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Hello reader,
The Denver Nuggets are the 2023 NBA Champions! As someone with no horse in the playoff race (my Dallas Mavericks had a terrible joke of a year and didn’t even make it to the postseason), Denver was one of my picks to win, so I’m pretty happy at what came to pass. It’s the organization’s first title too, which was part of why I wanted them to win.
In the days to come, I’m sure a lot of ink will be spilled on how this team was built around two homegrown stars – Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. But while the Nuggets might not have splashed out on massive free agent contracts, putting together a team like this is no cheap feat. Jokic himself, for example, is finishing a contract that pays him over US$33 million this year, and he’s signed an extension that will earn him US$264 million over the next five years.
That’s just one guy, by the way. A basketball team has 15 players.
Anyway, the point I’m making is that even purely emotion- and story-driven interests like sports rely on money to make them happen. Singapore’s SMEs might not need such obscene amounts of money, but apparently, access to loans is still an issue. Many business owners in the country rely on funds from their friends and family to keep their companies going.
It’s a problem that new digital banks are looking to solve. Read on to find out more.
Today we look at:
- The digital banks helping to close the SME lending gap
- The Singapore- and Vietnam-based startup that raised US$4.5 million to make Web3 transfers easier
- Other newsy highlights such as TikTok’s multibillion-dollar plans for Southeast Asia and Love Bonito’s growing numbers.
Premium summary
Going digital to solve the SME lending problem
Image credit: Timmy Loen
Did you know that 99% of enterprises in Singapore are classified as small or medium-sized? These SMEs account for 71% of the country’s employees and contributed US$210 billion to the economy last year.
But here’s a more worrying statistic: 86% of these SMEs said that on at least one occasion in the last five years, they weren’t able to secure the funds they needed for their business.
I’ve written before on how we, as a whole, tend to put too much focus on either the hottest new kids on the block or the biggest names – the Davids and Goliaths, if you will. But a lot of important stuff happens in between David and Goliath (maybe it’s someone named Timothy?), and these SMEs need tailored financing solutions to succeed.
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