Oxfordcaps works directly with universities and colleges as well to build a tailored experience for the student community, both via on-campus and off-campus housing
The Oxfordcaps team
Oxfordcaps, a branded and tech-enabled student housing startup with operations in India and Singapore, has raised S$11 million (US$8.15 million) in Series A funding led by Times Internet, a digital unit of India’s leading media company, The Times of India Group.
The new capital will be used for fuelling its growth with expansion into 10-plus cities in India and standardisation of its student housing product. Oxfordcaps aims to grow its operations across education hubs in India, including Delhi, Noida, Greater Noida, Dehradun, Indore, Jaipur, Pune, Bengaluru and Ahmedabad.
Founded by INSEAD graduate Annu Talreja (CEO) and IIM-Calcutta alum Priyanka Gera (COO), Oxfordcaps provides a technology-driven living experience to Gen Z students in India and Singapore.
The company operates via three sub-brands and caters to students across price segments, including Oxfordcaps Premium Residences, Oxfordcaps Student Residences, and Oxfordcaps Dorms for the budget segment. It offers fully-fitted out and custom designed residences with full- stack service model, including wifi, laundry, nutritious meals, professional housekeeping and an array of events and activities focused on career development and lifestyle for students.
With Gen Z’ers at the core of its business, it is also investing heavily on technology, particularly focusing on IoT and Deep Learning architectures, to provide a customised and engaging living experience for students.
The startup works directly with universities and colleges as well to build a tailored experience for the student community, both via on-campus and off-campus housing.
The founders claim the firm has clocked a 30x growth in less than 10 months since its launch in India, and has expanded from 200 beds to acquisition of over 6,000 beds.
Vani Kola, Managing Director at Kalaari Capital, said: “More than 10.4 million students across India migrate to cities every year to pursue their academic dreams. However, student housing today suffers from a high level of fragmentation, lack of quality solutions, price transparency, reliability and complete lack of tech enablement of processes. OxfordCaps is addressing this gap.”
“An avalanche of institutional capital is pouring into the fast growing student accommodation sector. We are confidently doubling-down on our initial investment in OxfordCaps to further propel their mission of providing an unparalleled student housing experience,” said Vishal Harnal, General Partner at 500 Startups.
In 2017, Oxfordcaps received seed funding from 500 Startups, ReadyVentures and a group of undisclosed angel investors. In the same year, Your-Space.in, another student housing startup from India, secured US$500,000 in angel funding from a group of unnamed High Net-worth Individuals.
Placio, yet another startup operating in this vertical, announced a US$2 million in pre-Series A round from Singapore-based private equity fund Prestellar Ventures in 2018.
Starting with Indonesia, the integration will see public transportation options available on the app with Trip Planner feature
Grab announced today that it officially operates mass market transportation services with public transit integration onto its app in Southeast Asia, starting with Jabodetabek area in Indonesia since three weeks ago. Grab offers first-mile-last-mile trips through a new Trip Planner (“Rute” in Indonesian) feature.
Grab also connects GrabBike and GrabCar to its first-mile-last-mile trips to and from public transit stations or bus stops in order to complement the public transportation options.
The Trip Planner feature will continue rolling out in other Southeast Asian cities in the coming weeks, along with its bus travel marketplace.
Leveraging its partnership with cities, public transit agencies and private companies, the new public transit and bus offerings cater to mass market consumers and provide access to transportation services that are affordable enough for everyday use. The two new features will offer mass transit options that are up to 70 per cent cheaper than private-hire car-hailing services.
“Today, in Jakarta for example, more than 70 per cent of daily trips are taken on motorcycles and private cars rather than public transportation when commuting to and from city centres. These trends underpin the massive congestion problems plaguing the city. Our long term vision is to make people ’s everyday commute so reliable and seamless that they eventually choose to leave their vehicles at home. Mass transit – via buses, shuttles or high-quality public transport – is the only way to achieve this without adding cars to the roads,” said Ngiam Xinwei, Head of Marketplace and Shared Mobility of Grab.
Trip Planner feature enables users to plan their journey with accurate public transportation information and end-to-end directions within the Grab app. Grab also seized the new MRT Jakarta launch momentum to introduce this feature and collaborated with MRT Jakarta to integrate its public transit information into the Grab app.
Grab said it will also provide shelters for pick-ups and drop-offs near the stations to better serve users’ first-mile-last-mile needs and ensure the safety of driver-partners and passengers.
“Through the integration of real-time transit schedules on the Grab platform, we believe that we can increase our ridership by tapping into the wide user base of Grab. More people will have better visibility, predictability, and reliability of when the next train will arrive and plan in advance,” said William Sabandar, President Director, MRT Jakarta.
Besides the new MRT lines, the Grab app will also display live public transit schedules from commuter rail, Airport Rail Link, Transjakarta public bus services, as well as more than 50 fixed schedules of public buses across Jabodetabek.
Simply by entering a current location and destination via Trip Planner, commuters are able to view available public transit routes nearby that will get them to their destination, along with real-time departure and arrival times for some of the public transport services. They will also receive walking directions or recommendations of first-mile-last-mile transportation options such as GrabBike or GrabCar to and from public transit that they can book right away.
Furthermore, not only public transit partners will get increased ridership, access to Grab’s network of ride-sharing services, and journey planning, they will also get to understand how commuters use public transportation services in-app and identify any gaps in existing public services that need to be plugged to improve accessibility for all.
As for “Bus” feature, Grab will pilot the marketplace over the next few months across key Southeast Asian cities. Grab will allow users to pre-book a seat at a price point lower than ride-hailing services, on a route provided by Grab’s bus partners, eliminating queuing and bridge the transit gap for people living in underserved areas where getting to and from city centres remains a hassle.
Bus operators will be able to efficiently manage and operate their bus fleet by getting full visibility of user demand information in advance. They can better allocate their available supply, and unlock new opportunities to serve unmet transportation demand.
“Ultimately, the mass mobility ecosystem we want to build is one that allows anyone to plan their trip end-to-end, book, buy electronic tickets, and pay for their entire journey across all modes of transportation, public or private, through one integrated payment system, while reaping the benefits of GrabRewards loyalty programme simply by going about their daily commute,” Ngiam added.
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There’s no denying that IoT is ushering in a safer future for everyone
The rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) is known for changing the way we conduct businesses with one another, but little attention is being paid to the abundance of ways it is revolutionizing modern safety and public health.
As we become ever more interconnected, our ability to predict public health crises and avoid common fatalities is becoming better and better.
Here’s how the IoT can increase safety, and how some companies and government officials are already working hand in hand to harness the power of technology in the pursuit of saving lives.
Our roads are becoming safer
First and foremost, the IoT promises to reinvent modern roadways and make cars much safer.
Most people think about autonomous cars when they consider the future of transportation, and it’s indeed true that self-driving vehicles will be a major part of tomorrow’s cities.
What few people realise is the way autonomous vehicles interact with their local environments to mitigate traffic fatalities and save countless pedestrian lives.
Given that the pedestrian fatality rate is increasing alarmingly in many regions, the need for interconnected vehicles that communicate in order to avoid collisions is more important than ever.
In the future, your distracting smartphone may communicate with the car or truck barreling down a sensory-laden road towards you, and divert the vehicle just in time to avoid a deadly collision.
The interconnected cities of the future are often imagined as surveillance nightmares, but although it’s true that privacy concerns will be around for years to come, one positive consequence is avoiding car accidents by a longshot.
The IoT is also reshaping city experiences as a whole, making things more pleasant for pedestrians and everyday citizens trying to go about their business.
Modern city planning is finding itself supercharged thanks to the introduction of intelligent planning software. For instance, reshaping our public work and enabling us to free up congested areas that have long suffered from traffic.
More efficient public transit schemes are in the work, and data analysis will also be conducted on the local climate to determine which areas of the city have more breathable air and fresher water.
The creation of a “smart environment” that can detect pollution at the speed of light is one of the most impressive ways that the IoT has done. This has increased the safety and longevity of the planet amidst climate change.
However, this is only the start and the true capabilities of the IoT are only just being discovered.
AI assistants are becoming home guards
The IoT is most notably taking shape in the living rooms across America, where smart AI assistants like Amazon’s Alexa have nestled into the role of household objects.
The rise of Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa isn’t just good from a commercial standpoint, these devices can do so much more than help you order milk or play your favourite tunes.
In the future, AI assistants will be used as home security devices, alerting authorities whenever something goes wrong and enabling you to harness the power of data to make your home an ‘impenetrable fortress’.
Security companies have already moved heaven and earth to announce huge partnerships with Google and other home assistant manufacturers in an effort to make people feel safer than ever.
Home assistants becoming the future of home security is just another way the IoT is going to increase safety enjoyed in the 21st century.
Make no mistake, the IoT is upending every aspect of our lives from business to security to who knows what.
While some might continue to doubt the interconnectedness movement, the growth of sensory technology in our everyday lives is clearly a positive development that should be welcomed from the viewpoint of public health.
We’re more connected than ever, but also as disconnected
Recently, a prolific developer by the name of _unwriter released the world’s first native Bitcoin web browser, Bottle. It provides a hint of what’s to come if we choose to rethink how we build applications on a new type of data plumbing system.
On the landing page, _unwriter responds to the question “Why a standalone browser instead of building as an extension for existing browsers, or waiting for mainstream browser support?” with the below statement:
“Many things we take for granted in the old “web browsing” experience — including the security model — no longer apply in the new world of Bitcoin. The thing is, Bitcoin is NOT “the next web”. In many ways, it’s completely opposite of what the WWW is, which is why Bitcoin is so powerful.
That’s why it’s more beneficial to start from scratch instead of forking an existing full-fledged browser built for the existing WWW, with many legacy features that can constrain future directions. We can create a new user interaction model optimised for the new Bitcoin world order.”
Bitcoin
What’s occurring right now in the BSV (Bitcoin SV) ecosystem is a flurry of developments that require a different type of thinking.
You can’t solve problems using the same thinking that caused them.
This is what made Bitcoin so “revolutionary” back in the day, because it got people thinking differently about the world.
Unfortunately, if you’ve been paying close attention to what’s happened over the last decade, the Bitcoin most people know (BTC) has been subverted (via the promise of Lightning Network as a scaling solution) to something that is no different to what we already have. In my opinion, this has been Bitcoin’s biggest setback.
Fortunately, Bitcoin had a way of preserving itself through what was known as forks. As a result, two key hard forks took place over the last couple years, which resulted in Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Bitcoin SV (BSV).
Whenever an attempt to alter the Bitcoin protocol as of v0.1 occurs, that new chain is considered the fork (regardless of the ticker, e.g. BTC/BCH/BSV). This is why there’s been so much contention around “who is the true Bitcoin?”
Like nature, or reality itself, it is neither perfect (Regular, High L, High C) nor completely random (Low L, Low C). If looked at through the lens of a security expert, it is not completely secure — but secure enough with the economic incentives used to combat some of the potential attack vectors.
Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are also based around this concept of SWNs.
Another way of understanding SWNs is through the concept of 6 Degrees of Separation. You may be familiar with the term from the 1993 movie of the same name, or even witnessed it unknowingly when looking at first, second, or third degree contacts on LinkedIn.
Six degrees of separation is the idea that all people are at most six social connections away from each other. As a result, a chain of “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in a maximum of six steps.
It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy in 1929 and popularised in an eponymous 1990 play written by John Guare. It is sometimes generalised as the average social distance since it seems logarithmic in comparison to the size of the population.
As mentioned, LinkedIn will show you up to third-degree connections. I have rarely (if ever) met anyone outside of first or second-degree connections. And, since the maximum is six, LinkedIn shows just how small our world feels, and this is important if you want to understand why companies like Facebook are now shifting their mission statement towards more meaningful connections over sheer numbers.
Sense of community
According to the American Psychology Association, a “sense of community” is the feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that their needs will be met through their commitment to be together.
This sense of community is an important factor in determining trust levels within a group. The higher the trust, the higher the sense of connectedness and camaraderie.
However, it is important to note that connectedness does not mean connection.
Back to talking about Facebook, after it shifted their mission statement, organic business page visibility was greatly reduced (unless paid via ads) and the algorithm was shifted to display actual friends and family posts and increase focus on smaller, tighter-knit Facebook Groups.
In the beginning stages of the social network era, we saw an explosion of open platforms. Now, we’re starting to see a contraction whereby individuals are preferring smaller messenger groups and/or more intimate viewing experiences (e.g. Snapchat/Instagram Stories).
“It is not open platforms people seek but rather closed personal groups and communication with people in a way that allows them to build trust over time. People need to be able to decide what they will consider public, private, or even somewhere in between. Importantly, such a system would include a means to attribute information to a source and stop the widespread misinformation campaigns that have been occurring.”
If you’ve lived long enough in this world, you will know that over time it’s far better to have a small, close group of friends than it is to have many acquaintances that you have no real deep relationships with.
Communities, or that “sense of community”, comes from high trust, strong bonds, and deep relationships with fewer people.
Why? Because it’s harder to go deep with more people — there just isn’t enough of you, or your time, to create authentic relationships both ways through volume. But, you can leverage the “small world effect” to achieve that sense of community.
Drake sums up this dilemma well in his song Fear:
“Yeah, and plus things are just surreal at home
People think I’ve changed just cause my appeal has grown
And now security follow me everywhere,
So I’m never actually am alone, I just always feel alone”
More connected than ever, but also disconnected. The same applies to the world of Bitcoin.
The network stays decentralised enough through a minimum number of “hops” (or degrees of separation) between nodes. This makes it so that not every single individual in the world needs to be a “node” (a computer or CPU used to check, validate or mine Bitcoin). Only a few need to be, so that the rest of the network can feel free to transact safely.
Because, at the end of the day, despite how rational we think we are, the majority of humans are driven by emotions.
Tying it all together
So what does this all mean for the future of social media?
If we think of Bitcoin, not just as cash or a “store of value, but a system, we can start to rethink many of the applications we currently have in the world with new eyes.
Example #1: social media
We are seeing an increase in the abuse of automation in the form of bots, anonymous trolls, and cyber-bullying.
Imagine a world where you may need to pay (in the form of micro-transactions) in order to comment, post, or reply. Mind you, this is already taking place on various sites such as Yours.org and Steem.it.
If someone really wanted to post negative things, en masse, it may cost them an arm and a leg to do so. Now, some will, of course, be willing to pay this, but then what?
Well, if data/transactions are being sent via Bitcoin (as the underlying plumbing system), all things get traced back to its source. It makes it very easy to track down if absolutely needed.
This starts to shift people towards more honest behaviour, as it brings in accountability.
Example #2: identity
With personal keys, Bitcoin removes the need for things like usernames, passwords, 2FA, etc.
You hold your keys. Other providers then need to request access to your data from which you could potentially be paid for directly, and in real-time, versus how it’s currently set up, whereby you give your data over freely and then lose out on any money made by third-parties selling your data.
Whenever something like an image, video, audio file, etc. gets copied, the piece of data’s original source (currently contained via OP_RETURN within a Bitcoin transaction) can be traced back and attributed correctly to the source owner and their original transaction ID.
It is immutable.
How to read a Bitcoin transaction on the public ledger, courtesy of Blockchair
Another useful example may come in the form of global, federated search. A fellow community management expert, Rachel Happe, shares:
“With Bitcoin underpinning everything, this becomes a reality, as all data becomes traceable/interlinked, while privacy still remains intact and secure (just not anonymous). We cry out for federated search, but also seek privacy. Bitcoin (as a system) is that near-perfect middle ground.”
Now, we haven’t even covered how communities have formed around Bitcoin (as an idea) itself, but if we wish to truly innovate, we must discard all that we think we know.
We must start from scratch, but with lessons learned from the past. Is Bitcoin (as a system) still worth keeping an eye on, in terms of reshaping our global financial/social infrastructure?
As the VC firm nears its 10th anniversary, East Ventures Partner Melisa Irene looked back into some of the most important milestones it has made
East Ventures Partner Melisa Irene
Entering the first decade since its launch in Indonesia, East Ventures Partner Melisa Irene sits down with e27 to discuss the most important milestones that the venture capital (VC) firm has made, especially in the past one year.
The firm was founded in 2010 with the goal to help propel Indonesia forward through the use of technology, and in 2018, it has seen what Irene described as “the accumulation” of all the things they have worked for.
“… We believe that we should begin by building the ecosystem as a supporting infrastructure. When we have managed to successfully build an infrastructure, we are going to enable other businesses to be built upon this existing infrastructure. That way we can make greater impact,” she explains.
Irene gives an example of Tokopedia which started out as an online marketplace that enables small- and medium-sized businesses to build an online presence, supported by features such as cashless payment, which is currently being provided by OVO.
In addition to building an ecosystem, East Ventures had also proven that it is able to grow a business “very fast” by solving “invisible problems” as done by their portfolio company Warung Pintar (a New Retail platform that works with street stalls or warung) and Fore (an on-demand coffee service).
In less than 1.5 years, Warung Pintar has worked with more than 1,000 warungs while Fore has operated 30 outlets in just six months.
For the future, East Ventures wants to continue on working to realise its vision to help Indonesia; it also aims to continue on seizing new opportunities in the market.
Some of the most exciting themes in the market currently include O2O (online-to-offline and vice versa) and New Retail.
“There will be more online-only services acquiring their customers through offline means; it has started to make sense as online means have begun to get too costly,” Irene points out.
Irene also believes that certain aspects of logistics industry has called for new innovation.
“Players will go beyond last-mile delivery; they will also touch the distribution process as a whole, including from its back-end,” she explains.
Businesses will also continue on building upon the existing infrastructure, which Irene sees as a great news as companies “can now focus on their creativity in innovating a certain industry.”
“For example, with Fore, we don’t build our own e-commerce platform. We also don’t build our own fleet or marketing agency. We simply innovate how people consume coffee by utilising the existing ecosystem, using services such as Moka POS or Go-Food,” she further elaborates.
“From the perspective of big data, this can also be really attractive … It is able to provide feedback to business players on which industry to enter. In the end, we will have a clearer mapping of our whole ecosystem and it will enable us to make progress faster,” she adds.
Another exciting change that is set to happen in 2019 is that many light-asset companies are going to make a move to become more heavy-asset. While a greater prospect for IPO is never guaranteed, Irene sees that these changes will open more opportunities for exit through IPO.
“We need to consider timing, but the door is opened more widely,” she closes.
