Online marketplaces are hot property in the e-commerce sector at present

Besides eBay and Amazon, there are countless examples of highly successful marketplaces out there, spanning a wide range of niches.

The core reason for their popularity from a consumer and seller perspective is fairly clear: they allow sellers to tap into several pools of consumers, who in exchange benefit from more choice.

However, in this article, we will focus on how they are taking the startup scene by storm specifically, and why they’re an attractive and high-potential business model for entrepreneurs looking for their next big idea.

Funding potential

One of the largest challenges a fledgeling startup faces is securing investment. Without significant funding from an angel investor, the vast majority of business ideas will fail to come to fruition.

Also Read: Warung Pintar CEO: How my grandmother inspired our vision for Indonesian mom-and-pop shops

In order to get this funding, entrepreneurs depend on the confidence investors have in their business model. Fortunately, technology investors are taking a strong interest in online marketplaces, indicating the perceived high potential of this type of business.

They are not only easily scalable, but they pose a lower risk than some other models of e-commerce because they tend to be asset-light.

According to The Conversation, there are 5,723 early stage private online marketplaces currently listed on AngelList (leading platform for investing in tech startups), with an average valuation of US$4.5 million – roughly US$25 billion in total.

This considerable value demonstrates how highly investors are coveting online marketplaces, so they’re an enticing prospect for entrepreneurs. As long as the concept and business plan are solid, the opportunities to secure funding are there for the taking.

Healthy competition

The beauty of the marketplace format, from an entrepreneur’s perspective, is that by hosting a multitude of different sellers in one place, the pricing competition is direct and immediate. The consumer can more easily compare prices, thus incentivizing the merchants to reduce their prices.

In theory, this should allow startup marketplaces to attract more customers, who are looking for lower-priced quality goods and increase their revenue through commissions on sales.

Naturally, there are always concerns about the authenticity of products, particularly in the luxury sector, but as an online marketplace, you can play the part of an independent adjudicator. This makes the online marketplace model mutually beneficial for entrepreneurs, sellers, and consumers alike.

Lower overheads

Unlike starting a conventional e-commerce store, online marketplaces do not necessarily require stocking your own products. Some larger sites, such as Amazon, combine selling their own wares and products from external merchants, but it’s advantageous for startups to simply act as the middleman.

One crucial reason for this is that it keeps overhead costs to a minimum – like warehouse space, stock acquisition, and inventory management – or even eliminates them completely, depending on the business plan.

Also Read: Fully integrating AI and healthcare is closer than you think

Although the investment potential of online marketplaces is strong, finding effective ways to cut costs is still a major plus. As a conventional inventory-based e-commerce site, hitting the sweet spot in terms of accurately judging the supply and demand of your products is a constant battle.

This is especially true of perishable goods. Without the need for inventory, online marketplaces are often less expensive to establish and avoid the stock balancing act in the long term.

—

e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

The post Why online marketplaces have lucrative startup prospects appeared first on e27.

When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills – Chinese Proverb

While innovation is the key to staying competitive in the industry, this supposed “innovation” is too often only a reorganisation of an existing offer that sometimes fails altogether.

Some would say, well you learn from your failures. But how many organisations today have the stomach for “expensive” failures that may even destroy the business altogether? So, is this then a catch-22?

The world of design offers some lessons for this predicament, but to learn these, businesses need to step away from what they see as the “problems” in their existing offers and take a better look at the surrounding business and consumption environment. They need to consider the lives and journeys of their customers for clues to understand the real reasons underlying these so-called problems.

Sometimes what we see as problems are only symptoms of underlying issues or opportunities in consumer interactions. Perhaps new consumer trends are driving micro changes in consumption, or maybe the product itself is being substituted as part of a broader evolution in the ecosystem.

Think how Uber disrupted the taxi economy or how m-Pesa, a mobile app became a de-facto “bank” or means of money-transfer for the unbanked populations of Kenya.

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” –Albert Einstein

Yes, such imagination could take you just about anywhere and could very well involve re-imagining the very foundations of the business.

Many of us know the story of how in the year 2000, Reed Hastings, the founder of a small company called Netflix, flew to Dallas to propose a partnership to Blockbuster CEO John Antioco and his team.

Also Read: RISE Corporate Innovation Accelerator partners startups and corporates in building real-world solutions using artificial intelligence through RISE.AI

The idea was that Netflix would run Blockbuster’s brand online and Antioco’s firm would promote Netflix in its stores. Hastings got laughed out of the room; Blockbuster believed then that the idea was too “niche” to succeed at a large scale.

Fast-forward 20 years, Netflix is now in 120 countries across the world, banks USD 28 billion a year while Blockbuster is bankrupt.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results” – Albert Einstein

Let’s talk about change, or rather — the lack of it. True, it’s hard to change and this has been an inherent human condition. After all, organisations are run by people, and people are human.

Many organisations therefore remain captive to this inertia of rest/ motion or continuing to do what they have always done. The heuristics of decision-making drive people to form judgements about things, via mental shortcuts that focus on certain parts of a problem but ignoring others.

Organisations too, end up selectively ignoring the parts of problems they don’t fully understand, and these often continue to cloud better judgement in making changes that may seem inconsequential today but perhaps, will address a much larger issue or opportunity tomorrow.

Incidentally, these biases also creep into consumer’s usage habits and ultimately social mores that include customs and manners and shapes their ways of valuing things in the world around them.

So then, how do we break the mould?

It’s easier said than done. We have in our years of experience encountered situations where we have been enthused at the willingness to change, in rooms full of attentive executives who acknowledge the challenges of modern business and the sea of changes digitalisation is causing.

Disappointingly, more than a few of those conversations have been lost in organisational bureaucracy, and the C-suites best efforts are often rendered toothless by vested interests from overpaid executives who have done all they could to protect their “turf” and guard the perceived success of the structures or silos within which they work in organisations.

Fast-forward eight months … Didn’t we completely forget about the customer there?

Enter Design Thinking, and in the words of one of its best-known practitioners, Tim Brown of IDEO:

“Design Thinking is neither art, nor science, nor religion. It is the capacity, ultimately, for integrative thinking”

Also Read: Why online marketplaces have lucrative startup prospects

Now a critic might ask here, “how is this any different from say, ‘out of the box’ thinking or ‘lateral’ thinking?” Ultimately, you are perhaps all correct in a way – Design Thinking as we see it at TheEngage is really just “thinking” under yet another name but without the barriers of having perceived constraints from our environments.

Encouraging design thinking involves understanding consumer trends that are continuously re-setting the expectations of customers. This requires thorough investigations to determine their effects on the business environment and thinking of ways to integrate them into an organisation’s services and products.

The process doesn’t end there as businesses also need to know the most agonising moments along the decision-making journey of customers and exploring how to convert those points of despair into ones of delight.

In other words, implementing a customer-focused perspective that reveals opportunities to create services and products that can empower and satisfy customers is a critical decision. This perspective allows businesses to take insights from the market and the customer journey and turn them into services and products that customers need but make business sense at the same time.

—

About Neel Banerjee

Neel Banerjee has Design Thinking credentials from the DesignSingapore Council. He has also trained as a Level 1 Executive Coach. Neel has trained and enabled organizational audiences in the Retail, Banking and broader entrepreneurial sectors using the Design Thinking methodology. These sessions have extended into program grants such as Capability Development Grant [Government of Singapore]/ roadmaps for builds for new apps or digital platforms.

Are you a key executive or business owner who is done with your share of “big” talk from professors or professional speakers but wish to drive some real change in your ways of doing business?

Want to learn more about how to use Design Thinking to catalyse new business plans that can ultimately make real money for your business? Visit Neel here and #EngageTheEngage

Image by mimagephotography

e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

The post Design thinking: A superpower for the challenges of modern businesses appeared first on e27.

The e-scooter sharing service said that it has expanded services in more station in Malaysia

Southeast Asian wide e-scooter service provider Neuron Mobility said that it has added more stations across Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Neuron scooters are now available in Kuala Lumpur’s city centre, including the areas of Masjid Jamek, Lot 10, KLCC, Bukit Nanas, and Berjaya Times Square.

The company does so in a bid to enable “efficient, reliable, and comfortable” short distance, alternative mobility in a form of urban transport in the densest part of Malaysia.

“Malaysia, and Southeast Asia as a whole, are working to reduce congestion and reliance on pollutive vehicles,” said ​Zachary Wang, CEO of Neuron Mobility. “We are proud to help cities integrate this new mode of sustainable mobility into their transport ecosystem.”

After a trial in Cyberjaya, the company felt confident to add more units in its fifth Southeast Asian city.

Also Read: Solidifying Singapore’s standing as a leading global blockchain hub

Neuron’a on-ground team currently stations themselves in the new locations to walk riders through the use of the mobile app, educate them on safety practices, and share local riding laws and regulations to ensure both rider and pedestrian safety

Neuron Mobility is the e-scooter operator that claims to have the largest shared e-scooter fleet in Southeast Asia.

Wang added that the expansion also marks the commitment the company has to ensure that its service would aid in urban transportation in the city with new technologies, partnerships, and education programs for public safety and proper parking of the scooters.

Just in recent months, Neuron Mobility has taken steps to scale across various markets with the upcoming launch of a commercial-grade e-scooter tailored for Southeast Asian infrastructure to serve the region’s most congested cities.
–

The post E-scooter service Neuron Mobility expands to more locations in Kuala Lumpur appeared first on e27.

Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) is a global organisation dedicated to building a more inclusive world through innovative finance and support for high-impact enterprises

Impact Investment Exchange (IIX), an organisation that aims to provide an innovative approach to finance and enterprise-support for a more inclusive world, announced that it has received US$887,000 (S$1.2 million) from the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

The company said that the fund will be used to develop the ecosystem for gender lens investing in Asia, as well as leveraging it to support the growth of 500 impact enterprises across Asia.

IIX’s program is called Equity@Scale, is funded under DFAT’s Frontier Brokers initiative—which focusses on addressing key weaknesses in the current entrepreneurial ecosystem and moving the capital to enterprises.

The program will also provide impact investing ecosystem players (including investors, foundations, banks, financial service providers, lawyers, corporate partners, and mentors) with the tools and resources to apply a gender-lens to their business approaches, processes, and strategies of engagement.

With the main mission of shifting gendered power dynamics in favor of women entrepreneurs and accelerating the growth of gender-lens investing, Equity@Scale will incentivise enterprises to integrate women throughout their value chain.

Gender lens investing refers to the use of finance to create gender equity by incorporating a gender analysis into investment decisions, with the intention to improve outcomes for women.

Also Read: E-scooter service Neuron Mobility expands to more locations in Kuala Lumpur

“Gender lens investing is a powerful solution to shift deeply embedded dynamics from treating women as victims to valuing them as solution-builders. Through our partnership with DFAT, IIX is taking our work to the next level by enabling everyone to play a role in building inclusive markets,” said Durreen Shahnaz, CEO, and Founder of IIX.

Through Equity@Scale, IIX will support enterprises with three types of capital: human capital in the form of investment readiness training; social capital in the form of access to mentoring and corporate networks; and financial capital in the form of access to investors and private sector equity and debt investments.

IIX claimed that it has been known for its experience in building the impact investing market and driving women’s empowerment across the world.

Shahnaz continue to share that she started IIX with the vision to bring women and underserved communities to the forefront of financial markets.

“I witnessed first-hand how women-led and women-focussed businesses face challenges to growth at every turn and realised that to change this we need to move beyond fragmented solutions and create long-term pathways for change,” said Shahnaz

Also Read: Four Indonesian SaaS startups merge to support SMEs digitisation

Reports said that there are around 30-40 per cent gender wage gap in Asia, and closing this gender gap could generate a 30 per cent increase in the per capita income of the average Asian economy in one generation.

While impact enterprises play a critical role in addressing gender equality and sustainable development issues, they face barriers in accessing resources and capital to grow. This issue is compounded for women-owned businesses across the developing countries, with an estimated 70 per cent of the seven million women-owned SMEs in the formal sector unserved or underserved by financial institutions.

“For nearly a decade IIX has been building these pathways through supporting entrepreneurs with impact assessments, technical assistance, and our ACTS accelerator program; connecting them to investors through our Impact Partners crowdfunding platform; creating financial products such as the Women’s Livelihood Bond that unlock greater private capital and amplify public resources; and sharing our experiences and methodologies with ecosystem players,” Shahnaz added.

IIX’s Equity@Scale program will accelerate conscious investment into women’s empowerment by broadening mainstream definitions of gender lens investing to include those investments which go into companies and initiatives that benefit underserved women (defined as low-income, rural, and minority women) in emerging markets.

IIX’s Women’s Livelihood Bond (WLB1) claims to be the world’s first impact investment products listed on a stock exchange reporting social and financial returns.

IIX has partnered with USAID, DFAT, DBS Bank, Shearman & Sterling LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, and Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas for the Women’s Livelihood Bond 2 (WLB2) that will open access to over US$100 million of private sector capital to impact one million women across Asia.
–

The post IIX receives US$887K grant from Australian government for gender lens investing appeared first on e27.

The company focusses in developing a space debris removal service to secure long-term orbital sustainability with established entities in Singapore, Japan, and the United Kingdom

Astroscale Holdings Inc. (“Astroscale”), the company that provides space debris removal service for long-term orbital sustainability, announced the opening of its new office based in Denver, Colorado (“Astroscale U.S.”), adding a strategic United States base to its entities in Singapore, Japan, and the United Kingdom.

Along with the opening of a new office, Astroscale also secured an additional US$30 million in an extension of its Series D investment round. The investors in this round are INCJ, Ltd., Japan Co-Invest II Limited Partnership (Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Investment Co., Ltd.), Space aSTART 1 Limited Partnership (aSTART Co., Ltd.), Innovation Platform 1 Investment Limited Partnership (UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Ltd.), and angel investor Joe Hirao.

The additional funding brings the total Series D amount to US$80 million and total capital raised to US$132 million.

“The United States has been active in addressing issues related to space traffic management and the mitigation of orbital debris. An office in the United States will allow us to work closely with policymakers and business leaders to devise a sustainable solution for this global issue,” said Nobu Okada, Founder, and CEO of Astroscale.

Astroscale U.S. will focus on business development and technology growth and will be led by Ron Lopez as Managing Director, bringing over 25 years of government and industry experience in the aerospace sector, including at the United States Air Force and The Boeing Company as well as leading the Defense & Space Asia Pacific sales team at Honeywell Aerospace.

Also Read: IIX receives US$887K grant from Australian government for gender lens investing

The global management team is rounded out by Chris Blackerby, Group Chief Operating Officer, who formerly served at NASA for nearly fifteen years, including as the NASA Attaché for Asia; Ai Makino, Chief Financial and Administrative Officer that has experience leading financial and personnel teams at several global startups; and John Auburn, Chief Commercial Officer, an expert in the aerospace sector, especially within European space industry.
–

The post Space sustainability company Astroscale receives US$30M funding, expands to US appeared first on e27.