News & Analysis

Girija Pande Joins tryb Group’s Board of Directors

Singapore – The Board of Directors of tryb Group announced the appointment of Girija Pande as an Independent Director of the firm.

Mr. Pande spent over a decade with TCS as Head of Asia Pacific, his last role being Chairman of TCS, Asia-Pacific. He established TCS’s Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore in 2001 and pioneered its business growth in Asia. He has spent over three decades in the Asia Pacific region working in senior capacities at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Ltd and ANZ Banking Group.

“Girija is an accomplished leader in technology and financial services and an experienced board member” said Nels Friets, Co-Founder and Vice Chairman of tryb Group. “We and our portfolio companies will benefit from his insights and strong network across Asia Pacific supporting the growth of tryb’s infrastructure technologies,” he continued.

Artivision To Buy MC Payment For Upwards Of US$59m

Singapore (DealStreetAsia) – SGX-listed Artivision Technologies has agreed to buy local fintech firm MC Payment for a minimum of S$80 million ($59 million), the companies announced, in what will be amongst the largest exits amongst startups in this space in the city-state.

Following the announcement, the Artivision stock surged on the SGX on Wednesday. At the time of writing, it was trading at 1.9 Singapore cents, up 11.76 per cent.

MC Payment, which had earlier this year taken a controlling stake in Genesis Payment Solutions (Genesis) that is licensed by Alipay to acquire merchants on its behalf, is a leading provider of omni-channel and omni-payment solutions in the Asia Pacific region, with presence in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and Cambodia. Its strategic partners in the region include Cambodia’s Soma Group, Sri Lanka’s Frostaire and Indonesia’s Sinar Mas Group.

Lien Choong Luen and Jason Strimpel Join tryb Group

tryb Group has made key appointments to deepen the firm’s operating efficiencies and technology capabilities. Lien Choong Luen and Jason Strimpel were brought on board as Chief Operating Officer and Head of Platforms, respectively, to further strengthen tryb’s position as a leading operating partner for enterprise and B2B financial technology companies.

“Lien and Jason joining the growing tryb widens the expertise of the team and enhances our capabilities to continue building our financial technology ecosystem for ASEAN.” stated Markus Gnirck, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of tryb. tryb is a financial infrastructure company that buys, builds and operates growth stage and middle market financial technology companies.

Does your user table look like this? (1)

Networks have been around for a long time. Think about the telephone which was invented in the late 1800s; the value of the telephone network increased exponentially as more and more users bought and started using them. Fast forward, and today you find several multi-billion dollar business that rely on these effects to drive their massive advertising engines.

Platforms that generate network effects are massively powerful ecosystems which increase in value almost magically. At tryb, we’ve been pitched by dozens of founders and CEOs who claim that their products generate network effects. Unfortunately, most the time this is simply not true.

Network effects matter for businesses because they are simultaneously a barrier to exit for existing users of the platform and a barrier to entry for the competition. As a founder or an investor, it’s important to appreciate the mechanics and nuances of network effects that are particular to any business, in order to understand what questions to ask and what the corresponding business strategy should be.

Five drivers for financial technology growth in ASEAN

The explosion of financial technology (FinTech) in the West, China and India has been widely reported. Meanwhile, Europe keeps itself busy with Brexit, Open Banking Platforms and PSD2 (Revised Payment Service Directive). China commentary is dominated by the rise of payment ecosystems driven by Tencent and Ant Financial. India has achieved tremendous progress by introducing the new electronic identity systems Aadhaar, a unified payment interface and payment bank licenses.

In Memory of Magnus Böcker

On 27 July, 2017, tryb lost a founding member, a leader, and most importantly – a dear friend. Magnus battled cancer for several years, fighting the disease to the very end before passing away in St. Louis, Missouri.

Career

A leader, Magnus built and led industry-defining businesses. He was the CEO of Singapore Exchange from 2009 to 2015, elevating it to become one of the world’s largest and leading exchanges. Prior to SGX, he was President of Nasdaq, playing an instrumental role in the eventual merger of OMX and Nasdaq in 2007. Under his leadership, OMX became the world’s largest provider of technology solutions for exchanges and clearing organizations.

A visionary, Magnus held over three decades of experience, reshaping the finance industry during that period. Magnus was Honorary Chairman of the Securities Investors Association (Singapore). He was also a member of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics at Singapore Management University, and Senior Advisor to Bain & Co. in relation to financial markets, exchanges and financial technology.

We, at tryb, will miss Magnus’ leadership, experience and camaraderie that he brought. We will stay true to Magnus’ values and spirit, building on existing momentum to achieve his shared vision.

Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends.

Big Data Analytics in Financial Services: Generating Actionable Insights

Big data analytics is not a new phenomenon. However, many financial services companies are still in the early phases of adoption and face challenges securing talent and expertise in this area.

Event

tryb hosted an exclusive breakfast session with the tryb community on big data analytics in financial services. The event included a panel of experts discussing use cases, implementation challenges and cutting-edge techniques. The panel was moderated by Veiverne Yuen, Managing Director (tryb) and included the following panelists:

Michelle Katics, Co-Founder & CEO (Portfolio Quest)
Jason Strimpel, CIO (COFCO International)
Liu Feng Yuan, Director – Data Science Division (GovTech Singapore)

The panel discussed practical insights on privacy and potential use cases with respect to trading, anti-money laundering (AML), fraud detection and large public infrastructure problems. They debated the usefulness of “real-time” data and predictive models in the face of growing anomalies.

tryb announces US$4m Strategic Investment in Chinsay

Chinsay AB, the leading cloud based platform for end-to-end administration of global commodity and freight contracts, has secured strategic investment of US$4 million from tryb Capital, a Singapore-based growth stage technology investor. The investment will be used to fund the continued development of Chinsay’s next- generation product and expansion into Asian markets.

About Chinsay

Chinsay’s platform offers a comprehensive suite of front-end tools and the opportunity to apply back-end APIs to enable clear productivity benefits to not only global traders, shipping companies and brokers but also ports, marketplaces and financial institutions involved in trade and trade finance. Chinsay sees a strong acceleration in growth in Asia alongside its major clients, which include the likes of ADM, Cargill, K Line, Noble Group, NYK, Rio Tinto, South32 and Unipec.

Magnus Böcker, Chairman and Co-Founder of tryb Capital stated, “Singapore’s position as a key shipping and trading hub made it more attractive for tryb Capital to invest into Chinsay. This is a great example of how innovative technologies from anywhere, in this case Sweden, can leverage Singapore as a growth platform into Asia.”

Dag Sundén-Cullberg, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Chinsay commented: “Chinsay’s board and team see this as a great opportunity for the company to take in additional capital for the current expansion phase while staying fully independent and at the same time getting a strategically important shareholder with an active agenda in the technology industry. The tryb team’s experience and network within technology will benefit Chinsay greatly as we continue influencing and driving usage of new technology in the freight and commodities markets.”

Lattice80 Interview with Markus Gnirck

The largest FinTech Hub in the world, Lattice80, interviewed Markus about his entrepreneurial journey, the competitive edge of tryb and what advice he would give to startup founders. Read more here.

Share your journey to get to where you are

The past decade took me all the way from working with the Zulu tribe in South Africa in an HIV orphanage, to building carbon fibre clips for airplanes, to scaling up a suit business in Germany, followed by embracing the tech scene in London (CleanTech, IoT, EdTech) to finally financial technology. FinTech was certainly not something that I planned or saw coming. However, when I co-founded Startupbootcamp FinTech over three years ago, it was the right timing in the right place and I knew that I had joined a fascinating industry.

Singapore’s MC Payment Acquires a FinTech Startup to Work with Alipay

Singapore-based MC Payment announced today it has acquired a controlling stake in Genesis Payment Solutions.

Genesis is a Singaporean payments company that is licensed by Alipay to acquire merchants for the Chinese online payments provider. It also helps businesses adopt payment methods by Global Payment Asia Pacific, Wirecard Singapore, and American Express.

The terms of the deal are undisclosed. MC Payment chief investment officer David Wang tells Tech in Asia the acquisition was made with a combination of cash and MC Payment shares.

Through the deal, MC Payment gains access to Genesis’ clients, mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises, as well as the firm’s merchant-acquiring license with Alipay.

“Chinese outbound tourists to the Asia-Pacific region have been growing at 26 percent the past seven years, with yearly expenditure at US$45 billion,” David says. “This is a great partnership for MC Payment to grow our payment solution products and aggressively target new merchants.”

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