Off to the races

• 500-backed used car trading platform Carsome has entered the realm of motorsports sponsorship as part of its brand-building commitment.
• The startup is now a sponsor of the B-Quik Absolute Racing Team Car #1, the Audi R8 LMS Evolution driven by Sandy Stuvik in the 2021 Thailand Super Series.
• Sandy, the first Thai driver to win a Formula 3 Championship, and the reigning double champion of the Thailand Super Series GT3 Class, will also become Carsome’s partner in the Thai market.
• According to Carsome co-founder and group CEO Eric Cheng, the company is evolving from just elevating and enhancing used car buying and selling experience to also building avenues that enhance Carsome’s brand messaging. It now wants to bring together a community that understands and shares the same ethos of solving industry pain points through technology.
• Read the full announcement on Carsome here.

Transforming cities

• 500-backed drone startup Aerodyne Group has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kiwitech, a Malaysian company offering Internet of Things (IoT)-based city surveillance services.
• Both companies will collaborate on smart surveillance, leveraging Aerodyne’s capability in aerial intelligence and Kiwitech’s existing surveillance assets in 25 Malaysian cities.
• The partnership is geared to support the implementation of Kiwitech’s Smart City Program with local councils in 25 Malaysian cities for the next 3 years.
• Founder and group CEO of Aerodyne Group, Kamarul Muhamed said, “The partnership between Aerodyne and Kiwitech will be a game-changer for the development of smart cities in Malaysia as we can now enable real time AI-driven aerial data for quick situational responses and data driven decision making.”
• Read the full article on Digital News Asia here.

Data tailored to fit

• The idea of 500-backed Omnilytics came from co-founder Kendrick Wong’s other startup, Shoppr, an aggregator dubbed ‘Tinder for fashion’. He shared that retailers were asking for details of how well their products were doing in various markets. And thus, Omnilytics was born.
• “We can monitor any brand around the world, we can see their performance,” Kendrick explained, with Omnilytics now offering data from more than 70,000 brands around the world.”
• The latest innovation offered to manufacturers is the ability to track how their resellers are pricing and marketing their products. According to the article, a discount of a single dollar can result in hundreds of extra sales for an online shop.
• Omnilytics has customers in seven countries, including brands such as Adidas, Zalora, Salvatore Ferragamo, Neelofa, and Carlo Rino, as well as non-fashion industry clients such as the Singaporean government and RMIT University.
• Read the full feature on Digital News Asia here.

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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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