Emerging Markets Roundup: July 5 - July 11 2023

Hi everyone, I’m Gautam. Every week I write the Spice Route newsletter, profiling tech in the five fastest growing regions in the world - India, SE Asia, MENA, Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America.

I’ve spent years immersed in these startup ecosystems as a founder and VC. If you’re a founder or PM building for these markets, or a VC looking to invest where the growth is, this newsletter is for you.

If you found this useful, share this with your friends and colleagues.

In Today’s Newsletter

🇮🇳 India’s EV market is on fire 🔥. In just 7 weeks, I’ve covered 11 deals and over $344M in funding for vehicles, batteries, charging infrastructure, and financing solutions. This week, Battery Smart joined the party with a $33M round from Tiger Global and others, tapping into the country’s fast-growing demand for electric vehicles.

🇸🇬 🇮🇩 🇻🇳 🇹🇭 South East Asia’s middle class is hungry for success 🚀. This week, edtech, fintech, and career platforms got funded to help them achieve their goals - Tuition centers, game-based learning for kids, financial education and wealth management, and career platforms to connect talent with jobs.

🇵🇪 Generative pie anyone? Peru’s NutriCo raises Pre-Series A funding to bring AI generated plant-based food to our tables.

🇨🇩 Is Kinshasa the next African tech hub? Nuru, a startup that provides off-grid solar power and internet access, has raised $40M in Series B funding from the IFC and others. The country has huge potential for tech innovation, with over 100M people, 60% of them under 25, and natural resources worth $24 trillion.

🇦🇪 🇸🇦 It was a quiet week for MENAP, with no funding activity recorded. The global funding slowdown has hit the region hard, with debt and grant funding rising to take its place.

Who’s Getting Funded

Local companies building for local markets.

We’re going to see the emergence of regional unicorns in sectors from fintech to agtech, driven by knowledge of local idiosyncrasies or protected by local regulation.

Agtech

🇮🇩 eFishery, an Indonesian company supporting aquaculture farmers through B2B and supplier marketplaces, smart feeding systems, and financing, has raised $200M in Series D financing from investors.

🇮🇩 Eratani, an Indonesian agtech startup providing farmer funding, supply chain management, crop distribution, and agricultural assistance, has raised $2M in Seed funding led by SBI Ven Capital.

🇵🇪 NutriCo, a Peruvian company using AI to develop plant-based foods, has raised $1M in Pre-Series A funding led by MrPink VC, White Lions, Terraflos Inc., and Artfo Holdings.

Cleantech

🇨🇩 Nuru, a Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) based solar mini grid company has raised $40M in Series B funding led by the IFC.

🇸🇬 Blue Planet Environmental Solutions, a Singaporean waste management and upcycling company, has raised $5M in funding from investors.

E-Commerce and E-Commerce Enablement

🇮🇳 SmartDukaan, a technology enabled retailer selling smartphones to urban, semi-urban and rural India, has raised $10M in Pre-Series A funding led by Findoc Finvest.

Edtech

🇸🇬 Zenith Learning Group, a Singaporean company operating offline tuition centers in the country, has raised $1.4M in Seed funding led by Trihill Capital.

🇮🇳 ZuAI, an Indian AI powered personal tutor for students, has raised ~$486K in Seed funding led by Prime Venture Partners.

🇮🇩 SoLeLands, an Indonesian immersive game-based learning platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding led by East Ventures.

Fintech

🇳🇬 Moove, a Nigerian embedded finance platform for ride-hailing, e-logistics, and instant delivery companies to underwrite loans to drivers, has raised $8M in funding from Absa Corporate and Investment Banking (CIB).

🇹🇭 Finnomena, a Thai company building a personalized wealth management platform, has raised $5.5M in Series B+ funding led by Openspace Ventures.

🇻🇳 Stag, a Vietnamese financial education platform, has raised $600K in Seed funding from Viet Capital Ventures and NH Securities Vietnam.

HRTech

🇸🇬 Impress.ai, a Singaporean AI-powered chatbot for recruiters, has raised $6M in Series A funding from Seeds Capital and others.

🇳🇬 Propel, a Nigerian all-in-one talent platform to empower developer groups, talent incubators, training schools, and other developer communities, has raised $2.76M in Seed funding led by No Such Ventures.

🇸🇬 NodeFlair, a Singaporean career advancement platform offering job listings and reviews of companies, has raised $2M in Series A funding led by Iterative.

🇮🇩 KarirLab, an Indonesian career platform for university students and new graduates, has raised an undisclosed amount in Pre-Seed funding led by Alpha JWC Ventures and M Venture Partners.

Mobility

🇮🇳 Battery Smart, an Indian startup offering battery-swapping services for electric two and three wheelers, has raised $33M in Pre-Series B funding from Tiger Global, Blume Ventures, and others.

Local companies building for global markets.

The pandemic accelerated two ongoing trends; product-led growth and a digital go-to-market became the norm, and enterprises had to digitize faster than ever. Community driven growth happens online, and the API-fication of tech has leveled the playing field when it comes to building software. Global companies in business automation, software and data infrastructure, AI, future of work, and web3 can now be built from anywhere.

Horizontal SaaS

🇸🇬 5x, a Singaporean end-to-end data platform built on the modern data stack, has raised $3M in funding led by Flybridge.

IoT, Hardware and Networking

🇨🇴 Somos Internet, a Colombian networking and telecom company providing stable, high speed internet, has raised $13.4M in Seed funding led by Nazca, K50, Daedalus Ventures, and Kaszek.

🇸🇬 Nami, a Singaporean AI driven IoT Platform, has raised $10.5M in Series A funding from Verizon Ventures and other investors.

Web3

🇮🇳 Shardeum, an Indian web3 company building a layer-1 blockchain smart contract platform on Ethereum, has raised $5.4M in funding from J17 Capital and others.

Who’s Investing

🇸🇬 Singapore based Vertex Ventures, the VC arm of state investor Temasek, has marked the first close of its Master Fund III at $900M.

🇰🇷 South Korea based Shinhan Venture Investment has earmarked 50% of its $200M flagship global fund for investments in South East Asia.

🇹🇭 🇸🇬 The Radical Fund, a Thailand and Singapore based early stage venture capital firm investing in cleantech in South East Asia, hits the first close of $40M for its new fund.

🇮🇳 Hosts of the 100x Entrepreneur, an Indian podcast, have launched a new $25M fund to invest in B2B SaaS startups.

🇮🇳 Gruhas and Collective Artists Network have launched an India focused startup fund to invest in consumer facing brands and products.

🇨🇳 🇸🇬 HongShan, the Chinese unit of Sequoia, is setting up shop in Singapore to invest in South East Asia.

Place of the Week

There’s a whole world out there to explore. Here’s a guide to visiting Belo Horizonte.

Thank you for reading 🙏 

This newsletter is very early, and I’m exploring taking this in multiple different directions.

If you found this useful, share this with your friends and colleagues. 

Best,

Gautam