Marketplace to marketing

• Carousell Group has launched Carousell Media Group, a full-service platform that offers advertising solutions across Carousell Group’s family of brands, including 500-backed online marketplace Carousell. The service is available in Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

• “Connecting brands with tens of millions of millennials every day — that’s what we do at Carousell Media Group. Over 70% of our audience is 20–35 year olds, who are generally part of a passionate community that comes to our platform to buy, sell and interact with one another. This makes the Carousell Media Group uniquely positioned to help brands connect with and better understand the buying habits and attitudes of this highly sought after consumer segment,” said JJ Eastwood, Managing Director of the Carousell Media Group.

The future of flying vehicles

• Founder and CEO Kamarul Muhamed of 500-backed Aerodyne Group was recently interviewed about the drone startup’s growth and future plans.
• Aerodyne has been actively expanding across the globe and is currently present in 35 countries. This has been made possible within only 6 years since its inception with a strategy of entering markets directly, through partnerships, or after merger and acquisition (M&As) with local companies.

• Kamarul believes the key to addressing public concern about the privacy and safety of drone tech is transparency. “We track all our incidents, and we’ve seen zero lost time injury and very few incidents. We publish the reports publicly, because we want the industry to grow and this innovation to be accepted by society,” he shared. “We hope that people realize that as long as drones are being operated by professional organizations, the technology is completely safe.”
• He predicts that urban air mobility (UAM) will become commonplace by 2030, and flying vehicles will be everywhere by 2040. “UAM will become a reality,” he said. “The question is when.”
• Read the full interview here.

Mobility that matters

• 500-backed super app Grab launched GrabAssist Plus in Singapore. This feature enables persons with disabilities to travel to and from partnering healthcare institutions without dismounting from their wheelchairs throughout the journey.

• Collaborating with fleet partners such as SMRT Taxis, the service will begin as a trial with approximately 10 wheelchair-accessible vehicles.
• Certified care services providers will train all driver-partners under the programme to provide assistance to passengers.

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500 Startups is a venture capital firm on a mission to discover and back the world’s most talented entrepreneurs, help them create successful companies at scale, and build thriving global ecosystems. In Southeast Asia, 500 Startups invests through the pioneering 500 Southeast Asia family of funds. The 500 Southeast Asia funds have backed over 240 companies across multiple sectors from internet to consumer to deep technology. It continues to connect founders with capital, expertise and powerful regional and global networks to help them succeed.

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