The announcement of the office expansion of Nest Tech VN

Our company would like to announce the expansion of its corporate office from July 1, 2020.

In order to meet the needs of expanding the scale of operations as well as increasing the number of employees, our company will expand an office in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City.

At the new office, we will be fully equipped with facilities as well as an airy working space, beautiful view, creating the most comfortable and convenient working environment for our employees.

Due to the expansion of the office, we will update some information about the address and phone number as follows:

Headquarter: T1-A01.01 M-One Apartment, 35/12 Be Van Cam Street, Tan Kieng Ward, District 7, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Customer Service and Operations: Ben Thanh Tower, 136-138 Le Thi Hong Gam Street, Nguyen Thai Binh Ward, District 1, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Hotline: (+84) 28 3535 4029

Thank you for always accompanying, caring for and loving Nest Tech VN!

Working space

Call center and Customer service

Meeting room

Rest room for staff

Yangon Broom raises funding led by Yangon Capital Partners to launch mobile app, training school

Yangon Broom, a Myanmar-based company, today announced that it has raised an undisclosed third funding round led by Yangon Capital Partners, the investment arm of a financial advisory company Trust Venture Partners.

Other backers include existing investors such as Emerging Markets Entrepreneurs (EME) and Nest Tech VN, who had previously invested a five-figure funding round in the startup in August 2019.

The new capital will be used by the startup to launch a training school that will train people in high-quality cleaning services. It is also set to launch its own mobile app.

Yangon Broom is an on-demand quality household cleaning service

Founded in 2016, Yangon Broom is an on-demand quality household cleaning service, which manages hundreds of maids on their platform. Its clients range from households to SMEs and schools.

The funding comes at a time when the pandemic prompts the necessity of maintaining high levels of hygiene.

In addition to that, Yangon Broom also mentioned in a press statement that many cleaning companies are struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving households and SMEs with limited cleaning options at a time where cleanliness is increasingly important.

Shinsuke Goto, Managing Director of Yangon Capital Partners, said that the investor is attracted to the startup due to its positive customer reviews and “clear market trend” in outsourcing domestic help.

“It’s clear that the co-founders have the right values for this very people-oriented business, putting their maids first and ensuring that they are properly rewarded for their efforts,” he said.

Apart from Yangon Broom, Yangon Capital Partners has made several investments in Myanmar such as logistics company Konesi and lifestyle membership platform Flexible Pass.

Recent funding activity in Myanmar includes a US$600,000 funding round for telemedicine startup MyanCare.

Startups from other Southeast Asian markets have also begun seeing Myanmar as a potential market to expand to, such as Indonesia-based Svara, which has mentioned plan to enter Myanmar’s broadcast market following their recent funding round.

Source from e27.co

KoneSi - Myanmar startups receive investor funding to expand from Nest Tech VN

KoneSi, a Yangon-based on-demand trucking start-up, has received a six-digit sum investment for nationwide expansion of Trust Venture Partners, a local financial advisory firm, and Nest Tech, a Vietnam-based venture capital company.

This is the second round of investment for KoneSi after it initially received pre-seed funding from Phandeeyar in 2017, according to its release on Monday.

The start-up is planning to use the new funding in three strategic business areas-to boost the utilization of its technology platform, acquire talented staff, and expand to other commercial cities around the country to strengthen its user base.

Soe Pyae Aung, third from left, co-founder and chief operating officer of KoneSi Freight Co, joins his team in a group photo (Photo: supplied)

“We believe that understanding the power paradigm between the customers and truck suppliers is the key to success in the business,” said Ma Zar Phyu Tint Lwint, CEO of KoneSi.

“In addition to that, knowing the logistics freight flows throughout the year in the country is critical because that way we can help our partner truckers getting the return loads and operating efficiencies,” she said.

Businesses in Myanmar face difficulty in outsourcing transportation to third parties due to unreliability, lack of standardised procedures and non-transparent pricing among truckers, according to KoneSi.

Moreover, due to fluctuating transport pricing controlled by large trucking groups as well as unethical working nature, small fleet owners and individual truckers have to struggle to get regular jobs. KoneSi aims to bridge the gap between shippers and small fleet truckers.

“The services designed by market-savvy management will bring down logistics cost, a bottleneck of business operations across industries, and eventually benefit consumers in Myanmar” said Shinsuke Goto, managing director of YCP.

The ecosystem of KoneSi comprises more than 100 business shippers and over 2000 truckers; it also has an average month over month sales growth of 30 percent.

Before receiving investment from YCP and Nest Tech, KoneSi was first seeded by Phandeeyar, an early investor in Myanmar which has invested in KoneSi and 16 other local companies since 2016.

“Since they first joined Phandeeyar’s Startup Challenge 2017 and, later on, were invested by Phandeeyar in 2018, we’ve seen intense growth, both on them as founders and their startup as a business. This new round of investment reinforces our initial belief that they are on a path to positively transform the logistics industry in Myanmar “said João Dutra (Kyaw Aung), startup ecosystem director at Phandeeyar.

Just last week, Emerging Markets Entrepreneurs (EME), an early-stage venture capital firm, had also announced during its anniversary celebration on November 20 that it had invested a six-figure and five-figure sum respectively into two local startups: Natural Farm Fresh, a local company producing high-quality solar-dried chili powder and other dried products, and Yangon Broom, a home-services firm offering on-demand services including cleaning and ironing to residential homes and businesses.

Source from mmtimes.com

TrophyRoom secures another seed funding

TrophyRoom secures another seed funding for its third round from its existing investors.

TrophyRoom, Singaporean mobile football game, announces that it has received the third installment of its seed round from its existing investors. In its previous round, the company behind the game said that it focussed on building a minimum viable product, while this time they are eyeing global launch.

The company describes the TrophyRoom game as “taking the best parts of fantasy sports, shaving off some of the complexities, and adding a wonderfully stressful card game similar to Hearthstone on top.”

Nest Tech invests in TrophyRoom

Co-Founder and CEO Zacharias Tegefeldt elaborates: “There’s a void in the market for a social entertainment product that brings fans closer to the sport, the action – and to each other. We aim to fill that void and be there in your pocket whenever there’s a game on.”

TrophyRoom game puts players in the role of a club manager, allowing them to name the team, select the jersey colors, and start playing. Players are free to choose any real-world football player, even put Ronaldo and Messi in the same team, without any transfer budget restrictions, as long as they play a real-world match the same day.

Once the ultimate squad is formed, the player can challenge friends. When the real world matches start, the real action begins.

Players then must issue orders to your players by playing Tactics Card – a TrophyRoom’s feature. Each card comes with a potential gain and a potential loss, so it’s important to play the right card at the right time.

TrophyRoom supports all the major international football leagues, such as Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1, and plan to launch even more global leagues as they enter new markets.

Some of the game’s backers include Nest Tech, a Southeast Asian venture capital fund, focussing on seed-stage tech startups, as well as and Maxify, a Swedish tech investor focussing on social and gamified experiences.

Soe Moe Oo, Founder of Nest Tech and one of the early investors in TrophyRoom, says: “TrophyRoom caught my eye early on. I saw the social viral component and an unsatisfied growing global market with huge potential. The game is contagious, very hard not to play, for hardcore fans and casual followers alike.”

The company behind the game said that the product is currently in a pre-launch stage and TrophyRoom is recruiting heavily to their offices in Singapore and Ho Chi Minh City at the moment.

Source from e27.co

Nest Tech invests in Mote Poh

Mote Poh is a localised version of employee benefits programmes that leading companies in Singapore, the US and other countries have been using for decades.

(L-R) EME Myanmar’s Investment Manager Matthew Viner, and Mote Poh CEO Loring Harkness. EME Myanmar, a recently-launched early-stage VC fund, has led a six-digit seed round in Mote Poh, a Yangon-based employee-benefits-as-a-service startup in the country.

Nest Tech, a seed-stage VC fund focusing on technology startups in Myanmar, Vietnam and Singapore, also participated in the round.

Loring Harkness – Founder of Mote Poh

Founded in May 2018 by serial entrepreneur Loring Harkness, Mote Poh seeks to transform the HR industry by partnering with companies to recognise and reward employees. Currently based out of the Phandeeyar co-working space in downtown Yangon, Mote Poh is developing a mobile app, and expanding to other types of loyalty programmes.

According to Founder and CEO Harkness, Mote Poh is a localised version of employee benefits programmes that leading companies in Singapore, the US and other countries have been using for decades. Many companies in Myanmar provide employees with limited compensation packages: salary, personal income tax, social security contributions, and occasional ad hoc benefits like team dinners. At the same time, many companies have difficulty recruiting, recognising and rewarding, and retaining top talent.

“I spoke to dozens of company owners, CEOs and HR Managers. I asked them why they didn’t provide better benefits to their employees. Their answers were nearly all the same: they fear that implementing an employee benefits programme will be time consuming and expensive — and that employees wouldn’t appreciate it,” Harkness said.

“So I created Mote Poh — a small book full of 100 per cent free items and exclusive discounts at favourite shops, restaurants and activities across Myanmar — to help companies surprise and delight their employees every month. Mote Poh makes employee benefits easy — just great benefits employees love, with no hassle and no big price tag,” he added.

Mote Poh claims it has benefits for every taste and budget, and it is an effective tool to surprise and delight employees — which makes it easier and cheaper to recruit, recognise and reward, and retain staff.

Currently, Mote Poh serves over 60 clients, including Yoma Strategic Holdings and MyJobs.com.mm.

“In the years ahead, I see us partnering with leading employers to help them build truly inspiring places to work, which promote health, happiness and productivity, and then recognise and reward employees for great performance,” Harkness added.

Harkness has over eight years experience building, funding and mentoring impactful technology startups in Myanmar and across Southeast Asia. He was formerly Country Director of Building Markets, an international NGO focused on building Myanmar’s startup community. His previous ventures include Ngwe.Su, focusing on prize-linked savings accounts, ROSCAs and other financial inclusion tools for the under-banked, and Next Billion, which connects positive organizations to the next billion mobile consumers via mobile video, apps, and messaging platforms. He was also curator of TEDxYangon (2012) “People, Planet, Profit”.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts from St. Olaf College in the United States and a Master of Laws from Monash University in Australia.

Based in Yangon, EME focuses on ‘tech-plus’ companies that are layering technology on top of existing networks and industries. Since inception in October 2018, it has made two investments: CarsDB, Myanmar’s leading online car portal, as well as Joosk Studio, an animation studio producing digital content for Myanmar’s emerging consumers.

Nest Tech invests in and nurtures technology entrepreneurs at the seed and early growth stages, focusing on the fast growing markets of Southeast Asia. Its other investments include TrophyRoom, a peer-to-peer football gaming app in Singapore; Edu2Review, an education review platform in Vietnam; and Flexible Pass, a health and fitness app in Myanmar.

Source from e27.co

Nest Tech invests in Flexible Pass

The health and fitness platform from Myanmar Flexible Pass has completed its fundraising round worth of six-digit dollar closed by Nest Tech, a VC firm that actively backs startups in Myanmar, Vietnam, and Singapore. Participating in the round were Seed Myanmar and Yangon Capital Partners (YCP), which is the investment arm of the financial advisory firm, Trust Venture Partners (TVP).

Nest Tech invests in Flexible Pass

The company plans to use the funding to expand into new markets such as beauty & lifestyle and to cover neighbouring city Mandalay, the second largest city in population.

Flexible was founded in June 2017 by CEO Sully Bholat, CEO and Founder of Flexible Pass, who told e27 that he “was very inspired” by US-based fitness class subscription platform ClassPass in the US. When he saw a similar platform, GuavaPass, emerge in Asia, he started work on bringing his own version of it to Myanmar.

“I noticed there was no one else who’s doing a fitness startup in Myanmar at that time, and I see a big market opportunity there, so I tried to start it to get the first-mover advantage in the country,” he said.

The difference between Flexible Pass and the aforementioned fitness class platforms is that in place of a subscription package, users book classes on a “pay-as-you-go model with reload packages.”

“Our initial model was like a subscription-based model like ClassPass and GuavaPass but we quickly learned that users in Myanmar don’t like the idea of the subscription model and putting a a maximum limit on the number of times users can visit a studio in a month,” said Bholat.

There are currently 3 reload packages available for users to buy and they are 30 points, 50 points and 100 points where 1 point = US$1. All the points are valid for use for 6 months from the date of purchase. Users can pay for these packages using cash or bank transfers.

Flexible Pass has partnered with 80 gyms and fitness centres in Yangon. It currently has about 500 monthly active users with about 2,000 bookings made monthly.

Flexible Pass’ users take an average of 4 classes or fitness activities per month. Bholat claims that users can save up to 40 per cent by booking through the platform instead of paying the walk-in-rates of its partner fitness centres and gyms.

“We have over 1,000 unique users of Flexible Pass so far and about 10,000 bookings have been made so far since it officially launched on June 2017. Initially, the usage rate has been low but we have seen a big increase in growth in the year of 2018,” said Bholat.

The low usage the result of a chicken and egg problem: the company could not get enough users as there were few top fitness centres and gyms on the platform and the centres themselves were reluctant to sign up as there were few users.

Bholat believes that Flexible Pass will be able to hit profitability in two to three years.

Flexible Pass was a winner of Rice Bowl’s ‘Startup of the Year in 2017’ and ‘Best HealthTech Startup of the Year’ in 2017 and this year consecutively in Myanmar. It was also a graduate of Phandeeyar-based Founder Institute.

“Flexible Pass has huge potential to become a major regional player in this sector with its disruption in the traditional fitness industry. We look forward to being a part of the growth and success of this startup,” said Soe Moe Kyaw Oo, Founder and Managing Partner Nest Tech.

Source from e27.co

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