A tool for thriving

• Co-founder of 500-backed startup Food Market Hub, Shayna Teh, shares her thoughts on how F&B businesses can get a competitive edge during the period of pandemic recovery.
• Recently, Food Market Hub collaborated with Saladplate, a B2B online marketplace for F&B businesses, to offer a comprehensive digital platform for the Malaysian F&B sector.
• The platform is designed to simplify the product sourcing journey and manage business expenditure intelligently. Powered by artificial intelligence, it empowers business owners to be cost-efficient and assists them in making smarter decisions in procurement.
• Citing research by Huawei Technologies, data shows that businesses can reduce costs, increase profit margins, and increase productivity by 60% when using advanced digital tools.
• Read the full piece here.

Evolving with the times

• Val Yap, founder and CEO of 500-backed insurtech startup PolicyPal, spoke with DigFin about the startup’s history, its acquisitions, trends in the industry, and entering new verticals.
• Val shared that sales grew 40% in 2020 during the pandemic when the adoption of digital services ramped up as people stayed home. This was also the year that PolicyPal was acquired by AMTD Group.
• In the following year, the startup itself acquired another company, Value Champion, a US-based, Asia-focused fintech firm. Val said that thanks to this strategic move, PolicyPal’s service offerings expanded beyond insurance and protection needs into financial planning.
• According to Val, PolicyPal is looking into new verticals and expansion opportunities this year in order to help consumers in Asia to be able to make better financial decisions.
• Listen to the full podcast here.

Minding the market gap

• Nirali Zaveri, co-founder and CEO at 500-backed Friz, a neobank for the creator economy, speaks in a podcast about her journey as an entrepreneur.
• Friz offers financial services to white-collar freelancers who typically have trouble accessing them with traditional banks, such as debit cards and credit lines as well as an invoicing solution.
• On entering new markets, Nirali believes in taking a systematic approach. “Start with a multicurrency account or a debit card that enables customers to get paid and spend on our platform. After having a good understanding of the customer segment, we would expand into lending, insurance, wealth management, and so on. With fintech, it is very important to build trust with customers first.”
• Listen to the full podcast here.