Daily Briefing: Singpost partners with logistics firm LogiNext to boost last mile deliveries; inaugural venture capital fund TNB Aura closes at $31.1m

And some Singaporean banking employees demand ridiculous pay rises.

From Deal Street Asia:

Singapore Post (SingPost) is partnering with cloud-based logistics optimisation firm LogiNext to provide parcel traceability and reliability for customers across Southeast Asia.

LaMP or Last Mile Platform is SingPost’s new proprietary logistics software which seeks to consolidate last-mile delivery services such as courier services, parcel lockers, brick-and-mortar collection points onto a single platform.

SingPost and LogiNext are in the midst of integrating the route planning AI software into LaMP. The exercise is expected to be completed next year.

“Our delivery route planning engine is the leading bench marker in the industry. Couriers have much better-planned routes, so they can handle more parcels. It’s a win-win for everyone, SingPost raises its already high delivery agility and the customer gets a much better experience with it,” LogiNext CEO Dhruvil Sanghvi said.

Read more here.

From e27:

TNB Ventures’ and Aura Group’s inaugural investment vehicle TNB Aura closed its Southeast Asia-focused VC fund at $31.1m (US$22.64m).

Several institutional investors, regional corporations, family offices and ultra high net-worth individuals individuals backed the fund.

It invests in companies with established traction and proven teams, in areas such as advanced manufacturing & engineering, IoT, robotics & autonomous systems, AI/machine learning and augmented reality/virtual reality.

The VC firm invests between $500,000 and $3 million into early-stage seed-to-Series A and B startups in Southeast Asia.

Read more here.

From eFinancial Careers:

Despite Asia’s banking labour market remaining stable in 2018, it has not stopped candidates in Singapore and Hong Kong from asking for ridiculous pay rises.

Banks are generally keen to hire overseas-based Asians, but these so-called returnees shouldn’t push their luck too far. “I recently spoke to a junior London compliance contractor who’s on a good salary, but has little experience,” says a senior Hong Kong-based recruiter. “He converted his pay into Hong Kong dollars and added 30%. I told him that for a full-time HK job, this worked out as a VP salary and it was unrealistic to aim for that money. I decided not to put him forward.”

Dalziel Lee, regional business consultant at BTI Executive Search in Singapore, spoke to a finance professional this year who wanted a 30% pay rise having only been at the bank for six months. “He found out that his peers got a 20%-plus increase a year ago, so he felt he should be getting more too and would leave his position if not,” says Lee. “I had to explain that a new bank would only offer him 10% to 15%, and that the problem with peer comparisons is that even in the same function everyone is different – experience, tenure, market conditions – so percentages can’t be applied across the board.”

Read more here.