Author: Resolution Ventures

Resolution Ventures, a leading venture capital firm specialising in seed-stage fintech investment, announces its investment in Glider, an Australian-based payment communications platform. Glider is transforming enterprise collections and receivables management through innovative API integrations and data orchestration tools.

Glider’s platform facilitates digital payment collection for debt collection agencies and large organizations. By automating reminders through SMS and email, Glider helps businesses recover overdue payments efficiently. Their revenue model charges a nominal fee for each customer communication, scaling with recovered amounts.

Resolution Ventures, a leading venture capital firm specializing in early-stage investments, is thrilled to announce its strategic investment in STAG, a pioneering Vietnamese wealth management start up. This investment underscores Resolution Ventures’ commitment to fostering innovation and financial inclusion in emerging markets.

STAG is revolutionizing wealth management in Vietnam through its innovative stock trading and investment platform. With a strong emphasis on financial literacy, STAG empowers young Vietnamese investors to navigate the complexities of the financial markets with confidence. The platform offers personalized investment recommendations, educational resources, and a user-friendly interface tailored to both novice and experienced traders.

“We are excited to partner with STAG on their mission to democratize investing and empower the next generation of Vietnamese investors,” said Sam Gibb, Partner at Resolution Ventures. “STAG’s innovative approach to wealth management, coupled with its strong founding team and strategic partnerships, positions it for significant growth in Vietnam’s rapidly expanding middle-class population.”

PasarMIKRO, an Agricultural Fintech company based in Indonesia, has recently raised USD2.5 million backed by Resolution Ventures and other notable investors. PasarMIKRO is a trade finance platform that enables farmers to get paid immediately and digitally, bringing them into the financial system. It provides bookkeeping, lending, and a marketplace for farmers and traders to move their produce.

Overlooked sector with a lack of digital infrastructure

The agricultural ecosystem in Indonesia is unorganised and fragmented with over 26 million smallholder farmers, micro/first-mile traders, and suppliers. Most participants do not have a footprint in the traditional financial ecosystem and are transacting and recording their activities with a pen and paper. Despite being a USD130 billion market and contributing 13% to GDP in Indonesia, the digitalisation progress in this sector has been lacklustre. Due to the trade structure, farmers also face challenges in working capital and delayed cash flows from the sale of produce, reducing their ability to reinvest into their operations.  

PasarMIKRO is set to change all that by providing smallholder farmers and traders a digital platform with and embedded financing solution. This helps them to scale their business faster and in a more sustainable way.

Bridging the gap between farmers and technology

PasarMIKRO is creating a digital platform for agricultural entrepreneurs to come together in one platform and marketplace. They provide a mobile application which consists of the tools and financing options for the traders and the smallholder farmers.

The marketplace will serve to increase liquidity for traders and farmers, offering aggregation, price discovery and optionality for the users. Traders will also be able to get access to trade credit while farmers get paid faster, allowing both to have more working capital to grow their businesses.

The transactional data that’s collected on the platform can be recorded and be used for data insights analysis to support financial, risk, and inventory management. Most importantly, this data will be valuable for building a traceable transaction history for credit scoring purposes, an important aspect for financial inclusion aspect that is lacking in the agriculture sector in Indonesia.

Since their pilot in December 2020, the company has onboarded nearly 1,000 famers, suppliers, and traders while disbursing over USD13 million to the farmers.

This round of funding will be used to expand the team to bolster its marketing and sales effort, and adding bandwidth to accelerate product innovation to augment product features. PasarMIKRO will continue to work with financial institutions to uplift the smallholder farming communities and expand their range of commodities products moving forward.

Sam Gibb, Managing Partner from Resolution Ventures said “We’re really proud to be able to support PasarMIKRO on their journey to improve financial inclusion for farmers in Indonesia. Their platform not only helps farmers to be paid more promptly but also gives them a digital presence, making other financial products and services available to a sector that has traditionally been cash based. The trickle-down effects from the work that they are doing to digitalise physical trade will flow through the other parts of the economy as well.”

Resolution Ventures is proud to support Mayar, an integrated payment acceptance, spend management, and digital commerce platform for MSME business in Indonesia. Mayar offers a no-code interface to easily allow merchants to set-up their business online and accept payments with payment links. The payment link system allows merchants to accept payments easily without API integration or coding skills.

iPiD, a Fintech start-up with a vision to simplify cross-border payments by making them as easy as sending a text message has recently raised USD3.3 million Seed round led by Resolution Ventures and 1982 Ventures. Other participating investors include Rapyd Ventures, Saison Capital, Jungle Ventures, the XA Network and other prominent angel investors. iPiD enables pre-payment verification for transactions anywhere in the world, based on a mobile number, email, QR code, Corporate Registration Number or any other proxy. It orchestrates the data exchange between the sending and receiving institutions without storing confidential data.

Addressing the challenges in cross-border payments

In 2018, cross-border payments totalled more than USD130 trillion with over USD240 billion of payments revenue. Person-to-person remittance revenue constitutes over 15% of the total payment revenue.

iPiD was founded in 2021 by Damien Dugauquier, Eddie Haddad, and Geertjan van Bochove to solve cross-border payment complexity. Cross-border payments still require various information such as the BIC, IBAN, routing codes, account numbers, and bank names just to make a simple international transaction. Transposition errors can sneak in when filling in these fields on forms which can cost the banks and subsequently the payors. As of 2020, the cost of failed payments amounted to USD118.5 billion due to data errors.

iPiD intends to bridge the payment and recipient channels, regardless of the platform they are using, such as e-wallets and bank account.  Although digital payments are becoming the new norm, these payment platforms remain siloed and fragmented, resulting in a lack of interoperability. The team previously worked at Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) accumulating decades of experience in dealing with cross-border payment messaging.

Connecting the dots

This round of funding will be used to expand and build the in-house tech, operations, and sales team, product development, and onboarding new partners. As a payment rail agnostic provider, iPiD will be working with banks, payment Fintech giants and startups to integrate their service into their partners’ offerings. iPiD will be providing payment pre-validation solutions to these partners, bringing added convenience and interoperability for their users, specifically towards the person-to-person market initially.

While there are some existing solutions in Southeast Asia that employ the same concept such as PayNow and DuitNow, most of these transactions pertain to domestic and close regional transactions. A truly global solution for cross-border payments at an international level has yet to be established. iPiD stands in the perfect position to ultimately be a global provider of pre-validation services to these payment channels and expand its core solution to consumer-to-business and business-to-business segments of cross-border payments in the near future.

Founded in 2016 by Lennise Ng and Aizat Rahim, the idea for Dropee stemmed from both co-founders’ experiences with their families’ retail businesses. Since then it has grown to address the pain points of SME and enterprise retailers throughout Malaysia and regionally. Currently, Dropee works with 80,000 retailers and suppliers, including some well-known global brands.

Dropee recently raised USD3M in equity from Vynn Capital, Resolution Ventures, and others as well as USD4m in debt funding in the round. The Y Combinator-backed startup will use the funds to continue to build out the core operations, expand into Indonesia and build its credit financing business.

Trade channels in the region are still fragmented with a low level of digital penetration. Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brands and wholesalers find it increasingly difficult to service retail customers without sufficient information about pricing and inventory levels throughout their supply chain.

To solve this, Dropee aims to revolutionise the way FMCG brands distribute their goods to wholesalers, distributors, and front-line retailers by providing a centralized platform to digitalise the ordering and distribution of FMCG products. The platform is able to integrate with traditional backend systems to enable brands to leverage additional insights to increase engagement and service levels throughout the supply chain. This also gives Dropee a front row seat to the economic activity of each of the retailers it supports on the platform, offering them an additional opportunity to better serve their clients with a financing proposition.

Building on its existing product suite, Dropee continues to introduce new products and services to empower retailers across the region. This includes Dropee Credit, which provides up to 60 days credit terms for each qualified retailer so that they are able to buy now, pay later on all their inventory purchases.

GIMO began life in 2019 as a digital lending platform and then subsequently pivoted to focus on earned wage access to be able to plug the payday gap for Vietnamese workers. Today, GIMO serves over 25,000 Vietnamese workers through over 23 different companies. 

GIMO recently raised USD1.9M from Integra Partners and Resolution Ventures. Gimo will use the money to build out its core operations, improve risk management competencies, and integrate advanced technologies such as data analytics and artificial intelligence to enhance customer experiences. 

According to the World Bank, 69% of Vietnamese are unbanked. And even among those who are able to access banks, many do not qualify for loans from conventional financial service providers. This has led many workers to borrow from loan sharks or expensive payday loan options to pay for bills or cover for unexpected events. In Vietnam, there are more than 60,000 criminal and harassment cases related to loan sharks and blue-collar workers every year. Workers forced to turn to these services suffer from 400% – 1,000% per annum interest rates together with harassment risks.

GIMO believes its services can help boost financial inclusion by giving workers access to what is already in their earnings and help “level the playing field” for hourly workers. The app allows workers to withdraw their income instantly for a small, flat fee. Through GIMO, employees can access their wages as they earn it without needing to worry about paying usury rates.

According to GIMO’s Co-founder and CEO Nguyen Anh Quan, the new investment will help the company improve the financial stability and resilience of blue-collar workers, as well as fast-track financial inclusion in Southeast Asia. Nguyen said,

“Blue-collar workers are among the most vulnerable to financial distress. When unexpected bills arise, they don’t have a lot of safe and affordable options. GIMO looks to change that. By helping workers get paid as they earn it, we hope to give them the peace of mind to focus on what matters.”

Resolution Ventures is proud to support GIMO as they tackle the challenge of giving employees control over payday and create a more equitable ecosystem that encourages the inclusion of underbanked workers. Managing Partner, Sam Gibb said, 

“We look forward to following along on GIMO’s journey as they continue to grow and provide millions of Vietnamese timelier access to their salaries, thus helping them address urgent financial needs while avoiding predatory lending.”

On returning to Pakistan after having spent decade in Canada, Halima Iqbal found it difficult to open a bank account and get access to financial services. It took her over three months and at various junctures, she was told to come back with her husband or father. After researching how Pakistani women deal with money, she connected with Farwah Tapal to create Oraan to help women to get access to financial services.

Only 7% of Pakistani woman have access to financial products because of logistical and social barriers. Chauvinistic attitudes have prevented women from having “the kind of financial mobility that they require to be able to contribute equally to the economic growth of the country” Iqbal said.

Oraan recently announced that it raised USD3m in funding, co-led by Zayn Capital and Wavemaker Partners, with participation from Resolution Ventures, i2i Ventures, Hustle Fund, Haitou Global, Plug and Play and angels like Claire Diaz-Ortiz.

This is one of the largest seed rounds raised in Pakistan and the largest for a female founded company in the country. Oraan has started with ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations) and plans to expand to other financial services leveraging the network of customers that it has successfully onboarded to date.

Typically, ROSCAs are formed within geographic communities, where there are already strong social ties between friends and neighbours. Each person puts in a set amount of money each month. Who gets a given month’s pool of money is decided by the committee, sometimes by a vote or random draw.

Oraan formalises and digitalises ROSCAs, offering five-month and ten-month plans. Based on Oraan’s research, 41% of the Pakistani population has participated in a ROSCA and over USD5bn gets rotated through them on an annual basis.

“We take this culturally, religiously, socially acceptable tool, which is committees, digitize them and bring women into a more formal space where they can open bank accounts,” said Iqbal. “We want to become a full-fledged neobank and very heavily based on community because that’s where we see that women want a sense of belonging,” said Iqbal. “When it comes to financial transactions, that’s one of the things they feel they lack, that sense of belonging.” 

Stemly spun out of ING Labs Singapore incubator raising USD2.5m from Elev8, ING Ventures, EDB Ventures and Resolution Ventures. Stemly was created in 2018 to help to solve the decision intelligence problems that exist in supply chain operations and finance. Stemly’s platform helps multi-national companies to make decisions with data science tools that enable it to automate inventory forecasting and optimize the supply chain and finance processes.

Stemly is able to help businesses reduce their inventory and working capital holding costs by 10-40%. “Businesses are challenged by the uncertainty in supply chains, where demand and supply fluctuations have been amplified by the pandemic of late,” said Stemly co-founder Sanjay Saini. “Stemly empowers managers to make better and faster decisions in demand forecasting, inventory optimization, and cash flow management, ultimately reducing their operating cost and improving their operational efficiency.”