Debt funding shows up in top 5 deals

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Hello reader,

Just the other day, I was writing Tech in Asia’s daily newsletter and covering the story about Southeast Asian founders warming up to venture debt.

To summarize, venture debt is often an attractive option because founders can generally avoid giving up equity, on top of the fact that many VCs are stricter in their investment requirements these days due to the funding winter.

While I haven’t properly observed this phenomenon, the data doesn’t lie, and the article states that more founders prefer venture debt. As it so happens, one of the startups that snagged a position on our list of biggest deals by country this week took on venture debt. Can you guess which company it is?

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.

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The biggest deals by country

🇦🇺 SafetyCulture is an Australian startup that provides workplace health and safety products. It has raised US$109.7 million in its latest funding round from AirTree Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, and Morpheus Fund.

🇮🇳 Indian adtech firm InMobi has secured US$100 million in debt funding from Mars Growth Capital.

🇨🇳 Ispace, a Chinese spacetech company, has raised US$98.8 million in its series C and C+ rounds. The funds were from Xin Ding Capital, Huizhu Capital, Jingming Capital, Qianlima, and Sichuan Industrial Revitalization Development Investment Fund.

🇰🇷 South Korean startup Spoon Labs, which develops content platforms, has secured US$90.1 million in strategic investment from Krafton.

🇲🇾 In its latest funding round, Malaysian coffee startup Zus Coffee has raised US$57 million from KV Asia Capital, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan, and PT Fastrata Buana.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s funding chart: 76 deals worth over US$780 million.

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M&As

🇸🇬 Lunch Actually and Paktor, two dating app companies based in Singapore, have announced a merger. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

🇦🇺 Generation Entrepreneur, an edtech firm headquartered in Australia, has been acquired by the Australian School of Entrepreneurship for an undisclosed amount.

🇰🇷 AmazingCre is a South Korean ecommerce company. It’s been acquired by Grandeclip for an undisclosed sum.

🇸🇬 Singaporean fintech firm StakeWithUs has been acquired by Nansen. Terms of the deal were not made public.

🇮🇳 Return Prime, an Indian ecommerce startup, has been acquired by GoKwik. Financial terms are not publicly available.

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Startups that are raising funds

Fundraising is hard. To make things slightly easier, we’ve compiled this list of fundraising startups for our subscribers.

We send fundraising startups directly to investors’ inboxes. There’s no better time to list your startup, and you can do so here.

🇸🇬 This Singaporean company is building AI-powered cybersecurity solutions.

🇮🇩 This Indonesian startup runs an online portal where users can participate in educational activities.

🇸🇬 This Singapore-based firm has developed an AI marketing intelligence platform.

You can find the full list of fundraising startups in Asia over here.

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Behind the Glasswall

Fundraising often involves reaching out to multiple contacts, many of whom founders might not have dealt with before. To provide some transparency to this process, we created Glasswall, a platform for founders to give feedback and recommendations on investors. Check out the full list here.

• ✅︎ “My interaction with Qin has been a rewarding journey and an eye-opener to the most crucial topics VCs consider while investing. He [handheld] us through a pivotal decision point for the company. Often times we found the team at Saison ready to connect and provide valuable network more than any of our current investors on a cap table.” – Read more
• ❌ “We were shoved to speak to a junior member of the team because a senior member was traveling. In the call, the member was obviously not listening to me and wanted the call to be over ASAP. He was very disrespectful and frankly a waste of time to speak to.” – Read more
• ✅︎ “Really enjoyed the meeting. Dimi is a breath of fresh air in a region where VCs are like sheep that say cookie-cutter stuff to founders. I was previously warned by others that Dimi can be very direct. But I actually like that he is. Since he doesn’t chat shit and sugarcoat, I know that whatever he tells me is honest and thought through. Building something is already fuckin difficult so I don’t need another VC massaging my ego. Had some interesting debates with him on our market and strategy, lots to think about.” – Read more

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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

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Thoughtful reads

1️⃣ Yummy lessons

If you’re someone who eats fast food from time to time, chances are you’ve gone to a restaurant owned by Yum Brands. And now, you can digest some of the lessons imparted by its co-founder and former CEO, David Novak, in this podcast episode.

2️⃣ Circle of trust

By now, it should be clear that influencers play a huge role in marketing, especially when it comes to B2C products. In this area, there seems to be a hidden factor at play, which can boost engagement even further. This article on Harvard Business Review digs deeper into this subject.

3️⃣ Space for Noplace

Move over millennials, everyone’s looking to capture the Gen Z market now. But those in the business world may be clueless about how to deal with Gen Zs. Tiffany Zhong, founder of social media app Noplace, shares more about what Gen Z is looking for.

4️⃣ The freemium conundrum

Freemium has emerged as one of the most popular models for SaaS companies, but there’s a fine line between implementing it correctly and getting into a disaster. Here’s some insights into the most common challenges with the freemium model and how to fix them.

5️⃣ Rules are meant to be broken

A popular principle for tech firms, the “Rule of 40” suggests that a company’s combined revenue growth rate and profit margin should equal or exceed 40%. Does this rule hold up to closer scrutiny? This post on Medium shares some data on it.