Lending a hand in tough times

• Hong Kong is battling its fifth pandemic wave, with many small and medium businesses (SMBs) grappling with a drop in customers and revenue.
• To support the SMB ecosystem, 500-backed Carousell joins the fight with the launch of a special CarouBiz SMB Pandemic Relief Package. It includes up to 40,000 Carousell coins and a CarouBiz subscription worth a total of ~US$255.
• “Over 52% of our CarouBiz merchants surveyed have physical stores, and a top concern is if their business can survive the anti-pandemic restrictions…We want to urge small businesses who are hesitant to go online to do so quickly,” said Kevin Huang, Managing Director of Carousell Hong Kong.
• “In addition to supporting small businesses, Carousell remains committed to its local community of users and is conscious about their needs. Through providing flexible and tailored offerings, we strive to make it through the difficult times with the local community,” he added.
• More details in Marketing-Interactive.

A cause for celebration

• Eid is drawing near, and 500-backed ‘buy now, pay later’ platform Kredivo forged a partnership with PT Matahari Department Store Tbk. to make it easier for consumers to shop during this festive season.
• Thanks to this collaboration, shoppers can use Kredivo at 139 Matahari outlets throughout Indonesia. One of the perks? They can opt to pay within 30 days at 0% interest.
• This partnership is also a commitment by both companies to facilitate the growth of the Indonesian retail sector.
• General Manager of Kredivo Indonesia, Lily Suriani, said, “The partnership with Matahari is Kredivo’s strategic step in realizing our commitment to serve tens of millions of users in the next few years, this includes serving consumers in all categories from gadgets, electronics, fashion, beauty, groceries to lifestyle.”
• Read more here.

Unlearning to learn effectively

• Sina Meraji comes from a family of educators. His mom was a primary school teacher, while his dad was a higher education manager-turned-entrepreneur. That’s how his journey to founding 500-backed Learning Loop began.
• Learning Loop is a proprietary learning framework that challenges traditional methods in the education sector. Sina believes in the value of the curiosity- and community-based learning experience. “By default, the number one way of learning is sure, [people are] reading books, Googling, watching,” Sina said in the Asia Tech podcast. But what happens when someone is truly stuck trying to figure something out?
• In comes groups on WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, Facebook, and the like, where people discuss specific problems from an individual’s point of view. “When you ask a question there, the value you get is that you’re getting a very specific and reliable answer within minutes, hours, or a day at most,” Sina shared.
• So, how does Learning Loop work? “At this point in time, it’s a monthly subscription. Essentially, you’re getting access to one learning loop a month. You can think of it as an expiring group chat, except the people in it are facing exactly whatever problem you’re facing…there’s this surge of intrinsic motivation for everybody to figure it out.”
• Listen to the full podcast here.
• Join Sina this Friday 8pm (Singapore time) on Twitter Spaces to learn more about the future of education.