Southeast Asia Business Roundup
Malaysia
Green Lagoon Technology Sdn Bhd (GLT), the first company to raise funds on equity crowd funding operator Crowdplus.asia’s platform, recently exceeded its 800,000 ringgit target.
The green technology company provides solutions for bio-gas harvesting, storage, treatment, and carbon reduction monitoring for palm oil mills.
The funds raised will be used for increasing its stake in two existing 1MW biogas plants located in Pahang to 40 percent each. The remaining 60 percent is owned by Khazanah Nasional unit, Cenergi SEA.
Singapore
Singapore-based equity and debt crowd finance platform FundedHere will be the first crowd funding platform in Singapore, if not the Asia Pacific region, to aid corporations listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) raise funds via short-term bonds of up to S$5 million.
In a move aimed at enhancing the liquidity available to firms on the Singapore bourse, FundedHere will let Mainboard-listed corporations crowdsource funds via these short-term bonds. These bonds will not require the issue of a prospectus, according to FundedHere.
The move comes at a time as the SGX is addressing concerns over Singapore potentially becoming an investment backwater amidst rising regional competition and shrinking market capitalisations.
FundedHere has successfully helped several privately held companies raise short-term funds through licensed crowdlending, at an annual interest rate of about 18 percent.
Philippines
Philippine-based tech startup incubator and accelerator IdeaSpace
Foundation recently announced the top 10 teams from its 2016 startup acceleration competition.
All 10 startups received startup grants and benefits of over one million pesos, including around a five-month acceleration program. The acceleration phase began on 1 August this year
Among the winning teams were Tralulu, a web and mobile application that connects tourists to local guides to co-create local authentic travel experiences; Tarkie is an employee expense management system with location-tagging and audit trails designed for field employees; Taxumo is a mobile & web app that helps reduce time spent working on business taxes; Investigrams is a portal that connects people to other investors, traders or analysts; and Cropital is a crowdfunding platform that connects anyone to help finance farmers.
Indonesia
PT Bank MNC Internasional (MNC Bank) Tbk (BCAP) is looking to raise one trillion rupiah from a rights issue and series III warrants to strengthen its capital structure.
In the rights offering, MNC Bank will sell about 5.3 billion shares to existing shareholders at 100 rupiah per unit. Proceeds from the rights issue are expected to reach 531 billion rupiah.
The series III warrants are estimated to bring another 531 billion rupiah and will be offered at the same price.
Vietnam
The investment arm of Vietnam-based SSI Asset Management (SSIAM) has made its first startup investment, in food distributor Hellomam. SSIAM is a unit of Vietnam-based brokerage Saigon Securities Inc. The financing was completed on 14 July.
Hellomam, founded in 2015, is an O2O (online to offline) platform that delivers organic foods to customers.
