Oversubscribed round was led by Japan-based VC, Real Tech Holdings  Will to up 200MWh production capacity and scale up manufacturing VFlowTech, a Singapore-based provider of vanadium-based redox flow batteries, has raised US$10 million (RM43 million) in a Series A funding round.  Led by Japan-based venture capital (VC) firm Real Tech Holdings, the oversubscribed round was participated by returning investors ranging from corporate investors including SEEDS Capital, Wavemaker Partners and Sing Fuels to personal investors like Michael Gryseels (Chairman of VFlowTech ..read more

Big gap in fully understanding issues around sustainability and ESG Tech & digitalisation play big part in helping businesses & society adapt Information is key in times of crisis. The financial press in the U.K., for example, grew at a time when the economy was in crisis. What we know today as business journalism grew out of the need to understand what was happening in the economy. Journalists had to learn how to read financial statements and understand economics in a way that the rest of us take for granted. We are facing a new crisis now. And just like before, media outlets are ..read more

Anything you say, can, and will be used against you Former Petronas CEO Wan Zulkiflee, a casualty of tiny Exxon shareholder 97% of Malaysia’s top 100 companies include sustainability data in their annual reports. This is per KPMG’s Survey of Sustainability Reporting 2022 which analysed the annual reports of the top 100 companies in 58 countries. 97% sounds encouraging, seeing that Bursa Malaysia’s reporting requirements for all Main Market listed issuers won’t come into full effect until 2025. Quantity however is not the same as quality. KPMG’s Head of Sustainability Advisory in Malaysia ..read more

RM2bil loans disbursed to thousands of MSMEs across Malaysia & Indonesia Convenience of embedded finance will pave way for rise of invisible banking As the world becomes increasingly digital, gone are the days of physically going to a bank to conduct transactions or apply for loans. Instead, we can now do all of these things from the convenience of our mobile phones. This shift towards digital financial services has given rise to embedded finance, where financial products and services like lending, payment processing, or insurance are integrated into everyday non-financial businesses ..read more

It touts the longest battery life ever in a Mac Up to 6x faster performance than fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro Apple recently announced the new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro featuring M2 Pro and M2 Max, Apple’s next-generation pro silicon. The M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro are said to be able to render effects up to 6x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Pro and perform colour grading up to 2x faster. This is based on a comparison with the previous-generation 2.4GHz 8-core Intel Core i9-based 16-inch MacBook Pro systems with Radeon Pro 5600M graphics with 8GB HBM2, 64GB of RAM ..read more

Exemption for telcos & data centres on potential increase in power tariffs MyIX lowered port pricing by 33% last year to further benefit country ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be the hottest tech trends sweeping across the world but in Malaysia, the digital economy and increasing utilization of the internet are the two hot developments.  One recent data point shared last week by the Malaysia Internet Exchange (MyIX) attests to this. Demand for Internet bandwidth in the country continues to soar with a peak of 1.9 Tbps usage last month (December 2022). This was m ..read more

To expand digitalisation platform, improve existing products Closed initial US$2.7mil Series A2 from 4 investors in 2021  WhyQ, a digital innovation startup focused on helping micro-SMEs (MSMEs) digitise their business, has successfully secured an additional US$1.08 million (RM4.6 million) in an extension to its Series A2 funding round.  In a statement, the firm said the extended round was led by the Kairos FoodTech Fund of Kairos Capital Group, which previously invested in Good Meat, Roslin Technologies and Mission Barns.  It said the initial Series A2 round of US$2.7 ..read more

Aims to be profitable within 3 years by focusing on expanding reach In last 2 years, had an over four-fold increase in merchant acquisitions, revenue iSeller, Indonesia’s solutions platform for merchants, today announced the completion of a US$12 million (RM51.4 million) Series B round of financing led by Intudo Ventures, with participation from KVision (Kasikornbank), as well as existing investors Mandiri Capital Indonesia and Openspace Ventures. With this round of financing, iSeller plans to release a new version of its flagship products focusing on improved user expe ..read more

Aims to further develop its cybersecurity insurtech platform  Funds will go towards expanding services, deepen presence in Asia   Singapore-based cybersecurity firm Blackpanda has raised US$15 million (RM64.6 mil) in its Series A funding round co-led by Primavera Venture Partners and Gaw Capital Partners. San Francisco based WI Harper, also participated in this round. In a statement, the startup said this round will fund the expansion of its technology enabled cybersecurity services, including digital forensics and incident response.  It said the company will also furth ..read more

Claims JHB1 will be the most sustainable data centre in Malaysia Will be funded under AirTrunk’s sustainability linked loan framework Australian based Asia Pacific hyperscale data centre specialist, AirTrunk, announced last week its entry into Malaysia with plans to develop a Australian dollar multi-billion 150+ megawatt (MW) data centre. Named AirTrunk JHB1 (JHB1), the facility will be the company’s first in Malaysia and ninth in Asia Pacific with four in Australia, taking its data centre platform to over 1.35 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. AirTrunk is majority owned by Australia’s Macquarie ..read more