Month: June 2019

Southeast Asia’s highest-capitalized startup is sitting on even more money from investors today after ride-hailing Grab announced it has raised $300 million from Invesco.

The deal takes Singapore-based Grab $7.5 billion raised to date. The money is part of its ongoing — feels-like-everlasting — Series H round which was started last June via a $1 billion capital injection from Toyota.

The round swelled to $4.5 billion thanks to contributions from a range of partners throughout 2018 and early 2019, then Grab said in April that it would add a further $2 billion to reach a $6.5 billion close before this year is out. This investment from Invesco is the first piece of that newest tranche to be announced, but there’s plenty happening under the surface, including a potential investment from PayPal, Ant Financial and others in a spinout of Grab’s financial services.

Grab declined to comment on the status of its Series H, and how much it has raised for the round so far.

Getting back to today’s news and, despite a relatively dry-looking announcement, there is an interesting takeaway to be found here.

Yes, this isn’t a SoftBank Vision Fund sized round — that $1.5 billion deal closed earlier this year — and it lacks the strategic significance of investments from backers like Toyota, Booking.com or Microsoft, but it does represent a doubling down on Grab from Invesco.

The firm merged with emerging market-focused fund Oppenheimer back in May. Oppenheimer — which has close to $40 billion in assets under management for its developing market fund alone — was among the participants in an initial $2 billion raise for that Series H, and now the merged entity is coming back to increase its position.

That first deal (from Oppenheimer) was $403 million, Grab said, so this new addition takes its spend on Grab to over $700 million. It also comes at an interesting time for the firm, which is reported to have reorganized its management team following the completion of the merger.

Based on that clearing of the decks/realignment, the decision to double down on Grab is a positive validation for the ride-hailing company. While it might not be a household name to those outside financial markets, Grab president Ming Maa played up Invesco as “one of the smartest investors in developing markets” in a statement released alongside news of the investment.

Grab acquired Uber’s regional business last year to become Southeast Asia’s undisputed ride-hailing leader, but it perhaps didn’t reckon on its local rival Go-Jek mounting a bid to finally expand its service regionally.

Having built a strong presence in Indonesia — where it pioneered ‘super app’ concepts like services on-demand and payments in the context of ride-hailing — Go-Jek has since expanded into Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore, with the Philippines also in its sights. Those moves were fuelled by investment from the likes of Tencent, Google and Warburg Pincus . As it seeks to go further and deeper in those markets, Go-Jek is currently raising a round for growth that is expected to reach $2 billion, half of which it said it had secured in January.

That accumulation of cash seemed to spark a call to arms for Grab, which turned its Series H into a gargantuan rolling round after increasing the overall round target first to $5 billion and then to $6.5 billion.

Uber may have decided to leave Southeast Asia, but the ride-hailing industry in the region is still as fascinating as ever.

Startup campus Station F is expanding beyond its original building in Paris with a co-living space called Flatmates. 600 people will be able to rent a room in shared apartments.

Compared to traditional accommodation in Paris, it’s much easier to get a room as you don’t need a French full-time work contract, guarantors and all the stupid stuff that landlords and professionals ask you — trust me, it’s a nightmare in Paris.

Station F says that it is the biggest co-living space in Europe. Flatmates is actually three different buildings designed by Jean-Michel Wilmotte. Just like Station F, French billionaire Xavier Niel is the owner.

There are 100 different apartments, which represent 600 rooms in total. You get to share the living room, kitchen and sometimes bathroom with other Station F members.

In addition to these common areas, there are multiple services accessible to Flatmates residents. You can access a café, a grocery store, a gym, a laundry, a lounge and an event space. There are also car and bike parking spaces.

Here’s a gallery of photos (click to expand):

[gallery ids="1848966,1848965,1848962,1848967,1848969,1848968,1848974,1848975,1848976"]

Everything has been designed to be a seamless experience for Station F members. For instance, you can unlock your room with your Station F badge — you don’t need a traditional key.

Flatmates is located in Ivry-sur-Seine, the city outside of Paris closest to Station F. It’s not the most charming location (1 rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau) as you’re surrounded by train tracks, highways and malls.

But it’s convenient if all you plan to do is work at Station F and sleep at Flatmates. Citymapper says that it takes roughly 25 minutes to go to Station F by bus, or 15 minutes by bike.

When it comes to rent, you can get a standard room with a shared bathroom for €399 per month. A premium room with a private bathroom costs €549 per month. And a couple room with a private bathroom and a dressing costs €799 per month.

If you’re a Station F member, you can access the application form from Station F’s intranet. Flatmates has partnered with Whoomies to match up residents based on your eating habits, interests and personality. It’s going to be interesting to see if people end up staying just a few months or much longer if they feel at home.

Creative technology and innovative ideas know no boundaries, which is why thousands of early-stage startup founders, investors, innovators and entrepreneurs — from more than 50 countries — will convene at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December.

In keeping with an international focus, we’re searching for countries that want to shine a spotlight on their best and brightest early-stage startups. Email the events team to apply for a Country Pavilion and bring your delegation to exhibit in Startup Alley.

The exhibition floor — the epicenter of opportunity — features hundreds of dynamic startups displaying their technology, products, platforms and services. Hosting a Country Pavilion in Startup Alley gives you the chance to showcase your country’s emerging startups and to be recognized as a world leader in technology.

Jana Rosenfelder, co-founder and COO of Actijoy, exhibited in a Startup Alley country pavilion sponsored by Czech Invest — a governmental agency that supports startups by defraying conference costs. The following year, Actijoy earned a TC Top Pick spot at Disrupt San Francisco 2018.

“TechCrunch Disrupt is one of the best startup conferences,” said Rosenfelder. “It’s so well organized, and the media exposure is much better than at other events. Startup Alley’s a great place for startups to network for leads, investors, industry contacts and partnerships.”

Here’s what you need to know about hosting a County Pavilion. Your delegation can consist of international startup groups, government innovation centers, incubators and accelerators. All startups must be less than two years old and have secured less than $2.5 million in funding.

Still with us? Good. Next, simply email the events team and tell us which country or region you want to highlight at Disrupt Berlin. We also want to know a bit about the startups in your delegation. The events team will contact you with a price quote.

Did you know that all startups exhibiting in Startup Alley — including pavilions — have a chance to be voted the Wild Card company? The Wild Card winner gets a shot to compete in Startup Battlefield, TechCrunch’s epic pitch competition with a $50,000 cash prize.

True story: RecordGram won the Wild Card at Disrupt NY ’17. The next day it competed in Startup Battlefield and went on to win the whole shebang. Pretty amazing stuff, right there.

You can get in on the exhibition action of Startup Alley even if you’re not part of a country delegation. Simply purchase a Startup Alley Exhibitor Package for €745 + VAT, and that price includes three Founder passes.

Disrupt Berlin 2019 takes place on 11-12 December. Come and showcase your country’s best and brightest startups to the world. Email us about reserving your country pavilion today.

Is your company interested in sponsoring or exhibiting at Disrupt Berlin 2019? Contact our sponsorship sales team by filling out this form.

WeGift, the U.K. startup that has developed a platform to let businesses easily issue e-gift cards and other digital rewards, has closed £4 million in Series A funding.

Leading the round is Stride.VC — the relatively new early-stage venture capital firm founded by Fred Destin and Harry Stebbings — alongside a number of other investors including including SAP.iO fund, Unilever Ventures, James Hind (founder of Carwow,) and Eamon Jubbawy (co-founder of Onfido).

The startup’s previous backers include Alex Chesterman, Charlie Songhurst, Simon Franks, Ascension Ventures, and Fuel Ventures.

“Currently payments are a one way street,” WeGift founder and CEO Aron Alexander tells TechCrunch. “Payments technology is built to enable businesses to take money from consumers but it doesn’t let businesses send money to consumers.

“We’ve created a new category of digital non-cash rewards to power customer acquisition, retention and loyalty globally: the ‘Twilio for e-gift cards'”.

Alexander says that historically businesses would offer a physical reward to power these use cases. For example, “open a bank account and get a free toaster (for my generation it was a free Filofax). In comparison, he says that e-gift cards are more appealing to consumers because they’re “easier to deliver than merchandise, they don’t get lost in the mail and they can spend it on what they want”.

There are upsides for the businesses handing out digital rewards, too. They include bulk percentage discounts when purchasing e-gift cards from retailers, and negating the need to ask for a customer’s bank account details. Most importantly, says Alexander, “you can track how they affect the customer journey”.

However, the problem with using e-gift cards at scale is that the technology infrastructure to automate orders and delivery is missing, meaning that it remains quite a manual process that often falls back on emails, CSV files and PDFs “This is what we are changing… [by automating] the issuing process of non-cash rewards,” explains the WeGift founder.

The resulting WeGift cloud-based platform offers an open API to enable businesses to automate sending digital rewards, on-demand and in real-time. “We give them instant access to a huge choice of rewards and payouts, an ever-growing network of more than 500 brand partners, across 26 markets and 20 currencies, in real-time,” adds Alexander.

Stride.VC’s Destin says digital rewards is a “messy, fragmented industry with broken processes, prone to errors and leakage, aged technology stacks and plenty of misalignment and distrust between the players”. It is also an industry dominated in the U.S. by two incumbents with a legacy in the physical gift card space and therefore ripe for disruption.

“The business model is well understood,” writes Destin, in a Medium post. “Think Stripe, applied to non-cash payouts. Robust APIs, real-time capabilities, disruptive pricing, transparency”.

Meanwhile, WeGift says the Series A will enable the company to deliver on its vision of create “the world’s first” real-time infrastructure for digital rewards and incentives. Specifically, the funding will be used to further scale WeGift’s operations, support expansion to the U.S, and to continue investing in its technology platform.

Founders Factory Africa and South African healthcare company Netcare will select 35 African health-tech startups for an acceleration and incubation program.

The partnership includes an investment (of an undisclosed amount) by Netcare in Founder’s Factory Africa, or FFA. The Johannesburg located organization was formed in 2018 as an extension of Founders Factory in London—an accelerator that has graduated 122 startups.

The application process is now open for FFA’s new Africa health-tech program, which will accelerate 5 startups a year and incubate 2, FFA CEO Roo Rogers told TechCrunch.

Criteria for the accelerator startups include that they have a healthcare focus, be post-revenue, and have a Pan-African scope.

Accelerated startups will receive a £30,00 cash investment (≈$38,000) and £220,000 in support services from Founders Factory Africa. Incubator health-tech ventures will receive £60K cash and £100K toward support. 

Founders Factory Africa and Netcare will share a 5 to 10 percent equity stake in each startup accepted into the program.

This is the first big foray into tech funding for Netcare, which operates South Africa’s largest private hospital network, according to CEO, Dr. Richard Friedland. The organization has 11,000 hospital beds, across 54 hospitals, and 18 primary care centers, he told TechCrunch.

Netcare’s interest in partnering with Founders Factory Africa to support startups comes down to multiplying healthcare solutions across the continent and shaking up the healthcare industry, according to Friedland.

“The way we deliver healthcare in South Africa, Africa, and perhaps internationally…is in many cases broken,” he said, adding there’s a crisis of affordability and access to healthcare in Africa.

“I believe healthcare is ripe for disruption and innovation and that couldn’t be more true than it is here in South Africa and the rest of the continent,” Friedland said.

He named the FFA partnership as a way to increase quality of healthcare in Africa. “We think the…continent and even our own business in South Africa can benefit,” he said.

Though a value wasn’t named for the Netcare round, it’s Founders Factory Africa’s second investment raise and collaboration.

Founders Factory entered Africa in 2018 through a partnership with Standard Bank (the continent’s largest bank), which a release said included a “multi-million pound investment.”  Founders Factory Africa selected the first five startups for its fintech accelerator track in April 2019.

Overall, Founders Factory’s move into Africa and healthcare (through FFA) raises several compelling things to watch.

One is the rise in African health-tech as a sector and the need for more capital. Formation of healthcare focused African startups has picked up but investment into these ventures is relatively low compared to annual VC: only $19 million of roughly $1 billion (using Briter Bridges and Partech numbers).

This is also particularly meager given the potential impact of health-focused startups on a continent that still posts dismal stats comparatively. World Bank life expectancy rates, which on average place Africa last, are just one indicator. So the FFA initiative could serve as a needed boost for African health-tech.

 

Another interesting observation: Standard Bank—and now Netcare’s—investment in Founders Factory Africa could be a preview of Africa’s large corporates embracing more venture investing. It’s definitely a sign the continent’s established companies are taking the ability of Africa’s startups to innovate (and potentially disrupt) more seriously.

And finally, Founders Factory Africa and Netcare’s investment in health-tech could produce innovation models with use-cases beyond Africa. We’ve seen this already with drones and fintech: Zipline piloted programs in Africa before launching in the U.S. and African startups are exporting payment models.

“There are so many issues in terms of healthcare delivery in Africa that can benefit from technological solutions,” Netcare CEO Richard Friedland said.

“I think the old bricks and mortar model of delivering healthcare in South Africa, in a private insurance or public setting, is archaic, it’s limited, it’s capital intensive and I think health-tech solutions can break that down,” he added.

If one extracted “Africa” and “South Africa” from Dr. Friedland’s comments, what he described could easily apply to the healthcare sector in the United States.

So it’s conceivable health-tech in Africa could produce scalable solutions that travel across the continent and abroad.

Startups aiming to pursue that objective through Founders Factory Africa’s new accelerator program have until September 6 to apply.

 

 

 

Talis Capital – an early investor in Darktrace, Pirate Studios, Luminance and iwoca – announces today that it’s raised $100m for 2019, a record for the firm to date as it passes it’s 10th year of operation.

In those ten years it’s done $600m in transactions as it seeks to invest in the fast-growing tech companies that are disrupting established sectors, including food and farming, consumer and healthcare. It’s also seen its total assets under management increase by 220% in five years.

In the past 12 months, Talis has invested in Pricefx, Beyond, Edge Intelligence, Insurdata, The Learning People, Import.io, Omni:us, Oh My Green, The Plum Guide, Ynsect, Medbelle, Artemis, Zyper and others. Prior to that it has also invested in Pirate Studios, Luminance, and Clausematch.

Vasile Foca, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Talis Capital, said: “The investors we work closely with want to back the next generation of innovators and disruptors… Talis Capital has its roots in a family office, but has grown to incorporate over 30 individuals and families to offer a gateway to the best of the European venture capital scene.”

We did a Q&A with Talis’s Matus Maar (MD) and Vasile Foca (MP), both co-founders of Talis Capital, to find out what makes this fund tick:

What’s it like to work with Talis versus any other kind of vc? How does Talis differ from a traditional VC?

What’s unusual is we’re backed by a group of successful entrepreneurs and business people, this unlocks opportunities for our companies across a broad range of sectors. We’re different for a number of reasons but mainly it’s our unique structure and investor base which is important. We can write checks from $400k to £15m+ and can do investments from Seed to Series C in any geography (US, China, Israel, EU etc). We cover B2B and B2C. We’re a generalist technology investor looking for companies that have global potential. Talis is looking for entrepreneurs (and ideas) that we can genuinely be passionate about.

What have been the biggest exits and most notable entrepreneurs you’ve worked with?

We partner with companies for the long term. This means that sometimes we provide liquidity for our early investors, while staying with the company and keeping that close relationship through another, later stage LP. This is because we perceive the upside from following-on on our investments for multiple rounds.

Are you competing with traditional VC funds? Who do you typically partner with?

Yes we are competing with traditional VCs but at the same time we are fully flexible to go solo, lead or co-invest, and we can do any structure. We have worked, over the years, with almost all the usual suspects and aren’t fazed by those VCs who boast a strong brand – it’s a people business after all. The way we leverage our entrepreneurial investor base to help our companies also means that other VCs and especially the companies themselves want us in. Our flexibility on the check size/ stage / speed tends to make us an easy partner to add to the captable.

You are celebrating your 10th anniversary. What do you think are are the three biggest changes in the sector in the last decade?

The first big change is evolution of VC funding itself. We see more participation from non-tech families and entrepreneurs in VC investing. 10 years ago tech was still just a post dot.com sceptical area for most people who favour traditional asset classes. Today, everyone understands undoubtedly that tech-leveraged companies have a chance to win mid-long term – in any industry. And so smart people from all backgrounds are investing or want to participate in the VC space.
We’ve seen industries like funerals, agriculture and health increasing the pace of innovation, while these were sectors that were completely offline just a few years ago.

The second big change is the evolution of start-ups. Starting a company is much cheaper than 10 years ago, mostly due to a maturing infrastructure and hence we have seen huge growth in seed stage rounds – with CAGR over 60% in the last 5 years alone. We’re also seeing Series A rounds getting bigger. While the number of start-ups in incubators, accelerators and various types of programmes has increased, the number of Series A rounds hasn’t really changed meaning it’s more difficult to source strong winners at Series A stage.

Increasingly, the boundaries between private equity, Hedge Funds, real estate funds, listed funds and venture capital are becoming blurred. They’re all doing VC now.

The third big change is the evolution of the consumer: it’s been called “the Amazon effect” and describes the behavioural shift in providing and receiving consumer services. Amazon’s “one touch purchase” experience has become the default customer experience standard to measure. This is driving change across many industries that were seriously lacking that e.g in insurance.

Can you tell me more about your network of investors? Are they involved at all in spotting the companies for example?

We have a fairly small group of investors (30 or so) who have all been very successful in their careers as entrepreneurs or high profile business people – it’s a mix of well known families and individuals. Their experience spans a number of industries including financial services, telecoms, commodities, industrials, leisure, retail, and real estate. They are all incredibly impressive and of course we welcome their views on what’s hot in the sectors they know inside out.

Why do they see tech as an opportunity right now?

Savvy investors globally are looking for ways to back the next generation of innovators and disruptors. But without the know-how, connections, education and access – it’s actually really hard to unearth the winners. Our investors see us as a gateway into the venture stage tech scene. The ideas we’re backing are not short term technology micro themes – we’re interested in longer term macro trends which we know are going to change the way future industries evolve.

Can you be more specific with regards to cheque size and stage and any particular verticals, themes or technologies you plan to invest in?

We focus mainly on Late Seed, Series A and Series B – $1 – $10m being the typical first cheque. But we pride ourselves at being flexible and our entrepreneurial investor base allow us to do so. And so we did some earlier seed as well as co-founded and incubated companies (eg Pirate Studios, Skwire). We’ve also done some larger $10m+ cheques in Series C companies, most recently Ynsect – a super cool tech-enabled, premium feed and organic insect protein producer in France.

Why have you chosen digital health, sustainable food and farming, and “content-to-commerce”? And what do you mean by “content-to-commerce”?

The themes and sub-sectors we focus on evolve all the time. We were heavily into cyber security when we led Darktrace Series A but that market now is very saturated. We really like certain areas of Fintech. We led the seed for Iwoca which is a great company, we backed Onfido, Clausematch, Omni:us, Luminance, Premfina. These are all either within direct finance or ‘picks and shovels’ companies like Onfido which enable the neo-banks to do instant secure ID verifications and open accounts fast. Omni:us, for instance, helps insurance companies to process claims much faster and more accurately through their innovative computer vision tech.
Data and IoT are all interesting and we backed number of companies in this space.

Digital health is such a huge opportunity because of several macro trends such as an increasingly aging population, a shortage of medical staff, and minimal penetration of new technologies. There is significant potential in switching focus to prevention rather than treatment which could save public and private institutions billions of dollars. Health institutions, which have traditionally been bureaucratic, are realising they can’t cope with the volume of patients, and they are actively seeking digital solutions.

The food and agri sector is subject to similar macro trends, the volume of food needed to feed a 9 billion population by 2050 requires technology to bring in efficiencies. From farm to fork, both consumers and investors are waking up to how innovations can transform verticals like precision farming, yield maximisation, sustainability and quality of foods supporting world preferences for a more diverse and conscious supply.

Content to Commerce is an emerging way for new generation commerce companies to acquire customers via their viral content mostly on social media, instead of the unsustainable pyramid scheme model of paid customer acquisition via ads on Google, Facebook, etc. They can engage consumers with content/video/podcast and providing them a seamless UX experience that converts them to purchase.

Companies like Threads are doing exactly that, acquiring customers by organic viral content on social and then they make money from the commerce side. Many publishers have tried to become e commerce companies and have failed, and many ecoms tried to become viral publishers but that is also hard. Those companies who know from the beginning that they are doing both (Content to Commerce) can do it well, and then it works amazingly.

Generation Z and Millennium-type consumers don’t buy at places that just provide the transaction – anyone can do that – they want an experience and they want to be aligned with the brand or content.

We have also backed Zyper that allows brands to connect with their biggest fans, create communities of them and let them be the genuine brand ambassadors. Or Narrativ that is rethinking completely how search will work for the content generation and helps publishers and retailers monetise better. Pirate Studios is enabling the 95% of musicians who couldn’t afford to record music to be able to do that now, and that content fuels more rehearsals at Pirate Studios.

What are the standout qualities you look for in founding teams and companies?
Crazy drive and ambition meets smart execution.

Charisma, strong determination, clarity of thinking, ruthless intellectual honesty and insatiable energy.

The ability to think big picture, and at the same time be detail-oriented, is a rare quality that we appreciate in founders.

Almost every new fund these days is talking about its operational support for portfolio companies. What does Talis do to actively support the companies you back?

It’s sad that it’s become a cliché. Supporting the portfolio operationally shouldn’t be used as a key differentiator or marketing piece. That’s the whole point of investing at the stage that we do. We ask founders questions they never thought were important. We’re on a journey with our entrepreneurs and support them operationally, financially as well as emotionally! Since you ask the usual stuff includes cross pollinating the portfolio, tapping into our venture network and wider industry networks (we host a couple of concept focused events a year) and as already mentioned our investor networks are unlike anyone else’s- which helps! We also have a super talented team which, alongside taking a board seat, we’re happy to deploy into companies when needed, for pitch deck support, operating model build-up, sector mapping, scouting acquisition opportunities and more.

What lessons have you learned from working with the likes of Darktrace and Luminance?
We led the Series A for both of these companies – both have been executing along an impressive trajectory. They perfectly demonstrate how transformational real AI solutions can be for corporates of all sizes (and there is a lot of so-called AI around right now that isn’t real).

What do you think Talis Capital might be investing in 10 years from now?

Autonomous everything. From cars to all aspects of life. Changing physical infrastructure of cities, eventually the whole world will be shifted – companies who can enable the changes will be big.

Ageing population. By then it will be obvious that people will be able to live substantially longer – or forever – and this will become a real issue in 10 years time. It will change and confuse all layers of society and on all levels: economic, security, social, food, leisure etc
Space. For now this category is reserved for investors with huge balance sheets and very long horizons. But Moore’s law will catch up and humans will definitely be exploring space en masse.
Nanotech. Energy should be unlimited by then – or we will understand that energy ultimately is not an issue (ties in with space) – and with Moore’s law kicking in on being able to program on nano level, we will be able to program and alter biology, which will help with the aging population issue.

Some of these will perhaps take more than 10 years…

India may have plans to follow France’s footsteps in building a chat app and requiring government employees to use it for official communications.

The New Delhi government is said to be pondering about the need to have homegrown email and chat apps, local news outlet Economic Times reported on Thursday.

The rationale behind the move is to cut reliance on foreign entities, the report said, a concern that has somehow manifested amid U.S.’s ongoing tussle with Huawei and China.

“We need to make our communication insular,” an unnamed top government official was quoted as saying by the paper. The person suggested that by putting Chinese giant Huawei on the entity list, the U.S. has “set alarm bells ringing in New Delhi.”

India has its own ongoing trade tension with the U.S. Donald Trump earlier this month removed the South Asian nation from a special trade program after India did not assure him that it will “provide equitable and reasonable access to its markets.” India called the move “unfortunate”, and weeks later, increased tariffs on some U.S. exports.

The move to step away from foreign communication apps, if it comes to fruition, won’t be the first time a nation has attempted to cautiously restrict usage of popular messaging apps run by foreign players in government offices.

France launched an encrypted chat app — called Tchap — for use in government offices earlier this year. Only those employed by the French government offices can sign up to use the service, though the nation has open sourced the app’s code for the world to see and audit.

Of course, a security flaw in Tchap came into light within the first 24 hours of its release. Security is a real challenge that the government would have to tackle and it might not have the best resources — talent, budget, and expertise — to deal with it.

China, which has restricted many foreign companies from operating in the nation, also maintains customized versions of popular operating systems for use in government offices. So does North Korea.

It won’t be an unprecedented step for India, either. The nation has been trying to build and scale its own Linux-based desktop operating system called BOSS for several years with little success as most government agencies continue to use Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

Even as India has emerged as the third-largest startup hub in the world, the country has failed to build local alternatives for many popular services. Facebook’s WhatsApp has become ubiquitous for communication in India, while Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows power most smartphones and computers in the nation.

Warburg Pincus, the private equity fund with over $60 billion under management, is doubling down on Asia after it announced a $4.25 billion fund dedicated to China and Southeast Asia.

The firm has been present in China for 25 years, and it has invested over $11 billion in a portfolio of over 120 startups that includes the likes of Alibaba’s Ant Financial and listed companies NIO (a Tesla rival), ZTO Express (a courier firm)among others. The new fund will work in tandem with the firm’s $14.8 billion global growth fund which was finalized at the end of last year.

What’s particularly interesting about the new fund is that it has expanded to include Southeast Asia, where internet adoption is rapidly expanding among 600 million consumers, for the first time. It is the successor to Warburg Pincus’ previous $2.2 billion ‘China’ fund and, with the addition of Southeast Asia, it’ll aim to build on initial investments in the region that have included Go-Jek in Indonesia (although it is going regional) and Vietnamese digital payment startup Momo from its Singapore office.

Indeed, the firm’s head of Southeast Asia — Jeff Perlman — said in a statement that Southeast Asia is “exhibiting many of the strong investment themes and trends which have driven our China business over the last 25 years.”

While there is plenty of uncertainty around China, and more widely Asia, due to the ongoing trade battle with the U.S. — which has ensnared Huawei and other tech firms — Warburg Pincus said it had received strong demand for LPs whilst out raising this new fund.

Though it declined to provide details of its backers — and you’d wager that few, if any, are U.S-based — it said it surpassed its initial target of $3.5 billion for the China-Southeast Asia fund. That’s despite evidence suggesting that China’s investment space is experiencing a slowdown in total funding raised despite more deals.

In terms of target investments, the firm said it intends to focus on areas including consumer and services, healthcare, real estate, financial services and TMT — technology, media and telecommunications.

Warburg Pincus is already one of the largest investors in Southeast Asia in terms of potential check size, although it has been fairly selective on deals at this point. The fund’s move to include the region alongside will be a boon for companies looking for growth-stage deals that are hard to find in the current venture capital ecosystem.

More broadly, it is also a major endorsement for Southeast Asia as a startup destination. The region has long been seen as having immense growth potential, but it often sits in the shadows of more mature regions like India and China.

Warburg isn’t alone in grouping Southeast Asia with another region. Sequoia’s India fund reaches into Southeast Asia — alongside its recently-launched accelerate program — as does the most recent fund from Vertex Ventures.

On the other side, a number of Chinese funds are increasingly doing deals in the region and setting up shop in Singapore. Those include GGV which has backed startups like fintech company Thunes, Ant Financial-backed fund BAce Capital and ATM Capital, which helps Chinese companies expand into and localize in Southeast Asia.

Alibaba and JD.com have been in a war over the Chinese e-commerce space for a decade or so, but a third player called Pinduoduo has managed to shake up the duopoly in recent times. The startup, which was founded in 2015 by an ex-Googler and went public on the Nasdaq last July, has further flexed muscles during the recent “6/18” shopping spree.

According to data provider QuestMobile, Pinduoduo’s daily active users have outnumbered JD’s for at least the past 12 months, and it came out of the mid-year sales festival — first popularized by JD as a counterpart to archrival Alibaba’s “11/11” shopping day — with 135 million DAUs.

JD, in comparison, ended with 88 million DAUs and Alibaba’s Taobao retained its top spot at 299 million. That result further solidified Pinduoduo’s position as China’s second-biggest ecommerce company by number of users.

The boom of Pinduoduo is in part attributable to ties with its investor Tencent — also a backer of JD — which enables it to sell via WeChat’s lite app and tap the giant’s vast social network. Alibaba, on the other hand, has for years been prevented from selling through WeChat.

In terms of sales, Pinduoduo still remains some miles behind JD, which focuses on large-ticket items like home appliances and targets China’s urban, deep-pocketed shoppers. Pinduoduo took a more rural tack and has built a reputation for hawking ultra-cheap goods at small-city consumers.

In 2018, Pinduoduo racked up 471.6 billion yuan ($68.6 billion) in gross merchandise volume, a somewhat problematic term for gauging sales as it totals the value of orders placed, regardless of whether they are actually sold, delivered or returned. (Alibaba stopped revealing GMV a few years ago.) JD’s GMV was almost four times that of Pinduoduo at 1.68 trillion yuan ($243.9 billion) last year.

One has to keep in mind that JD is a 21-year-old firm born out of the PC era, whereas Pinduoduo has been up and running on mobile for less than four years. The startup’s continued growth is undeniable. In a March report, investment bank UBS’s Evidence Lab predicted that Pinduoduo could overtake JD in GMV as early as 2021.

But Pinduoduo’s story is not all roses. Currently trading at $20.54, its stock has plunged about 35 percent since a March high. The online marketplace has also been chided for selling counterfeits and subpar goods, an endemic problem that’s long plagued Chinese e-commerce. This year Pinduoduo was put on the U.S. government’s “notorious” blacklist alongside rival Alibaba for selling fakes, while the company claims it’s actively working to root out problematic listings.

If you’re an Instagram user, chances are you’ve encountered a ton of ads for companies trying to sell products directly to consumers, using social networks as storefronts paired with online stores. French startup Taster is doing the same thing with restaurants built specifically for food delivery startups.

The startup raised an $8 million funding round from Battery Ventures, with existing investors Heartcore Capital, LocalGlobe, GFC and Marc Ménasé investing again.

Taster is creating native brands for Deliveroo, UberEats or Glovo in Europe. The company has launched three different brands — Mission Saigon, O Ke Kai and Out-Fry. These restaurants don’t have any tables, they’re basically kitchens for food delivery. They even have multiple addresses in the same city.

So far, the startup has delivered 400,000 meals in Paris, London and Madrid. And Taster now tries to predict trends to order just the right amount of food for a specific day. There are 115 full-time employees working for the company, including 100 people in the kitchens.

With today’s funding round, the company plans to launch three new brands and open more kitchens. In order to scale more rapidly, the company doesn’t handle real estate itself. Taster now relies on third-party companies, such as Travis Kalanick’s CloudKitchens.

By focusing as much as possible on creating brands and cooking food, Taster can quickly scale and compete aggressively with more traditional restaurants.

The company doesn’t have to manage deliveries, which is an advantage over full-stack startups like Frichti. And unlike traditional restaurants, Taster doesn’t have to rent expensive locations and hire waiters.