Daily Briefing: Cost blamed for slow take-up of electric cars; Analytics startup Milieu Insight bags $3.27m pre-Series A funding

And fintech startup InstaReM rebrands to Nium.

From CNA:

Cost could be one reason for the slow take-up of electric cars in Singapore. Car dealer Hong Seh Motors currently carries three models of Tesla cars, probably the best-known electric vehicles on the market.

All cost upwards of S$400,000 – more than four times the price of a popular model like the Volkswagen Golf. Even cheaper models like the Hyundai Ioniq or the Nissan Leaf cost about S$140,000 – more than 30 per cent costlier than a petrol equivalent.

“What customers do not see is that the total cost of ownership is lower,” said ERIAN executive director Subodh Mhaisalkar.

Read more here.

From e27:

Analytics startup Milieu Insight received $3.27m (US$2.4m) pre-Series A funding led by MassMutual Ventures.

According to an article by TechInAsia, with the new funds, the company aims to expand into four new markets in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Milieu also plans to use part of the funding to further develop and enhance its product offering.

The company was established in 2016. Milieu Insight just launched its product portfolio that includes two key offerings: Milieu Portraits, a dynamic consumer segmentation tool, and Milieu Studies that helps businesses carry out brand, advertising, or product research from within a self-serve platform.

Read more here.

From e27:

Payment fintech startup InstaReM rebranded its global enterprise payment platform to Nium, at the Money 2020 USA event in Las Vegas. The rebranding follows the recent US$41 million Series C funding round earlier this year.

Nium’s name origin came from the Sanskrit word for rules and principles. It encapsulates the idea of “rewriting the rules to ensure financial freedom for everyone, everywhere”.

Nium is the global payments platform to enable businesses to send, spend, and receive money from around the world, in addition to empowering them to develop their own products that simplify cross-border payments.

Read more here.

Screenshot from Milieu Insight webpage