has rebranded to Openspace Ventures.

NSI Ventures was started by Hian Goh, an entrepreneur who sold his startup Asia Food Channel in 2013, and finance exec Shane Chesson in 2014. The firm was initially conceived as the venture capital arm of Northstar, which manages some $2 billion in assets with a focus on Indonesia.

In a statement, Goh paid tribute to Northstar’s support but said that “the moment has come for us to bring Openspace Ventures to the next stage, as an independent, Southeast Asia-focused venture fund manager.”

Following its spin-out, Northstar Group co-founder and managing partner Patrick Walujo will become a senior advisor to the firm, providing “strategic advice” on investments in Indonesia.

Openspace is best known in Southeast Asia for its early investment in Go-Jek, the Indonesian ride-sharing company that is valued at over $4 billion and in the process of expanding across Southeast Asia. To date it has invested in 19 companies, including online fashion brand Love Bonito, roti bread maker Zimplistic, restaurant discovery service Chope, and digital insurance startup Axinan. It announced its second $125 million fund last December, a final close for which is expected this year.

The firm said that 12 of its 15 investment deals have since secured follow-on funding, with a total of $2.2 billion poured in. Much of that comes from Go-Jek, but even removing two recent rounds that total around $2 billion, leaves good numbers for the rest of its portfolio.

In fact, a recent report from investment tracker Prequin listed the firm as the third highest performing investment fund worldwide for those created between 2003-2015. That shows progress but the proof is in the pudding, and for VCs that means LP returns. Opensauce, like others in exit-starved Southeast Asia, is yet to have a liquidation event despite making promising progress.

from TechCrunch

PayPal reported its first-quarter results after the bell on Wednesday, sending shares up about 3% in after-hours trading, due to better-than-expected numbers.

Adjusted earnings per share were 57 cents, above analyst estimates of 54 cents. Revenue for the quarter was $3.69 billion, up 24% from last year. Analysts surveyed by Yahoo Finance had been expecting $3.59 billion.

This comes from $132 billion in total payment volume, with $49 billion coming from mobile transactions. The company touted four consecutive quarters of accelerating revenue growth.

PayPal also raised guidance, expecting revenue for the year to between $3.78 and $3.83 billion.

PayPal broke out results for Venmo, its popular peer-to-peer payments app. It processed $40 billion in payments over the last year and $12 billion in the first quarter.

PayPal added 8.1 million active accounts. Its average customer makes 34.7 transactions per year, an 8% increase from prior years.

PayPal repurchased 23.6 million shares of common stock last quarter, returning $1.83 billion to shareholders.

PayPal shares have doubled in the past year, but at $74, shares are beneath the high of $85 we saw last quarter. The company dipped following its last earnings report on news that eBay is looking to partner with competitor Adyen. 

PayPal and eBay were previously the same company, but the two separated in 2015. PayPal is the larger of the two businesses, with a market cap of nearly $88 billion. eBay is worth under $42 billion.

from TechCrunch

Fresh off a massive cascading series of fiascos that has thrown the future of Qualcomm into doubt, the company managed to report a mostly positive first quarter and keep the stock from going into a further tailspin.

Qualcomm has been under considerable pressure for a wide variety of reasons, the most obvious one of which is a massive takeover attempt by Broadcom falling apart. But beyond that, Qualcomm is facing issues trying to close its acquisition of NXP, faces a continued public spat with Apple, and is looking to cut costs as it tries to appeal to Wall Street amid tension over its future as next-generation wireless technology begins to roll out. The company’s operating income fell 40% year-over-year amid its continued sparring with Apple over royalties.

The company ended up finishing with an earnings beat, reporting earnings of 80 cents per share compared to 70 cents per share expected by analysts. The company said it generated $5.23 billion in revenue, compared to $5.19 billion expected by analysts. Qualcomm, beyond just its own specific issues, is heavily dependent on the health of the smartphone supply chain. Apple missed targets expected by Wall Street when it came to iPhone sales, as one potential signal for example.

Following the BroadQualm collapse, the company said it would work to reduce its annual costs and cut around 1,500 jobs. This, too, comes at a time when its former chair Paul Jacobs stepped down after he said he would be exploring the possibility of a proposal to acquire Qualcomm and take it private. This, beyond just its fighting with Apple and its attempts to finish off its acquisition of NXP, has ended up shedding a ton of uncertainty as to what will happen to the chip designer.

Broadcom acquiring Qualcomm, in a very tense deal that came down to the White House eventually putting the brakes on the deal, would have consolidated two of the largest fabless chip firms into a single unit — but it’s not clear what Broadcom CEO Hock Tan would have done with Qualcomm, which is currently embroiled in a series of quarrels with Apple over royalty payments. The Trump administration proposed tariffs on Chinese products, adding another layer of uncertainty to the situation.

from TechCrunch