SoftBank-backed e-commerce platform Brandless shuts down – TechCrunch
San Francisco-based Brandless, an e-commerce platform that sells a variety of cruelty-free products, is the latest of SoftBank Vision Fund-backed company to face trouble that eventually led to its shutdown.
The update will lead to further scrutiny over SoftBank Vision Fund’s reputation. When SoftBank made its investment into Brandless, TechCrunch dubbed it as a “surprising development” as the company was considered “relatively nascent” to raise such a big amount of funding. Once again this is a lesson on the importance for startups to have a build a strong brand presence before scaling their business, and for investors to ensure that process.
What happened to WeWork in 2019 had led to a growing trend of investors expecting a clear path towards profitability from its portfolio. This latest development will further strengthen that awareness and demand.
Video platform Clipchamp raises US$8.8M in Series A funding round – Press Release
Australian video creation platform Clipchamp announced an AU$13.2 million (US$8.8 million) Series A funding round led by Tola Capital with participation from TEN13 and existing investors.
With the funding round, the company also announced that it has reincorporated in the US while its headquarters will remain in Brisbane, Australia.
As a video creation platform, Clipchamp enables creators to produce a video without having to rely on expensive or complicated equipment or software. This investment showed once again that content is king –particularly video content. Especially since the company itself stated that the video content creation market is now an AU$135 billion industry with 720,000 hours of new content updated on YouTube every day.
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Circles.Life raises funding round by Warburg Pincus, reportedly closer to unicorn status – e27
Singapore-based digital telco startup Circles.Life has raised an undisclosed funding round which was reported by Tech In Asia to have brought the company “closer” to the unicorn status.
Once again this indicates Southeast Asia’s strength as a market in drawing investors’ interest, as global investors continued to invests a large amount of funding into growth-stage companies. However, as predicted in a report by Cento Ventures, in the upcoming years, this type of funding might become rarer as investors will focus more on investing in more early-stage companies –with smaller ticket size.
Medicinal cannabis startup HempStreet raises US$1M in Pre-Series A – Tech In Asia
India-based healthcare startup HempStreet, which focuses on research and retail of cannabis for Ayurvedic medicine, has raised US$1 million in pre-series A funding round led by US-based pharmatech firm Pharmacon and private investor Romain Barberis.
This is a relatively exciting update for an Asia-based cannabis startup, and it is in line with the potential of the global medicinal cannabis industry. Even within Southeast Asia, countries such as Thailand had seen a “green gold rush” following the recent legalisation of cannabis use.
HempStreet will not be the last Asia-based startup to raise funding. However, this development will certainly be limited to markets where the use of medicinal cannabis is legal.
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