Founders of the Singaporean food ordering app Oddle, which offers choices from Michelin-starred restaurants to bubble tea concoctions, are working with an adviser to exit the company, people with knowledge of the matter said.
The start-up, cofounded by Jonathan Lim (林澤延), Pua Yong Xiang (潘永祥) and Jeremy Lee (李俊輝), has reached out to potential suitors to gauge interest, said the people, asking not to be named as the process is private.
Sale documents show that Oddle has raised total funds of S$5 million (US$3.7 million) over the past three years and is projecting a gross profit of S$8 million for the fiscal year ending March next year, the people said.
Online food ordering from people stuck indoors has taken off since the outbreak of the COVID-19, boosting revenues at companies such as Oddle.
Deliberations are at an early stage and the founders could decide to keep the business, the people said.
The firm declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg News.
The start-up counts SPH Ventures, RB Investment, Fidelis Capital, Wavemaker Partners and Quest Ventures among its backers, according to its most recent filings with Singapore regulators.
The company’s order management system is used by about 3,000 brands in more than 10 countries, its Web site shows.
Among these outlets are Odette, ranked as Asia’s best restaurant, where people can order Normandy crab dumplings and milk-fed Axuria lamb, as well as humbler offerings such as bubble tea and ice cream.
Oddle posted revenue of S$1.8 million in the year ended March 31, 2018, surging 57 percent from a year earlier, according to the filings.
Its net loss narrowed to S$2.3 million from S$2.6 million.
The number of tech start-up exits in Southeast Asia was little changed in the first half of this year from a year ago, according to a recent report by Singapore-based Cento Ventures.
The proceeds generated from the exits dropped by almost 50 percent, the report said.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”