#GenesisStories Archives

Founded in 2016, Milieu Insight is a consumer research and analytics company that connects businesses directly with their target audience. Milieu’s platform offers businesses a wide range of tools for accessing, analysing, and visualising high-value and timely consumer opinion data to help power better decision-making and strategy in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

By leveraging technology and applying consumer research best practices, Milieu built an opinion-based insights platform to connect communities to organizations, making understanding consumer sentiments and behaviours quick, simple, and fun! Milieu’s mobile app user base has grown from 500,000 users in 2019 to over 2 million users in 2020. It has also increased its enterprise customer base by 300% to 180 customers as of October 2021, up from 45 at the start of 2020.

Recent news: Milieu has raised US$5 million in its latest funding round for product innovation, developing new software as a service-oriented consumer insight offerings, and expanding beyond South-east Asia (11 November 2021).

“Genesis believes that the consumer insights industry is due for a tech upgrade and the strong value that Milieu brings to corporates that want to know what their customers are thinking and where the trends are heading. When we first encountered their research and insights, we knew that Milieu was solving an important, real-world business problem of consumer insights and their approach could revolutionise the industry,” said Dr Jeremy Loh, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Genesis.

The traditional market research industry was based on primitive methodologies and inefficient processes. Milieu was born out of a conviction that its co-founder and CEO, Gerald Ang, had — that market research should be there to make everybody’s life easier, not tougher. Therefore, he decided to build his own tech-driven automated research product that would operate more efficiently and intelligently, thus revolutionising the way market research is conducted. From Gerald’s perspective, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted many industries, but it has only been an accelerator in driving the acceptance of online research.

”Empowering people to share their opinions effortlessly has always been our goal. Our partnership with Genesis allows us to continue building on our positive momentum, improving the user experience of our solutions and reach a wider audience, without experiencing high shareholders’ dilution,” says Gerald.

Recent research published by Milieu include the silent mental health crisis in South-East Asia, the tipping point for switching to electric cars, and where E-wallets stand in the future of payments. Its innovation and insights have not gone unnoticed by the industry, winning the team nine industry awards since 2019, including Campaign Asia’s Most Valuable Product, Marketing Interactive’s Market Research and Programmatic Agency of the Year, as well as several Mobile Experience (Mob-Ex) awards.

Founded in 2015, Deliveree is a full service on-demand ground logistics marketplace platform powered by sophisticated mobile and web app technology that allows businesses to book and manage ground transportation of goods, cargo and merchandise. At the moment, Deliveree has about 90,000 active drivers.

Recent News: Deliveree Logistics has raised a total of $38.8M in funding from 7 investors, including Genesis Alternative Ventures.

Deliveree also aims to generate better income through its Driver Partner Benefits Program by lowering the costs of maintaining their vehicles which supports United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Decent Work & Economic Growth, Goal 8). Employee data suggests that active drivers have seen a good improvement in earnings and corresponding standard of living.

“Deliveree is helping me save to start a family.” – Ari Susiyanto, Deliveree Driver Partner	“Deliveree has more than doubled my earnings. Now I can make more choices.” – Tarsan, Deliveree Driver Partner	“I struggle less with money each month since working with Deliveree.” – Pattana Juntakarn, Deliveree Driver Partner
Income Improvement 207%	Income Improvement 261%	Income Improvement 168%
Greater Jakarta, Indonesia	Greater Jakarta, Indonesia	Ladprao, Bangkok, Thailand

“Venture debt is a great financing option. It blends perfectly with the equity round and can help maximize a company’s valuation,” said Gagan Singh, Chief Financial Officer, Deliveree.

“We have a great working relationship with Deliveree and we are impressed with their commitment to improving the lives of their driver partners. Genesis will continue to support companies with impact objectives that are looking to scale Southeast Asia.” – Eddy Ng, Head of Investments & Portfolio of Genesis Alternative Ventures.

Founded in 2016, Flow is a credit management company that is transforming the business of unsecured consumer finance through AI technologies and ethical practices in Asia. Flow is constantly looking out for opportunities to promote responsible collection and financial inclusion to empower consumers in underserved economies.

Recent news: Earlier this year in March, Flow became a member of Asosiasi FinTech Pendanaan Bersama Indonesia (AFPI). With this alliance, Flow will be in a stronger position to transform the credit ecosystem in Indonesia through literacy movements and ethical collection.

Flow supports United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure, Goal 9). In the last year alone, Flow has created 362 full time and part time jobs per portfolio company. From which, 50% of these job positions are filled by women. Flow has also helped more than 150,000 borrowers.

According to Flow, the problem of debt bondage can become a time bomb, especially during a pandemic. To combat this, Flow recently organised a Financial Literacy Webinar titled “Financial Literacy & The Responsibility of Financial Institutions” to provide financial literacy education for the wider community in Indonesia.

On top of that, Flow will be launching a new function, FlowCares. Through FlowCares, borrowers will be able to access a self-service portal powered by AI which allows the borrower to bypass uncomfortable conversations with another human being on the subject of loan repayments.

“We have evaluated the Fintech value chain and were very impressed with Flow’s commitment to transform the decades-old debt collection business using AI and ethical practices. Genesis is a returns-first, scaled impact venture lender who wants to back growth-stage companies with impact objectives such as financial inclusion, sustainable food production, small business digitisation and gender diversity, that are looking to scale across Southeast Asia.” – Dr. Jeremy Loh, Managing Partner of Genesis Alternative Ventures.

“This funding from Genesis is another major milestone for Flow and for our debt portfolio purchase business in particular. In keeping with our mission, we can reach out to further support consumers in overcoming financial difficulties,” said Tomasz, CEO & Co-founder, Flow.

Catch Arun Pai, Chief Sales and Strategy Officer from Flow at the Genesis Forum where he and other industry leaders discuss “Accelerating Financial Inclusion Across Southeast Asia Through Fintech”.

“At the time I was trying to determine what kind of business and life I wanted to commit my time to. I was trying to find my calling.” Shortly after Peggy quit her job in finance, she founded Lynk Global in 2015, a platform where businesses can gain access to a pool of mentors and experts. Lynk Global’s network now has more than 840,000 knowledge partners and has pioneered the idea of selling knowledge as a service on a global scale.

“Genesis is in the ecosystem talking to a lot of venture capital firms. It’s a good way for Lynk to be more recognised and it drives our brand awareness,” said Peggy Choi, CEO & Co-founder, Lynk.

Recent news: Lynk, an AI-driven knowledge-as-a-service platform, and UBS, the world’s leading global wealth manager and a provider of financial services, are collaborating to help UBS’s institutional clients globally to enhance the integration of expert access into their investment process. This collaboration comes on the heels of Lynk’s $24M funding round led by Brewer Lane Ventures and MassMutual Ventures, bringing the company’s total funding to $30M.

Impact & ESG

While women and people of colour are often underrepresented in tech, diversity is in the company’s DNA. According to an interview with Bloomberg, Peggy mentioned the following:

Lynk’s Diversity Metrics:

51%:49% female to male ratio
20+ nationalities, across 8 offices
Team speaking over 20 languages

Source: https://lynk.global/in-the-news/lynk-founder-ceo-interview-on-bloomberg-tv

Lynk also focuses on building a diverse database through initiatives and campaigns such as Lynk Elite Expert Women (a female leaders focused campaign to recruit more expert women to its network with aims of ensuring more gender-balanced insights), Malala Fund Education Champion Network (Lynk donates to the charity every time a female expert joins its network and Redress & The R Collective (Lynk commits to limiting waste and operate out of co-working spaces promoting shared use of company resources) which supports United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (Quality Education, Goal 4), (Gender Equality, Goal 5) and (Responsible Consumption & Production, Goal 12).

“Not only is Lynk leading the way in democratizing access to knowledge, they also have a strong impact commitment. Genesis is proud to support Lynk and we look forward to its future growth.” – Martin Tang, Co-Founder of Genesis Alternative Ventures.

Founded in 2016, TaniHub has more than 45,000 farmers and 350,000 buyers in its network. Farmers are able to earn more for their crops due to the streamlined distribution channels where there are fewer middlemen between farms and the restaurants, grocery stores, vendors and other businesses that buy their products. It does this through three units: TaniHub, TaniSupply and TaniFund.

Recent news: TaniHub Group, an Indonesian startup that offers a technology-driven platform to better match supply and demand in the Indonesian agricultural and fresh produce sector recently raised a $65.5 million Series B.

During Pamitra’s time with the local farmers in Indonesia, he repeatedly heard complaints about how difficult it was to sell produce. “I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. At the time, I just wanted to help the farmers get access to the markets.” If he could help farmers get their products to market more efficiently and reduce price disparity between farmer and buyer, they could increase their earnings and improve their lives.

Being a capital-intensive business, TaniHub raised debt from Genesis as they needed warehouses to wash, sort and pack the harvests before delivering to the buyers. If they were to raise equity, “the founders will get diluted significantly,” said Pamitra Wineka, CEO & President, TaniHub.

Impact & ESG

TaniHub aims to improve farmers’ access to credit, increase incomes of farmers, practice demand-supply matching which leads to waste reduction and engage in sustainable agricultural practices which supports United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (No Poverty, Goal 1), (Decent Work & Economic Growth, Goal 8), (Responsible Consumption and Production, Goal 12) and (Climate Action, Goal 13).

“We are delighted with the robust quality of our portfolio companies, especially since a growing number of them are making a positive impact to society and the environment, underscoring Genesis’ profit-for-purpose commitment.” – Ben J Benjamin, Co-Founder of Genesis Alternative Ventures.

“When we met with the Genesis team, we really liked their vision. They are social impact driven which is the soul of our business,” said Pamitra. TaniHub’s data indicates that the farmers have seen a major improvement in terms of standard of living.

More than 30,000 smallholder farmers have been onboarded into the TaniHub ecosystem
Farmers in TaniHub’s platform have recorded at least a 20% increase in their income
Farmers who have participated in TaniFund have generated an additional 50% in income

Source: https://about.tanihub.com/blog/read/tanihub-group-raih-pendanaan-seri-a-plus-sebesar-us17-juta-untuk-menjangkau-100000-petani-pada-2021

Watch Pamitra Wineka at the Genesis Forum where he and other industry leaders discuss “Ketahanan”: The Resilience of These Indonesia Start-ups.

Founded in 2013, Trusting Social delivers AI-led products to leading banks and finance companies, enabling them to provide credit to under-served consumers at scale. Today, Trusting Social’s credit insights cover more than a billion consumers and are used by more than 130 financial institutions across Vietnam, Indonesia, India and the Philippines.

Recent News: Headquartered in Singapore and operating across Vietnam, Indonesia, India and the Philippines, AI Fintech Trusting Social announced an undisclosed venture debt financing with Genesis Alternative Ventures.

“We have enjoyed a great partnership with Genesis. Venture debt solution allowed us to raise growth capital without high dilution. They have also been very supportive of our business through introductions to potential clients and partners,” said Jaideep Lakshminarayanan, CFO, Trusting Social.

“We are excited to be supporting Trusting Social’s growth as they increase their breadth of product offering, helping banks and financial institutions to increase their reach to the under-served consumers.” said Eddy Ng, Head of Investments and Portfolio at Genesis.

Impact & ESG

On top of providing AI-led products, Trusting Social is on a mission to fill that gap by providing credit scoring and improving access to financial services for such consumers which supports United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure, Goal 9).

“Our ambition is to enable financial inclusion on an unprecedented scale, and Genesis will be helping us frame our reporting for this purpose.” – Nguyen Nguyen, Founder & CEO, Trusting Social.

Trusting Social’s data indicates that there are more than 1 billion borrowers scored in Asia with about 1 million customers enabled every month.

Catch Jaideep at the Genesis Forum where he and other industry leaders discuss “Accelerating Financial Inclusion Across Southeast Asia Through Fintech”.

Milieu Insight Revolutionises Traditional Research, Bringing Real-Time Consumer Insights to The Forefront, Seamlessly

Deliveree Logistics has raised a total of $38.8M in funding from 7 investors, including Genesis Alternative Ventures.

Earlier this year in March, Flow became a member of Asosiasi FinTech Pendanaan Bersama Indonesia (AFPI)

Lynk, an AI-driven knowledge-as-a-service platform, and UBS, the world’s leading global wealth manager and a provider of financial services

TaniHub Group, an Indonesian startup that offers a technology-driven platform to better match supply and demand in the Indonesian agricultural

Trusting Social delivers AI-led products to leading banks and finance companies, enabling them to provide credit to under-served consumers at scale.