Other major story of the day is Paytm’s ongoing talks to raise US$1.5-2B from existing investors SoftBank Vision Fund and Ant Financial

Digital tech, food security among key areas to get more R&D funding [ChannelNewsAsia]

Following a mid-term review of its five-year science and technology plan, Singapore will pump in more money to boost research and development (R&D) efforts in three key areas, namely digital technologies, cell therapy manufacturing and food security.

“Our investment in R&D is a long-term endeavor. It is not just for the short run and we must continue our investments in basic sciences,” said Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat on Wednesday.

Heng, who is also the chairman of the National Research Foundation (NRF), was speaking alongside Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing and National Development Minister Lawrence Wong at a press conference held at the end of the 11th Research, Innovation and Enterprise Council (RIEC) meeting.

Paytm raising up to US$2B; Valuation may touch US$18B [The Economic Times]

Online payments services company Paytm is in the midst of raising US$1.5-2 billion from existing investors SoftBank Vision Fund and Alibaba’s financial affiliate Ant Financial, said people with knowledge of the development.

The latest financing round at One97 Communications, the parent of Paytm, is likely to peg the company’s valuation at US$16-18 billion, these people said, adding that new investors may join the current round.

Grab Malaysia drivers defend new cancellation fee policy [The Star]

Grab drivers are defending Grab Malaysia’s move to charge users a fee for cancelling.

Arif Asyraf, the president of the 300-strong Grab Drivers Malaysia Association, said the new policy was something that has been requested by drivers for a long time.

“We feel good about the cancellation fee. It’s something that drivers have been asking for Grab Malaysia to implement,” he said when contacted.

According to Arif, 36, the cancellation fee is meant to discipline some riders who take advantage of the services that Grab drivers provide. He said riders only get charged a fee of RM3 to RM5 if they cancel five minutes after a booking has been made.

PH payments app Mynt mimics model of its 45% stake owner Ant Financial [DealStreetAsia]

Mynt, the Philippine payments app backed by billionaire Jack Ma’s Ant Financial, plans to roll out insurance products en route to becoming a sprawling financial services platform in its Chinese ally’s image.

The operator of GCash is now trying to become a conduit for insurance policies with the help of strategic partners that can help it expand a slate of products from banking and credit-scoring to financing and money market funds, Chief Executive Officer Anthony Thomas said in an interview.

E-sports startup GamingMonk attracts strategic investment from Japanese company GameWith [press release]

Gaming and esports platform GamingMonk has raised US$100,000 as strategic investment from Japanese gaming media GameWith.

The funding is being used for product development, team building and brand marketing. GamingMonk has grown its user base by 500% in the last six months.

The startup raised a seed round last year from Incubate Fund, Rajan Anandan, Stellaris Ventures, Smile Group, AdvantEdge Founders and Samir Khurana.

GamingMonk is a community whose mission is to build an ecosystem for gamers through prize tournaments, gaming content and many other engagement programs.

The company was founded in 2014 by Abhay Sharma and Ashwin Haryani.

Takuya Imaizumi, CEO of GameWith, said: “The gaming industry in India has strong growth potential and GamingMonk, led by a strong management team, is well-positioned to further benefit from industry trends. We are excited about the company’s growth prospects and proud to have this opportunity to support the journey.”

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The national scale competition is supported by five government ministries and agencies

Grab announced that it has partnered with five government ministries and agencies in launching Thinkubator, a startup conference and competition that the company said seeking innovation and tech talent development in Indonesia.

Coordinating Maritime Affairs Ministry, the Office of Presidential Staff [KSP], Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, the Indonesian Investment Coordinating Board [BKPM] & Agency for Creative Economy [Bekraf]) are five ministries involved in succeeding the competition.

Officiated by the Coordinating Minister of Maritime Affairs, Luhut B Pandjaitan, Thinkubator would be a public-private collaboration between Grab and Indonesian government in search of the next decacorn startup for Indonesia, said the company’s official statement.

Later on, Grab said it plans to bring this program to other Southeast Asia countries, to help grow the overall tech ecosystem in the region.

“There is so much innovation here, driven by a real passion to make a difference. With Thinkubator, we want to create an open and inclusive platform that will find and nurture the best ideas from Indonesia. A large part of Grab’s success is thanks to the many giants that support us. We have the opportunity to pay it forward and are excited to join hands with the Indonesian government on this search for Southeast Asia’s next big success story,” said Hooi Ling Tan, Co-founder of Grab.

Also Read: Facebook Indonesia confirms the resignation of Country Director Sri Widowati

Thinkubator was first conceived from a conversation with the country’s Coordinating Minister of Maritime Affairs, and has become a nation-wide competition in search of the best ideas across key categories including Logistics/Transportation, Agriculture/Environment, Education, Health and others, all focussing on diversity and inclusion.

In total, Grab said it has welcomed 1,165 startups applications for the program, with 150 shortlisted candidates to join the conference today that includes workshops and networking opportunities.

From the shortlist, six top finalists will be selected from to pitch their ideas in front of a professional panel of top business leaders that includes William Tanuwijaya, Co-Founder of Tokopedia; Friderica Widyasari Dewi, Executive Director at KSEI; and Chairul Tanjung, Chairman of CT Corp.

The finalists of Thinkubator will have a chance to receive funding from a total pool valued at Rp 3 billion, including access to Microsoft Azure to grow their business. Exposures on a national television will also be an advantage of the finalists as the final will be broadcasted live on Trans TV, tomorrow, March 29, 2019 at 8 PM.

Also Read: Insurtech Waterdrop Company closes nearing US$74M Series B funding

Grab also has Grab Ventures Velocity (GVV), Grab’s flagship scale-up program for post-seed startups that would be a follow-up to Thinkubator. It will start accepting applicants for their second batch in Indonesia, offering a platform to test and commercialise their solutions with the Grab customer base.

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Southeast Asia-based Blue Mobile is a vending machine platform

Along with Beijing-based Joy Capital as co-investor, Hangzhou-based Ant Financial invests in Blue Mobile, a vending machine platform based in Southeast Asia. The amount of the Series C funding round is undisclosed, as reported by KrAsia.

The company said it will use the funding to explore collaboration with Truemoney, Dana, Lazada, and Tokopedia for mobile payments usage possibilities.

Back in 2014, Blue Mobile was founded in Shenzhen and now has subsidiary companies in Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

It has a flagship product called BluePay Wallet, which is a mobile payment platform that allows payment, transfer, with no transaction fee, said to be handling more than 300,000 transactions on a daily basis.

Also Read: Insurtech Waterdrop Company closes nearing US$74M Series B funding

The company claims that it now runs more than 6,000 smart vending machines across Indonesia and Thailand. It plans to add 30,000 units in the coming year and partner with major e-money platforms
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Photo by Laura Thonne on Unsplash

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The Tokopedia-UI AI Center of Excellence will focus on AI implementation in the various aspects of society and industry

Indonesian e-commerce giant Tokopedia and Universitas Indonesia (UI) today announced the launch of Tokopedia-UI AI Center of Excellence, an artificial intelligence (AI) development centre at the university’s campus in Depok, West Java.

In a press statement, the institutions explained that the initiative taken to encourage academics and researchers to use technology, especially AI, in presenting real-life solutions to problems that occur in society as well as industries.

Through the collaboration, researchers from UI will develop AI-based solutions to address problems that occur in society and industry, including the e-commerce industry, such as logistics, risk management, cybersecurity, and payment.

The centre will also use super computer technology as provided as NVIDIA.

Also Read: Blockchain-based e-KYC platform claims the throne at Binar Academy and Tokopedia’s Hack of Thrones

“This facility is also expected to be able to support Faculty of Computer Science (Fasilkom UI) in producing human resources that are ready to contribute and compete globally, especially in the field of AI,” said Fasilkom UI Dean Mirna Adriani, Ph.D.

Tokopedia CEO William Tanuwijaya stated that the implementation of AI technology in the various aspects of e-commerce business, from warehousing to logistics, helps the company in its mission to democratise commerce through technology.

“At Tokopedia, we believe that technology should be an enabler that empowers the people, rather than a disruptor,” he said.

Previously, fellow Indonesian unicorn and Tokopedia competitor Bukalapak has also launched its R&D centres in Bandung and Surabaya.

Traveltech unicorn Traveloka has also opened its R&D centre in Bangalore, India.

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Image Credit: Tokopedia

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The digital gifting and loyalty platform receives an undisclosed amount of funding from VIISA and VinaCapital Ventures

Digital gifting platform based in Vietnam UrBox announced today that it has closed a seed round of funding for an undisclosed amount from VIISA and VinaCapital Ventures, two Vietnamese VCs.

In an official statement, UrBox shares that the funding it received will be used to strengthen their merchant, create synergies across companies, provide UrBox with access to top talents, as well as expand connection with global tech companies to have a presence in other countries in Southeast Asia.

“The experience in the transition of customer service from offline to online for SMEs has been painfully labored, especially with larger enterprises. We believe that UrBox’s persistence in crafting a better solution for every new business, such as Urbox’s API services, can resolve this problem for B2B clients. Through the Accelerator Program and follow-on investment, we support Urbox in their growth and working with their strategic investor, VinaCapital Ventures, who also believes in Urbox’s mission and team quality,” shared Hieu Vo, CFO at VIISA.

Furthermore, as B2B is their key focus, UrBox will leverage on VinaCapital Ventures and Dragon Capital (VIISA’s founders)’s network to reach more potential and scalable partnerships opportunities and will do so by hiring talents in technology, marketing, partnerships, and business development.

UrBox was first launched in late 2017 as a platform that helps businesses integrate their reward or loyalty program with an ever-growing network of national and international gift suppliers or merchants. UrBox also connects brands with customers through multiple digital channels.

Also Read: Smart retail startup Blue Mobile raises Series C funding from Ant Financial

Using UrBox, customers can receive the gift voucher and store it on their app/phone to redeem at both offline and online store.

Determined to change manual processes in the reward system, UrBox founders initially started out as a consulting agency to build loyalty programs by connecting merchants to big corporates in Vietnam. With its business model, businesses don’t need to deal with each gift supplier or merchant, print out the cash vouchers, pack, and send gifts to customers as it’s all done by UrBox.

To date, UrBox said that it has expanded their gifting acceptance with merchant network of hundreds of lifestyles brands and nearly 3,000 outlets across Vietnam, ranging from Dining & Drinking, Shopping, to Online.

UrBox claimed to be serving more than 30 top corporates in different sectors from banking, telco, insurance to tech companies.

e27 previously reported that VinaCapital Ventures made an investment in Wee Digital and UrBox just a week prior to this news.
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Image Credit: UrBox

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Afterall, nobody wants a lousy one-star app rating right?

Between April to May 2017, our team launched the first version of Funding Societies | Modalku investors’ app on both Android and iOS. From a modest group of two developers and one freelance designer, we have expanded to a fun team of seven engineers and two designers, managing seven different applications altogether.

In this article, we wish to unveil our biggest upgrade to date — along with the challenges we encountered, our approach to solving them, and the kind of impact we strive to deliver as app developers.

We hope this will be helpful to anyone contemplating a significant refactoring phase or a major design overhaul!

_{Left: previous version vs right: investor app V2.}

Challenge #1: tech debt

As we expanded, our investor base and their expectations and needs grew proportionally. What started as a lean mobile app soon evolved into a complex product which required quicker iterations and stronger feature updates.

However, our project architecture wasn’t ready to scale this just yet. To provide a little more candid context, our early application releases fulfilled just three conditions for production to take place:

• The release wouldn’t spike our crash rates to more than or equal to 0.05 per cent.
• Users would be able to invest (core functionality).
• Financial data presented on the app was accurate.

While this approach was straightforward, it brought forth a greater inclination for several workarounds to be hidden under the rug, making it increasingly difficult to build new and supplementary features.

While the project had accumulated tech debt in several measures, the ones that stood out the most emerged when we were working on massive storyboards (iOS), and huge Activities and ViewControllers.

The pain-points we faced could be summarised into five points:

• Difficulty in implementing unit tests.
• Painfully slow load times of Interface Builders.
• Conflicting constraints.
• Lack of reusability leading to code redundancy and inconsistencies.
• Impossible for developers to collaborate on UI development.

Our solution
Since our investor app caters to regional users, this would mean that there are vastly distinct user journeys that we have to keep in mind — the biggest consideration point being accommodating the differences in legal regulations, currencies, and languages across the three countries.

As such, we knew that moving towards custom labels, custom text-fields and table-views, and a specific number for matters was the way forward in fostering reusability.

With that, the next step for us was to review our project architecture and reconsider Model View Controller (MVC). We decided to go ahead with Model-View-View-Model (MVVM) for V2 – paving the path for lean activities/view-controllers and cleaner distinguishing of business logic based on a UI standpoint.

Below is an overview of our final architecture:

Broadly speaking, our architecture consists of four important layers:

1. Managers – This layer is responsible to connect with several individual components. Each component, for example, Retrofit in Android and Alamofire in Swift, is only accessible via their respective manager (which in this case will be NetworkManager).
2. Repositories – This is a very critical layer as it’s responsible for decoupling the business logic from the UI. Classes in this layer expose only relevant methods via interfaces in order to protect the business logic being modified by the UI layer.
3. View Models – Standard view models in the MVVM architecture. View Models contain all attributes that are to be displayed by the respective UI.
4. Views – All the XML, Storyboards, XIBs, and associated view classes to make the experience pretty belong here!

As you can probably infer from above, our revised architecture is not an overly-complicated one. We focused on keeping it simple so as to keep the development process efficient and easy to understand.

This architecture eventually alleviated all our pain points, empowered us to scale efficiently, and allow us to build more supplementary features.

Challenge #2: dated UI and UX

We believe it is imperative to keep up with the evolving needs of our users. A casual browse across different user interfaces of popular products will make it pretty apparent that the adoption of dark themes is on the rise.

Earlier this year, Mojave introduced the popular theme to MacOS. It was also the top requests voted by YouTube users. Moreover, Windows 10 and Android’s support for the dark theme is fast approaching as well.

The mobile and design teams identified the trend towards dark-themed applications and hugely appreciated its usability. As such, we were inspired to incorporate it into our app to enhance the experience and hopefully delight our users.

Besides ramping up on the physical appeal of our user interface, we have also introduced major changes and improvements to everything related to UI and UX.

Our solution
We can summarise two modules that went through a major overhaul below (user onboarding & portfolio management):

a. User onboarding

User onboarding on regulated finance apps can be tedious, especially when it comes with the various KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) checks, and other regulatory requirements. With such information to be accounted for, the process of even beginning to utilise the app can certainly seem daunting.

This is where we believe coming up with a considerate and well-thought user journey, and offering helpful UX-related messages, can mitigate the problem. As such, we introduced two key changes into our user onboarding process. They are namely:

1. USPs (Unique Selling Points)

Before kick-starting the onboarding journey, we present users with four key USPs of Funding Societies; in short — a ‘why choose us?’ For a relatively new financial services company like us, we believe it’s important for us to take time in establishing trust in our new investors.

2. Integrating-arrows button

With so many fields to fill in, we wanted to offer users an easier way to navigate between fields, along with a button that’s always accessible for continuing to the next step. With a traditional approach, users would be required to constantly scroll and tap.

We tried to make it more straightforward with guiding arrow buttons; all while making sure the app remains elegant.

b. Better portfolio management

1. Improving dashboards

We believe a good dashboard doesn’t only show information that users care about, but also helps them to intuitively find the data they truly need and help make these data easier to comprehend for them. While designing the dashboard, we researched in-depth to ensure that we show the right information hierarchy. We also grouped data in a more logical way.

For example, instead of showing all financial data and returns in one page, we grouped them in 2 tabs: Performance and Account. This makes our dashboard more user-friendly and helps app-users access the right information they need more effortlessly.

2. Portfolio filters

Finding specific data in a long list can be a pain in the neck. Good, functioning filter options then become the ideal solution to this problem. We designed the new portfolio filters based on our users’ job stories, and it goes something like this:

“As an investor, when it’s the [end of the month], I wish to check [all my due repayments this month] to [summarise the monthly performance]”.

By making an effort to empathize with our users and making decisions based on their point-of-view, the new filters we introduce will become more meaningful and beneficial.

In retrospect — how did it all go?

Looking back, we’re extremely grateful for having gone through this enormous refactoring phase. Having a clean code-base has significantly boosted our engineers’ excitement level in pushing forward more effective updates, improved internal NPS scores, and also increased the average number of story-points completed each sprint.

There was a direct impact on business too; our improved onboarding journey is directly attributable to a significant increase in user sign-ups and retention. If you’re considering an enormous refactoring effort while keeping the current boat afloat, we’d recommend three key principles to stick by:

1. Simplicity is underrated, less is really more.
2. Taking a step back is more often than not taking a step forward.
3. Always empathize with your users.

We hope that this article has brought you plenty of useful insights, and for the budding app developers and engineers alike, we wish you the very best in building something that is ever trailblazing and game-changing!

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Image Credits: deagreez

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Bukalapak partners with Indonesian P2P lending platforms Amartha, Modalku, and PohonDana

Indonesian e-Commerce unicorn Bukalapak announced its partnership with three Indonesian P2P lending platforms, Amartha, Modalku, and PohonDana to launch Modal Mitra (in English capital partners), a program designed to support small businesses with capital financing solutions. Small businesses, especially kiosks owners, who have joined as Bukalapak’s partners will be given this exclusive opportunity.

“We want to give capital access to SMEs that want to improve its business with Bukalapak. With Modal Mitra, business owners can gain access to capital to buy inventories for their small kiosks to increase in quantities and varieties. We hope that this can benefit small business owners that often face challenges in capital to purchase inventories,” said Sigit Suryawan, Associate Vice President of Financing Solution Bukalapak.

To apply for Modal Mitra, Bukalapak allows partners that have been verified and actively selling on the platform to speed up the equity application. Once approved, the funding will immediately made available in Saldo Mitra, the business owners’ Bukalapak’s wallet, separated from personal balance.

The financing offered starts from IDR1 million (US$70.32) to IDR10 million (US$703.2). The business owners can choose the length of loan payment up until six months, which can be installed weekly starting from IDR90,000 (US$6.33).

Also Read: Rewire, a cross-border banking platform for migrant Filipinos and Thais, scores funding

The capital financing can be spent to purchase the inventories to fill in the partners’ kiosks and virtual products offered in Bukalapak.
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Also, OSS Inversiones to buy Meituan Bike’s Mobike, Cambodian government to invest US$5M annual fund for tech startups

oBike’s new owner to acquire Mobike [Deal Street Asia]

OSS Inversiones, the investment firm that acquired oBike last year, has reportedly offered to acquire 100 per cent of the international operations of Chinese bike-sharing firm Meituan Bike (formerly known as Mobike), which are Singapore Mobike and Mobike BV, the holding company of Mobike’s international subsidiaries,

The investment firm reportedly has allied with Singapore bike-sharing startup Anywheel, which will see the latter manage the Singapore unit of Mobike while OSS will oversee international operations outside of China once an agreement is reached.

OSS reportedly submitted its offer for Mobike to Meituan-Dianping last Monday. However, both OSS and Anywheel would consider putting more weight behind the offer, as American e-scooter company Lime is also said to be interested in Mobike’s Singapore and Japan units.

Singapore’s Land Transport Authority (LTA) has recently confirmed Mobike’s application to terminate its bike-sharing licence in Singapore, which left Anywheel in charge of a sandbox licence to operate up to 1,000 bikes, joined by SG Bike and Qiqi Zhixiang.

Singaporean VC Rajah Blue Media invests in Australian Adgile Media [Deal Street Asia]

VC firm from Singapore, Rajah Blue Media Holdings, reportedly has made an investment in Adgile Media, an Australian digital marketing startup, for an undisclosed amount of Series A round.

The funding is said to be used for Adgile Media’s global expansion and distribution of its proprietary technology in Singapore, Canada, Ireland, South Africa, US, UK, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Japan. The technology is claimed to be able to deliver real-time insights on TV advertising’s effectiveness.

“Adgile’s technology has managed to produce robust, granular quality of their data, strong analytics suite, and real-time functionality of the technology,” said Rajah Blue Media principal Mark Radford.

Cambodian government to create US$5M-worth of annual fund for tech startup [Khmer Times]

To support country’s blossoming digital economy, Prime Minister Hun Sen said that the government of Cambodia plans to create a US$5-million annual fund to strengthen the tech startup scene, as reported by Khmer Times.

The fund was announced during the opening of the 2019 Cambodia Outlook Conference, held at Phnom Penh’s Great Duke Hotel with focus on digital transformation to achieve Industry 4.0.

Also Read: Rewire, a cross-border banking platform for migrant Filipinos and Thais, scores funding

“An entrepreneurship fund will be established with US$5 million dollars a year to support startups in terms of financing, technical expertise, marketing, production, and training,” the prime minister said, highlighting the country’s dramatic economic transformation from an agriculture-based economy to manufacturing and services-reliant.

Supreme National Economic Council (SNEC) is to establish a working group that will focus on three areas: Building infrastructure and developing e-payment systems and the logistics network; developing the digital ecosystem; and promoting the digitalisation of the government while strengthening entrepreneurship, improving digital literacy, and developing open data.

Aun Pornmoniroth, the Minister of Economy and Finance, said it will take the country at least 10 years to complete the transition into a full-fledged digital economy. “Cambodia may need to spend the next five years building the pillars of a digital economy, and will probably spend another five to ten years growing that digital economy and aiming for a technology-driven market,” he said.

“Our vision is to create a robust digital environment that allows both small and large firms in the country to connect to global value chains,” he added.

e-Commerce solution Shopmatic merges with retail management solutions Octopus, eyeing APAC region [Press Release]

Singapore-based e-commerce solution aimed to help small business and individual entrepreneurs Shopmatic, announced its merger with Octopus, a fellow Singaporean company providing retail management solutions focussing on omni-channel sales and customer engagement.

With this partnership, both companies will focus on bridging the existing gap in retail businesses that hinders them to go online as well as have strong offline touch points. This collaboration will also see both firms expand into newer markets and leverage on each other’s geographical presence.

“Our merger with Octopus will enhance the offline-online synergy. Their strength and experience in Point of Sales (POS) suite of solutions will be of immense value to merchants across the Asia Pacific region. We see great synergies in the two companies and will be one of the few entities to offer a comprehensive omnichannel offering for SMEs & aspiring entrepreneurs,” said Anurag Avula, Co-Founder & CEO, Shopmatic.

The combined entity will see online businesses enhancing their e-commerce technology with Shopmatic’s solutions while tapping into the physical retail opportunity with Octopus’ POS solution. Offline businesses can also power their stores with Octopus’ suite of retail management solutions and at the same time have Shopmatic’s support to navigate the burgeoning world of online commerce.

The combined entity is said to acquire 500,000 customers, generate more than U$1.5 billion in GMV and achieve US$7.4 billion in revenue in 2019.

Student housing startup Stanza Living secures US$4.4M funding from Alteria Capital [Press Release]

India’s student housing operator Stanza Living announced that it has raised INR 30 crores (US$4.4 million) fresh venture debt from Alteria Capital, bringing a total funding of INR 115 crores (USD16.7 million) over the last 15 months. Earlier, the company raised funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, Matrix, and Accel Partners.

“The student housing segment in India is largely unorganized, suffering from several infrastructure and service quality gaps. We offer a student living experience that mirrors international standards,” said Anindya Dutta, Managing Director and Co-Founder, Stanza Living.

Also Read: In Photos: A stroll around CoHo’s tech-enabled co-living spaces in India

Dutta said that the funding will be used to unlock an inventory of one lakh beds by 2021 and bring Stanza Living brand experience to students across India. The company will also be working on developing financing and funding structures relevant to the business.

Stanza Living offers a new-student living models encompassing a service-led housing solution, proprietary community-building personal and professional development programmes and a high-quality ecosystem catering to diverse student requirements. The company said it has scaled the business by unlocking an inventory of 15,000 beds across Delhi NCR, Bangalore, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Indore, Vadodra, and Dehradun in 2019.
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Just 1 per cent blockchain adoption is expected. What about the other 99 per cent?

Bitcoin’s 2017 bull run from US$900 to US$20,000 (at its peak) has caught the world’s attention, bringing the once obscure distributed ledger technology mainstream.

Many industry newcomers have the misconception that blockchain is a newly emerged technology. However, the fact is that cryptocurrencies and the underlying blockchain technology have been around since a decade ago, back when Satoshi Nakamoto first published the Bitcoin Whitepaper in 2008 and mined the genesis block of bitcoin a year later.

Source: Coinmarketcap

The hype and attention buoyed by the parabolic price action have also attracted more players to enter the industry.

Just three years ago, the total number of ICOs stood at 29, with total funds raised totalling US$90 million. In comparison, the total number of ICOs in 2018 stood at 1,257 and total funds raised US$7,852 million — which translates to a whopping 4,234 per cent and 8,624 per cent growth respectively!

Source: ICOData.io

Despite being around for so long, and having garnered positive news and directions, blockchain technology remains far from practical adoption.

A 2018 survey by Gartner has indicated that blockchain adoption rates are still low — one per cent today and only eight per cent expected by surveyed CIOs in the short term.

Meanwhile, user adoption of decentralised applications (dApps) on Ethereum, the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap, remains surprisingly low. Daily users of all dApps averaged less than 10,000.

Yet, Ethereum has a multi-billion dollar market valuation at US$14 billion, highlighting that the prices of these cryptocurrencies are mostly driven by speculation and not use.

Also Read: Today’s top tech news, March 27: Indian student housing startup Stanza Living raises US$4.4M funding

So what exactly is holding blockchain technology back from mainstream adoption? We explore a few possible factors in this article.

Scalability of technology

Current technology limitations — such as scalability — remain a significant issue facing blockchain technology.

The scalability trilemma as termed by Ethereum’s founder Vitalik Buterin states that blockchain systems can only effectively possess two out of three components — either decentralisation, scalability or security hence trade-offs are almost inevitable.

CryptoKitties, a ERC20 dApp enabling players to buy and breed digital kittens on the Ethereum network is a prime example highlighting current technical limitations of blockchain technology. This single dApp alone has resulted in the congestion of the entire ethereum network, highlighting the difficulties in scalability with decentralisation.

In December 2017, unprocessed ethereum transactions were reported to rise up six-folds resulting in Cryptokitties having to increase their “birthing” (transaction) fees to minimise network congestion.

It is promising to note that improvements to current technological limitations are actively being explored, such as the recent Ethereum Constantinople hard fork and new structures like the Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) aiming to solve current limitations with blockchain technology.

Expectations outpacing usefulness

The state of ICOs draws parallel to the infamous Fyre Festival saga, with charismatic millennial founders over-promising and under-delivering by “selling a dream”.

The “80 per cent marketing, 20 per cent product” framework seems to ring true for many projects, with a recent E&Y report showing that only 29 per cent of 2017 ICOs have delivered a product.

Hence, it is important for investors and the public to do their own due diligence while assessing any opportunities. Reverse ICOs, ICOs founded by already established businesses with a proven team, communities and use cases may just prove to be an effective filter.

Lack of trust in a trustless system

Public sentiment and perception of the industry have been low, especially with the current bear market and bad actors in the industry.

In recent news, we have investors being locked out of US$190m after the death of an exchange founder, exchanges with 9.4 per cent of its total holdings stolen and a 20 per cent spike in money laundering cases in Japan last year.

It is no wonder that there is currently a lack of trust in the system, with regulatory and security issues being frequent occurrences.

Misconceptions fuelled by lack of education

Understandably, it has been tough for investors and the public to really get to know what cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are all about, with the technical jargons and the ever-evolving landscape.

This has led to common misconceptions such as:

1. Bitcoin = cryptocurrencies = blockchain technology
Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are not interchangeable terms. Bitcoin is a form of cryptocurrency, while cryptocurrencies are forms of digital assets as mediums of exchange.

Blockchain technology is a form of distributed ledger, a technology underlying cryptocurrencies enabling peer-to-peer transactions.

2. Blockchain technology is only for cryptocurrencies and payment
Blockchain and cryptocurrencies may go like peanut butter and jelly. However, it is not the only use case for blockchain, a distributed ledger technology that spans across multiple industries and used cases.

Also Read: Paving the journey for our app users is a rocky road

3. Price volatility and bear market reflect the current state of technological progress
Blockchain technology, as the underlying distributed ledger technology, should not be conflated with the incentive layer of public blockchains, namely cryptocurrencies. As Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak shared in a CoinTelegraph interview, people should focus on Bitcoin value creation rather than being preoccupied with price.

No moonbois or lambos but the future remains bright

Despite such factors, holding the adoption of blockchain technology back, we still believe in the vast potential of blockchain technology, with its ability to impact and improve different industries.

According to a recent report from US-based market research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), global blockchain spending will account for almost US$2.9 billion in 2019, which is an 88.7 per cent increase from 2018.

With such positive projected growth and the involvement of big corporates and institutions — such as NYSE which recently launched digital assets platform Bakkt and corporates such as IBM’s well-known active involvement in blockchain technology — there’s still long-term growth and opportunities for the industry.

In order for the industry to mature and grow, we believe that education is key.

Investors, projects, users and the wider communities should look past the hype and instead learn more about the true state and merits of blockchain technology and explore how it could be used to solve problems or enhance existing solutions in different industries.

In time and with solid development, trust will slowly be built up.

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Image Credits: maxuser

Disclaimer: Nothing written, posted or said by representatives of ArcadierX, its community managers, or community members should be interpreted as, taken as, or constitutes investment advice. All written comments are opinions of individuals and any investment is a risk that individuals take themselves.

ArcadierX is a leading marketplace builder Arcadier’s blockchain initiative to onboard users with a blockchain enhanced platform. For more insights and developments about blockchain and eCommerce, check us out on medium. 

How can we expedite the rate of blockchain tech adoption? Continue the discussion with us on Telegram.

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The opportunities for tech startups to deliver digital financial services are said to multiply

Fintech companies that combine innovative financial service business models with digital technologies are emerging in Southeast Asia in waves.

Fintech is revolutionising Asian banking by modernising cumbersome service channels, creating new ways to borrow money, and bringing in once-excluded customers.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the region has around 266 million people, with limited access to basic financial services such as bank accounts, loans, credit cards and insurance. There over 30 million SMEs underserved by the financial system, facing a collective credit shortfall of around US$175 billion.

It is safe to say that the potential market for Fintech in the region is significant.

At Cento Ventures, a Southeast Asia-focused venture capital firm, we focus on the financial technology industry from a broad perspective that includes both companies that are providers and enablers of modern financial services.

When we look for Fintech investment opportunities, our main criterion is the use of technology to enable or to improve a financial event in some way. For example, a software platform that is widely adopted by retailers might create an opportunity for lending to those retailers or for insurance of the goods being traded – perhaps not ‘Fintech’ in the narrow sense but most certainly an enabler of it.

Fintech in Southeast Asia

In recent years there has been a global trend towards the convergence of finance and IT in the form of Fintech, leading to the emergence of various new digital financial services.

In Southeast Asia, the economy is still in the early stages of digitalization. The total economy of the region is estimated at US$2,900 billion, out of which, only US$50 billion (1.7 per cent) is digital. This suggests that there is a significant opportunity for the growth of digital financial services as the digitization of the wider economy progresses.

Also Read: A decade of innovation: How East Ventures is building Indonesian tech ecosystem from the ground up

Approximately 1,000 companies have been built in the last few years that use technology to tackle some of the challenges in the financial services sector across Southeast Asia. As of now, Singapore remains Southeast Asia’s Fintech hotspot with over 490 fintech companies.

However, other markets are also generating interesting startups at a great pace. Today, Indonesia has around 262 fintech companies and is a booming market for digital payments, lending, and increasingly insurance.

Waves of development

The first wave of Fintech to be developed was focused on payments. 2C2P, Asiapay, iPay88 and Codapay are some examples of payment companies built in Southeast Asia. Many of these serve new online merchants, helping them to process payments from consumers.

Alongside this, we saw the creation of many e-Wallets that help consumers to store value and make purchases digitally.

Next came a wave of startups that made it easier to borrow money. The region has seen many online lenders, for example, Modalku and Funding Societies to name a few. These companies seek to help people and businesses borrow money more flexibly and efficiently than from traditional lenders and use technology and data to assess credit-worthiness in new ways.

Another wave of fintech innovation that is getting going and which has considerable potential is insurance. Both online insurance distribution platforms like Indonesia’s Cekpremi, and Malaysia’s Jirnexu, and direct insurers such as Thailand’s Sunday Insurance are growing fast.

We believe that future waves of fintech innovation will not be only about creating additional consumer-facing products but will also address B2B opportunities in areas such as security and data analytics.

One factor to note is the importance of regulation in the financial services sector. Central banks and regulators around the region have established ‘sandboxes’ designed to allow fintech players to test their services under relaxed regulations. These serve to encourage innovation in a controlled manner.

At the same time, digital financial services remains a highly scrutinised sector. For example, in late 2018 Indonesia’s OJK blocked websites and sent warnings to many of the peer-to-peer (P2P) lenders operating in the country in response to complaints about lending practices.

Digital platforms as opportunities for fintech

We believe that there is an opportunity for new digital platforms to play an important role in developing and distributing digital financial services that are tailored to the needs of their users.

Digital platforms enable connectivity, create new ways for people to exchange value, provide enhanced user experiences, facilitate trust between participants and help in data collection. This can lead to opportunities for fintech in areas like travel, logistics, healthcare, and retail to name a few.

Source

Some digital platforms in Southeast Asia, such as Grab and Go-jek are already offering related financial services that include payments, loans and insurance, both directly and in partnership with others.

Also Read: Need some advice for your startup? Check out these 11 contributor articles

The region is producing other large digital platforms across a number of different sectors, that have, or are building, financial services components to their business models. For example, Carro and Carsome in the automotive sector, PropertyGuru and 99.co in real estate, and Bukalapak and Tokopedia in retail.

Future opportunities for Fintech can be seen in digital platforms that serve various industry sectors which have not yet been materially disrupted by the internet. For instance, if shipping transactions are done on an online platform, then the platform is in a strong position to offer value-added services such as shipping insurance.

Likewise, if students are using a portal to apply for universities, they are likely to require associated services such as financing of school fees. Technology can be used to make these financial services more easily available and, quite often, more cheaply.

Fintech is not only about banks and insurers — many online transactions can have a financial dimension to them. As more and more sectors of Southeast Asia’s economy are transformed by the internet, the opportunities for tech startups to deliver the enabling digital financial services will multiply.

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