August Newsletter from Orbit Startups

Friends of Orbit,

In Southeast Asia, women micro-entrepreneurs often face barriers in taking out a loan due to social and gender norms. To combat this funding gap, Boost Capital, already in use by multi-market banks, recently?raised seed funding for its chat-based solution that allows MSMEs to receive a loan using only a smartphone. Meanwhile, William discusses the new applications of AI with The Economist, Ching-Ping weighs in on the barriers to AI adoption in healthcare, and Oscar breaks?bread with founders in Bangladesh.?Check out the highlights below, and see you next month.

Until then, Orbit Startups

ORBIT IN THE NEWS

The Economist recently sat down with?Orbit MD? William Bao Bean and The AI Living Lab founder Arvind Sethumadhavan to discuss AI investments in Asia-Pacific. Hear?about the new business models emerging from the industry applications of AI such as?MotionsCloud?and?VideoVerse, and why it's time to shift the?rhetoric?from “human vs machine” to “human + machine.”

Cosmopolitan interviews Natasha Bansgopaul, co-founder of Orbit-backed digital asset management firm?VegaX, on?leaving her corporate job at PepsiCo, navigating the 24/7 fintech industry, and advocating for yourself at work. Natasha is part of Cosmo's?The?New C-Suite: the women of color founders making major waves in America, where less than 1% of all VC funding goes to Latina and Black women founders.

Boost Capital, co-founded by Lucinda Revell and Gordon Peters ,?raised $2.5M to close the funding gap for MSMEs through?its chat-based onboarding solution for banks. Through Boost—available in?English, Filipino, Cambodian, Bahasa and any language requested by bank partners, loan applicants can talk to a chatbot on Facebook Messenger or Whatsapp and get approved in as short as 10 minutes. E27 reports on how Boost, a technology partner to the United Nations Capital Development Fund, is delivering an inclusive solution that can impact millions in Southeast Asia.

EVENTS

The Global Startups Academy 2023 program co-organized by Orbit Startups in collaboration with KISED (Korea Institute of Startup & Entrepreneurship Development)?is heating up in Seoul. Here's a look back at the Co-Workshop Day including the Fundraising Fundamentals 101 workshop delivered by Stella (Jeehyon) Yoh , Principal at Orbit, and a networking happy hour with Korea's ecosystem stakeholders supported by Jae woong Choi and Kaha Go 郭凯赫 .

Orbit COO Ching-Ping Lin weighs in on the future of AI in healthcare at the recent?FTR4H - Future for Health?conference alongside Orbit mentors Mark Waechter , Christian O. and Teddy Li . Ching-Ping, who holds a PhD in biomedical informatics, revisits her experience building digital health systems in rural communities in Uganda, China, and the US to reflect that while AI is making workflows more efficient, there are still barriers to innovations in AI due to health data gate keepers. Insurance companies, policy makers and health providers need to accelerate collaborations to provide data across the fragmented care industry, especially in emerging and frontier markets and especially for startups who don’t have infinite runway to negotiate for data.

Bangladesh has achieved a 6.4% average annual GDP growth between 2016-2021, significantly outperforming other Asian competitors and is on track to becoming a middle-income country, BCG reports. Having launched SM2, a program for Bangladeshi startups in 2021, we're bullish on investing in the ecosystem as a whole.?Orbit MD?Oscar Ramos?recently shared his learning at Bangladesh Startup Summit and met up with Orbit founders here, including teams from e-learning platform Ostad and MSME supply-chain solution PriyoShop co-founders Asikul Alam Khan and Dipty Mandal .