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DMaaS Startup Dedoco secures US$3 Million in funding from True Global Ventures

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DMaaS Startup Dedoco secures US$3 Million in funding from True Global Ventures

Dedoco enables organizations to better manage digital workflows, increasing overall security, trust, and transparency through blockchain technology

Dedoco secures US$3 million funding from True Global Ventures 4 Plus (TGV4 Plus) Fund to fuel its global expansion. TGV is an early investor of prominent projects such as blockchain unicorns Animoca Brands and Sandbox, as well as the recently listed marketplace trading platform, Forge Global in the US.

True Global Ventures Invests US$3 Million into Dedoco - A Document Infrastructure Platform for Enterprise Web3

Dedoco is a next-generation digital DMaaS (Document Management as-a-Service) that is built on blockchain technology, providing increased data privacy and document security to users. Founded in 2020 by Daphne Ng and Dr Ernie Teo, the latest investment brings Dedoco’s total capital raised to US$7.5 million. Dedoco’s seed round was led by Vertex Ventures SEA & India (VVSEAI) who continued to support the company and extended a US$2 million follow-on funding for its ambitious geographical expansion as part of this financing round.

In the last 12 months, the company embarked on its international expansion and now has presence in Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and with its sights set on new markets this year, including the US. Its current clients and partners span over 150 across government, banks, financial institutions, real estate, professional services, and technology platforms. They range from organizations such as ERA Realty Network, GovTech Singapore, Nexia TS.

While Dedoco entered a seemingly crowded market, existing solutions failed to address common challenges such as the risk of fraud, unauthorized signatures, and non-compliance. The current solutions typically rely on centralized trust and take custody of digital documents, creating security concerns for organizations dealing with highly sensitive and confidential information such as fintechs, financial institutions, banks and governments. Conversely, Dedoco’s decentralized approach allows users to continue managing their documents “on-premise”, thus supporting organizations in adhering to document security, data residency and sovereignty obligations, especially those in highly-regulated industries.

By utilizing blockchain, every Dedoco-issued document is trusted, verifiable, and interoperable across multiple systems. Thus supporting companies in their transition to web3, by providing essential, practical applications that solve universal pain points not addressed by other providers.

In addition to Dedoco’s decentralized workflow and signing apps,

  • Dedoco Verify tracks the chain of custody of a digital document and tamper-proofs the evidential audit trail, providing trusted records for both internal and external audits.
  • Dedoco Document Check feature helps Signers verify the document version before signing or approving the document, solving a US$42 billion global pain point for agreements and legal contracts, and safeguarding business interests.
  • Dedoco vCerts enables organizations to issue blockchain-verifiable certificates that are ERC721 standard and OpenCerts compatible. This ensures that credentials, such as academic and skills certificates, licenses, and memberships, have not been tampered with, protecting both the issuer and recipient.
  • Dedoco Form-as-a-service is a customizable workflow solution that integrates easily with any repository to create digital forms and link them to workflows for digital collaboration.
  • Dedoco VideoSign serves as a virtual meet-and-sign solution, allowing for a holistic experience to achieve greater efficiency and caters to documents that require identification and witnessing of signing parties. Aside from tamper-proofing the recording process, the full evidence capture is tied to the digital document and verifiable on the blockchain.

“The world is already moving away from heavy, complex centralized systems, where many were designed to be closed-loop and system-centric. Dedoco, on the other hand, takes a decentralized approach to document management, while ensuring privacy protection and document security for companies. I believe that the future of technology is about giving our users full control over their documents and getting more out of their technology purchase. We are excited to partner with TGV – who has an impressive track record backing world-class blockchain companies from early on – in supporting our global Web3 vision,” said Daphne Ng, co-founder and CEO of Dedoco, who was recognized as a Top 15 Women Leaders in Asia’s Fintech Industry in 2021 and Top 100 Women in Fintech 2022 globally.

“As a pioneer equity investor in the web3 space since 2017, Dedoco is one of the very few blockchain companies globally that has successfully secured mass enterprise adoption through providing practical applications that businesses understand and need. In addition, we are seeing a phenomenon in the recent few quarters where big techs and enterprises, especially banks, FIs and fintechs are fast adopting new technologies to help them solve complex challenges relating to compliance and security. As long as Dedoco continues to solve these critical challenges and stay focused on their enterprise SaaS strategy, they will continue their strong acceleration of adoption globally,” added Kelly Choo, Founding Partner of TGV4 Plus.

With the recognition of innovative blockchain in enterprises, TGV4 Plus continues to invest in talented serial entrepreneurs leading globally ambitious blockchain start-ups. The fund is dedicated to blockchain companies, primarily in late-stage Series B and C across four verticals: Entertainment, infrastructure, financial services, data analytics, and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Founded by an international group of “super angels”, TGV’s partners are entrepreneurs, business angels, family offices, and institutional investors, many with co-investment rights in future equity rounds.

Start-ups can reach out via LinkedIn or through the Fund’s Contact page:

About Dedoco

Dedoco is a digital DMaaS (document management as-a-service) platform that focuses on data privacy, document security and provides customers across a range of sectors with trusted, verifiable and connected documents. As an industry-leading solution that is ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified and Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) accredited, Dedoco improves efficiency and compliance whilst ensuring a no-store, tamper-proof solution. In maintaining the highest transaction integrity, Dedoco seeks to transform the way organizations manage document workflows.

About True Global Ventures

True Global Ventures (TGV) is a global Venture Capital firm built by a group of serial entrepreneurs with a solid track record of investing their own money together with Limited Partners into ventures run by serial entrepreneurs. Portfolio companies leverage web3 technologies, incorporating blockchain as competitive advantages to drive change with proven products. TGV is a distributed fund with a presence in 20 cities, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Moscow, Stockholm, Paris, Luxemburg, Madrid, Warsaw, New York, San Francisco, and Vancouver.

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Climate tech Startup Bio-Logical raises $1m Seed round: Kenya’s Agricultural Sector to Get a Boost from Bio-Logicals Landmark Biochar Carbon Removal Facility

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Climate tech

Climate tech company Bio-Logical has raised a $1m seed round to scale up its operations in Kenya, facilitating its mission to build climate resilient communities of smallholder farmers around the world.

Smallholder farmers are facing a dire outlook with faltering harvests, increasingly extreme weather and skyrocketing fertiliser prices becoming increasingly common due to climate change. Bio-Logical addresses this challenge through a circular economy, transforming waste into biochar, a super material that sequesters carbon for millenia and regenerates degraded soil. Their biochar is then incorporated into an organic fertiliser which is distributed to smallholder farmers in the region, regenerating land, increasing crop drought resistance and boosting yields by over 50%.

“Bio-Logical was founded on the belief that Smallholder farmers should not suffer at the hands of a climate crisis they have played no part in. At present, soil degradation and changing weather patterns due to climate change is directly threatening the livelihoods of 500 million smallholder farmers around the world.” Rory Buckworth, Co-Founder

Utilising its innovative technology, Bio-Logical’s first site will be the largest biochar production facility in Africa. It will transform over 30,000 tonnes of agricultural waste a year into biochar, sequestering 25,000 tonnes of CO2. This process will generate carbon credits, the revenue from which will be used to subsidise its resilience building fertiliser for smallholder farmers, boosting yields and reducing fertiliser costs.

We believe carbon credits should do more than simply remove carbon from the atmosphere and instead should be used to build the resilience of climate vulnerable communities” Philip Hunter, Co-Founder

The funding round is led by the Steyn Group alongside Angel Investors Rob Konterman, Luke Calcott-Stevens and Jochem Wieringa. The round will go towards the development of Bio-Logical’s first Kenya site which will pave the way for its expansion throughout the region that will see the company scale to support 1 million smallholders and sequester 1 million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2030.

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According to setscale, More than 50% of US Small Businesses are Unaware of Federal Government Contracts, Losing $84 Billion a Year in Valuable Deals

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Setscale, a purchase order financing company, reports on small business financing, highlighting the lack of access to US government contracts

Setscale, the purchase order financing company, released today its first-ever report on US small business financing. The report surveyed US small business owners to better understand some of the financial barriers to small business ownership, including their awareness of federal government contracts for small businesses.

69% of US small businesses struggle with cash flow, preventing them from meeting the demand of government contracts.

More than half (52%) of all surveyed small business owners revealed that they aren’t aware of the specific contracts the US federal government awards to small businesses each year, missing out on approximately $84 billion* per year.

Government contracts are well-valued and often serve as a gateway to a steady source of income and small business growth. More than 70% (71%) of surveyed US small businesses say that they’re aware of lucrative and reliable government contracts, but more than half (52%) say they don’t know what specific contracts are available to them. And over a quarter of US small businesses (29%) are completely unaware that the federal government awards contracts to small businesses.

This report highlights that the federal government is investing in small businesses in record-high amounts, but business owners are still struggling to fill open government purchase orders. Almost 70% (69%) of US small businesses struggle with cash flow and working capital, preventing them from meeting the demand of a government contract. Many businesses pursue lines of credit from a bank or financial institution to fulfill purchase orders, but these are costly and hard to obtain. Alternative finance like purchase order financing can help these businesses secure and fulfill valuable government contracts.

Moreover, US small business owners say that a lack of cash flow and working capital prevents them from securing government contracts. At 22%, a lack of cash flow or capital is the second most popular reason that prevents US small business owners from securing a government contract. The most popular reason they aren’t securing government contracts is due to a lack of time and resources (25%).

“Our small business financing report sheds light on an issue that more than half of surveyed business owners know all too well – that even though the US federal government is awarding a record number of contracts to our small businesses, they’re still struggling financially to fulfill open purchase orders, potentially losing out on more than $80 billion each fiscal year,” comments Daniel Fine, Founder and CEO of Setscale.

“Government contracts are fierce competition for US small business owners for a reason. They’re reliable, well-valued, and often lead to steady sources of income. However, due to a lack of knowledge of the specific government contract awarding process, business owners are unsure if they can fulfill the government’s open purchase orders without pursuing a line of credit from a bank or financial institution,” elaborates Fine. “With interest rates at an all-time high, it’s an incredibly bad time to be a borrower. PO financing allows a small business to quickly bid on a contract, finance the full transaction, and scale operations to meet the size of the order.”

*In Fiscal Year 2022, the US federal government awarded $162.9B in federal contracting opportunities to small businesses. 52% of surveyed US small business owners reported that they aren’t aware of the specific contracts the US federal government awards to small businesses * $162.9B = $84B in lost opportunities.

Survey Methodology
Setscale designed and executed research for this report in collaboration with Censuswide. 251 US small business owners in companies with less than 50 employees (aged 18+) were surveyed online in October 2023. Censuswide abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society which is based on the ESOMAR principles.

About Setscale
Setscale is a fintech startup solving the trade financing dilemma for small businesses. Small businesses frequently get purchase orders, but don’t have the money to fill them. Through its PO financing technology, Setscale finances the cost of those goods, allowing small businesses to focus on product and sales, enabling them to scale. Setscale is an ideal partner for SMBs, coming in where traditional financial institutions won’t, enabling SMB’s to finance their growth. Setscale funds supply. You meet demand.

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Monsha'at leads delegation of Saudi startups at Web Summit 2023

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As part of its work to showcase the growth of the Kingdom’s SME sector, Monsha’at, the Small and Medium Enterprises General Authority of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, took part in Web Summit 2023: one of the world’s leading technology conferences.

Held from 13 to 16 November 2023 — in Lisbon, Portugal — the event provided Monsha’at the opportunity to spotlight Saudi Arabia’s most innovative SMEs. The authority led a delegation of Saudi start-ups, calling attention to their success and contributions to the national economy. Moreover, the event provided a platform for industry leaders, including policymakers, heads of state, and tech CEOs and founders, to address global challenges.

Sami Al Hussaini, Governor of Monsha’at, said: “2023 has been a landmark year for Monsha’at and the Saudi SME sector, with the number of start-ups in the Kingdom growing to over 1.2 million. While we have made a great deal of progress, we can achieve more. Launching innovative partnerships with businesses and entities around the world is essential. Events such as Web Summit 2023 enable us to do that, immersing some of our leading start-ups in an energized environment conducive to collaboration, innovation and growth.”

Saudi Arabia’s start-up ecosystem is currently undergoing a period of rapid growth. Amid the continued expansion of its non-oil sector, the Kingdom achieved one of the highest economic growth rates in the world last year and has been recognized as one of the best-performing countries in terms of leveraging reforms to improve its business environment. In Q2 2023, the Kingdom led the region in VC funding and capital raised, accounting for 42% of MENA funding at a value of $446 million.

Among the Saudi start-ups participating in Web Summit 2023 were: Zid, Lendo, Nuqtah, Syarah, Asasat Advanced Systems, Wosul, Kabi, Master Works, resal, WhiteHelmet, Mustadem, and Tachyon.

Monsha’at’s participation at WebSummit follows its recent participation in other world-class conferences, including SWITCH Singapore, and ComeUp Korea, where it has helped connect some of the Kingdom’s leading start-ups with the international business and investment communities.

About Monsha’at:

Monsha’at was established in 2016 with the aim of regulating, supporting, developing, and sponsoring the SME sector in the Kingdom in accordance with global best practices, in order to increase the productivity of SMEs and their contribution to GDP.

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