Business
Vietnam’s e-commerce platform Leflair allegedly owes US$2M liabilities to suppliers, customers
Leflair Vietnam, an e-commerce startup which ceased its local operations in February, is accused of owing US$2 million in liabilities to around 500 of its suppliers and many customers, Tuoi Tre News reported.
According to the suppliers, Leflair representatives admitted in a meeting that it is undergoing a capital crunch and is seeking funding from different investors.
The company also revealed that it only has less than US$50,000 in its cash account.
Founded in 2015, Leflair was started as an online platform with a flash-sales model and sourced goods from brands and official distributors such as Calvin Klein, Botanist, and Moleskin, and resold them to Vietnamese customers.
Before ceasing operation, Leflair raised US$7 million in Series B funding from Belt Road Capital Management and South Korean retailer GS Shop.
Coronavirus Drug Discovery competition reveals top 3 potential COVID-19 treatments
Sage Health, an organisation with a mission to help treat, prevent and cure all human diseases by the end of the 21st century, hosted Coronavirus Deep Learning Competition.
The competition has revealed its top three potential solutions identified from contestants, they are:
First place:
Matt O’Connor, Founder of Reboot.AI, Data Science Coach-based in Hong Kong and New York City.
Results: He identified Remdesivir as a potential COVID-2019 treatment, as well as a few other novel molecules that still need to be tested for synthetic feasibility, using a generative recurrent network trained on the Moses and ChemBL datasets which together represent about 4 million molecules to learn a representation, a compressed form, of all of them.
Second place: Thomas MacDougall, a graduate student in Computer Science at the University of Montreal.
Results: He identified a novel compound as a synthetically feasible potential treatment for COVID-2019by building a neural architecture using constrained graph variational autoencoder to generate molecules, and an edge memory neural network to classify them.
Third place: Tinka Vidovic, a PhD student at the Mediterranean Institute of Life Sciences based in Croatia.
Results: Vidovic identified Valproic Acid as potential treatments for COVID-2019 using a Connectivity map genome-scale library of cellular signatures that catalogues transcriptional responses to chemical, genetic, and disease perturbation her analysis. She also used a dataset called ‘Harmonizome’, which contains 72 million functional associations between genes and their attributes as a starting point.
Also Read: Keep calm and remain communicative: Startup founders share how they cope with coronavirus crisis
Sage Health was founded in February 2020 by Siraj Raval and Dr John Billings with a mission to assist healthcare providers in both volunteer and paid projects, involving its growing community in as many related initiatives as possible every step of the way.
The Coronavirus Competition is its first initiative, and it will be donating samples of the winning compound to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for further analysis.
Malaysia’s Cradle Fund reveals 5th cohort of Coach and Grow programme
Malaysia-based early-stage startup nurturer Cradle Fund announced a collaboration with Proficeo Consultants to launch the fifth instalment of Coach and Grow Programme (CGP)2020 to support the fast-growing innovation ecosystem in the country.
According to Digital News Asia’s article, CGP is a specialised coaching programme focussed on nurturing startups and growth-stage companies to get them on the path of sustainable revenue generation and scale.
The programme provides “show-how” techniques from successful entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate professionals who join the programme as coaches in order to Pay-It-Forward to the ecosystem.
Acting Group CEO of Cradle, Razif Abdul Aziz (pic) said the CGP’s goal is to help build and strengthen the capacity of local entrepreneurs and to accelerate the growth of Malaysian tech-companies.
Started in 2011, the CGP was the first long term coaching programme offering customised content and dedicated coaches for a period of 12 months.
This programme is fully mandated by the Government of Malaysia for high potential entrepreneurial ventures with the objective of creating a pipeline of high-quality companies that will grow and scale their businesses locally and regionally and attract investment and growth funds from funding agencies and investors.
Enrolment for CGP opens from March 6, 2020 with 100 places available for startups and growth-stage companies.
People
Co-founder of Bali-based creative community hub Rumah Sanur Arif Budiman passed away
One of three co-founders of Bali’s Rumah Sanur – Creative HubArif’ Ayip’ Budiman passed away yesterday at 10 pm local time at Puri Raharja Hospital, Denpasar, Bali. Budiman was known as a creative hustler in Bali’s startup scene and also Deputi Litbang (Head of Research and Development) of Indonesia Creative Cities Network (ICCN).
The deceased will be laid rest at Kampung Jawa Jalan Maruti 13, Denpasar at 1 pm local time today.
Also Read: Indonesia’s association for coworking spaces is officially launched
Rumah Sanur – Creative Hub was opened in June 2015. In line with the co-founder’s vision of fostering Indonesian makers and creatives, Rumah Sanur nurtured two startup businesses—Kopi Kultur, a coffee shop that works directly with Indonesian coffee farmers and To~Ko Concept Store, a store that presents designs by small-to-medium enterprises from across Indonesia with a focus on sustainability and upcycling.
Over time, as the website recorded, Teras Gandum, the Bali Export & Development Organisation, Rudolf Dethu Showbiz, and Chris the Barber joined the Rumah Sanur family.
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Picture Credit: Unsplash.com/Dimitri-Karastelev
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