Burufly, Indonesia’s leading Social Travel site has strengthened its foremost position with investments from two significant Venture Capital firms.  Walden International, a pioneer VC firm on cross border investments and Batavia Incubator, a joint venture of Indonesian Corfina Group and Japanese Rebright Partners, who have an extensive local network, have just closed an investment round in Burufly. 

Peter Goldsworthy, President Director of Burufly shares that “We are truly excited to bring in two high caliber firms that have a wealth of expertise in ecommerce, web2.0 and strategic alliances.  Everybody realizes that the opportunity in South East Asian travel is massive and that there is more to travel than just booking hotels via a search engine. With the support of Walden, Batavia and Ardent Capital (an early investor in Burufly), developing a social travel platform that touches more than 10 million highly engaged users is Burufly’s goal.  Burufly will continue to differentiate and create sustainable value for its customers by focusing on content and creating a social marketplace for travelers to build networks, based on expertise and sharing.”

Adrian Vanzyl, CEO of Ardent Capital, sees much validation in this funding round.  “Given the population size and growth rates in Southeast Asia, we are pleased to see such strong domestic and international funding support for companies such as Burufly.  Ardent will continue its focus on investing into, building and supporting local businesses so that they are ready for global investment.”

Loo Hock Voon, Managing Director of Walden International says; “Travel is about discovering new places and new experiences.  This is the age of social travel and ‘insider’ peer recommendations.  Burufly helps people to discover destinations and plan trips in a visual and engaging way.”

Suryanto Wijaya, Director of Batavia Incubator shares; “What attracts us to Burufly is its highly social aspect - users voluntarily share their traveling experiences. As a regional player Burufly helps local and foreign tourists to discover travel destinations, which is especially useful in Indonesia where information is often a rare commodity. Eventually, this will create a very valuable data mapping based on travelers' interests to assist the government developing these potential destinations.”

Burufly now has more than 380,000 registered members, 3,000 images shared in the last week and nearly 3  million engagements (mau, pernah and comments). Month on month growth will have Burufly set to reach over 1 million registered members before end 2013. “With an aggressive product roadmap and the mindset of ‘growth hacking’ permeating throughout the entire organization, I’d expect that milestone will come earlier”, says Peter Goldsworthy. Reaching this milestone will make Burufly one of the top three travel destinations in all of South East Asia.

Singaporean media outfit, e27, has raised about US$615,000 (S$760,000) through a funding round with investors in the region, and plans to expand into Southeast Asia.

The round was raised with B Dash Ventures from Japan, Pinehurst Advisors in Taiwan, Ardent Capital in Thailand and Dan Neary in Singapore. e27 has been around since 2006 and runs a news site on tech startups in Asia, and organizes conferences.

Mohan Belani, e27’s CEO and co-founder, said that he is looking to hire editorial staff in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. The company’s focus, however, will remain on its annual flagship event called Echelon, he added.

Last year, about 3,000 people attended Echelon, which also drew 50 startups and 150 investors. Echelon 2013 will be held on June 4 and 5 in Singapore this year.

After this funding round, B Dash Ventures CEO, Hiroyuki Watanabe, will join e27’s board. Current members are Nic Lim (8capita) and founders, Belani and Thaddeus Koh.

Belani said that the company has been bootstrapped so far, except for a small angel round raised in early 2012 by 8capita.

As the year 2013 kicks off, startups, companies and venture capital firms set new expectations and goals. What exactly does 2013 promise? We spoke to some of the more prominent venture capitalist around the region to find out their outlook for the new year.


Amit Anand (Singapore): What 2013 means for the various Southeast Asia ecosystems

Amit Anand is the Founder and Managing Partner of Jungle Ventures, a Singapore based pan Asian early stage fund for Jungle Venture. The fund also recently launched a new US$10M super angel fund, collaborating with the prestigious 500Startups. Some of Jungle Ventures’ portfolio include Cinemacraft, DocDoc and travelmob.

Amit is also the Vice Chairman for Business Angel Network South East Asia (BANSEA).

Here’s what Amit has to say about 2013:

“Ecosystems such as Singapore and Indonesia are most likely to orbit into next stage of maturity or die trying. The next few years are VERY critical to the region as some of the seed stage experiments will come of age and teams will have to demonstrate long term viability of their businesses. On the other hand, newer ecosystems such as Thailand will get on the seed stage radar so it maybe a good time for entrepreneurs that are looking for seed funding to consider Thailand as their base. It is also a decent home market. Watch out for Australia though! If given the right access to Southeast Asia markets, there are highly potent startup teams bubbling down under!

VC’s, especially local ones, that open themselves to taking early risks may find great pickings in the bridge to Series A segment. Not all startups will reach the desired milestones for Series A convincingly and it would take an expert eye to pick early winners irrespective. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of funds that have the wherewithal and mindset to do that. We are very upbeat about that stage of investments.

Though not publicly disclosed there are many startups in Singapore (and the region) that are hovering around the $100m mark. It will be interesting to see if they consider exiting or have the vision and execution prowress to THINK BIGGER and be the first Billion dollar digital enterprise from here!  Eitherways, stories such as Bubblemotion, mig33, PropertyGuru, Viki, Reebonz will end up teaching us a lot and one should closely watch them for the next few years.”

Adrian Vanzyl (Thailand): We are very bullish on verticals with a direct path to monetization

Adrian Vanzyl is the cofounder and CEO of Thailand based Ardent Capital. Ardent Capital has founded, grown and successfully exited a range of companies, primarily in the internet sector in SE Asia, but also in the US and Australia. Some of these successful exits include Ensogo, Dealkeren, Admax Network, and NewMediaPlus.

Adrian spent ten years with Blumberg Capital in San Francisco (most recently as CTO for this $100M early stage digital media focused fund, where he was also CEO of two portfolio companies).

Here’s what Adrian has to say about 2013:

“We are very bullish on verticals with a direct path to monetization. These include travel, beauty, parenting/kids et cetera. We particularly like those that can reduce customer acquisition cost, and drive engagement, by having a social community layer of some sort (comments, likes, photos). We are not seeing as much traction as you’d expect for general, non differentiated commerce sites (eg Amazon.com clones).  This is due to a lack of clear messaging, non-competitive pricing, customer service issues, and international competition.

The other big area is enabling platforms, such as creative payment solutions and gamification.  These unlock purchase behavior, and drive greater engagement. We’ve made a couple of bets across the above areas, including Burufly.com (social travel) and gamification (Playbasis). From a trend’s perspective, we still see way too many point solutions, that will never grow into real substantial businesses.  This trend is actually being driven by all the incubators, angel money, and government money becoming available.  Overall none of us will ever complain that there is too much money available to help startups,  but what money is available should go to real businesses, not a 20th copy of a copy of a 3 year old US business model.

These businesses won’t get Series A funding, which is disheartening for the entrepreneur, and makes the startup space look like a poor career choice.  As a group we need to help smart entrepreneurs think big, and build real businesses, and avoid the trap and attraction of quick but small point solution businesses. Overall the growth in the startup scene the last 12 months has been absolutely tremendous, with some really high quality incubators and training programs coming into the region. For example, we’ve seen more tech focused co-working spaces in Thailand in 2012 than all the years prior. And this trend should continue throughout the region. Fun year ahead.”

Jamie Lin (Taiwan): Web Gaming will start to overtake traditional Online Gaming, Facebook will continue it’s dominance, and ecommerce will continue to be bullish.

Jamie is the Founding Partner of appWorks Ventures, a US$ 11M Super Angel Fund located in Taipei, Taiwan with a focus on the mobile and consumer internet space. appWorks runs an incubator program, inspired by Y-Combinator, that has helped more than 120 startups.

During his life as an entrepreneur, Jamie co-founded Social Sauce, which is behind travel social network Sosauce.com and web 3D game production house Muse Games. Prior to that, he co-founded Intumit, the leader in Chinese search engine technologies, and Hotcool.com, a build-to-order online PC retailer, among other things.

Here’s what Jamie has to say about 2013:

“In terms of gaming, I think we’re going to see Web Gaming starting to overtake traditional Online Gaming (which requires downloads) in some countries this year.  Though still small compared to Web Gaming and Online Gaming, Mobile (/App) Gaming is also gonna become a major battle field this year.

In terms of advertising, Facebook is going to become even bigger this year and might even challenge Google’s dominance in some countries.  Real-Time Bidding will slowly start to get going also in some countries.

In terms of e commerce, I think it will generally grow 20-50% in most countries but that is an area where different countries really have very different standings.”

Jeffrey Paine (Singapore): Mobile will be big

Jeffrey is the founding partner of Golden Gate Ventures, which recently teamed upwith Singapore based JFDI to fund and support digital startups. Jeffrey is also the director for Founders Institute Singapore.

Here’s what Jeffrey has to say about 2013:

“Mobile will be big – in education, personal health, and commerce.

Personalization may come sooner than we think as well.”

Hugh Mason and Wong Meng Weng (Singapore): Health and Education is ready to be disrupted.

Hugh and Meng is no stranger to the startup community in Singapore. They runJFDI.Asia, one of Singapore’s latest and very successful accelerator programme.

JFDI.Asia ran their first bootcamp earlier this year together with SingTel Innov8 which graduated 11 startups, with more than 60 percent of the startups succeed in securing S$500,000 to S$700,000 funding at the end of the program.

Here’s what Hugh has to say about 2013:

“Maybe I can give a couple of different spins on that. First up, here’s a rough top 10 domains in descending order of popularity from the teams that applied to us this year: Marketing, Content, E-commerce, Education, Analytics, CRM, Games, Health, Finance, Business Intelligence.

As for which of those will succeed … our experience is that Asia’s different to, say, the USA because rolling out across this region is harder than say the US, there’s a common currency, legal structures etc. Here in Asia the only organizations that really span the many cultures and countries in our neighbourhood are the multinationals. So JFDI.Asia is building close links with a number of multinational partners that can offer market intelligence and channels to market for our start-ups, to help them scale. Success, in terms of building a really big business here in Asia might turn out not to be about focusing on a particular market vertical but rather on the partnerships that can help to scale across this vast region.

These are the personal picks from Meng Wong: Travel, health, education, monetization of mobile social media.”

Eddie Chau (Singapore): Multi layered big data analytics and cloud will be serious contenders

Eddie Chau is the founding partner of TNF Ventures, which recently funded travel startup Flocations and finance startup TradeHero. Eddie Chau is also the CEO of Brandtology, which was acquired by Media Monitors.

Eddie is also the cofounder of V-Key, a mobile security company which recently raised a $4M series A funding.

Here’s what Eddie has to say about 2013:

“Multi-layered big data analytics (data sources can be from social, demographic, mobile etc) will be seriously considered by more organisations, including government, financial, as well as FMCGs. This is for them to gain intelligence/competitive edge and most importantly to get closer to their clients and to understand their behaviours

More will move to Cloud and the management of the cloud will be a big issue and presents a lot of opportunities.”

Stuart B Richardson (Australia): AdTech, eCommerce, Social Media Marketing Tools, ‘Internet of Things’.

Stuart is the founder of Australia’s early-stage technology venture capital investment firm, Adventure Capital. He is also the cofounder of York Butter Factory, one of the premier coworking/incubator spaces in Australia with over 50 high-potential seed-stage companies in residence within a year of commencing operations. 

On top of that, he is also the founding investor of breakout technology businesses Axiflux and 121cast. Stuart also advises numerous entrepreneurs and their early-stage technology businesses.

Here’s what Stuart has to say about 2013:

“In terms of hot-spots for activity, I think the following are worthy of attention:

• AdTech – battle for dominance in the DSP / RTB market – and especially mobile ads in Asia
• eCommerce (less so in Australia due to structural and potential regulatory issues)
• Social Media marketing tools
• Hard technology & the emergence of the ‘internet of things’ (ie. Axiflux & Ninja Blocks)
  
  

I think we’re also going to see a lot of consolidation and commoditisation in the Startup sector as the knowledge proliferates and cost of launching a startup continues to plummet. All the whilst the scale costs are rapidly increasing as channels to market become more crowded.  This will be Asia’s own Series A Crunch.”

As I looked back on 2012, preparing a series of posts about how technology and startups have changed in Asia, it struck me just how significant the period was for Southeast Asia.

So often disregarded by folks who focus on China and India with their billion-plus populations, or the high-tech markets of Japan and Korea, Southeast Asia is likely one of the world’s fastest evolving technology markets. Nowhere else is technology having such a fundamental and visible effect on life, and that’s all set to continue in 2013.

Here are a few reasons, in no particularly order, why I am excited by the potential of this year in Southeast Asia. I wouldn’t chose to live anywhere else in the world.

Southeast Asia is being noticed as a market

Outside stimulus is one key factor that helps emerging markets to develop and, prior to 2012, Southeast Asia had seen precious little input from overseas players. Most preferred to focus on more substantial opportunities and markets, that is if they ventured overseas at all.

Though Southeast Asia has some 600 million inhabitants, the Internet and technology are nothing like as widely adopted as they are in the US or Europe. Indeed, measuring the region’s tech footprint is no easy thing — as I pointed out back in 2011 — and that is a major reason why companies tended to ignore Southeast Asia in favor of other markets where potential and target audiences are more obvious.

Fast forward to today and many more companies are realizing that Southeast Asia is not only well populated and lucrative, but also largely untapped by their competitors. This awareness began in late 2011 and it continued through 2012 when Twitter and Facebook usage among countries like Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand grabbed headlines — some of the countries were even more active than Western markets, which opened eyes.

In today’s multi-device era, social media usage is a more accurate way to measure the development of the Web in a country, as opposed to more traditional metrics, such as Internet penetration. Indonesia’s high usage of Twitter and Facebook, the popularity of Instagram in Thailand and other factors are helping to put the region on the map for Web companies, despite a deceptively low rate of fixed-line Internet.

Last year alone saw Rocket Internet launch five companies in Southeast Asia, and Lazada and Zalora raised millions of dollars from a series of investors that are bullish about the future of the Amazon-like marketplace services in Southeast Asia’s nascent e-commerce market.

Other international names, such as music service Airbnb, Deezer,Tencent’s WeChat messaging app, Naver’s Line app also sharpened their focus on the region to grow their user bases. Chinese giant Baidu continued its softly-slowly approach, as it launched new products to explore the potential of Thailand and Vietnam, while it opened the doors to its Singapore-based research center. The center specializes in linguistics and will be used to develop local services for Southeast Asian markets, showing clearly that the Chinese search giant sees potential here.

Smartphone growth and Internet access

At the core of the growth in the indicators that are putting Southeast Asia on the map is the rise in ownership of smartphones, which has helped bring about incremental rises in Internet access. Android has been the single biggest driver of mobile devices across Southeast Asia. Reports on its influence vary; the Google owned operating system accounts for upwards of 31 percent market share, according to Ericsson, while GfK puts that figure at 49 percent.

In separate research, GfK estimates that smartphone sales in the region are up 78 percent year-on-year. It found that, in seven key markets — Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines —  a cumulative $13.7 billion worth of phones were sold between July 2011 and June 2012.

What is most interesting about the GfK data is that smartphones make up just 25 percent of all mobiles sold in those seven markets, according to the firm. That means that there’s plenty more growth to come — in time, more first-time Internet users will come online with their mobile phones as their sole/main access point to the Web.

For now, there is still a price barrier for many — since pre-pay is the standard and many operators do not subsidize devices. Ask yourself if, without the discount you get for a two-year contract, would you buy an iPhone 5 unlocked?

While devices are getting cheaper and older, discounted models — like the iPhone 3G — fall into more consumers’ budgets, there are other organizations help to bring data into people’s hands. Last week, Malaysia’s government revealed details of a smartphone rebate that will allow young people to get MYR200 ($65 US) back when they buy selected 3G smartphones priced below MYR500 ($163US).

The move is motivated by improving access to technology and a spokesperson said the idea is to get “those with the old second-generation mobile phones to migrate to a basic 3G smartphone”. Aimed at those that cannot afford the devices — rather than the population as whole — the move is innovative and indicative of an overall feeling that mobile can bring real change and benefits to the mass market.

It isn’t just governments that are helping, Internet firms have jumped in to lower barriers. In October, Google launched its ‘Free Zone’ initiative that lets mobile owners use its services for free in the Philippines, while Opera’s Web Pass helps novice mobile Web users keep tabs on their activity to keep their costs low. That service launched in Malaysia in November and has rolled out in other emerging markets worldwide since.

Then there are the countless mobile operators that have teamed up with service providers — such as messaging firm WhatsApp and Opera — to offer bundled deals that enable unlimited use of Web services for a low fee. Tablet adoption has been slower, but we can likely expect it to grow as cheaper devices — such as Kindle’s new Fire range and the Google Nexus 7 — come to the region.

All of this means more access for more people. That not only helps bring the benefits of information online to residents of Southeast Asia, but it also creates a more fertile environment for Web services like e-commerce, e-government and remote learning.

More startups are thinking regional

I’ve largely looked at the changes from a consumer standpoint, and for good reason since startups have to fish where the fishes are — as they say — and every ecosystem relies on having a captive audience. With Southeast Asia’s Internet population growing strongly, so the region’s startups have pushed on with more assessing the potential to move outside of their domestic market to reach beyond their local market.

Let’s not be simplistic, Southeast Asia is a hugely complicated market thanks to its diversity. Language, culture and ethnicity vary across the region, even if you just assess the biggest countries. Yet, a new wave of successful startups have shown that employing a regional mindset from day one can reap big rewards.

Back when most companies were still focused on winning in their home markets first, a number of business demonstrated that there is plenty to gain from a broader view. Paul Srivorakul is the Chairman of Ardent Capital, a private investment firm based in Bangkok, but he is most notable as the founder of Admax Networks (bought by Komli in February 2012) and Ensogo (bought by LivingSocial in June 2011).

Srivorakul got both businesses running across multiple markets early on, and he reaped the dividends with two of Southeast Asia’s most notable acquisitions to date, though the price of both deals remains undisclosed.Ensogo enjoyed 85 percent market share in Thailand, 50-60 percent in the Philippines, and 45-50 percent in Indonesia — no wonder Groupon was so keen to buy it, and so aggressive when it didn’t.

Both businesses could have remained focused on Thailand. However, by pushing the boundaries and going beyond the local blinkers that many entrepreneurs have tended to wear when building companies in Southeast Asia, they developed into companies that were obvious and beneficial acquisitions for two industry leaders.

Srivorakul is, unsurprisingly, an advocate of the regional approach. Ardent is a new entrant into Southeast Asia’s investment community but already it is putting together a system that will help its portfolio companies easily expand across the region’s key markets, giving them more potential to grow and — perhaps crucially — more potential to raise funds and attract potential suitors.

By pooling administrative support, sharing resources and knowledge between its portfolio companies and dipping into Srivorakul’s network of contacts, he’s confident that Ardent-backed startups can scale both rapidly and effectively.

Ardent isn’t alone in pushing a ‘regional from day one’ model to companies that it applies to. The increase in the number of companies that are thinking regional stands to benefit Southeast Asia by increasing competition, providing better services and providing attractive acquisitions for big firms that do decide to enter the market or boost their presence.

Starting local and expanding once you have an established base still remains a very valid path that companies are taking but it also comes with some risk. By taking its time to move into a specific market, a startup might lose its early mover advantage, or face increased competition from domestic firms that are better entrenched in the local space. That’s particularly true when services are based on the latest consumer trends, or take their cue from more established businesses elsewhere in the world.

More opportunities for startups and entrepreneurs

Irrespective of big company involvement, Internet access rates and regional thinking, Southeast Asia’s startup scene has grown at a fast clip, and that’s certain to continue on in 2013, regardless of any other factors. One big reason behind that is the grow in opportunities.

Accelerators

JFDI Asia’s inaugural bootcamp last year was a big step forward since it brought a Western-style accelerator to pan-Southeast Asian startups. The 100-day program was fully focused on developing a business, with mentoring and expertise from those who’ve built successful companies; the result saw more than half of the startups land funding. Indeed, more than 60 percent of the 15 participants landed at least SG$650,000 (US$530,000). That’s something JFDI Asia CEO and co-founder Hugh Mason is (understandably) proud of and encouraged by.

The program used weekend startup events to help seek out and identify participants and, though that element has been removed this year now that the Bootcamp has traction, Mason tells me that these events themselves triggered regular meetups and communities across the region. Thus it has had an influence beyond the companies that actually came on board, and it is helping to kick start awareness of startups and the possibilities of building businesses.

This year, JFDI Asia is aiming to run two programs, and it has teamed up with Goldengate Ventures to help fast-track promising startups to seed funding stages, and beyond. Mason says that JFDI is aiming to graduate more than 100 startups, he is optimistic that one of that number will be a $100 million startup — a game changer with real influence.

That’s largely based on the fact that, from its initial progress, JFDI’s is ahead of the average for Techstars-affiliates’ progress. Mason believes that the coming together of these macro factors gives entrepreneurs in the region a huge opportunity and market to step into.

Right now, it isn’t clear where, what or how a huge company like that could emerge from Southeast Asia, but growing the ecosystem, access to mentoring, funding and information are sure to increase the potential for this to happen. Equally, learning by failure, and serial entrepreneurialism – starting a company, and leaving once it is established — are two things that are still seeding across Southeast Asia; these factors will be key to future services and business that emerge from more experienced and seasoned entrepreneurs.

Growth of startup hubs and pan-regional investors

Much as I despise the word, ‘startup hubs’ have emerged across Asia. Bangkok, for example, now boasts at least three top co-working spaces (from around zero a year ago), while TNW regularly hears from startups in thriving communities in places such as Vietnam, Cambodia and other off-beat areas.

The connectivity of the Internet, coupled with the low cost of living, is undoubtedly the reason for this. But, rather than be apologetic about that, the fact is that this is a huge opportunity to attract talent and possible investment to the area.

Singapore continues to be the center point of VC cash — thanks to numerous government programs — but deals are being done in startups across the region, be it Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, etc. Likewise, VCs are emerging outside of Singapore, with Japanese investors particularly keen on the region.

While most of the cream of the crop is not likely to leave Silicon Valley for Southeast Asia, two of Goldengate Ventures’ founding team saw success in the US and opted for Asia. Equally, new startups like DoctorPage — a health service from now-Google-owned DailyDeal co-founder Max Scheichenost — have started out in Asia with global ambitions, and that shows that the region is increasingly seen as an excellent place to build a business.

Challenges

Southeast Asia is fighting a number of challenges, however. The openness of markets for foreigners varies wildly across the region — from business friendly Singapore to visa/work permit strict Thailand — and many startups have found recruiting and retaining quality local talent to be a huge challenge.

Equally, the mindset of many is stacked against startups. Society in many Southeast Asian countries values working for big companies (‘getting the lanyard’), not to mention that few startups can compete against the salary and compensation packages that multinationals and other large businesses can offer. That may hold some advantages — since it helps weed out the mercenaries after little more than a pay check — but there’s little doubt that many would-be entrepreneurs are holed up in less risky jobs and environments, rather than out there building startups and learning from the experience.

Then there are the continued tech issues, uneven income distribution, payment system compatibility woes and the low rate of bank usage across the region as a whole.

Let’s not kid ourselves that Southeast Asia has arrived. There’s still plenty of work to be done but — as I said at the top — I do believe this is the world’s most exciting region, such is the potential for growth and change. Here’s to 2013 in Southeast Asia, and more progress!

Ardent Capital, Thailand based hybrid venture fund, today announced an important milestone for its portfolio company Anything Pvt Limited. Dialog Axiata (Sri Lanka’s largest and fastest growing mobile telecommunications network), is investing US$1.6M into a new Joint Venture, which will combine Anything.lk, and the most visited online mall – iBuy.lk, B2B and C2C trading portal Tradenet.lk, and recently launched online classifieds site myTrader.lk.

The merger of the category leading online businesses will yield an aggregated and unified e-commerce platform WoW.lk which will present Sri Lankan consumers with an unparalleled digital commerce experience spanning daily deals, branded store offerings, travel and leisure deals, B2B and C2C trading and the opportunity to buy and sell via an online classified service supporting Web, SMS and USSD mediums. Dialog will own 26% of the combined entity, this stake being worth around US$1.59 million. The remaining equity will be held by the shareholders of Anything Pvt Ltd, of which Ardent Capital is the largest shareholder. Further, the Shareholders Agreement provides the opportunity for Dialog to increase its stake in the new JV such that it can over time acquire the entire business.

Reeza Zarook, the CEO of Anything.lk, will be the CEO of the combined entity. Reeza believes that “the combination of a fast-moving innovative start-up, backed by the credibility and reach of a Telco with over 50% market share is an unusual marriage, and one that brings the best of both worlds. We can now reach out to over 7m Dialog subscribers as a ‘known-party’ and that will bring immediate customer acquisition and conversion benefits. We’ve grown fast in 18months: 93 staff now processing 10,000 orders a month; 12,000 phone calls per month, and 100% brand recognition within the Colombo-based A/Bmarket demographics. However this JV will propel the company even faster, giving the business a presence in every major town in the country and reaching customers who upto this point were reluctant to engage with us. We’re the Amazon for Sri Lanka – that point is undisputed by those in this business space – the challenge is getting a nation to know not only that, but more fundamentally – what exactly is e-commerce.”

Commenting on Dialog’s investment in the JV, Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya, Group Chief Executive for Dialog Axiata PLC said, “Over the past years, Dialog has made significant progress in Sri Lanka’s nascent e-commerce space through our various online businesses including iBuy, Tradenet and myTrader. In line with our aggressive aspirations with respect to digital commerce, we now have the privilege of combining strengths with a category leading business, Anything.lk to create an all new online business experience for Sri Lankan consumers.  We are pleased to have been able to work with Ardent Capital on this deal, leveraging their regional expertise in the Business to Consumer space.”

e27 article here
Besuccess article here
Thumbsup article here

Paul is a speaker at our partner event Echelon Ignite, we caught up with Paul to learn more about Ardent Capital and the startup ecosystem in Thailand and South East Asia.

beSUCCESS: Your plans with Ardent capital, your portfolio and focus areas

When we first started Ardent capital we wanted to primarily invest into SE Asia and focus on Ecommerce/Transactional media startups i.e. revenue focused models. In our markets, revenue gets front seat with investors, unlike companies who focus on user growth (example Instagram)

We targeted early stage startups and wanted to help accelerate them to product/market fit and series A funding. We started discovering early on that there were not that many good teams or startups to invest into so we started building out a division called Ardent Labs, to build out the new ideas that solved local pain points. We just launched “whatsnew.co.th” in Beta, which is a social marketplace to launch and discover the newest products and services in Thailand, e-commerce option will be launched in a few weeks, but right now we are focusing on fine tuning our customer acquisition and user/business generated content.

I think there are huge opportunities in the Social commerce space, from discovery to delivery, especially in our markets. Ardent looks at it in 3 simple chunks, (Before you Buy, While you Buy, and After you Buy). Many traditional e-commerce companies can do all three, but some do 1 of the 3 really well, like SVPPLY (Acquired by Ebay) or Pinterest who focus on “Before you Buy” AKA social/discovery commerce.

beSUCCESS: You have a track record of setting and exiting digital businesses – what are some of the promising trends in SEA/Thailand when it comes to digital businesses

Online advertising across SEA 6 markets is still low at 3%, so there are lots of opportunities still in advertising. Although click through rates are going down, I think the next wave of ad companies need to focus on content marketing, creative native ads, social, personalisation, and definitely be performance driven. We recently invested into a revenue agency called syndacast.com who focus on nothing but performance marketing.

I also think Gamification is the next big opportunity similar to social media. One of the companies we invested into was Playbasis.com who is a GAAS (Gamification as a Service), a platform that allows brands and publishers to gamify their web and mobile properties. They are getting tons of traction and I think they will give Bunchball and Badgeville (US Based) a run for their money in Asia.

eCommerce is massive which is why Ardent Capital is laser focused on this space. Also I think mobile and social focused startups are great , because I think every business has to incorporate that into every aspect of their business. Its a “must have” and B2B startups that are helping brandS.companies integrate social/mobile are killing it.

beSUCCESS: How do see the Thai startup scene shaping up ? Advantages , challenges

I think the biggest challenges we face in our markets is still the traditional mindset of Asians who are afraid to fail. Failure is important in innovation and building the ecosystem, but its scowled upon in Asia. Security is important in most Asian families and doing a startup is incredibly risky especially when there is little proof of BIG rewards or success in our region. There are not that many deals in our markets and I think publicizing exits or more media coverage of funding is so important to motivate entrepreneurs. However, the GDP growth across SEA and mobile/web adoption in our markets are growing fast with and average of 30% of 600M people on the net. This is starting to attract a lot of foreign investors and entrepreneurs who are starting to move/launch their companies here. The locals need to learn and adapt fast.

If you can build a great company in SEA, there is a massive opportunity to exit at a great valuation because there are local, regional and global companies willing to bid for you. We got very lucky and exited to 2 regional companies (Komli from India, STW Group from Australia) and 1 global (LivingSocial). The potential exits are great here, but the window of opportunity is probably only 3-4 years before is starts getting really crowded.

India-headquartered digital ad specialist Komli has announced that it is expanding its business with the acquisition of Admax Networks, one of Southeast Asia’s largest advertising network providers, for an undisclosed price.

Komli, which was founded in India but is active in 12 different markets worldwide with a staff of more than 300, provides a range of online advertising platforms and services which cover the Web, mobile, video, and social media.

Its purchase of Admax gives it Southeast Asia’s largest independent online ad network, which reaches more than 90 million unique users across Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam each month.

Komli will now also enjoy the 4,500 advertising partnerships that Admax holds — including exclusive sales partnerships with Facebook in Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines and MSN in Thailand — and its relationships with more than 350 advertisers in Southeast  Asia.

Admax is focused on display media advertising but, following the deal, it will be able to offer “a whole host of new solutions” to its customers, according to its CEO Matthew Ward. One such new product is Komli’s Real-Time Bidding (RTB) platform which enables advertisers to evaluate, bid on and purchase online ad inventory on an impression-by-impression basis.

Prashant Mehta, CEO of Komli Media, believes that the two firms have much synergy and he said of the deal:

Admax’s deep publisher and advertiser relationships and strong team presence across key markets in South East Asia will further reinforce our position. We are delighted to have our expertise come together, allowing the combined organization to flourish as the strongest player in the region.

Komli will now integrate Admax into its Aktiv Digital team in Southeast Asia, bringing the two together under the Komli Media banner, which, in turn, it says will become the region’s largest Web advertising service.

The deal represents another successful piece of business for its founders, the Srivorakul brothers, who started Thailand-based group buying site Ensogo, which was sold to LivingSocial last year.

The companies put together a video which recaps the deal, its benefits and how both firms will work going forward:

TheNextWeb article here
PRweb article here
DigitalMarket article here

STW Group, Australia's largest marketing content and communications group, today announced three significant investments in fast growth businesses in the emerging economies of South East Asia.

The investments include a majority position in Edge Marketing Ltd, Indochina's largest independent marketing agency, with major offices in Vietnam and also in Thailand. STW has acquired a majority position in the largest independent marketing agency operating in Vietnam and Thailand, with principle offices in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi. Edge is a creative agency specializing in data, digital and direct marketing disciplines.
In Thailand, Edge is a leader in digital media planning and buying, social media, performance media and digital content management.

Since it was founded in 2004, Edge has grown to more than 400 employees, working with major clients across the region including Diageo, Citibank, Mead Johnson, Microsoft, Samsung, HSBC and many of the region's leading local companies.

"The cultural fit between Edge founders David Appleton and Patrick Looram, Thailand senior executives Nam Do and Nathilda (Tuk) Rathanawut and STW was powerful from the outset," Connaghan said. "Edge feels like an STW business. It is perfectly positioned in the high potential Vietnam and broader Indochina market to grow quickly, particularly with STW's backing. We are also extremely optimistic about expanding the Thailand capability, and partnering with Edge to expand into other South East Asian markets in time."

CampaignBrief article here

WASHINGTON, June 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — LivingSocial, the online source for handpicked experiences at a great value, today announced it has acquired Ensogo, the market-leading deal site in Thailand and the Philippines; DealKeren, an Ensogo company based in Indonesia; and GoNabit, a daily deal pioneer with a presence in four Middle Eastern countries. LivingSocial also introduced Daily Deals in the Netherlands.

These three acquisitions and the Netherlands launch bring the total number of countries in which LivingSocial operates to 21. The company’s reach now spans six of the seven continents. Ensogo, with members in the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia, marks the first LivingSocial acquisition in Asia.

“As with previous acquisitions, LivingSocial has again chosen to align with local companies that possess similar values and ways of doing business,” said Tim O’Shaughnessy, CEO and co-founder, LivingSocial. “We are excited to enter the dynamic Asian market and our presence in the Middle East and the Netherlands further strengthens our strategic global efforts to bring LivingSocial values to members across the globe.”

Officially launched in June 2010, Ensogo is known as the No. 1 social shopping website in Thailand, Philippines, and Indonesia and currently serves more than 800,000 members. It continues to gain massive popularity and trust among Asian consumers as the market share leader, and Ensogo members have saved more than $25 million USD in the past year. Ensogo is backed by Rebate Networks, a leading international VC specializing in the social commerce space.


TechCrunch article here
ZdNet article here