Tag: Singapore

Singapore: TPG Capital Asia Acquires Quest Laboratories

TPG Capital Asia, the Asian investment platform of global alternative asset firm TPG, announced that it has completed its acquisition of Quest Laboratories Pte Ltd, one of the leading independent, private medical laboratories in Singapore.

The acquisition forms part of TPG’s A$279 million (S$279 million) purchase of Healthscope Limited’s Asian pathology laboratories in Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam. In Singapore and Vietnam, these laboratories operate under the brand “Quest Laboratories”, while in Malaysia, they are known as “Gribbles Pathology”.

“We are pleased to complete the acquisition of this premier laboratory-of-choice to private healthcare practitioners and patients in Singapore. The healthcare sector is one of TPG’s key investment areas and we look forward to leveraging Quest’s core competencies to grow our pathology business across Southeast Asia,” Richard Seow, TPG Senior Advisor and incoming Chairman of Quest Laboratories, said.

Quest Laboratories is the first full-service private laboratory to be dually accredited by the College of American Pathologists and the Singapore Accreditation Council.

The company serves specialist doctors, general practitioners, as well as integrated healthcare providers with a full suite of laboratory tests.

Its main laboratory in Singapore, which spans over 25,000 square feet, has the largest fully automated sample management system in Singapore with the capability to provide consistently accurate and reliable results.

Quest’s satellite laboratories located in Paragon Medical, Thomson Medical Centre and Novena Medical service the key private hospitals, medical centres and specialist clinics.

In Vietnam, Quest Laboratories operates two laboratories in Ho Chi Minh City in a women’s and children’s private hospital and in the central urban district.

TPG’s investment in Quest Laboratories builds on the firm’s strong healthcare foundation in Asia and across the globe. It is also a result of the firm’s global interest in the sector, accompanied by deep expertise and geographical exposure, having invested across a range of businesses—from pharmaceutical companies to healthcare services.

Also Read: Singapore: Cloud Inventory Firm TradeGecko Secures $10M

Investments in Asia have included Manipal Hospitals in India, United Family Healthcare in China, Novotech and Healthscope in Australia, and the Jetanin Institute for Assisted Reproduction in Thailand.

TPG’s latest investment in Quest Laboratories comes alongside its investments in businesses that are headquartered out of Singapore including PropertyGuru, TE Asia Healthcare, and Parkway Holdings (now part of IHH Healthcare). – AsiaPEVC.com

Singapore: Cloud Inventory Firm TradeGecko Secures $10M

TradeGecko, a global SaaS inventory and order management platform for small-medium businesses (SMBs), today announced a Series B investment of $10 million, led by TNB Aura Fund 1 and Aura Venture Fund, with Perle Ventures, and 33 Capital participating in the round.

This increases the total capital invested to date to over USD 20M. The proceeds raised will be used to grow TradeGecko’s product suite, providing a seamless commerce platform to thousands of commerce brands, and expanding to empower more commerce businesses around the world.

“In terms of feature-density, user experience, and quality of integrations, TradeGecko is the best-in-class B2B software-as-a-service provider in the inventory and order management space”, said Vicknesh R Pillay, Managing Partner of TNB Ventures and TNB Aura Fund 1. “We are pleased to back this standout player.”

“We see a massive opportunity to provide the back-end systems of SMB commerce on a global scale”, said Cameron Priest, CEO of TradeGecko. “With the rapid growth of SMBs around the world, partnering with Aura enables us to leverage their market knowledge and extensive network. With the latest funding, we will continue to invest in solving our customers most challenging operational challenges.”

TradeGecko was built with the vision of empowering millions of entrepreneurs to build the business of their dreams by providing a back-end platform to run the entire business operations of a growing commerce brand.

With global HQ based in Singapore and North American HQ in Toronto, the company powers the operational back-ends of leading SMB commerce brands including memobottle, Dead Studios, Brooklyn Bicycle Company, Maui and Sons, and Paula’s Choice Skincare.

Also Read: Singapore VC Amasia Backs Skillshare’s $28m Series C

TradeGecko aims to free business owners from the operational complexity of running their business to spend more time building a brand their customers will love.

“The investment into TradeGecko is a great deal for our fund” commented Calvin Ng, Managing Director of Aura Group. “We are confident in the long-term prospects of the company and the team’s ability to continue executing strong and consistent growth of their revenues and unit economics.”

Singapore VC Amasia Backs Skillshare’s $28m Series C

New York-headquartered online learning portal Skillshare has raised $28 million in Series C funding round backed by Singapore and San Francisco-based venture capital firm Amasia.

The new round includes $20 million in equity funding as well as $8 million in venture debt. Union Square Ventures, who previously participated in Skillshare’s earlier funding rounds, led the equity portion of the financing. Also participating were Burda Principal Investments and Spero Ventures.

Skillshare said it will use the financing to accelerate growth and expand its learning ecosystem, which serves the growing independent workforce.

“This round comes at a time in our company’s history where we’re seeing a lot of momentum,” said Matt Cooper, CEO of Skillshare. “Over the last twelve months we’ve experienced greater than 100% revenue growth, much of which was driven by what we call the ‘Independent Class’”.

Currently, Skillshare’s platform boasts over 5 million users and over 20,000 classes taught by a network of 6,000 experts across dozens of fields.

“Skillshare’s subscription model and affordable price make its ever-growing catalog of classes broadly accessible,” said Albert Wenger, managing partner at Union Square Ventures. “That’s a powerful model as it keeps the price of marginal usage at zero, allowing members to try classes risk-free and explore new paths of learning across a wide number of disciplines. In that regard, it’s like a Netflix for learning”.

Also Read: Israel: AI Vision Firm AnyVision Raises $28m in Bosch-led Series A

Matt Cooper, CEO, Skillshare

Of late, that thriving online community has become increasingly global as well, the startup said. Asia, particularly, has shown huge potential, with paid members from the region growing by more than 400 per cent over the last eighteen months.

Skillshare raised its Series B round in May of 2016. To date, the company has raised a total of $42 million in equity financing.

Singapore: Keppel Offshore & Marine Secures $51m Contract

Keppel Offshore & Marine Ltd (Keppel O&M), a wholly-owned company of Keppel Corporation Ltd, has secured two contracts with a combined value of about S$70 million ($51 million) in Brazil and Singapore.

In disclosure to the Singapore Exchange, Keppel O&M said the two contracts were secured through its wholly-owned subsidiaries.

In Brazil, Keppel FELS Brasil has been engaged by its long-standing customer, MODEC Offshore Production Systems (Singapore), part of the MODEC Inc group, to undertake the topside module fabrication and integration of the FPSO Carioca MV30, a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel.

This is the sixth FPSO collaboration between Keppel FELS Brasil and MODEC.

In Singapore, Keppel Shipyard has been entrusted with the conversion of a LNG Carrier to a floating storage and re-gasification unit (FSRU) by a leading globa operator of oil and gas production vessels.

“Keppel O&M has a strong track record in production, storage, gasification or liquefaction vessels, having successfully delivered more than 130 of such units over the years,” said Chris Ong, CEO of Keppel O&M.

BrasFELS shipyard, Keppel FELS Brasil’s facility in Angra dos Reis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will commence the fabrication of the modules for the FPSO in Q4 2018.

When completed, the FPSO Carioca MV30 will have the capacity to process 180,000 barrels of crude oil per day and 212 million cubic meters of gas per day. The unit’s storage capacity is 1.4 million barrels of crude oil.

The FPSO will be deploye4d at the Sepia field, which is located in the pre-salt region in the Santos Basin, some 250 kilometers off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Also Read:
Singapore’s Radiflow Bags $18M from ST Engineering
Hong Kong: Australia’s CTM Acquires HK-based Lotus Travel Group

Keppel Shipyard has previously delivered three FSRUs, including the world’s first FSRU conversion. With the increase in demand for LNG in power generation, FSRUs are a fast, flexible, cost-effective, safe and environmentally-friendly storage and regasification solution that is well suited for deployment in remote areas with smaller energy requirements.

The world’s first converted FLNG vessel, Hilli Episeyo, has achieved final acceptance and commenced commercial operations for Perenco in Cameroon. This was accomplished within four years of the contract award to Keppel Shipyard.

Paktor’s Parent M17 Entertainment Withdraws US IPO

M17 Entertainment, the parent company of Singapore-based dating and networking app Paktor, has officially withdrawn it initial public offering in the New York Stock Exchange after delaying its debut on June 10.

In a statement, M17 Entertainment said it has notified the New York Stock Exchange of its determination to withdraw the American depositary shares representing its ordinary shares from listing.

The decision was inline with previous announcements relating to the postponement of its planned IPO, the company said.

It was in May when M17 Entertainment files for an IPO in the New York Stock Exchange, seeking to raise a total of $115 million.

M17 operates the largest live streaming platform for developed Asia, including the markets of Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

According to its filing, the total number of registered users on its dating applications grew to 14.6 million as of March 31, 2018 from 13.9 million and 11.0 million as of December 31, 2017 and 2016, respectively.

Paktor’s last funding round was in November 2016, when it raised $32.5 million from K2 Global and existing investor PT Media Nusantara Citra Tbk.(MNC Media Group), with further participation from new and existing investors. That had brought the total amount the company had raised to $57.5 million.

In March 2017, under a share swap agreement, all of the shareholders of Paktor exchanged their shares for equivalent classes of M17 shares, and M17 became the holding company of Paktor.

Also Read:
South Korea’s ProtoPie Raises $3.5m in KIP-led Series A
On-demand Logistics Platform GoGoVan Raises $250m

In October 2016 and January 2017, Paktor acquired 36.8 per cent and 9.44 per cent of the equity interests of Machipopo, respectively, and in March 2017, under the same share swap agreement through which M17 acquired Paktor, the company also acquired all of the remaining interests of Machipopo by issuing equivalent classes of our shares to the remaining shareholders of Machipopo.

The company’s interactive entertainment platform includes 17 Media, the largest live streaming platform by revenue in Developed Asia with a market share of 19.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2018, according to Frost & Sullivan, and 33.3 million registered users.

Singapore’s Radiflow Bags $18M from ST Engineering

Radiflow, a provider of industrial cybersecurity solutions for critical infrastructure, announced that it has raised an $18-million investment round led by ST Engineering Ventures, the Corporate Venture Capital unit of ST Engineering.

Radiflow’s existing investors, led by Zohar Zisapel, also participated in this investment round.

Radiflow provides cybersecurity solutions for industrial control systems (ICS) and Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks.

The company has been one of the pioneers in this market and has been growing rapidly with more than 50 customers worldwide, including Tier 1 critical infrastructure operators in the United States and Europe, and endorsements from leading US national labs and consultants.

Radiflow’s wide product portfolio, which consists of risk assessment, threat detection and secure remote access tools with unique in-depth industrial asset visibility, anomaly detection and distributed architecture, offers extensive use cases and applications for protecting ICS and SCADA networks.

The cybersecurity risks to the conservative industrial market have been recently highlighted with both focused attacks, such as the Triton case, and IT-based attacks, including the cryptocurrency mining malware attack that Radiflow’s iSID system detected at a waste-water facility.

Radiflow is addressing these challenges with its advanced industrial cybersecurity solutions and its rapidly expanding technology partner ecosystem, which includes recently announced collaboration with Palo Alto Networks and RSA, to ease field deployments and ensure compliance with the new regulations, including NERC CIP and the EU NIS Directive.

Radiflow reports that the company is experiencing strong demand for its industrial cybersecurity solutions across all critical infrastructure sectors and has more than doubled the sales of its threat detection tools and services over the past year.

Radiflow will use the investment proceeds to extend its sales network to support the growing market demand, strengthen its brand globally and continue developing its innovative solutions to meet the evolving customer needs.

The investment and partnership enables ST Engineering to access Radiflow’s detection and prevention tools, which has been integrated with its Rail Command, Control and Communications (C3) Systems (SCADA) – in this instant the rail supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system.

The combining of these two technologies has resulted in the development of the region’s first end-to-end cybersecurity solution for the rail transport industry.

“This investment in Radiflow demonstrates ST Engineering’s focus in identifying startups with global best-in-class technologies for collaboration opportunities. The access to our established business networks and channels will help these companies to expand and accelerate the scope of their growth, developing solutions that will benefit our global customers,” said Low Ka Hoe, Chief Strategy Officer at ST Engineering.

“The collaboration between ST Engineering and Radiflow will enable us to introduce our solutions to new customers and territories, while this new investment will facilitate us to expand our market traction and accelerate the next stage of our growth,” commented Ilan Barda, CEO of Radiflow.