In the second half of 2024, our Altara team has been busy working with our portfolio companies and entrepreneurs across the ecosystem. We spoke and hosted office hours at a dozen regional startup events in the last three months alone. In the course of our engagement, we polled founding teams on their key priorities between now and the end of the year. They told us they are focusing on generating profits, raising funds strategically and pursuing ways to outpace competition, such as acquiring assets and expanding into new markets.
KYAN Technologies, a personalized cancer medicine startup, continues to gain traction as it expands outside of Singapore. In the past quarter, KYAN completed an ovarian cancer study with the University of Basel, demonstrating high success rates of their diagnostic test in a clinically actionable timeframe for primary tumor samples. KYAN has also initiated studies with MD Anderson to identify effective drug combinations for individual TP53-mutated AML patients.
Tonik, the first digital bank in the Philippines, announced its expansion to Cebu, bringing its full suite of customer-centric and innovative products to the second largest market for financial services in the country. With this expansion, customers can now access the complete range of Tonik's products and services, including the Shop Installment Loan, previously available only in Luzon.
Investment Associate Shane Chen attended XenConnect Manila in June, where he hosted an offline speed dating event co-organised by Xendit and Google Cloud. The prolific event saw more than 30 curated early-stage tech startups in the Philippines match with leading regional and local VCs.
General Partner Dave Ng was recently in Kuala Lumpur for the annual Tech In Asia Conference in July. Dave moderated a panel on the topic "Why aren't more VCs investing in Malaysia", where he shared the contrarian view that there is actually no shortage of VCs when we look at the data.
Senior Analyst Jamaine Lee was in Bangkok in August for the annual Techsauce Global Summit, bringing together both the local and regional tech ecosystems. Jamaine moderated a panel on "Financial Evolution: What's the next phase of FinTech?"
General Partner Dave Ng was recently featured on Yonhap News sharing his perspectives on the technology and SaaS market. He shared that Asia including South Korea is at the cusp of an inflection point, where companies will increasingly adopt software and cloud computing for digital transformation of their businesses.
All eyes are on the United States Presidential Election in November. With the only scheduled debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump now recently behind us, the most important election of 2024 looks set to be a neck-and-neck race which will be decided in the swing states. Along this backdrop, Southeast Asia has remained relatively stable, economically and politically.
The theme for our 2024 Annual Investor Meet on 25 September is "Generating Liquidity & Launching Fund 2".
