Nest Tech, specialises in funding seed stage tech startup, has added Singapore-based mobile F&B ordering company Waitrr into its portfolio

Singapore-based F&B ordering startup Waitrr has formed a strategic partnership with Nest Tech, a VC that invests into seed-stage tech startups, in which the latter also invests in Waitrr. The partnership will also look into international expansion.

Founded by Tim Wekezer in 2015, Waitrr’s solution maximises the capacity of floor staff, table-turns, and average ticket size with no up-front cost while capturing consumer insights and enabling restaurants to re-market to their customers.

Waitrr enables diners to order ahead from over 200 restaurants in Singapore via mobile app and provides the diners with payments solution. It provides dining experiences for both guests and restaurant partners.

For F&B outlets, the company said that using Waitrr would improve the operational efficiency of both dine-in and takeaway establishments as it automates the order taking and payment processes. This approach allows restaurants to increase the operational capacity of their staff, so they can provide personalised service to their guests.

For diners, Waitrr offers a fully integrated loyalty and rewards program and partners with F&B outlets such as The Daily Cut, Guzman y Gomez, PAUL, and Da Paolo Gastronomia.

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“We see Waitrr’s technology as the logical next step in the F&B space. Our strategic partnership will see Waitrr expand across other countries in Southeast Asia starting with Vietnam and Myanmar,” said Soe Moe Kyaw Oo, Managing Partner, Nest Tech.

Soe Moe Kyaw Oo established Nest Tech in 2018 to support technology startups in Singapore, Vietnam, and Myanmar, seeking to back entrepreneurs with vision and passion at seed stage.
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Reviews serve as that tangible form of trust for your business and your online marketplace

“Google it.”

We have definitely heard those two words before — probably even spoken them ourselves. The word Google has become synonymous with researching anything on the Internet!

Now consider Yelp.

Some people, especially those living in San Francisco, might consider Yelp the Google of food reviews. They turn to it to look for new cuisines and food joints, relying on its reviews and ratings to instruct their decision.

Now, picture this. You did a quick search on “Japanese restaurants near me”, and multiple relevant eateries pop up. You then narrow down your options to the final two, but to your horror, you find that the two cannot be distinguished. What do you do to resolve that awful conundrum?

You turn to Yelp, and you notice that small yet stark difference. Restaurant A has multiple five-star ratings by exceptionally satisfied customers raving about its food and ambience, while Restaurant B suffers a little in the review department. Alas, we have arrived at our decision: Restaurant A.

Reviews are so critical in our decision-making process. While the recommendations of friends and family rank first in our minds, online reviews come in a close second. According to a Fan & Fuel Digital Marketing Group survey, 92 per cent of respondents mentioned that they would hesitate to make a purchase on items with no reviews.

Reviews serve as that tangible form of trust for your business and your online marketplace. While we may not necessarily believe all reviews – and even empathise with restaurants that receive irrational, negative reviews from accusatory customers – relying on the opinion of others to influence our choices is human nature.

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Airbnb has a Superhost status for the crème de la crème of hosts; Uber has a star rating for drivers and passengers; Etsy has written reviews from happy customers that praise the workmanship of the good delivered. To users, these reviews are perceived as “real experiences” and are a helpful reference point for them to refer to.

We’ve raved about the benefits of reviews, but how does one get off on the right foot with regards to reviews for their online marketplace or business?

Getting started – reviews and reputation systems

The simple yet fundamental first step as a marketplace or business owner is to encourage buyers to leave reviews for sellers. After a good has been purchased or service rendered, buyers may be prompted to leave a one to five-star rating, coupled with a written review to justify the rating given.

For example, a marketplace that rents outdoor event spaces. A buyer of that marketplace has had a great birthday party hosted at her chosen venue, so she leaves vibrant compliments about its spaciousness and cleanliness. After her, another satisfied buyer leaves similar reviews commenting on the quality of the space. There is a consensus building up that the outdoor event space lives up to the seller’s claim.

Collectively, these ratings and reviews hold tremendous weight. While sellers can post photos and rave endlessly about how roomy and scrubbed their event space is, a review or two solidifies that description’s trustworthiness.

More about reputation systems

One way that businesses and online marketplaces can implement a rating system is through gamification. This happens when a user (buyer or seller) is awarded points, badges, or higher status in the community for “playing a game,” like performing an action or achieving a quantifiable goal.

Typically, these accumulated points lead to a reward, which could also serve as a reputation status.

Here are some quicks questions to get you started!

• What is the objective of your marketplace: one-time purchases, or repeated ones?
• What kind of user behaviour are you tracking?
• Which behaviours are worth rewarding, and which worth penalising?

Your answers to those questions will determine the design of the reputation system (or game) most suited for your marketplace. For example, if the goal of your reputation system is to allow buyers to determine whether a seller is trustworthy, then a relevant indicator would be to monitor the seller’s percentage of fully completed transactions, service ratings and comments.

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There is a lot to explore in reputation system and reviews, and it might even seem overwhelming initially. Nevertheless, the first step to get started is simple – encourage and build a culture of review giving in your marketplace.

Reviews build trust among potential buyers, which is so valuable and essential in any online marketplace. But more than that, it also helps to validate a buyer’s decision post-purchase.

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Image by inueng

Samuel Kuek is from the Business Development Team at Arcadier, a SaaS company that provides ideas that allow you to build your own marketplace in minutes. You can follow Arcadier on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn for the latest insights on marketplaces and the Sharing Economy.

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Thailand’s Digital Economy Promotion Agency or depa signs MoU with the companies to receive know-how and technology

Back in February 2019, Thailand’s Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa) has signed agreements with six regional Internet of Things (IoT) companies from Singapore as a symbolic partnership. It will see the six companies provide know-how and technology to Thai government, as well as boosting the agency’s Digital Park Thailand and IoT Institute Initiative.

The six companies involved are Willowmore, UnaBiz, Gobi Partners, Ascent Solutions, Unity, and Spotwerkz, as reported by FutureIoT.

The MoU covers opportunities like the opening of a training center within the Thailand EEC digital park, looking to explore the development of IoT solutions for Thailand’s small medium enterprises and large companies.

The agreement is also a nod to Thailand 4.0 policy, the government’s 20-year strategy to make Thailand a more tech-centric and value-based economy.

“These partnerships will strengthen and enhance Thailand’s resources and help us gain a competitive position in the IoT industry within the ASEAN market,” said Dr. Passakon Prathombutr, Senior Executive Vice President of depa.

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Signed in Singapore, the companies involved are expected to provide technologies based on their expertises.

Gaming platform Unity provides professional 3D automotive design, industrial, and architectural services as well as film and animation services. depa will utilise Unity’s capability to support the digital transformation efforts for SMEs and manufacturing as well as Thailand’s creative industries in film and animation.

Spotwerkz, as a big data analytics company, will play a role as the licensee of Unity in Thailand.

With UnaBiz, that claimed to be Asia’s first IoT dedicated network operator in Singapore and Taiwan, depa will develop digital capabilities in the area of industrial automation, agriculture, tourism, education, and healthcare, as told by Henri Bong, CEO and founder of UnaBiz.

As the provider of enterprise-grade smart padlock, smart cabinet locks, and portable Sigfox-Bluetooth gateway SigWAV, Willowmore will work with depa in developing access control, security systems technology, and IoT gateways.

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Gobi Partners, on the other hand, will be providing depa and the Thai government with expertise on funding startups.

Ascent Solutions, the company that provides services in various industries such as warehouses, logistics, freight forwarding, intelligent transportation, and e-passport tools will help Thai government to develop technologies and provide its solutions to the Digital Park Thailand and IoT Institute in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC).
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Who really remembers every single thing that has affected their performance by the end of the year?

Let’s face it, annual performance reviews are unrealistic and aren’t effective when it comes to adapting on the fly and making changes with maximal flexibility.

Not only is the end-of-the-year scramble hectic and stressful, but no one can really remember their entire year’s performance track record — unless they have an eidetic memory or something.

As it seems, annual performance reviews may quickly fade into obscurity and become a thing of the past. Many companies are now swapping from annual to a more frequent performance review format.

The more frequent and “real-time” the performance review, the more readily a company is able to adapt. In essence, correcting and/or reversing a lagging aspect of performance that would have gone unnoticed in an annual review.

We live in a rapidly changing world, and for businesses to thrive on top of just staying afloat, they need to be able to review and redirect their course in an almost instantaneous manner.

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For real-time performance reviews to be implemented effectively, they need to almost be personalised and chock full of crowd-sourced feedback. As conducive to progress as real-time performance is, mainly smaller companies are making the shifts, while large corporations face a plethora of problems associated with changing their entire performance review system.

Small businesses should take advantage of this changing of an era and begin implementing a variety of tactics to ensure the most detailed and thorough real-time reports are available.

One very basic tactic is creating criteria with which “team leaders” will effectively review their team members. Then encourage weekly meetings with team leaders, breaking down annual performance reviews into weekly chunks.

Another tactic that has been implemented with great efficacy is the mobile app, Snapshot. With this app, employees can ask to be reviewed at any given moment based on five principles; leadership skills, relationships, business acumen, technical capability, global acumen. Instead of being given a standard rating, they are simply informed on if they are surpassing, failing, or meeting expectations.

Real-time performance reviews are still time-consuming, but not nearly as much as annual reviews have been. Instead of writing lengthy end-of-the-year evaluations, leaders are conducting five to ten-minute review meetings, which shortens annual reviews exponentially.

While they both have their efficacy, real-time performance is more effective at allowing on-the-fly adaptation, whereas annual reviews allow one to see the bigger picture or the overall scheme of things. With that being said, they both have their uses, and when implemented in cohesion, can greatly increase a company’s ability to assess and manage resources and performance.

Another time-saving option is the use of crowdsource reviews, which is where employees company-wide can write reviews and ratings on other employees, though the feedback is, at times, indirect and not as conducive to individual employee improvement.

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One issue that has arisen, however, is deciding on bonuses and pay raises without the traditional annual review and rating system. With that being said, a rating isn’t necessarily the best way to decide on pay raises.

If trust can be placed in team leaders, and employees can be accurately reviewed on their market values, company contributions, and how refined their skill sets are, then this extensive input should be enough for a company to make decisions on raises and bonuses.

All-in-all, though it is a work in progress, real-time performance reviews are in the immediate future, and change isn’t painful, only resistance to change is.

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The funding was secured in the company’s Q4 last year, just after the launch of Venturra Discovery itself in September 2018

Medigo, Indonesia-based healthtech company that connects healthcare facilities with patients, doctors, insurance agents, and government under one platform, announced that it has raised seed funding from Venturra Discovery, the new seed investment arm of Venturra Capital.

Claimed to be different than other healthtech startups, Medigo was founded in May 2018, focusses on connecting healthcare facilities with the mission to “build a better, more connected Indonesian digital healthcare ecosystem”.

To do this, Medigo targets hospitals, clinics, and also Puskesmas (the local health centre) as users of their platform, seeking to connect them with their patients, doctors, and supporting partners such as insurance as well as the government.

“Medigo believes that the real problems in the Indonesian healthcare industry are not patient-side, but on the providers’ side. The healthcare industry is highly regulated, very bureaucratic, and complex. We aim to solve problems for providers first. Without solving those problems, it’s tough to provide quality service and experience to patients,” said Harya Bimo, CEO of Medigo.

In its official statement, Medigo highlighted that most of more than 2800 hospitals in Indonesia are not yet connected to their doctors and patients. Majority of more than 18.000 clinics all over Indonesia are not yet standardized and still being operated manually.

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Challenges in the Indonesian healthcare industry include interoperability in all levels of healthcare facilities from Puskesmas, clinics, to hospitals. There is also inefficiency in accessing medical records for both patients and healthcare providers, along with complicated referencing process between healthcare facilities, not to mention the manual process required for insurance claims.

One of Medigo’s products for healthcare providers in Indonesia is an out-patient management platform for hospitals to manage their polyclinics operations such as registrations, queue, patient slots, and doctors schedule through API connection.

For clinics, Medigo provides an integrated clinic management application called Medigo Qlinik, that is aimed towards clinics owner or management to digitize their operations.

As for patients, Medigo provides a soon-to-be-launched app to connect to doctors practicing in Medigo’s clinic and hospital partners. It lets patients register, book a consultation, check medical resume, dan pay for consultations and medicine.

Also Read: Six Singapore-based IoT companies sign deal with Thailand’s depa

Currently, the pilot phase of Medigo is running in local hospital Rumah Sakit Pertamina Pusat (RSPP), Rumah Sakit Pertamina Jaya (RSPJ), and over 100 clinics. This year, Medigo aims to partner with 10 hospitals, 500 clinics, to get to 3 million interactions between patients and doctors.
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Image Credit: Medigo

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