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NativeX, Vietnamese EdTech Startup Raises $4 Million in Just 8 Months to Revolutionize English Learning for Working Adults

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HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Feb. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — NativeX, the innovative EdTech startup, has just secured $4 million in total funding within just 8 months since its launch. NativeX raised $1.5 million from angel investors through SAFE instruments in June 2023, and it now completes its seed round for an additional $2.5 million. The round is being co-led by Ansible Ventures and Blueprint Ventures, with the participation of Northstar Ventures and other investors. With this significant funding, NativeX is well-positioned to advance its mission of revolutionizing English learning for 10 million busy working professionals in Vietnam, before moving to other SEA markets.

Valerie Van V., Founding Partner at Ansible Ventures, emphasized the alignment between NativeX’s innovative approach and their investment thesis, stating, “Improving education through upskilling will be a crucial pillar in Vietnam’s EdTech market. Despite attracting international investments, Vietnam’s labour productivity lags behind other Asian countries, ranking 136th out of 185 countries as of 2021. This situation necessitates the development of training curricula and investment in top talent by local Vietnamese companies to remain competitive. As manufacturers strive to produce higher quality products, the demand for skilled labour will rise. Consequently, initiatives for transformation and upskilling, particularly on-the-job training, will receive increased investments and efforts from business owners in Vietnam. We are excited to co-lead this NativeX seed round and firmly believe in the company’s potential to empower top Vietnamese talents as they advance in their careers.”

Huiting Koh, Founding Managing Partner at Blueprint Ventures, highlights the hallmarks of building NativeX into a leading brand in the EdTech space, sharing, “The company solves a true pain point for Vietnam’s working professionals. The ability to get ahead in their careers is increasingly dependent on a good grasp of the English language – reading, writing, comprehension and verbal communication. NativeX delivers a product that has a strong product human-need fit, creates an emotional affinity with its end consumers by empowering them to reach their goals, and aligns with their values by helping them get ahead in life. These are elements of a strong foundation for NativeX to become a lasting brand. The strong user and engagement metrics at this early stage are equally impressive, combined with the market’s demand for their product. We are excited to partner with our esteemed co-investors and back this experienced management team to build a trusted and credible education technology brand for adult English learning in Vietnam.”

Introducing NativeX and Its Innovative Approach to English Learning for Professionals

NativeX believes that English proficiency is key to unlocking the career potential of working professionals, particularly for local tech talents aiming to compete in the global tech labour market. Founded in April 2023, NativeX aims to transform how working adults in Vietnam learn English by offering a comprehensive online platform. This platform includes live classes taught by experienced foreign teachers and provides flexible scheduling options to accommodate the busy lives of working professionals.

A standout feature of NativeX is its innovative and flexible group class model, allowing learners to book classes that suit their schedules. The collaborative and supportive learning environment is created by grouping learners with similar proficiency levels. This is proven to be effective. Ms. Ai Chau, Co-Founder and Head of the Academic team, highlights the company’s unique content-led approach to curriculum design and learning experience, ensuring scalability and consistency in teaching quality as they scale.

Success in the First Year: Transforming Careers Through English Proficiency

NativeX has already achieved significant success in its first year of operation, with learners reporting notable improvements in English communication skills. The platform attracts a diverse range of learners, including 50% managers and professionals in IT, healthcare, marketing, and business fields. Continuous learning and adaptation based on user feedback and market trends have been key principles guiding NativeX’s growth.

Trang Ly, Co-founder and Head of Growth and Engagement, proudly shares that 75% of MAU remains active on the platform after 7 months and those users typically spend 12-15 hours per month learning English. The platform has also gained trust from its user base which is reflected in the very high average order value, 2-3x compared to the EdTech industry average in Vietnam.

Founding Story and Future Plans: Building an Engaging Upskilling Education Platform

The founding of NativeX was inspired by the founders’ personal experiences and the recognition of the limitations of traditional learning methods. The team aims to build a highly engaging upskilling education platform for busy working adults, with English learning being the first vertical.

Looking ahead, NativeX plans to allocate 80% of the seed funding to accelerate product development. The company aims to launch a new conversational English program in June for intermediate-level users, incorporating soft skills training as well. Ms. Ai Chau emphasizes the uniqueness of their approach: “Why only English? Why can’t we learn English and something else useful at the same time?”

Vietnam has increasingly become an attractive destination for multinational corporations to outsource given its young population and political stability. This will certainly create many more higher paying jobs but also requiring a much higher English proficiency level to ensure higher quality of business and efficiency. In addition to support local workforce to capitalise on better employment opportunities in FMCG and Services sectors, NativeX also plans to collaborate closely with IT engineers to develop an ecosystem supporting their success in the global outsourcing IT market.

About NativeX

NativeX is a disruptive Vietnamese EdTech startup that aims to revolutionize English learning for working adults. Founded in April 2023, NativeX offers a comprehensive online platform that provides live classes taught by experienced foreign teachers. With its innovative and flexible group class model, NativeX creates a collaborative and supportive learning environment for professionals with busy schedules. The company is committed to helping working adults unlock their career potential through English proficiency. For more information, visit https://nativex.edu.vn/

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SOURCE NATIVE X EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY JOINT STOCK COMPANY

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OceanBase Receives Honorable Mention for the Second Consecutive Year in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Report

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SINGAPORE, Dec. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — OceanBase has once again been named as Honorable Mention in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems (Cloud DBMS), marking the second consecutive year it has received this recognition.

OceanBase offers scalable distributed database for data-intensive transactional and real-time operational analytics workloads, with ultra-fast performance and high compatibility across major global cloud infrastructures, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud. Operating across more than 30 regions in Asia, Europe, and America, OceanBase has already served over 2,000 customers, such as SAIC Volkswagen, DiDi Global, vivo, Pop Mart, Haidilao, Kwai, Trip.com, GCash, DANA, and PalmPay.

Over the past year, OceanBase has made significant strides in the Southeast Asian market. In December 2024, Starpay, a leading financial technology company in the Philippines, announced a partnership with OceanBase to leverage its cutting-edge distributed database solutions.

OceanBase hosted the inaugural OceanBase INFINITY tech conference in Jakarta, Indonesia in June 2024. During the event, the company announced strategic partnerships with leading local resellers to better serve customers in the Indonesian market.

According to Gartner’s latest DBMS market data in the Magic Quadrant, “the overall database management system market grew by 13.4% in 2023, reaching $103.2 billion“, up from $91 billion in 2022. The DBMS segment remains one of the fastest-growing areas within the software market, alongside analytic platforms, networking software, and supply chain management software.

In May 2024, OceanBase was also recognized as an Asia/Pacific Customers’ Choice and also named a Strong Performer in the 2024 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Cloud DBMS report.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems, 18 December 2024

Gartner, Voice of the Customer for Cloud Database Management Systems, 24 May 2024

Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

GARTNER, MGAGIC QUADRANT and PEER INSIGHTS are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

About OceanBase

OceanBase is a distributed database launched in 2010. It provides strong data consistency, high availability, high performance, cost efficiency, elastic scalability, and compatibility with mainstream relational databases. It handles transactional, analytical, and AI workloads through a unified data engine, enabling mission-critical applications and real-time analytics.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.oceanbase.com/

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SOURCE OceanBase

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Matwings Technology Raised Series A Funding of Tens of Millions USD to Redefine Protein Design

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‘Beyond Structure, Predicting Function’

SHANGHAI, Dec. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Recently, Shanghai Matwings Technology Co., Ltd. (‘Matwings’), a global leader in AI-driven protein design, announced the successful completion of Series A funding rounds, raising tens of millions of USD, led by Qiming Venture Partners.

Matwings is pioneering a new frontier in protein engineering with its proprietary AI-based general protein design platform, AccelProtein™, which directly predicts protein functionality beyond the structural data. By predicting functionality, AccelProtein™ offers a new approach for acquiring high-functioning proteins.

AccelProtein™ is built on the Pro-PRIME model, a breakthrough developed by a collaborative team led by Professor Liang Hong at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. After years of research focused on data collection, curation, and optimization, the team developed the Pro-series – an AI framework for protein design. Their work, titled “A General Temperature-Guided Language Model to Design Proteins of Enhanced Stability and Activity” was recently published in Science Advances.

A featured case of AccelProtein™’s impact is the design of a specialized Glycosyltransferase enzyme, which is used in the production of EPS-G7, a core material for pancreatitis screening. Within just 4 months, Matwings increased the enzyme’s total glycosylation activity by 7 times, enhanced product specificity from 60% to 98%, and reduced hydrolytic activity by 33%. These improvements cut down the cost of EPS-G7 by 90%.

In another application, Matwings successfully engineered a super alkali-resistant affinity ligand (a nanobody) for affinity chromatography, improving alkali resistance by 3 folds, binding capacity over 100%, and heat stability by 8℃. This innovation saved millions of USD in CMC costs for a Matwings client. Additionally, scale-up production to 5000L has been successfully completed. Such advancement enables low-cost affinity chromatography purification a viable option for a wide range of biologics, bringing more cost-effective solutions for drug production.

Since 2021, Matwings has successfully delivered over 30 protein-engineering and enzyme-mining projects either proprietary (e.g., Enterokinase, Carboxypeptidase B, KEX2 Protease, Maltogenic Amylase, Subtilisin, Protein A, PETase, T7 RNA Polymerase, and phi29 DNA Polymerase) and co-developed with our stakeholders. These projects span across various applications, including drug innovation, in vitro diagnostics, nutrition and healthcare, food and beverage, and green energy.

About Matwings

Matwings, founded in 2021 by an elite team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is one of the earliest companies to focus on AI protein models.

Matwings is dedicated to moving beyond directed evolution methods to design and engineer functionally optimized proteins by leveraging a proprietary, pre-trained, AI-based general protein design platform with 780 million curated full-length protein sequence data, including nearly 500 million private data.

This cutting-edge technology platform, AccelProtein™, enables us to engineer proteins and uncover or de novo design novel proteins with significantly improved properties, including stability, activity, affinity, yield, etc.

To date, Matwings has successfully engineered more than 30 proteins either proprietary or co-developed with its stakeholders, and more than 40 ongoing projects across various applications in pharmaceutical industries and synthetic biology industries, e.g.  key enzymes and proteins for CMC, innovative Biologics, synthetic biology and more.

Matwings is actively seeking global partnerships to jointly develop and commercialize new products.

Contact Information:
Email: info@matwings.com
Website: https://www.matwings.com/en/ 
Tel: +86 158 2106 5410
Paper Link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr2641 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/matwings-technology-raised-series-a-funding-of-tens-of-millions-usd-to-redefine-protein-design-302339150.html

SOURCE Matwings Technology

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Agoda Highlights Tokyo as Top Global New Year’s Eve Destination

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SINGAPORE, Dec. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Digital travel platform Agoda has announced Tokyo as the most popular destination for New Year’s Eve, based on accommodation searches. This marks a shift from last year when Taipei held the top spot. Following Tokyo, the list includes Bangkok, Taipei, Pattaya, and Osaka, showcasing a diverse range of preferences among travelers.

The data highlights a perpetual interest in Tokyo, a city known for its unique blend of tradition and modernity. Travelers are drawn to its vibrant celebrations, cultural experiences, and iconic landmarks. Bangkok and Taipei, too, continue to be favored destinations, offering rich cultural festivities and lively atmospheres. Pattaya and Osaka also make the list, appealing to those seeking beachside celebrations and culinary delights, respectively.

Agoda’s data reveals Tokyo’s prominence not only on a worldwide scale but also within Japan. Domestic accommodation searches have increased by 23%, with Tokyo leading as the preferred destination, followed by Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, and Okinawa Main Island. For Japanese traveling abroad, the destinations primarily considered are Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, Pattaya, and Hong Kong.

Hiroto Ooka, Associate Vice President North Asia at Agoda said: “Tokyo’s rise to the top of Agoda’s New Year’s Eve destination list is a testament to the city’s global appeal. Whether you’re celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tokyo, Osaka, or anywhere else in the world, Agoda is ready to help you find the perfect spot to ring in the New Year.”

As travelers prepare for their New Year’s Eve plans, Agoda offers a comprehensive selection of over 4.5 million holiday properties, more than 130,000 flight routes, and over 300,000 activities, all available for seamless booking. Download the Agoda app for the latest deals or visit agoda.com/deals.

 

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SOURCE Agoda

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