South-east Asian VC firms rally together to help startups weather Covid-19 storm

SOUTH-EAST Asian venture capital (VC) firms have rallied together to help startups weather the storm of Covid-19, with ground-up initiatives looking to boost revenues and keep staff employed.

Openspace Ventures, 500 Startups and Cocoon Capital have joined hands to aggregate all promotional activities offered by startups across the region under a single website, supportstartups.com Through this, they hope to "leverage the strength of the ecosystem to drive more traffic to startups".

The initiative gathered more than 250 submissions from startups in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines within 24 hours of its soft launch, said the VC firms in a statement on Wednesday.

About 50 businesses - across verticals such as e-commerce, enterprise SAAS (Software As A Service), cyber security and F&B businesses - are listed on the website. 

Additionally, the VC firms said that Amazon Web Services (AWS) will offer US$5,000 in promotional credits to each eligible startup that registers in the programme, to be provided under the AWS Activate programme. 

Vishal Harnal, partner at 500 Startups, said: "This initiative is our way of standing up for our inventive companies in their time of need and encouraging entrepreneurs to push ahead and not give up." 

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But beyond that, the initiative does more than sharing promotions and deals, said founder and chief executive of Dexecure, Inian Parameshwaran. "It's a way of creating a new space in the ecosystem where both startups and business can thrive in the long run and emerge from this crisis even stronger." 

Other VC firms in the region have collated a database to help startup employees who have been laid off as a result of Covid-19's impact.

The database - a Google sheet form on www.SEAcosystem.com, aims to help those talents that have been let go to find new jobs, and to help growing startups find new talent.

The form compiles the details of those who have been laid off, companies that are still hiring, and profiles of companies that are undergoing lay-offs.

The VCs involved - Saison Capital, FutureLabs, Jungle Ventures, Alpha JWC, Convergence Ventures, Patamar Capital, Rainmaking, TRIVE Ventures and Tribe Accelerator - are supporting the initiative by disseminating the forms through their networks and verifying the postings on the form.

Joachim Vandaele, founding Partner at FutureLabs Ventures, said: "Top talent is what makes or breaks ventures, so as an ecosystem, we have a collective interest and responsibility to keep the talent in South-east Asia. Customers come and go, financial capital flows in and out, but human capital is what we need to hold on to."

David Gowdey, managing partner at Jungle Ventures, said: "One of the great things about working in the technology space is that many roles are highly fungible, with limited training to get up and running. So, if you've built up a level of expertise within one startup, then much of that knowledge can typically be applied to another. We hope to see a high absorption rate of any displaced talent as we emerge from the current crisis."