Brankas, Kaya Founders launch Open PHinance Challenge for SEA startups

Indonesian Open Finance company Brankas has joined hands with Filipino investor Kaya Founders to launch Open PHinance Challenge for early-stage startups in the Philippines.

The Open PHinance Challenge is an 8-week accelerator programme to generate innovative, high-value Open Finance products for early-stage startups in the Philippines to creatively solve their audience or operational needs.

Over the next few weeks, participating teams will undergo week-long intensives centred around product ideation, business development, user validation, regulatory compliance, pitching and fundraising. 

Under the guidance of subject matter experts, participants will develop a unique product and pitch. The teams will be fully evaluated based on their product and pitch on the Demo Day in Manila on October 14, 2022. They will be judged by a panel of investors, leading startup founders, and open finance experts on various metrics, including product and business viability, investability and pitch quality.

Also Read: Insignia Ventures, Visa join open finance platform Brankas’s US$20M Series B round

Todd Schweitzer, Founder and CEO of Brankas, said: “We are now at the very beginning of banking 3.0 in the Philippines, where we’re unbundling and embedding financial services and reducing reliance on the financial institutions (FIs) to build financial products on their own. More and more FIs see a business value in partnering with startups like the accelerator participants, where they can distribute, monetise, and share data on behalf of the FIs. This is what we hope to enable with the Open PHinance Challenge, and we hope that it benefits the users of the participants as well.”

The teams represent seven different sectors and four Southeast Asian countries.

The startups are as follows:

1. AltSwitch: A blockchain-based company building products for the ecosystem of decentralised apps and services. It aims to develop a state-of-the-art hardware and software wallet to provide digital asset

security to the growing class of more than 300 million wallet users.

2. Betterteem: A cloud-based HR integration app that uses AI to enable businesses to predict employee churn, provide on-demand mental health support, and a digital employee community platform to influence employee experience positively.  The startup recently secured an undisclosed sum in funding from Techstars, Crestone Venture Capital, 1337 Ventures (Malaysia), and Suresh Thiru (ex-CEO of JobStreet).

3. Cropital: An agriculture crowdfunding platform providing farmers access to scalable and sustainable financing. Having raised ₱100 million (US$1.8 million) to support farmers across ten provinces, it now intends to build a credit scoring and reporting service for rural banks to manage risks in extending loans to small farmers.

4. Datacultr Fintech: A digital debt collection and risk management startup, it digitalises collection processes automates customer engagement and provides lifecycle management. Having raised a US$1 million seed round in early 2022, it looks to disrupt the lending segment in the Philippines by unlocking credit access for the 67 million unbanked and under-banked population.

Also Read: Betterteem is Slack, Microsoft Teams, SharePoint, Intranet all rolled into one

5. Dyippay: A fintech startup servicing the public utility vehicle sector. It is an app for automated fare collection systems for cashless and cardless transactions. Ultimately, it aims to reduce the costs borne by transport cooperatives and eventually expand into a suite of services which harmonise public transportation in the Philippines.

6. KoleK: An enterprise SaaS that orchestrates receivables processes for companies by providing a complete solution that tracks receivables, increases payment conversion rate and provides data for better financial decisions. Their software is a bank-agnostic solution that leverages open banking infrastructure for finance teams to have flexibility in products for their operations.

7. Mochi: Mochi is a B2B BNPL startup that aims to help MSME merchants purchase supplies without worrying about cash on hand. They do this by working with platforms, funders, and other technology solution providers who share their mission of building a more inclusive and integrated B2B e-commerce market in Asia.

8. Rambooor: Rambooor is a Web3 startup which aims to make decentralised finance (DeFi) accessible, safe, and profitable for ordinary users via a secure non-custodial wallet. The solution intends to enable end users to derive passive income from DeFi activities such as staking and

liquidity farming.

9. Sonicboom Solutions: It is a fintech company based in Malaysia focusing on making payment efficient for building owners and drivers in the mobility and parking industry. During the Challenge, t will develop an all-in-one payment reading solution and license plate recognition technology.

10. Spiro Carbon Group: It enables smallholder farms to transition to climate-friendly farming methods, subsequently generating and selling high-quality, transparent, and socially conscious carbon offsets to SMEs globally. Their solution aims to create an open, secondary source of income for small farmers and open a pathway to net zero for business via a broad grassroots network.

11. Taikee: Taikee is a personal finance platform that uses AI to create a unique financial management plan and set up for its users. By analysing a user’s demographics, goals, and spending habits through transactional data, Taikee aims to create a personalised experience for Filipinos to get started with managing and handling their finances. 

Brankas is an Open Finance technology provider in Southeast Asia. It provides API-based solutions, data and payments solutions for financial service providers (like banks, lenders and e-wallets) and online businesses. Brankas partners with banks to build and manage their Open Finance infrastructure, producing APIs for real-time payments, identity and data, new account opening, remittances, and more. 

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