CDP Institute

Checkmate, an Australian designed shopping tool that scours the web for best deals, has secured $5 million seed funding from Fuel Capital. Available as a mobile app or laptop extension, Checkmate finds deals and applies them at checkout, so customers can get last-minute deals. It also can manage orders, store gift cards and track deliveries.

Customers in Australia, India, and Japan will now be able to access Cloudflare’s Data Localization Suite (DLS) to help global companies and businesses based in these countries comply with data localization obligations. Cloudflare allows users to easily set rules and controls on where domestic data goes and who can access it. This is crucial in the Asian market where nearly 70% of countries have passed or drafted new data protection and privacy legislation.

Line Man Wongnai, a food delivery service operator, has raised US$265 million in Series-B fundraising, enabling its valuation to surpass copy billion and thereby achieving unicorn status. The move makes Line Man Wongnai the third unicorn in Thailand after logistics service operator Flash Express and fintech firm Ascend Money.

Business automation platform StoreHub has raised US$13.5 million in pre-Series B funding led by American venture capital firm 500 Global, previously known as 500 Startups. It intends to use its latest funding to continue meeting demand while maintaining positive unit economics, and investing in technology innovation to deepen the value for each customer.

Mexicans can put their cryptocurrencies to a new use: using them as collateral for a credit card. This is thanks to the card launched this week by local startup Crecy, developed in collaboration with Pomelo, a payment infrastructure and card issuance company from Argentina. Those who want to obtain it must leave Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cardano, or Polkadot as collateral and will be able to access a line of credit ranging from 1,000 to 720,000 Mexican pesos (US$50 to US$35,000 approximately).

Argentina is the first market in Latin America where Bitso (Mexican Cryptocurrency Exchange) launches crypto payments through QR codes. This payment method will enable Bitso’s one million users in this country to pay their daily expenses from their apps at any merchant that accepts QR payments. To make a payment, the user can choose between Argentine pesos (ARS), USD stablecoins, Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), or DAI.

Oracle is confident of achieving a high growth momentum in India for cloud services and believes that it would continue to register a 25% quarterly growth rate. The company has set its sights on becoming the preferred cloud services provider for business across sectors in India. The company, which saw global revenues of $11.4 billion with a year-on-year growth of 18% during the first quarter of the current fiscal year, also grew by 100% when it came to India’s cloud infrastructure unit.

India’s fastest-growing checkout payments partner Simpl has deployed a successful engagement strategy by investing in a robust marketing automation platform powered by CleverTap. Simpl’s leadership team decided to partner with CleverTap to ramp up their retention efforts and reduce errors and the time needed to launch campaigns.

OneStream, a leader in corporate performance management (CPM) solutions for the world’s leading enterprises, and PwC Australia announced today they have entered into a strategic alliance for the Australian market. The alliance will leverage PwC’s expertise as a leading business and technology consulting services provider and OneStream’s unified, cloud-based CPM software to support activities ranging from project delivery to marketing and strategic business collaboration.

The partnership between M2M Connectivity and US-based Blue Sky Network will focus on improving connectivity for agricultural, transport, mining, and utility companies. Blue Sky network is a leader in the development of satellite tracking systems and two-way communication for remote land, air and sea applications, and this solution with M2M will use omnidirectional antennas making it easier to deploy for both fixed and mobile IoT devices. It will support mid-band IP data applications to offer an affordable alternative to  users needing IP, but not the throughput speeds of higher-cost offerings.

Respond.io, a Malaysia-based social-to-conversational commerce software as a service (SaaS) platform, has closed $7 million in Series A funding. Respond.io has grown its revenue 25 times since the previous round and will use the funding to continue its push into large enterprises by extending its extensive suite of integration capabilities, expanding from its home in Asia to build a presence in the Middle East, Europe and Latin America.

Singapore-based Sea Ltd. is preparing to fire 3% of Shopee employees in Indonesia, part of a broader wave of regional job cuts intended to curb ballooning losses and win back investors. The 3% cut in Indonesia aligns with layoffs of a low-single-digit percentage across the division.