No age limit for entrepreneurship

Kakao Entertainment, KreditBee, Breton, and more raised funds this week. [Read from your browser]( FOMO Saturday Welcome to Tech in Asia's free Saturday VC newsletter! Get full access to our subscribers-only premium content and other insightful analysis on the big and messy topics of Asia’s tech and startup community by [registering here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Hello {NAME} In 2020, Tech in Asia interviewed [Tan Geok Leng, the founder and CEO of Aida Technologies]( as part of our partnership with Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority. The AI-powered data analytics startup seems to have done pretty well since then, given that it was acquired this week by Amplify Health. I remember watching the video and thinking how cool Tan was to build a startup at a time when most of his peers were probably slowing down in their careers or thinking about retirement. It shows that age is no barrier, and if there’s something you want to do, go for it - don’t let anything hold you back. Having the right mindset can be pretty powerful, and I’m sure that it has made a big difference in the journeys of the companies that topped this week’s funding list. You can find all other important investment deals that happened in the last few days in our [weekly funding news wrap-up](. Let’s dive into the biggest deals and M&As that recently took place. --------------------------------------------------------------- THE BIGGEST DEALS BY COUNTRY  KR Kakao Entertainment, the entertainment arm of South Korean tech giant Kakao Corp., [raised US$964 million]( in seed money from Singapore-based Pwarp Investment and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. IN Fintech firm KreditBee [took home US$100 million]( in fresh series D funds from Advent International. The Indian startup offers a platform for young professionals to obtain instant personal loans. CN Breton, a pure electric heavy truck developer from China, secured US$84.5 million in series C money from Hunan Xiangtan Caixin Industrial Development Equity Investment, Jinhua Brayton Talent Equity Capital Partnership, Tianjin Xingyue Puyu Technology, and Xuying Equity Investment. JP Japanese healthtech startup Kakehashi raised US$60.8 million in a series C round from Aozora Corporate Investment, Axiom Asia, DNX Ventures (Draper Nexus Ventures), Dai-ichi Life Insurance, Globis Capital Partners, Salesforce Ventures, and For Startups Capital. SG Holmusk is a Singapore-based analytics platform focused on behavioral health. It [bagged US$45 million]( in series B funds from Veradigm, Health Catalyst Capital, Heritas Capital, Northwell Holdings, and Novartis. Here’s the complete list of this week’s funding chart: [120 deals worth over US$1.7 billion](.  ---------------------------------------------------------------  M&As ID Swift Logistics Solutions, an Indonesian company offering fulfillment and delivery services, [has been acquired by GoTo Group]( for US$38 million. IN India-based fintech startup SMECorner has been acquired by Ambit Finvest, a non-banking financial company, for an undisclosed sum. SG Aida Technologies, an AI-powered data analytics firm from Singapore, [has been acquired by Amplify Health]( a joint venture between AIA Group and Discovery Group. The financial details of the deal are not publicly available. IN Chumbak, an ecommerce firm from India focused on gifting, has been acquired by Goat Brand Labs for an undisclosed amount. IN India-based AI startup Jubi.AI has been acquired by Servify, a device management company, for an undisclosed price. IN To Be Honest, an Indian startup offering a range of snacks, has been acquired by Ghodawat Consumer, the consumer goods vertical of Sanjay Ghodawat Group. The companies didn’t reveal the financial terms of the deal.  ---------------------------------------------------------------  STARTUPS THAT ARE RAISING FUNDS Fundraising is hard. To make things slightly easier, we’ve compiled this list of fundraising startups for our subscribers. Do you run a startup that’s raising at the moment or know someone who does? Sign your company up for listing [here](.  SG Buzz ARVR is a Singapore-based advertising and marketing platform powered by generative AI. ID Kita is a pregnancy-tracking app from Indonesia. VN MFast is a tech-enabled agent banking network that aims to democratize financial access to Vietnam’s underserved population. You can find the full list of fundraising startups in Asia [over here](.  ---------------------------------------------------------------  KILLER PITCH DECKS 1️⃣ An AI map startup’s pitch deck helped it score US$6.2 million from Microsoft’s venture fund NextBillion provides AI mapping solutions to enterprises that allow them to expand in emerging and developed markets. Last year, the Singapore-based company used [this pitch deck]( to secure a series A extension round from M12. The deck is well designed and introduces NextBillion’s mapping platform and its additional capabilities. It also provides case studies that reveal the traction that the startup has gained. 2️⃣ A flying taxi startup’s pitch deck helped it land US$1 million in seed funding The ePlane Company, a developer of electric planes, aims to make commuting within cities easier while keeping its price at only 1.5x of current taxi fares. The firm used [this pitch deck]( to secure seed funding last year. The presentation lays out how the firm seeks to provide high-mileage flying taxis for door-to-door travel in cities and then outlines the company’s vision going forward. 3️⃣ A document analytics startup banked US$1.7 million with this pitch deck Launched in 2014, US-based DocSend provides users with a different way to send email attachments. The startup used [this pitch deck]( to raise a series B round worth US$1.7 million in 2013. The deck has a nice and tidy flow, starting from the cover slide that states DocSend’s business purpose. It then proceeds to share the startup’s revenue model, market size, market opportunity, and customer acquisition plan.  --------------------------------------------------------------- EXCLUSIVE LISTICLES Lists of most active investors in the region [China]( | [India]( | [Indonesia]( | [Japan]( | [Singapore]( | [Southeast Asia]( List of top-funded startups in Asia [China]( | [India]( | [Indonesia]( | [Israel]( | [Japan]( | [Hong Kong]( | [Singapore]( | [South Korea]( | [Vietnam](  ---------------------------------------------------------------  THOUGHTFUL READS  1️⃣ Showing off your… failures? VCs talk a lot about the promising companies they backed and which took off to become giants. But these days, they’re also talking about their biggest mistakes: the firms they could have bankrolled but didn’t, and now they regret the decision. As a matter of fact, some VCs are openly discussing and writing it down, creating a kind of “anti-portfolio.” Is it a show of humility or just performative? [This piece]( from The Wall Street Journal takes a closer look. 2️⃣ Don’t distract your employees Remote work has made some managers hyper-paranoid about their employees’ productivity, choosing to prioritize vanity metrics like the number of emails sent or responsiveness to messages over actual, valuable contributions. This pulls employees from their core work - which is bad news for everyone. [Here’s how]( managers can stop distracting their staff and enable them to work more productively. 3️⃣ A glossary of terms Any newbie to the startup world will probably spend a fair bit of time Googling all the weird terminology and jargon that gets used in the space. And when you dive into the VC world, it only gets worse. [This piece]( from Confluence VC shares a glossary of the terms and acronyms used in the space - even if you’re an old hand at the startup investment game, it’s still worth a read. 4️⃣ So, how much do VCs earn? VC seems like one of the most lucrative roles in the startup world, but how much do people in the industry actually make? In an attempt to answer this question, Confluence VC surveyed 184 respondents across different roles and functions in VC firms. Check out their findings [here](. 5️⃣ Sunny days ahead for China’s VC scene As China relaxes its zero-Covid policy and opens up to the world again, the outlook on investing in the country has gotten a lot brighter. According to [this piece]( from TechCrunch, 2022 was a difficult year for investors in China, but 2023 is set to be a year of opportunity.  --------------------------------------------------------------- [ADVERTISE]( | [SUBSCRIBE]( | [HIRE]( | [FIND JOBS]( P.S. 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