Users can better manage finances through real-time correspondence with the virtual assistant.

Clare.ai aims to provide clients with a personal virtual financial assistant powered by natural language processing and artificial intelligence. In its conception, the team behind Clare.ai envisioned a white-label chatbot to help banks deliver customer service with higher level of control and cost efficiency. It provides a conversational solution based on machine learning algorithms and natural language processing, with over 10 Asian languages in its repertoire to date.

Clare.ai co founder Bianca Ho noted that its natural language processing engine, for example with Cantonese, remains dedicated to understanding conversations about finance, with 70% accuracy rate. "We take proprietary data from banks and take data such as call logs and emails and feed them out to bots," she said. 

Some of the features of Clare.ai allow clients to ask about the details of their finances anytime, anywhere through real-time chats and text messages. The virtual assistant called Clare will also provide clients with guidelines on how to spend their money and manage their finances better by learning their spending habits, getting insights from their frequently lasked questions, and eventually tailong financial management tips.

Apart from the intelligent financial management that Clare can provide, it can also manage all accounts in one place with the added flexibility and accessiblity of the AI's integration with Facebook Messenger. This can be done without the need to download another app to talk to Clare. This allows instant replies and correspondence, providing ease in transactions anytime, anywhere. 

Items from camping tents to sophisticated gadgets are rented out for $150 a day.

When founder Elliot Leung recalls the earliest prototype for Gaifong, a new peer-to-peer platform for item rentals, it was simply a Google spreadsheet where people could list things they want to rent out and at what price. Still, the concept hit a deep nerve, with thousands of people signing up as members and listing their possessions for short-term rentals.

"It was very rudimentary but it worked. People started posting lots of amazing products, from camping tents to pet care kits – even a Mahjong table, and began renting from others in the list," said Elliot Leung, founder and CEO of Gaifong. "As items accumulated, we decided to take this a step further and add in a security and payments layer and turn this into a business."

The Gaifong platform, which is accessed through an app and established by Leung with co-founder Hon Kuan Chan, soon got on its feet through a CCMF startup grant and angel funding through the British Chamber of Commerce Business Angels. To date, the rental platform has attracted 25,000 members or so-called ‘neighbours’ (the Cantonese word for Gaifong) and 12,000 rental items in Hong Kong.

The average item is worth around HK$4,000 and is rented out for HK$150 a day.

Gaifong earns by charging a 15% to 20% platform fee on each transaction, and Leung said the startup has bright revenue prospects. "We've still got a 10-20X revenue opportunity here in Hong Kong, so this will be our main focus area in the near future," the founder noted. "We only have 25,000 'neighbours' involved but are already close to breakeven."

Gaifong's immediate business focus in 2018 is to drive up its member count and also incubate a few more cities around the region. Leung said the rental market is underserved, which has made their platform popular among photographers and other professionals that do not want to invest in expensive gear purchases early in their careers. On the item supplier side, people with spare gear at home which they seldom use such as virtual reality and technology gadgets find it appealing to rent them out for some side income.

As Gaifong prepares for regional expansion, Leung remembered the startup’s early stages when it was hard to secure funding due to investor doubts on the business model. "Everyone thought we were crazy. Well, people still do! People couldn't see past the current craze for e-commerce and retail."

Part of the concern is security against scammers and thieves, which Gaifong weeds out through security checks for card and fraud. Renters also receive deposit protection.

The founder added that a key differentiation strategy for Gaifong is to build up a stock of products across a broad range of categories instead of specialising in a single one. "We're more Amazon rather than Ikea," said Leung. With many rental items to sift through, members might find it hard to find the exact one they need. This led the team to inject Gaifong with a proprietary recommendation engine which suggests items to users based on their interests, past app activity, seasonality, and other data points.

If the marketplace lacks the item they want to rent, members can use the Wish function to alert neighbors, which Leung said is a unique service in the market. "Once they see your ping, and they have what you need, they'll upload it for you," said Leung of the best-case scenario when using Gaifong's Wish function. "It's a bit like Uber mixed with Chinese location-based social app Momo, except it's for item rentals only."

Total funding is now at US$16M.

When Luke Grana, CEO and founder of the namesake direct-to-consumer online apparel brand GRANA, visited Peru, he discovered the luxurious, super-soft and inexpensive Peruvian Pima cotton - and literally the thread that would form the basis for his newest multi-million-dollar startup.

"Living in Australia, I felt that everything was so overpriced for the quality. You should be buying clothing that has a long lifespan in your wardrobe, not get destroyed after a few washes or itch your skin when being worn," said Grana. So when he encountered the long line fabric rolls in the Peruvian markets, he considered the possibility of creating a quality piece of clothing from the material for less than US$10. He then met with a local factory in Peru that was vertically integrated with generations of experience sourcing and making one of the longest fine cottons in the world.

Grana made a few simple t-shirt samples from Pima cotton, brought them back to Australia, and found a ready market among friends and family who thought the design and quality of the t-shirts for US$15 (HK$118) each was too good to pass up.

From this initial response and after some marketing research, GRANA was officially born in 2014. In three years it has become one of Asia’s fastest growing direct-to-consumer and e-commerce apparel brands, and a darling of financing opportunities.

Most recently, it raised an undisclosed amount of growth capital venture debt financed by STI Financial Group, a Hong Kong-based investment group that provides bespoke capital solutions. The company said funds will be used to fuel the company’s sustainable business growth, improve cash flow management and advance its use of artificial intelligence to improve customer engagement and website functionality.

"Being a young company, it’s important that we don’t rely on raising more equity," said Grana of the latest venture debt deal. "Right now, it’s about fueling long-term business growth, expanding our market penetration in key markets and continue making high quality basics at disruptive prices for our customers.”

Powered with additional financing, GRANA plans to expand its current collection of sustainable items next year.

Solid business model
To date, the three-year old startup has attracted a steady stream of financing that amounts to US$16m or roughly HK$125m. At the end of 2016, GRANA successfully closed a Series A round of US$10m in capital with lead investment from Alibaba’s Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, along with continued support from Golden Gate Ventures and MindWorks Ventures. The brand has managed to attract high-profile investment and venture debt opportunities because of its unique approach to fashion and marketing, as well as its solid business model.

"I set out to research the fashion industry to create a brand that focused on making simple, comfortable and affordable basics - at a strict 2-3 times markup that didn’t sacrifice quality over cost," recalls Grana on when the startup was still being conceptualised.

"In Hong Kong and many parts of the world, mid-range brands like ours aren’t internationally available for everyone to buy from online but the demand is there with consumers wanting to wear consciously made clothing and we aim to close this gap by shipping to 67 countries," he added.

Creating a business model and finding market opportunities is second nature to Grana, a serial entrepreneur. He established GRANA from the HK$1.5M he had saved from his previous business ventures. (He has started up several espresso bars in Australia, which he has sold, and also founded electric vehicle infrastructure provider and network operator ChargePoint in 2008, which was acquired in 2012 by Leightons.)

He spent a year researching the inefficiencies of the fashion industry, and identified Hong Kong as a strategic location to set-up an e-commerce brand that could ship to an international market. He relocated to Hong Kong from from Australia to plunge straight on to his newest venture.

But despite his strong entrepreneurial track record, Grana still encountered difficulty finding financing for his admittedly disruptive and unconventional fashion brand.

"Raising the initial seed funding was a challenge as most angel investors are based in Singapore," he said. "I was very ambitious and proactive to get myself out there, pitch the business idea and get GRANA off the ground."

But he eventually struck a deal with Bluebell, MindWorks Ventures and Golden Gate Ventures, which supported GRANA's seed round to raise US$6m in the first year and a half after its launch.

With investments pouring in, Grana said resources have been focused on building a strong and talented team, and developing innovative technologies to improve the customer online shopping experience. He has also prioritised business analytics, as deeper data diving helps the team enhance business operations and services.

The company operates an 18,000-sq ft global distribution centre in Hong Kong, which enables it to ship products to 67 markets within two to five business days. The facility also houses 60 employees.

While GRANA’s business model is focused on online selling, it has not shied away from physical promotions, having staged 15 pop-up showrooms across Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.S and Australia.

It has also leveraged the power of influencers, improving its global reach after high-profile celebrities Jessica Alba, Gigi Hadid, Jamie Chung and Lily Collins were seen wearing the brand's quality basics. In a world where fast fashion brands seem to rule by sheer retail size and ubiquity, GRANA is trying to show consumers - and the global retail market - a compelling alternative.

"We believe in directly sourcing and making high quality basics at an affordable and honest price-point available for everyone to access online. Slow fashion is the future and we encourage more retail brands to move away from the fast-fashion business model to focus on conscious consumption," said Grana.

"We’re obsessed with searching the world to identify luxury fabrics, turning these fabrics into simple, comfy and affordable wardrobe essentials through our direct-to-consumer business model, operating online only and having a lean supply chain to lower the cost of owning quality apparel," he added.

The founder also highlighted the brand's efforts to educate the consumer - what they are wearing, where it comes from and why it is prices a certain way. "This is a new shopping mindset we’re trying to start, a wider conversation to make people more aware of traditional fashion practices that aren’t necessarily fair to those working within the supply chain but also the high mark-up consumers ultimately pay,” he said.
 

They are looking to extend services beyond the Greater China region.

After amassing 25 million users in Hong Kong and China, mobile lending platform WeLab is looking to extend its services beyond the Greater China region, and it has secured US$220 million in fresh funding to help power its overseas foray.

In November, WeLab raised US$220m of combined Series B+ equity and debt strategic financing, with big-name backers such as Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, International Finance Corporation (IFC) and other global banks.

The new round of financing nearly doubles WeLab’s total funding to US$425 million, and the company plans to use to it seek growth in new markets, as well strengthen its operational structure and international partnerships.

WeLab was founded in 2013 and since then has grown to a major loans provider in both HK and China, processing US$28 billion in loans so far, according to a company release. Users only spend three minutes waiting whether their loan is approved, and everything is done online or on mobile with no requirement to meet a human agent. The service is also available 24/7 online instead of being restricted by brick-and-mortar office hours. And the icing on the cake: The FinTech business model means it runs a lean operation, allowing for interest rates to be kept to as low as 1.99%.

“For this round of strategic financing, it was important for us to have participants that would help scale our business to the next level,” said Simon Loong, founder and CEO of WeLab, who leads the more than 500 staff across the company’s offices in Shenzhen and Beijing, China and Hong Kong, as well as in India.

“We have been able to strengthen our cash position, further diversify financing sources and strengthen relationships with leading, global financial organizations. This will underpin our growth story, and see us deliver even greater fintech innovation in the world’s fastest growing market,” he added.

WeLab has developed a business model that targets the gap in financing among the Chinese population with a vision to “Provide affordable credit for 30% of China by 2018.” The World Bank estimates 36% of China’s population aged 15 and above have borrowed money, but only 10% managed to borrow from a financial institution. This is where the mobile lender has broken new ground, providing a tech-powered solution that does not rely on consumers having an established credit history. The result: WeLab’s millions of users and that now avail formal financing and loans in a “more efficient, direct and inclusive way,” the company said.

WeLab said it plans to spend the newly raised funds “to scale its rapidly-growing business and accelerate expansion into new products and geographies beyond Greater China.” But the company has not yet revealed in which markets it will expand, or which products it plans to launch next from the new funding.

Best-in-class technology
The mobile lender also intends to invest in the development of its best-in-class credit technology, which has enabled the company to effectively analyse unstructured mobile big data within seconds and make credit decisions for individual borrowers. The quick results and seamless mobile lending process have been instrumental to its rising popularity.
Meanwhile, banks and telecommunications companies also license the mobile lender’s technology.

The US$220m financing in 2017 follows WeLab’s US$160 million Series B financing in 2016, which was that year’s second-largest fintech Series B in the world, according to a KPMG and CB Insights report. Early backers include CK Hutchison’s TOM Group, Malaysian sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Berhad, and Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s top investment firms.

“We were attracted to WeLab because of its innovative business model,” said Cindy Chow, executive director of Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund. “As one of the fastest growing fintech companies in Hong Kong and the Mainland, we look forward to working with the team and support their further expansion.”

“WeLab has established itself as an exceptional, technology-driven fintech company driven by its professional management team, innovative products and best-in-class technology. Credit Suisse is committed to serving the diverse financing needs of entrepreneurs and we are proud to play a role in
helping WeLab access the capital needed to fund its continued growth,” said Mervyn Chow, Greater China CEO and co-head of investment banking & capital markets, Asia Pacific for Credit Suisse, which is participating in the strategic financing and acting as placement agent.

“WeLab has demonstrated its ability to effectively make credit decisions based on non-traditional, but otherwise reliable data, for millions of Chinese borrowers without prior credit history,” said Andi Dervishi, FinTech Investment Group Head of IFC, a member of the World Bank Group. “We believe the firm’s strategic partnership with banks will result in a sustainable competitive advantage to the company. Similarly, consumers will benefit from improved access to credit and from building a credit history, an important step towards financial inclusion.”

It promises a delivery speed of four hours.

When HK-based supply chain optimisation platform PICK-UP thought of disrupting the corporate logistics industry late last year, it targeted the weaknesses of traditional couriers: They bore heavy fixed costs with a logistics model that needed a warehouse, vehicles and permanent staff, not to mention a temporary storage storefront and sorting facilities.

It has been a year since PICK-UP launched and it has quickly risen to challenge incumbents with a delivery speed promise of four hours, at a cost comparable to what HK businesses were used to paying.

Crystal Pang, one of the four founders of PICK-UP who leads strategies and products, said a so-called asset light model is at the center of the start-up’s growing number of satisfied e-commerce customers - its other clients include popular online gift shop Gift Something - and increasing daily deliveries that have reached 1,200 in September.

This is why PICK-UP is looking to expand in three key areas with an undisclosed amount of new funding: Add features on its mobile app, a new marketing push for large-size merchants, and branch out its delivery coverage to a couple more cities. (It currently delivers to the entire HK Island, the entire Kowloon, Kwai Ching, Tsuen Wan, Sha Tin and Tseung Kwan O.)

PICK-UP’s asset light model removes the need for warehousing and permanent staff, and instead matches companies and crowdsourced freelance agents, the latter of which executes same-day deliveries.

Operationally, Pang said a proprietary technology assigns agents to delivery requests to speed up dispatching, analyses the most efficient pickup and drop off routes to shorten delivery times, and executes batch and cluster processing to fully utilize capacity and reduce cost.

Meanwhile, for investors, she reckoned this asset light model gives PICK-UP a highly scalable growth model where fixed costs and operational overhead does not rise together with demand.

“We sell homemade food and sauces. Our target is to ensure freshness when delivering to our customers. Express delivery in Hong Kong is expensive, so delivery service has always been our main concern,” said Rosemarie Leung, director of Gerine Fine Food, one of many rave reviews the startup has received. “PICK-UP’s delivery service delights our customers’ experience and reduces our cost, which makes our business more competitive.”

Three expansion areas
Pang revealed there are plans to further improve the platform, which was originally made with only personal contributions from all four co-founders, which aside from Pang includes three other founders, Eric San, Paco Chan and Allon Wong who lead operations, sales & marketing and finance, respectively. The team also pooled funds from “friends and family.”

But fast forward a year, and PICK-UP has raised an undisclosed amount of additional funding, the proceeds of which will be used to expand three key areas, according to Pang.

First, it will to roll out of new version of apps “with more value-added features.” Second, it will launch a new marketing campaign to target large-size merchants and invest resources to facilitate API integration. Third, it plans to expand to 2 more locations or cities.

E-commerce integration
“One path to further grow our platform and enhance efficiency will be integrating with large e-commerce platform to help them with retail peaks and also partner with traditional couriers during peak periods by providing additional capacity for their distribution," said Pang.

She recalled what happened last year during the peak Christmas and Chinese New Year seasons when PICK-UP was swamped with orders the whole week before Christmas and the team did not have enough delivery agents to handle a ten-fold surge in volume.

“We did not want to upset our users so in the end all seven of us, including three software engineers, plus our good friends went out to help fulfill all the delivery requests and worked tirelessly till midnight to make sure all the packages were delivered," said Pang, although the expansion plans should help ensure such a situation does not repeat this year.
 

The fund will be used to develop its proprietary technology and further expand its team.

Nearly four years since it was founded and now ramping up to more than 1 million consumers served per month, personal finance management platform MoneyHero.com.hk has secured US$50m in additional funding and is looking to push through its next stage of growth by upgrading its technology and hiring top talent.

MoneyHero secured access to the funding led by IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, as part of CompareAsiaGroup Series B. The holding company employs more than 150 financial experts and technologists and aside from its presence in Hong Kong (MoneyHero), it also operates in Indonesia (HaloMoney.co.id), Malaysia (CompareHero.my), the Philippines (MoneyMax.ph), Singapore (SingSaver.com.sg), Taiwan (Money101.com.tw) and Thailand (MoneyGuru.co.th).

The latest funding round also included other new investors Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, SBI Group and H&Q Utrust, as well as existing investors Goldman Sachs Investment Partners VC and Growth Equity, Nova Founders Capital, ACE & Company and Route 66 Ventures.

Rachel Lam, managing director of MoneyHero, said the funding raised through a Series B Round will be used to develop its proprietary technology and further expand its team with “exceptional talent.”

One of the key goals: Improve user experience on the platform, which has stood out in a competitive market by going the hi-tech route: It uses data, machine learning and artificial intelligence to offer optimal search matches across a breadth of financial products.

For example, the site can compare personal instalment loans from more than 20 banks and let a user perform a free eligibility check after entering how much they want to borrow and loan duration. It also offers comparisons for credit cards, mortgages and travel insurance - with over 400 personal finance products to-date.

Lam said MoneyHero’s investment and user growth can be attributed to its strong industry partnerships. She said the platform has developed deep relationships with the largest local and regional banks and insurers in HK. Partners include Standard Chartered, HSBC, Citibank, Bank of China, American Express, DBS, Bank of East Asia, FWD, Chubb and MSIG. It also works with these firms to arrange exclusive promotional offerings such as additional air miles and cash rebates.

“We compare all financial products for consumers for free before making a decision,” said Lam, who was one of the earliest employees of HK fintech company Welab and spent over 6 years working in product development and marketing at retail banks, including Citibank. “We are passionate about providing personalised solutions as we connect consumers with the best banking and insurance products for them.”

“This investment marks a turning point regarding how consumers in Hong Kong will acquire and manage their financial products and sets the scene for a vastly improved personal finance space in Hong Kong,” said Alister Musgrave, founder and managing director of MoneyHero, who has worked for equity sales and derivatives sales trading for Morgan Stanley in London. “We’ve accomplished a lot already, but still have much more ahead of us with many exciting new developments on the horizon.”

It has created more than 6,000 listings, and they aim to launch a series A round of funding next year.

When it comes to educational activities, Hong Kong parents take them very seriously, desiring every edge for their child’s development, whether it be in academics, sports, arts or even recreation. But the search for the right educational provider can be frustrating due to the breadth of options and lack of unbiased evaluations, which led Jennifer Chin to launch the Hong Kong education review start-up Whizpa.com last month.

“For busy parents living in Hong Kong, not to mention those with more than one child, it is never easy finding the right learning centers, classes or activities,” says Chin, a mother of three with investment banking and education industry experience, on what inspired her to build Whizpa.com fresh from having her third child.

“It’s not that we don’t have information around us. In fact, we have almost an overload of information – so much so that it has become difficult to sift through everything and find out what works and what doesn’t.”

She explains that many Hong Kong parents have been taking to Facebook, Wechat and social media blogs and group discussions to try and ask friends, families and even random online strangers for suggestions. In fact, she cites a recent survey that revealed close to 90% of parents in Hong Kong rely on word of mouth and recommendations from other parents when looking for kids’ activities and education providers for their children. Blogs and group discussions are a great source of recommendations, but the problem is that questions can easily get lost or moved down.

“I thought it would be great to have a platform where information is neatly categorised and easily searchable to make our lives easier when it comes to kids’ education,” says Chin.

The start-up founder set up Whizpa, a name that came from the concept of “word of mouth” to “whisper amongst parents.” She also used TripAdvisor as inspiration when developing the education review site’s platform. The current core features include a comprehensive database to search, compare and choose educational activities and providers, as well as rating and review functions for parent users.

Series A funding
Chin says Whizpa, which is currently bootstrapped and has created more than 6,000 listings, aims to launch a series A round of funding next year to add new features, including e-commerce capabilities. The start-up will also use the additional investment to hire sales and in-house IT staff in preparation for a possible expansion to other Asian cities where parents also put priority in educational activities.

“We plan to grow Whizpa.com to a platform where users and providers can book, transact and pay for classes for their children online through our platform. Currently, most kids’ classes and activities in HK are cash and cheque based. Providers don’t offer online payment systems and at best, they have a bank account for parents to transfer fees without going to the center to pay in person,” says Chin.

“If Whizpa.com becomes a huge success in Hong Kong, I believe that it can be replicated in many cities in the world like Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing, Taipei, Jakarta etc. where children’s education is a focus and a big Industry. The education industry is huge with lots of potential to revolutionise how parents search, compare and transact on kids’ activities and classes.”

Provider promotions
On the other end of the education spectrum, schools also want to reach out to parents outside of the usual networking and referral methods. This is where Whizpa has been keen to make a difference, allowing providers with smaller marketing budgets to get the word out.

Chin shares how Whizpa worked with ESF Sports and ESF Language & Learning, which runs the after school activities at ESF Schools in over 30 locations around Hong Kong. The number of activities at each location can vary, which can be a headache to handle in other review platforms, but Whizpa found a way to put up multiple accurate listings, which she says ultimately helps parents searching for the best location.

“We created separate listing pages for each location where parents can review and rate their services at the different locations Each location has a different group of parents with kids enrolled and hence having the separate listing pages will be good for ESF to get feedback for each location from their parents. Secondly, the class information for each school and location are different also,” says Chin.

“Many smaller providers do not have a big marketing budget let alone hire a marketing manager to manage marketing needs for their businesses. With Whizpa.com, we help

providers promote their businesses simply by bringing all their customers’ testimonials, comments and feedback out onto our platform in the form of reviews and ratings.”

“Best of all, these testimonials are free and coming from customers who have used their services or products and sharing the inside scoop and experiences with other parents.” 

Qupital plans to expand in Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

For a small business with slow-paying clients, a cash flow problem can quickly escalate to an operational nightmare, especially if banks refuse to lend in time. This led Hong Kong start-up Qupital to propose an alternative: Why not raise financing against your account receivables by connecting with professional investors?

Qupital’s auction-based financial solutions seem to have found a ready market, and investors believe the start-up can scale up in Asia. So far it has received HK$20.5m in total funding from MindWorks Ventures, Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, Convoy Financial, Aria Group and other investors.

As part of its expansion plan, Qupital plans to expand in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, where there are many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with limited access to traditional bank financing. It is also looking to grow from an account receivables trading platform to offer other financial products to businesses and more asset classes to professional investors.

“We work with a client who retails and distributes confectionery products. They are a young but very successful company that has expanded rapidly. However, their operating cash has not been able to grow at the same rapid pace,” says Winston Wong, co-founder of Qupital.

“We approached them through cold calling, and introduced our solution to them. They were able to fund their invoices in 48 hours or less, and now have the strong confidence to be able to handle larger orders from big customers such as supermarkets, department stores and convenience stores.”

Wong says this is where Qupital’s competitive advantage lies: It quickly and efficiently provides an option for SMEs to fund their unpaid invoices, and in a fully online platform that is easily accessible.

“Using our online invoice discounting platform, we are able to help businesses raise funding against their unpaid invoices. Qupital currently serves a wide range of businesses in the export, manufacturing, and distribution sectors.”

Qupital began when Wong and another founder Andy Chan, twenty-somethings with backgrounds in traditional factoring and software engineering, saw a large underserved market in Hong Kong. They researched similar invoice financing platforms overseas and decided to launch one that could serve the unique needs of Asian SMEs amidst a trade environment that is moving towards open account payment terms with longer payment cycles.

“We started the business using our own software development skills and advice from our legal advisor,” says Wong.

Both founders worked hard to get the word out to companies that Qupital’s services would ease their cash flow worries. They cold-called SMEs, like the confectionary retailer client they assisted, and were not averse to taking any measure that would convince clients to take them more seriously.

“When our business was only our two founders, we would print multiple business cards with different titles when going to pitch to new clients to give the impression that our company has a larger size,” says Wong. “Andy also grew facial hair for a period to present a more mature look to potential clients and investors.”

Qupital also sought out the advice of experts. Whilst the founders were able to use their combined background in traditional factoring, computer engineering and software engineering, they still sought out a legal advisor. The guidance from Hong Kong-based venture capital firm MindWorks Ventures and Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund has and will be critical as the start-up looks to conquer Taiwan and Southeast Asia.

“Qupital hopes to continue to help Hong Kong businesses grow and succeed on the international stage using our digital solution. The financial technology adoption rate for businesses in Asia is still behind other regions, and Qupital wants to be able to play a role in growing this market,” says Wong. 

The e-learning and virtual tutorial platform is now a haven to more than 350,000 Asian students.

When a Form 4 student in Hong Kong was taking double the time to understand Mathematics concepts than his peers, he was compelled to sign up to Snapask. The e-learning and tutorial platform is now a haven to more than 350,000 other young Asian students where they can ask questions and learn at their own pace with the help of virtual tutors.

The company plans to expand to Japan, Thailand and Korea in the next six months, powered by US$8m in raised funds to-date and aspirations to become a global education powerhouse.

“Neither his school class or tuition centre has the time in the tight schedule to cater to his needs in detailed explanation of topics and questions,” says Timothy Yu, founder of Snapask on the Form 4 student’s struggles, which his start-up have been addressing through its e-learning platform.

“He thinks the one-on-one chat makes it less embarrassing for him to ask his core questions and has the time and space for him to grasp the concept. He felt a lot more confident with Mathematics and is seeing an improvement in his academic results. Snapask is still supporting him this year as he prepares for his HKDSE.”

Hong Kong students take the HKDSE, or Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education Examination, after finishing their six-year secondary education to measure their attainment and is a key determinant to which universities they can apply.

Branching out from Hong Kong and four other countries where it currently operates (it debuted in Malaysia and Indonesia earlier this year), Snapask plans to attract more students in Japan, Thailand and Korea.

“We are aiming to become the first global education company by 2020. We are therefore expanding rapidly in different regions to support this ambitious goal. Ultimately, we hope to establish operations in 30 regions around the globe and be the leader in self-directed learning trends,” says Yu.

With its fast user base growth and scaling potential, Snapask has raised a total of US$8m to-date from accelerator programmes, individual investors and venture capital firms since it was founded in 2015. Its pool of tutors has also ballooned to 20,000, enabling faster and better quality assistance to students. A typical Snapask user can snap a picture of a question and receive assistance from local tutors within seconds.

“Unlike most e-learning tools available around Asia, we are not simply providing a platform for students to get one-way learning. It allows our students to take the lead by asking questions that they have at hand during their revision. Contents are therefore personalised to every student’s needs," says Yu.

The founder recalls how Snapask began two years ago as a Question & Answer (Q&A) platform where students could receive instant homework help from tutors. Since then, the start-up has added a Quizzes feature, a free-to-use platform for students that want to practice with digitised academic content.

Last year, Yu was named to the Forbes Asia's 30 under 30 list, recognising him as one of the “brightest young entrepreneurs” in the region. The finance professional decided to ditch the lucrative field to found Snapask after seeing a market gap in student education outside the school setting. His instinct paid off, with the start-up progressing rapidly from a side project, to angel investor darling, to accelerator and incubation success story.

“Questioning the efficiency and effectiveness of brick-and-mortar tutoring centres, I began working on an alternative platform to bridge the strong demand for after-class education support with talented but busy university student,” says Yu. “We hope to equip our students with self-directed learning skills.” 

Here’s why this AI driven customer service platform is better than chatbots.

When banking and financial firms look to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) in customer service, often in pursuit of lower costs and faster responses, there is often an uncomfortable pause when the question is raised: “Can robots really do this job as well as, if not better, than humans?”

Kami.ai CEO Alex Cheung says that the problem with existing chatbot platforms is that they rarely solve the problems of companies since their AI has not been designed to adapt to individual preferences among users either through nonexistent or poorly prioritised data tracking.

This is where Kami.ai has stepped in. Through its patented AI technologies, the startup has created a conversational platform that puts emphasis on machine reasoning. Firms that use the platform can then automate customer service with highly engaging messages and form better-informed decisions through insights generated from ongoing customer interactions.

“Kami aims to transform chats into intelligent conversations and into critical insights,” says Alex Cheung, CEO of Kami.ai. “In short, it is AI that we can trust.”

This June, Kami won the “Best Startup” award in the ARM Demo Day in Shanghai and was also one of 15 finalists in the Bosch Venture Forum in Germany participated by 130 startups worldwide.

Kami has also attracted the interest of notable investors, which now include the chief marketing officer of Hanson Robotics, an ex-marketing director from Apple, and a venture capital firm with 50 listed companies.

From London to Dubai, Kami has been the toast of awards bodies and investors that are looking for the next big startup. But before all this clamor, Cheung had to go through a major letdown before he could come up with Kami’s winning approach to AI-driven customer service platforms.

“I used to have an idea of building a summarisation service for financial analysis. I partnered with friends to prototype it, sadly it was a failure,” says Cheung.

“The key takeaway for that failure is without understanding each individual, we cannot give them the most relevant suggestions to meet their needs. And the best way to understand humans is through conversation and interaction,” he adds.

From chatbot to conversational platform

“Most of the existing chatbot platforms fail in tracking the context or remembering the important information from user conversation which makes them fail in giving highly relevant suggestions to the customers,” says Cheung. “And when it comes to service-oriented businesses, relevancy is the key to success.”

Kami is leapfrogging other chatbot platforms by presenting what the company calls as a conversational platform, which is powered by a dynamic memory network architecture that basically digests conversations and learns from them faster.

Through this conversational platform, users of Kami then reap three key competitive advantages: Banking and financial firms can remember customers better, know customers better, and obtain visualised intelligence that lets them act with more accurate customer information.

“We believe pure algorithms and data won’t bring AI anywhere. The success of an AI company largely relies on how easy the technology can be applied,” says Cheung about Kami’s future.
The startup is in the process of building a standardised developer toolkit to allow people to build their virtual assistants, as well as forming partnerships with solution providers and consulting firms to resell the platform to their clients.

“At the end, we want to make intelligence accessible and manageable. That’s why we will open the platform for public subscription. People can eventually live smarter and better lives with all these informed insights.”

This start up helps consumers to lock in competitive FX rates for their purchases abroad.

When Ovi Olea traveled abroad, he went on a shopping spree and swiped his credit card, but he gave up figuring out the exact foreign exchange (FX) rates that would be applied to his purchase – an experience that deeply frustrated him since it made him feel helpless.

“There is no visibility and control,” says Olea. “The foreign exchange (FX) rates used for the conversion seem to be at best random, and sometimes can be really unfavourable.”
With this pain point in mind, Olea founded the Hong Kong-based financial technology startup Valoot Technologies and developed a solution that lets people lock in competitive FX rates for their purchases abroad.

Consumers can choose their own payment currency before using their credit cards and also know the FX rate in advance straight from the market, enabling them to sidestep hidden mark-ups and commissions to eventually pay at less than around 3 percentage points. Valoot earns by charging a “very small” fee for the service.

A few months after establishing the company, he brought on board Valoot COO Bei Zhou and Valoot CTO Nik Tang, two other key co-founders.

“People tell us that they think the team were all crazy to give up stellar careers and well paid jobs in order to be 100% focused on Valoot,” says Olea.

But deep cross-functional expertise between the founders has helped propel Valoot forward, securing pre-series A funding earlier this year with First Eastern Investment Group. Olea says the deal not only provides investment to Valoot, but also access and network that the startup would need to grow exponentially.

The amount of investment was undisclosed, but it was sufficient enough move the company to pursue its core activities, including establishing more industry partnerships and bulking up its sales force.

 “We are funded to an ideal level,” says Olea. “Not comfortable enough to move into a fancy new office, but at the right level to push on through with execution of our business priorities.”

Democratising FX

Valoot has been attracting more clients through their unique solution, extensive industry contacts, and quick execution. Olea recalls one client that wanted to implement WeChat Pay for their e-commerce site, turning to the company after discovering that none of the established payment gateways offered the service.

“We rolled up our sleeves, used our network and determination, and we had the solution live for the client in less than two months,” says Olea.

Valoot is aiming to become “the biggest and the best” payment gateway for WeChat Pay globally. In the United Kingdom, for example, the partnership allows Chinese students to pay tuition fees at competitive FX rates.

Valoot is also exploring multiple partnerships to further widen its network and reach. It recently announced a partnership with Tencent to receive the company's system when the user pays.

“We want to bring about much-needed change in this area by transferring our payments and FX skills and expertise for the benefit of everyone shopping abroad – in effect democratising FX,” says Olea.
 

It aims to provide efficient business-ready travel service based on corporate travel policies.

TravelSky recently announced the launch of CozyGo, Hong Kong’s first business travel management mobile app. The app is a pioneer in the market, and taps into cross-border corporate travel demand, especially among SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). It aims to provide efficient business-ready travel service based on corporate travel policies.

The business travel management mobile application, TravelSky notes, is designed to enhance the efficiency of the business travel booking process, and the autonomy of the traveler to manage his/her own booking and approval process within just a few clicks, without the need to spend extra time on internal communications for approval of the trip.

The company also says users of TravelSky partner companies will be able to use CozyGo for flight searching and booking, trip management, and order approval functions. It also stores frequent flyers’ information to provide convenience for repeated bookings.

Business travel demand is strong and Hong Kong’s large SME sector in particular is known for frequent cross-border business travel. According to TravelSky, bookings with Chinese commercial airlines increased by almost 12% from around 449 million in 2015 to around 502 million in 2016. And in the first two months in 2017, domestic flight bookings with Chinese commercial airlines recorded a YOY increase of nearly 14%, to around 75 million.

“As a leading provider of information technology solutions for China's aviation and travel industry, we are excited about extending our technology to Hong Kong. CozyGo is our flagship product for travel management companies in China, which achieved 120,000 downloads in 2016," says Mr. Peng Bo, General Manager of GDS (Global Distribution System) Business Unit, TravelSky Technology Limited.

"We aim to capitalize on Hong Kong’s high-potential market to capture market share in the corporate travel sector here. Today’s launch aligns with our vision to become a world-class company, internationally competitive and stable in the Chinese market.”

TravelSky is headquartered in Beijing and a solely-state-owned high-tech enterprise that specialises in providing information service for air travel and tourism industry. It is a central enterprise administered by State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council.
 

Eatigo’s total funding closed at USD 15.5M after Series B.

A leading online restaurant reservation platform in Southeast Asia, Eatigo’s mission is “to connect empty tables with empty stomachs” via a system of time-based discounts at their partner restaurants.

“We improve the inefficient capacity-utilization of restaurants by sending them diners when they have empty tables and so increase their profitability,” says Michael Cluzel, Co-Founder and CEO of Eatigo.

The platform offers users the opportunity to dine at hundreds of popular restaurants, all of which are discounted, all day, every day and offer 50% off at some point during the day, says Cluzel. “This single-minded focus on yield management for restaurants makes us a global first mover. Eatigo sends 90% of its traffic to partner restaurants during off-peak hours, which helps these restaurants increase profitability,” he shares.

Cluzel founded the platform along with Chief Financial Officer Siddhanta Kothari, Director Pumin (Louis) Yuvacharuskul, and Director Judy Tan.

Eatigo was established because according to the co-founders, F&B is very inefficient when it comes to capacity utilisation, with restaurants experiencing high capacity utilization during lunch and dinner, but low utilisation at other times of the day. Cluzel says F&B’s percentage is only 30% vs airlines’ and hotels’ 80%. 

“This makes for a global market of USD$2.6 trillion operating a 30% capacity without anybody servicing it,” he says. “The opportunity is global, and is a huge and blue ocean. The basic insight is that an empty table is a perishable good just like an empty airline seat.”

Cluzel shares that Eatigo was bootstrapped by its founders all the way to Series A, with no angel or seed round. “While financially painful, this created a very strong focus on sustainability and profitability for both Eatigo itself as well as our merchants and is a key reason why today we have an LTV that is bigger than our CAC, making us one of the very few e-commerce players with positive unit economics,” he notes.

In terms of funding, Eatigo closed at USD 15.5M after Series B.

On the consumer side, Eatigo through its app has managed to provide millions of consumers with an upgraded dining experience. “This is shown by our Google Play and App Store rating of 4.5 and 4.4 respectively, with these ratings coming from over 1 million installs, and are significantly higher than the average e-commerce and transactional app which usually tends to be lower than 4.0,” says Cluzel.

On the restaurant partner side, they send their merchants very significant and profitable traffic. “For our good merchants, we represent 20% to 30%, in some cases 40% of their daily traffic, which is a significant increase,” he shares.

As for upcoming initiatives, Cluzel says the plan is to continue to roll out Eatigo across the region and establish themselves as the leading player in each of their markets by end of the year. “We would also like to build a strong-growth business with sustainable unit economics and simply make our customers happy,” he notes.
 

Storefront is a short-term retail space rental marketplace.

Storefront is an online marketplace that simplifies the complex search and rental process for retailers and e-tailers interested in renting a space for a short-term. It has also been described as the Airbnb of retail.

“Thanks to Storefront, finding a space to host a pop-up store is as easy as booking a hotel room,” says Benoît Clément-Bollée, the CEO and Co-founder of Storefront Asia.

Storefront is the result of the merger between PopUp Immo and Storefront. In 2014, Mohamed Haouache and Adrien Kerbrat created the first French platform dedicated to short-term retail spaces rental in Paris: PopUp Immo. It rapidly became the French leader and opened new offices in Europe and Hong Kong under the name OuiOpen with the reinforcement of the founding team with Clément-Bollée and Matthew Greenwell.

In the meantime, Storefront, created by Erik Eliason and Tristan Pollock in 2012, had imposed itself as the American leader of temporary retail space rental. Both companies were seeking international expansion, so, in 2016 Storefront and PopUp Immo decided to join forces to become the world’s largest short-term retail space rental marketplace.

Storefront is the first and largest international short-term retail space rental marketplace, shares Clément-Bollée. They are present in 3 continents and 8 cities: Hong Kong, New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, Milan and San Francisco, and their network of spaces has more than 20,000 listings.

“We make retail simple and help brands grow,” says Benoît Clément-Bollée. “With pop-up stores sales are multiplied by 3.6, the set up time of the store is 5 times shorter and in average it costs HK$20,000 to set up a pop-up shop with Storefront compared to HK$980,000 to set up a traditional retail store.”

“Pop-up stores have so many potential uses that they answer a lot of retailers and e-tailers problems,” he says. “Whether they want to launch a product, test several locations before committing to a long-term lease, sell exclusive products, or enhance brand recognition, pop-up stores are the solution.” For instance, he says, for fashion designers who open pop-up stores during Fashion Week, these will be tremendous growth levers.

Storefront in Hong Kong was actually launched when Clément-Bollée contacted Haouache because he saw a news item about Storefront’s participation in a Tokyo startup competition and told him that he wanted to start a similar business in Hong Kong.

The management team had already thought about of launching in Hong Kong but this made it more concrete than ever. So just 2 days later, Clément-Bollée was hired to start Storefront in Hong Kong, making Storefront the first international pop-up marketplace setting foot in Asia.

“We are already settled in 8 cities around the world and we’re not going to stop there,” he says. “Next stops are Berlin, Miami, Chicago, Macau, Tokyo, China and Singapore, of course.”

One of Storefront’s priorities is also to invest in technology, in order to have a smarter company that facilitates the life of our customers, but also of their employees, for them to be more efficient in their everyday tasks.

“And of course, our ultimate goal is to design the store of the future and create a retail revolution,” shares Clément-Bollée.
 

Around 1,000 smart bicycles are currently available in the New Territories area.

Gobee.bike is Hong Kong’s first bicycle-sharing service. It makes use of a smartphone application, currently available for Android devices, supported by a cloud-based system and GPS that allows users to locate, rent, and drop off bicycles anytime.

"Gobee.bike is different from many other bicycle-sharing systems across the globe as it is station-free. Users can drop off their bicycles at any legal public space without the restriction of fixed bicycle stations," says founder Raphael Cohen. He says 1,000 smart bicycles are currently available in the New Territories area – Sha Tin, Tai Po, and Ma On Shan, specifically.

Cohen is a serial entrepreneur who grew up in Paris. He has lived in Hong Kong for six years, and also lived before in Toronto, Shanghai, Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City. He is the CEO & Co-Founder of Gobee.bike, the former Co-Founder and CSO of HotelQuickly, Asia’s largest last-minute hotel booking app, as well as the former Co-Founder and MD at Foodpanda.com

He says he started the business because in Hong Kong, storing bicycles at home and renting one are both inconvenient. "There were also no 24/7 bike-rental services, so many locals were not able to ride bicycles after work hours," Cohen notes. "But with Gobee.bike, people can locate our bicycles that are near them through our app, rent them at any time of the day, and drop off the bicycles at their destinations."

Gobee.bike, he also notes, is a convenient service for Hong Kong. Instead of taking the bus or trains for short trips, locals can now opt to ride bicycles at only HK$5/half hour. "It is also a healthier and a more environmental-friendly option as users can exercise on their commutes while reducing carbon emission," he notes.

Cohen was inspired by the bike-sharing services in Shanghai and Paris and thought it would be a good service to introduce to Hong Kong. In terms of help with funding, he says the Swiss Founders Fund; Cocoon Ignite Ventures, Lastminute.com group's Founder & Chairman Fabio Cannavale, Lamivoie Capital, Goldman Sachs alumni as well individual investors have all invested in Gobee.bike. It has also received lots of interest from other investors.

Gobee.bike has raised a seed round of funding from VCs and angel investors, in order to build-up a proof of concept in Hong Kong and set-up their whole team, says Cohen. They are also in the process of raising USD80 million of funding for global expansion.

"We plan to have 20,000 bicycles in Hong Kong by September and cover most areas in Hong Kong by the end of the year," shares Cohen. "We are also launching the iOS version of our app very soon. We also plan to expand into other Asian cities, European countries, and North America with 300,000 bikes by December 2017."
 

Investment is already at US$7m.

The Times Group, India’s largest media conglomerate, led the investment round of Oddup with the existing 500Startups, Click Ventures, and the new investors, Silicon Valley-based Moneta Ventures and White Capital.

Oddup is a data-driven research platform founded in 2015 which provides investment statistics using data and analysis. Widely known as ‘The Startup Rating System’, Oddup gives trends, current and expected future valuations of startups.

The company's vision is to bring insight and transparency across the startup landscape for smart startup investing. Oddup has a rating score from zero to 100, based on analyst view points and the computed algorithm, the Oddup Score.

Talking about the fresh funding, Lam shared that they are very proud to have The Times Group as a key strategic partner of Oddup. “Their distribution networks and coverage will be instrumental to our growth and global presence. This funding allows us to strengthen our research and coverage on a global scale. Our core goal remains the same and that is to help investors better understand the startups they are interested in”, said Jackie Lam, co-founder and COO of Oddup.

Oddup platform offers free sign-up and use, with a subscription charge for premium access to the reports and in-depth analysis. It is currently available on Apple iOS and coming up soon on Android devices.

Oddup API is also available to customers who want to integrate startup data into their existing workflows.

Especially as a means to build a presence in China.

WeMine is a marketing technology firm specialises in developing an intelligent marketing suite on WeChat.

"Our vision is to build experience-centric social media marketing tools that make a marketer’s life easier," says Lala Tse, founding strategist and communications manager, WeMine.

Tse notes that most WeChat service providers offer template solutions that are neither catered to international business’ operations nor compatible with customised development with other functions in the future. On the other hand, she says WeMine offers a flexible management platform with a modular coding structure that allows sustainable scalability for the company to add and expand their functions on WeChat.

“A lot of third-party WeChat management platforms are available now in China. But very few to none of them are catered to the management personnels of international brands,” Tse also adds. “WeMine has the technical know-how of breaking the cross-border barriers for international brands by having strategic partners in China, offices in both Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and solid experience in working in process improvement in MNCs from the team.”

Unlike the native WeChat management platform, Tse shares that WeMine is capable of designing and developing universally friendly platform that focusses on MNCs’ management users, helping them through the so-called “wall of China” to reach the billions.

The company traces back its beginnings in late 2014, when the business had a soft launch under their sister brand’s name, RollAngle, an outsourced all-around marketing consultancy based in Hong Kong.

Tse shares that upon receiving tremendous demand on setting up a WeChat official account, marketing management, and functions development, WeMine was officially spun off from RollAngle and established its own entity in June 2016. Now it serves to provide marketing technology support and SaaS management platform to devise WeChat marketing campaigns in just a click.

The business began upon the realisation of the current and potential power of the WeChat platform. "WeChat active users rocketed from 195 million to 350 million in 2013," says Tse. "We noticed the lucrative business opportunities behind the platform, and spent months digging into the details and understanding the platform inside out."

The company observed that despite WeChat’s attractiveness to merchants as a channel to build digital presence in China, the logistics - for instance, the requirement of a China BR, selecting a correct type of account - and the rapidly changing policies of both the Government and the platform set high barrier to the majority of international merchants to devise effective and responsive strategies.

"WeMine acts as an outsourced mar-tech team for companies to develop and monitor their WeChat channels, unleashing the underlying value (mining), hence the business name," shares Tse.

For those who would like to manage the platform on their own, WeMine also provide a comprehensive SaaS platform comprising useful tools to create winning strategies.

In terms of the company's funding, it’s all self-help at this stage, notes Tse. "We have reached out to a number of angel investors, and received a considerable amount of funding from one angel investor based in Singapore," she says.