Asia Scores Big In B2B

With nearly $50 million in venture capital funding for B2B startups this week, the field didn’t fare too bad. The Asia-Pacific region undoubtedly led the way, with India securing the largest investment of the week (alternative SME lending) and other deals reaching Australia and China in the logistics, cross-border payments and SaaS segments. Check out our breakdown of all the deals below.

Cross-Border B2B Payments

Airwallex

With $3 million in new venture capital, Australia-based Airwallex is helping businesses pay and issue cross-border invoices in the currency of their choice. According to reports on Tuesday (July 5), Shanghai-based Gobi Partners, along with angel investors Huashan Capital One and the CEO of Easylink Payments, Billy Tam, provided the funding.

Airwallex provides a platform to aid businesses in their mitigation of FX risk and volatility and streamline the cross-border payments process for businesses. The new backing will help with the firm’s development of its payments platform, currently in beta phase, along with new features to its service, including a multi-currency digital wallet, reports said. Reports said the firm is also looking to further expand in Australia and Asia.

“Current cross-border payment processes are expensive, clunky and time-consuming,” said Cofounder and CEO Jack Zhang in a statement. “It can take days for the money to reach its destination, and the transfer and foreign exchange fees are excessive and often prohibitive to SMEs.”

He added that Airwallex aims to reduce these points of friction to “empower businesses to build stronger global trading partnerships.”

Logistics

Quickli

India’s logistics startup scene blew up with venture capital interest last year. While the excitement seems to have waned, one industry player emerged with new funding.

Quickli declined to disclose how much it secured, reports said, though it did say AVG Group and 500 Startups provided the funding. Quickli enables businesses to handle the “last mile” of logistics and delivery, especially as the B2B eCommerce industry balloons in the country.

In a statement, Quickli Founder Rohan Diwan said the company handles about 2,000 orders daily, adding that the firm “will utilize the capital to enter new geographies, including Bengaluru.”

Alternative Lending

NeoGrowth

Just months after its first investment funding round of 2016, NeoGrowth, an India-based SME marketplace lender, announced $35 million in new backing, led by IIFL Asset Management, Accion Frontier Inclusion Fund and other backers.

Reports on Tuesday said the funding will be used to help NeoGrowth gain further traction with small businesses, often with little or no credit history. The company secures its loans against future credit and debit card sales, reports noted, and while India’s alternative SME lending startup community is growing, NeoGrowth is reportedly the first in the nation to offer this particular type of loan product.

The firm said its most common loan types include one-time equipment purchases, retailer expansion or renovation and seasonal inventory purchases.

SaaS

Don’t Scratch Your Head

It may not have received the largest funding round this week, but Don’t Scratch Your Head (DSYH) certainly takes the cake for most unusual startup name. The India-based firm raised $250,000 from VCats Surat and Zaffiro Ventures, reports said on Thursday (July 7), lending their support to the Software-as-a-Service and logistics company that aids businesses with multiple marketplaces to manage and reconcile accounts, payments and other logistics management processes.

In a statement, DSYH CEO Suraj Vazirani said the investment will be used to boost its underlying technological infrastructure.

“DSYH has been developing a first-of-a-kind technology to identify and address the real-time logistics reconciliation challenges of Indian eCommerce sellers,” said Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, cofounder of VCats.

BevSpot

This industry-targeted startup provides hospitality firms with a beverage management system, enabling them to manage alcohol inventory and invoice management via a mobile platform. U.S.-based BevSpot just raised $11 million for its solution, reports said on Thursday, in a Series B round led by Bain Capital Ventures.

BevSpot’s mobile tool also provides firms with end-to-end business metrics on invoice and inventory, as well as sales data. One restaurant group that uses BevSpot said it reduced the time it took to manage inventory and order new products by 70 percent.

“The hospitality industry is one of the last staple industries still operating without world-class, web-based software, forcing individual establishments and the industry as a whole to operate largely offline without access to critical, real-time data,” said the startup’s CEO and cofounder, Rory Crawford.