Weekly roundup: Malaysia’s B2B marketplace Lapasar raises $1.8m and other SE Asia deals

Weekly roundup: Malaysia’s B2B marketplace Lapasar raises $1.8m and other SE Asia deals

Weekly deal monitors that capture prominent venture capital transactions in Southeast Asia, Greater China, and India.

Lapasar, a B2B marketplace based in Kuala Lumpur, announced raising 7.5 million ringgit ($1.8 million) in its latest funding round led by shopper360 Limited, which is part of startup accelerator and investor NEXEA.

The startup, led by Thinesh Kumar, Lakshmandas, Dennis Raj, and Noomi Fessler, said it will use the fresh capital to accelerate the growth of its wholesale business. Lapasar targets serving 10,000 grocery stores, restaurants, and hawker stalls over the next 24 months.

Lapasar started entering the FMCG wholesale market only in June 2020, helping the company grow 172% year-on-year since its $500,000 seed funding in 2019.

The startup launched as a B2B marketplace that connects corporates to suppliers of products and services across Malaysia. It claims to have a database of over 10,000 suppliers of products and services from all over Malaysia.

SG fintech startup Few¢ents raises $1.6m in seed funding

Few¢ents, a Singapore-based fintech-for-media startup, announced raising $1.6 million in a seed funding round backed by venture capital firms M Venture Partners and Hustle Fund.

A host of angel investors, including Kenneth Bishop, former Facebook managing director for Southeast Asia, have participated in the fundraising that the startup said will finance the enhancement of its proprietary pay-per-content solution.

Founded by Abhishek Dadoo and Dushyant Khare, Few¢ents helps digital publishers unbundle and monetise premium content such as articles, videos, and podcasts via a pay-per-content service that sits on the publishers’ sites.

Khare led partnerships for Google with the region’s largest publishers for 13 years while Dadoo previously co-founded online-to-offline attribution platform Shoffr, which was acquired by Affle in 2019.

The startup currently works with publishers and media platforms across Asia and Europe, including India’s leading vernacular dailies Sakal and Dainik Jagran and Indonesian tech news platform DailySocial.

SOUTHEAST ASIA DEAL MONITOR

DealStreetAsia has also put together a table listing out prominent venture capital transactions in Southeast Asia in the week beginning May 3.

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