Also, four Asian startups represent the region at NTT Data Open Innovation Contest and dual-managed medtech fund closes at US$50 million

Four startups to represent Asia at NTT DATA Open Innovation Contest 7.0 on March 22 — [Press Release}

Companies from China, Singapore, Japan and India will be representing Asia at a global pitching contest that spanned 15 countries across the world between December to March.

The Asia representatives (and a one-sentence descriptor) are as follows:

Institute of Software CAS [China]

• A behaviour analytics company that tries to detect emergency illness or death before it occurs

FOMO Pay [Singapore]

• FOMO Pay is a payments company that lets people use a QR-code to accept money from a wide variety of sources

Ftcash [India]

• An online payments and loans platform for extremely small companies (1-3 employees)

Cinnamon [Japan]

• An AI-based company that reads documents and extracts/files useful information to speed up the filing process

NTT Data is a Japanese IT service provider that is publicly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Golden Gate Ventures said to be raising US$100 million — [Bloomberg]

Golden Gate Ventures, of the most famous VC funds in Singapore, is raising a US$100 million fund that is targetting its first close at the end of March and the final close at the end of 2018, according to Bloomberg.

The VC plans to use the money to target e-commerce companies, payments services and mobile apps.

The fund would be the firm’s third. The most previous fund closed at US$60 million and the first was worth US$10 million. According to Crunchbase, Golden Gate has four exits (RedMart, POPAPP, Noonswoon and HUBBA).

Co-working space Outpost continues expansion across Indonesia — [Press Release]

The Indonesian co-working and co-living space, Outpost, announced today it is expanding to a third location in Canggu, Bali.

The company has facilities in Ubud, Bali and Phnomn Penh, Cambodia.

““This strategy places us at the forefront of the global trend towards digital nomadism and destination coworking, and the phenomenal growth of the coworking movement in Asia,” said Bryan Stewart the Co-founder of Outpost in a statement.

“We believe our unique neighborhood approach to offering our members combined coworking, coliving and colearning packages sets us apart from others in the field, with our Life Design Lab professional development program fully integrated as part of our membership options.”

MDI Ventures leads US$10M post-Series A funding round for Australia’s Whispir – [e27]

From our article: Corporate venture capital firm MDI Ventures, which operates under state-owned telco Telkom Group, announced that it has led a US$10 million post-Series A funding round in Australian communications platform Whispir. Existing investors Telstra Ventures and NSI Ventures also participated in the current round, which will be used to expand to Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries.

Previously, Whispir has opened an office in Singapore to support innovation and expansion in the region.

Whispir is described as a cloud platform that automates communication process, making it easier to businesses to effectively interact with staffs, business partners, and clients. Whispir implements artificial intelligence (AI), IoT, and data analytics in developing their products.

Tikehau Capital and SPRIM Ventures close US$50 million in medtech fund — [DealStreetAsia]

Tkehau Capital and SPRIM Ventures have announced the first close of a dual-managed healthcare fund at US$50 million, according to DealStreetAsia.

The VC fund will be focussing on early-stage funding and cheques could be in the range of US$500,000 and US$5 million. Running medtech companies is often far more expensive than other sectors.

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