News

Lendela - Series A

Nov 2023 - Lendela has raised a USD 5m Series A round led by Chocolate Ventures. Happy to say that Investigate VC also participated in this round. Lendela is an online platform for you to find the best loan with one application - free of charge and with no hidden fees. Currently in three markets; Singapore, HK, and now also Australia.

See also Tech in Asia

Healthtech investment!

Nov 2023 - In only 4 minutes - diagnose a person's mental health state and and any issues for early treatment and have a more healthy and productive organisation - and avoid potentially larger consequences for the individual and the organisation. This investment is for the time being under wraps - watch this space for more information soon.

A storm is here - TechStorm!

Mar 2023 - We are very proud to announce that we have invested in the great team at TechStorm. Being the 14th investment in Investigate VC’s five year long history, it also marks the 7th investment in a founder team with a woman - 50% of our portfolio companies now have a female founder or co-founder. The CEO and Co-Founder Debbie Lee is contributing to this achievement. Speaking about achievements; since their launch in 2019 TechStorm has managed to grow from zero to 71m streaming subscribers and over 15m subscriber TV households in 11 countries in Asia! They will organise their inaugural SUMMIT X, a power packed business conference with C-Suite thought leaders across deep tech, AI, Esports and Finance in May 2023.  We look forward to working with Debbie and the team at TechStorm as they continue to deliver amazing results - much more to come!

Investigate VC - 2022 rewind

Dec 2022 - Hope everyone is having a good ending to yet another ‘different’ year. Here is a short summary of some 2022 highlights for Investigate VC:


AWST - A gateway into the NFT world

May 2022 - Despite the recent market crash, NFT still shows no sign of stopping. Along with other notable investors in the round, we are very excited to announce our 13th portfolio company: AWST.

AWST provides a superior user experience for brands, corporates, and ad agencies to familiarise themselves with the key aspects of interacting with Web3 and owning NFTs. They have built an open ecosystem with options to interact with interoperable platforms such as OpenSea, for newcomers and power users alike. AWST had 15 inbound large brands with 93% conversion rate in the past 6 weeks, their platform and NFT SaaS tools allow brands, corporates, and ad agencies to launch collections without hassle, and help users to reduce complicated processes, making the entire transaction process quick and convenient.

Investigate VC - 2021 Rewind

Jan 2022 - To welcome 2022 and in expectation of further achievements in the new year - I thought that I would make a short summary of some 2021 highlights for Investigate VC:

Quincus Series B - GGV | Boeing

Nov 2021 - Quincus announced the completion of Series B. The funding round catapults the company's valuation to over USD 100m. The investment round was led by UP.Partners and AEI HorizonX (Boeing CVC), with participation from existing investor GGV Capital

In little over a year Quincus has completed pre-Series A, Series A and now Series B fundraising rounds - which reflects the tremendous growth path the company is on and the investors’ confidence in Quincus. The company will continue to build on the advantages of the platform's supply chain innovative technology to reshape the movement of goods and commerce globally. Quincus provides the logistics industry with an end-to-end (from pick-up to delivery) machine-learning-enabled platform that optimizes and automates shipping operations.

See also PR Newswire  | Technode 

Portcast @ Pre-Series A

Sep 2021 - Super excited to announce that Portcast is doing their Pre-Series A. Investigate VC has been a keen supporter from day one, investing in their Seed round (2018). Portcast  is through their product helping customers within the supply chain making sense of what is happening in the world of transport, both maritime and air freight. Incredible work by the founders Nidhi Gupta and Lingxiao Xia!

As they say in Scandinavia; Hip, hip, hurra!

See also TechCrunch | Fortune

Cambridge Capital x Softbank

Aug 2021 - Much has happened since Investigate VC invested in Parcel Perform in their Seed round in 2018. The awesome work by Arne and Dana (the founders) and the team they built has resulted in great financial and product traction, and now recognised to the extent that two premier VCs are participating in the Series A round; Cambridge Capital (lead) and Softbank.

Congratulations!

See also TechCrunch | The Business Times | Tech in Asia

Cove x Keppel Land = Series A

Dec 2020 - Since Investigate VC and Venturra led the seed round in 2019 much has happened with Cove. Cove has expanded to Indonesia and are quickly heading towards 1,000 rooms. This has led to them successfully raising a USD 4.6m series A round, despite the pandemic, with investors like Keppel Land (lead), Idinvest, and Venturra participating.

A huge congratulations to the awesome founders and team at Cove!

See also e27 | Business Times

Founder of the year!

Nov 2020 - Congratulations to Jonathan E. Savoir at Quincus which is a very worthy winner. Proud to say that Quincus is a portfolio company of Investigate VC. Here are the criteria for the awards:

"TechNode Global presented the ORIGIN Innovation Awards to outstanding startups, corporates, ecosystem enablers, and movers and shakers in Asia who are poised for growth. Nominations were evaluated based on criteria such as value proposition, strength of technology product, company growth potential, and the leadership capability."

I understand why Jonathan won :) and very happy that we could support him, Katherina-Olivia Lacey and rest of the great team at Quincus! Read more about the award here.

Quincus - Enabling carriers!

Jul 2020 - Along with other VCs and angel investors we are very excited to announce Quincus as our 12th portfolio company. There are a lot of logtech companies out there that are trying to make the supply chain better, most are however drawing their data from carriers that have legacy systems that are not built for the volume, transparency, and speed needed to ensure efficient and effective handling of parcels in today's world. Quincus delivers an end-to-end solution for the carrier industry; first- to last mile handling of parcels and containers. In addition they offer intelligence and optimisation that has real effect for the quality of service and for the bottom line.


StoryBrain - Better UI by AI

Mar 2020 - We are very pleased to announce that our 11th investment is another Antler grown company; StoryBrain is improving user engagement by evolving content with the help of AI. Visual content take almost all of our interfaces and can influence how one experience a website or app! StoryBrain deliver better versions of your own images to your users and customers.

We are very excited to support the founders Jikku Jose and Jibin Mathew, and the rest of the highly competent team. They have from day one got attention from large regional and global players. Can't wait to share more on what they are doing.

Aurigin - Need capital?

Mar 2020 - Aurigin is the world’s first deal origination platform to use a complex algorithmic approach to match middle-market corporates seeking capital with the most relevant providers of capital anywhere in the world. Aurigin helps members raise capital, buy and sell companies, locate potential investments and new clients.

We are very proud to support the founder Mr Romesh Jayawickrama and his team at Aurigin to continue to build on what is now the largest mid-market platform for capital raise and M&A. 

Cove – Redefining co-living

7 Oct 2019 - Guillaume, Luca, and Sophie has managed to reach yet another milestone in building the greatest shared living space company in SEA; COVE – they raised USD 2m from high quality VCs like Venturra Discovery, Picus Capital, and The Xander Group Inc. Venturra and Investigate VC co-lead the seed round.

Very happy to have founders like Guillaume Castagne, Luca Bregoli, and Sophie Jokelson to join the Investigate VC portfolio. COVE is one of the companies coming out of the first cohort of Antler, a company generator and one of Investigate’s portfolio companies – great to see how an investment is creating great investment opportunities for Investigate VC!

KlikDaily – Building a retail chain through an app

7 Oct 2019 - We’re proud to join Indonesia-based Klikdaily in revolutionizing local traditional merchant businesses in Indonesia through our investment in the company. Klikdaily is an on-demand eCommerce app that simplifies the US$12 billion FMCG supply chain from an end-to-end perspective between retail brands, merchants and consumers in Indonesia.

The company was founded by CEO Amos Gunawan and CTO Indra Dhanurendra. Amos is an entrepreneur with more than eight years of diverse experience ranging from primary, industrial, and service sectors in Indonesia. He has worked with some international corporations i.e. Total E&P and Astra International. Indra has more than ten years of IT experience and he serves as a mentor of UMN (University of Media Nusantara) incubator under Sky Star venture.

Lendela – Revolutionising the consumer loan process

Oct 2019 - Lendela

Lendela is making the above possible by having a close relationship with the banks and lending institutions and using their proprietary data algorithms to pre-qualify consumers - with just a few questions. It is not only new consumer loans they can help you with, they also help you consolidate your loans and lower your expenses, by connecting you with the right lender and simplifying the process.

As you probably can tell, we are very excited to welcome Lendela as a portfolio company in Investigate. Mr Nima Karima, Founder and CEO, and his excellent team has already launched in Singapore and Hong Kong.

GrowthDesk - Successful launch of their retail product SKALE

Sep 2019 - GrowthDesk

Above are only some of the results achieved in just a couple of months after the soft launch of GrowthDesk’s retail digital marketing product, SKALE. GrowthDesk is the new umbrella brand for DREA (property) and SKALE (retail) – the great team is still the same, although quickly expanding to keep up with the fast growth of the company. They are managing the impossible; to address the SME market in a profitable way! SMEs also represents 90% of the market.

Thanks to Yuet, CEO and Co-Founder, and the rest of the team at GrowthDesk for great work – I am very happy to ride along on this fast and exciting journey!

GrowthDesk is an industry-specific marketing automation platform built for the other 90% of advertisers; the small to medium business owners. GrowthDesk is a portfolio company of Investigate VC.

Antler – From 0 to 8 in a year!

July 2019 - Antler

Antler is an example of what a truly great team can achieve. Seeing the 3rd cohort (picture) kicking off this week in Singapore made me think back on the above achievements – it both humbles and inspires me! Very grateful to watch this up close and be a very small part of it (investor and advisor).

Antler is a portfolio company of Investigate VC.

GrowthDesk x OrangeTee

July 2019 - GrowthDesk

This is just a taste of the scale and possibilities the exclusive partnership between OrangeTee and GrowthDesk's DREA product is enabling. Mr Tan Steven, MD at OrangeTee, and Ms Yuet Whey Siah, CEO and Founder at GrowthDesk, together with their respective teams, are behind this collaboration that are two great examples of companies that is not standing still but rather embrace new technology and the possibilities it offer their companies. GrowthDesk is not limiting their offering to the property industry, they are now also a catalyst for driving online and offline growth for the retail sector.

Very proud to have GrowthDesk as part of the portfolio of Investigate VC!

Antler - 7th location, 5th continent!

May 2019 - Antler

Do you want to…

Check out Antler! In only 18 months, they have started up programs in seven locations on five continents; Singapore, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Sydney, London, Kenya, and New York.

Antler made it to Forbes magazine after only a couple of weeks on the ground in the new Brooklyn, NY location! Huge congratulations to Tyler Norwood, Partner at Antler NY, and Magnus Grimeland, CEO and Founder, and the rest of the Antler team. Amazing what they have accomplished in such a short time.

Antler is one of Investigate VC’s portfolio companies.

Do You Want to be a Millionaire?

Jan 2019 - Panya Studios

That could be one of the questions on an app that Panya’s real time interactive media solution provide support for. We’re thrilled to announce our latest investment in BKK based Panya Studios, which created the most popular app in SEA in 2018. Panya Studios is a perfect fit to our business model focus, network orchestrator, enabling media companies and content creators in building their own interactive low latency shows at broadcast scale – which means that these shows would be able to attract a broader range of users, even those without fast internet connections.

The company was founded by CEO Geir Windsvoll, CPO Jakob Lykkegaard Pedersen, and CTO Rathakit Nopparangsritananon. Prior to Panya, Geir was the founder and managing partner of Santora Nakama, a SG/BKK based startup studio focused on building founder startups from scratch. Jakob built and sold two companies originated in Bangkok,  Playlab and Pagemodo. Playlab was the biggest independent mobile game developer in South East Asia, managing 28 million players worldwide and was in 2017 acquired by Chilindo. Rathakit has 10 years of experience in software and mobile application development both for Android and IOS system in many IT/Tech companies including Agoda and several startups in Singapore and Thailand.

“2018 was extremely challenging, yet thrilling – growing to 2 million users in 10 months – we amassed some amazing learnings. In 2019, we need to grow 20X to reach our goals”, says CEO and Co-founder Geir Windsvoll. “We’re very excited about the mixed media and the amazing opportunities that this new format gives. Imagine having million of users engaged in the same millisecond, imagine what you can do.  Outside of the Trivia template, there are still many possibilities to do thousands of variations. If you are a premier league fan, you have a very different experience playing a Premiere Trivia mid-game rather than a traditional Trivia or e.g. Asia Got talent Trivia following the traditional episodes on TV.”

Milestone: Antler's first demo day

Jan 2019 - Antler

These are just some of the impressive stats from Antler‘s first demo day last week at Google‘s South East Asia’s HQ. Fantastic work by the whole team – and this is just the beginning; Stockholm started their first cohort last week, within May this year Amsterdam, London, and Sydney will welcome their first talents (even more locations will soon be announced). Soon Antler will help generate hundreds of startups every year, disrupting industries!

All this enabled by the great founding team; Magnus Grimeland, Fridtjof Berge, Vegard Medbø, Jussi Salovaara, Dilan Mizrakli Landgraff, Lisa Enckell, and several others.

The 13 impressive companies from the first cohort of Antler presenting were: Sampingan, Panya Studios, Cove Living, All Woman Co., AutoSahulat, Cognicept Systems, EduCredit.ph, Eureca, Gardoré, Josudo, Motoran Technology, Robin (HireRobin), and YoRipe.

Vikings @ Breakfast!

Sep 2018 - event

The Vikings are raiding Singapore – come join us for a hearty breakfast and inspirational talk and panel debate that makes you ready to raid all day long 🙂

Paulina Fogel VP Strategic Accounts at Trax, is telling their great story!

The panel will shed some light on how to succeed in the bustling startup scene in Singapore! The panelists include Matti Junila, Head of Southeast Asia at Smartly, Nima Karimi, COO and Co-founder at Lendela, HuiLin Chin 陈慧琳, Director of Partnership at Antler, and Mikael Krogh, Managing Partner and Founder at Investigate Pte Ltd. And Marie Claire Maxwell, Head of Technology and Startup Lead at Business Sweden will do an awesome job in moderating the bunch!

See you!

Portcast – Forecasting just became accurate!

Aug 2018 - Portcast

We are very excited to announce Investigate’s fifth investment, Portcast, which has a great value proposition and equally great founders. Mikael Krogh, Managing Partner and Founder of Investigate says that “Portcast is an excellent example of a network orchestrator company enabled by cutting edge machine learning and big data analysis – analysing more than 22,000 dynamic real time data points and correlating them to the proprietary customer data in order to give accurate predictions on cargo volume and arrival time. This can give maritime and logistics companies up to 15% boost in profits.”

“Investigate as an investor is a great fit for Portcast – the network, unique investment theme and approach helps us develop the business and seize opportunities.” says CEO and Co-Founder Nidhi Gupta, “We are looking forward to continue to grow Portcast together with Investigate and our other investors.”

Minister visiting Antler!

Aug 2018 - Antler

Antler had the honour of welcoming The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway, Ms Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide, and the Norwegian Ambassador to Singapore, Ms Anita Nergaard, to the office for a friendly chat on the Antler program and the startup landscape of SEA. It was a great and informative afternoon of knowledge sharing and ideas. A pleasure to see the fostering of ties and building of a collaborative bridge for businesses between SEA and Europe.

Talents - look out!

May 2018 - Antler

Investigate’s fourth investment is all about building – Antler the child of Mr Magnus Grimeland, CEO and Co-Founder, is setting out to help great talents build tomorrow’s outstanding companies.

“This is a bit like turning the startup process upside down – typically you first have an idea then you gather the talent, Antler starts with finding the right talent.” says Mikael Krogh, Managing Partner and Founder of Investigate Network Capital. “The reason why this is such a good recipe for success is that Antler addresses market inefficiencies and offers effective solutions to the common reasons for failure. For example; a) inability to find the right founding team/talent, b) not the right idea, and c) not enough capital. For Investigate this is interesting in several aspects in addition to return on investment; we get first hand access to the startups and the right to invest in companies that we are particularly interested in. This is also a very good, if not unusual, example of Network Orchestrating, fitting right into our investment theme. Last but not least – Magnus has gathered a great team and partners to ensure excellent execution of this strategy and scaling of companies that are being built!”

“We are very happy to have Investigate aboard as an investor.” says Magnus Grimeland, CEO and Co-Founder of Antler. “Investigate’s investment theme is fully aligned with the type of companies we want to help build. We aim to build up an effective global network of top mentors, partners and investors to help our founders get the best support and launching pad for their businesses. Investigate is one of our key partners in this space, and they will also play an important role when it comes to further external funding of the companies we are building.”

Pitch it like a Viking!

April 2018 - event

Can you pitch like a Viking? Ms Manminder Kaur Dhillon Founder of Supernewsroom could definitely do that – they won the first prize! There were several exciting companies, so not so easy to pick the winner. Thanks to Mr Leonard Opitz Stornes and Vikingcubator for arranging and inviting me to judge together with Mr Tore Andre Godager, Ms Lim Qing Ru, and Mr Tyler Norwood, and last but not least thank you to Mr Are Gloersen for being the Chief Viking of the evening!

Norway Asia Business Summit Participation

April 2018 - event

Mikael Krogh was invited by NBAS to talk about “Today’s Startups – Changing the Game?” and also to moderate the debate around this theme. A big thank you to the participants of the panel debate; Dr. Ayesha Khanna CEO of ADDO AI, Shao-Ning Leigh Huang MD and Co-Founder of AngelCentral Pte Ltd, Fridtjof BergeCOO and Co-Founder of Antler, Stein Eggan MD of NTNU Technology Transfer AS, and Pal T. Naess Director at Innovation Norway. Thank you to Norwegian Business Association (Singapore) for arranging and giving me the opportunity!

Investigate + e-commerce Technology = Parcel Perform

“Parcel Perform is making e-commerce ‘sexy’ again.” says Mikael Krogh, Managing Partner and Founder of Investigate Network Capital. “Dr Arne Jeroschewski and Ms Dana von der Heide, the co-founders of Parcel Perform, are good examples of how you can look for an opportunity that can facilitate a Network Orchestrator business model. Parcel Perform is solving the problem of ‘losing’ the customer after checkout by offering:

The result? 40% increase in customer lifetime value (CLV) after checkout!”

“And that is just the beginning!” continues Mikael. “The data created and accumulated creates several, and arguably even more valuable, opportunities for products and services – more on this later in 2018 and beyond. Investigate is looking forward to taking a part of the journey and assisting along the way.”

Investigate’s First HR Tech Investment!

Feb 2018 - Salary Board

Salary Board is Investigate’s second investment and our first in the HR tech industry. “Salary Board, is a great example of the type of Network Orchestrator companies we are investing in; Salary Board is collecting public as well as proprietary data and applying their knowledge graph/AI and big data analysis to create products not before available – offering great value for the customers. What is also interesting is that every time a customer is added the value for everyone increases. Mr Madu Ionascu, the CEO and Founder of Salary Board, and his team has already proven that they are excellent in delivering value to their network by adding large MNCs as customers. We at Investigate are looking very much forward to assist Madu and his team to go international with Salary Board.” says Mikael Krogh, Managing Partner and Founder of Investigate Network Capital.

GrowthDesk - Investigate's first investment!

Feb 2018 - GrowthDesk

“Investigate is very proud to announce GrowthDesk as our first investment. GrowthDesk is a good example of the type of companies Investigate would like to support and that represents ‘Singapore 2.0’; companies with a business model which is highly scalable and less manpower hungry. Additionally it is particularly satisfying that GrowthDesk is a company that helps regular SMEs to move into digital and social marketing in order to expand their businesses. Ms Yuet and her team have managed to build a platform using artificial intelligence to continually improve their product as they help more and more SMEs, initially targeting the property sector. Investigate, with our international team, are looking very much forward to working with GrowthDesk to expand their business internationally and into new sectors.” says Mikael Krogh, Managing Partner and Founder of Investigate Network Capital.

The CEO and Founder Ms Yuet Whey Siah started a company that helps SMEs to take advantage of digital marketing, especially social marketing – where most of us ‘consume’ ads today.

GrowthDesk de-mystify digital marketing by using artificial intelligence and automation in different verticals (currently the real estate vertical). It is all executed through an app on your mobile, creating a campaign in only 60 seconds. Their chatbot qualifies the leads before GrowthDesk’s lead management system helps the SMEs to follow up with the leads. Analytics on the marketing campaigns are supplied in real time. For each campaign, their ‘advertising machine’ learns and subsequently optimises in real time all campaigns on the GrowthDesk platform.

Mr Birger Nergaard Joins The Advisory Board

Feb 2018 - advisory board

We are very pleased and honoured that Mr Birger Nergaard has joined Investigate as an investor and Advisory Board member. Birger is also known as ‘Mr VC’ in Scandinavia, after pioneering the venture capital industry by establishing Four Seasons Venture (now Verdane Capital) in 1985. Birger was the CEO until 2006 and now serve as GP and Director. Birger brings vast amount of expertise and knowledge that will benefit both Investigate and its portfolio companies.

“It is exciting to be part of Investigate, both as an investor and Advisory Board member. Investigate has an approach and investment theme adjusted to the new tech start up reality where big data analysis and artificial intelligence are commodities, ‘off-the-shelf’ products, enabling companies to launch products and get profit much earlier than before, and grow at a much higher rate. I am equally excited to be part of this next chapter of venture capital – especially in South East Asia that is booming with interesting startups.” says Mr Birger Nergaard.

“Having such an experienced and successful person like Mr Birger Nergaard joining Investigate as an investor and Advisory Board member is a testament to what we are currently doing is on the right track. Having a person like Birger on board will ensure that this continues to be the case. We are very proud and grateful.” says Mr Mikael Krogh, Founder and Managing Partner of Investigate VC.