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.

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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.

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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

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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.
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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.
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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.
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The startup life is mostly about adapting, improvising and overcoming the obstacles

I am the co-founder of Outside, a community tasking app that makes it easier for people to help each other with their daily inconveniences.

Our team is made up of students and fresh graduates who are passionate about tech and the sharing economy. We have previously attempted several business ideas together and ultimately got back together to build Outside.

This is how we failed, and then realised it gave us what we needed to succeed.

The beginning

I met my co-founder and friend, Dion, back at a social entrepreneurship program in secondary school. After graduation, we decided to try starting up businesses together.

Within a few years, we attempted six different ideas, ranging from tech-enabled crowdsourcing, sustainability, gaming, to even contract jobs and events.

After testing out multiple concepts, we finally arrived at the idea of creating a platform that would make it easier for people to help each other. And thus, Outside was born.

Like most people who lack the ability to build an app themselves, we resorted to outsourcing. However, the experience was not the best.

The constant check-ins with the outsourced developers were very time consuming and the development process took three months longer than what was planned.

Worst of all, the app did not perform as expected.

The six months of designing and gathering feedback led to more functions, and a much bigger price tag. The constant unexpected delays and changes were slowly diminishing our savings.

Also Read: Exclusive: Sea Group gaming arm eyes future in live streaming

Soon, we realised that we had to raise more money or drop the app.

As 20 year-olds, this was the toughest decision that we had to make. We considered borrowing money and even tried to apply for bank loans (the banks obviously rejected).

Ultimately, with rising tensions and tighter finances, we had no choice but to let go of the app.

Levelling up

However, soon after, Dion and I felt that it was possible to pick up programming by ourselves to save the app.

The journey was not at all smooth.

While learning and building the app, we hit roadblocks such as learning a framework that couldn’t support the required functions and had difficulty seeking help. We failed to hit our targets and the release for the private beta was pushed back for nearly three whole months.

While rushing for the private beta release, we were constantly in the office till the last public commute. This routine of pushing ourselves only resulted in burning out and increased tensions within the team.

After realising the detrimental effects of our working style, we agreed on building a proper work schedule and system to better manage our work process. Then, with everything in place, we managed to launch our private beta in December 2018.

While we also initially intended for our public beta to launch in December, we received several crucial feedback and noted problems from our private beta testers. This led to us making the decision of doing a controlled scale test instead.

Doing so allowed us to focus on understanding our current testers and helped us in better-adding value to the app.

After fixing up issues and restructuring the app we successfully (and proudly) launched the public beta of Outside in February 2019.

At this point, we were very lucky and thankful that we were given the opportunity to both open our first booth and pitch for the finals at Unicon Arena 2019. We came in as the runner up within 48 hours of our launch too so yay!

The lessons learnt

1. Skills can be picked up
Don’t look at outsourcing as your only option to build the business, there is a huge existing pool of free resources to pick up the basics; Codecademy for programming and Google Digital Garage for digital marketing and many others as long as you try to search for it.

As always, Google and Youtube are your best friends. There are also countless of tutorial videos and guides available for app development and most things startup related.

I was actually able to attend all the Blitzscaling classes in Standford thanks to Greylock’s Youtube channel.

2. Set KPIs as a team
In order to make things move faster, I ended up setting strict deadlines for the team which only led to ineffectiveness and burnouts instead.

Try to understand the difficulties and make changes to the plans where necessary, allowing the team to suggest their own deliverables will make also help them feel more responsible for their work (Its good to read up on OKRs).

3. Less planning, more “Adapt. Improvise. Overcome”-ing
You’ve probably seen this in the context of a Bear Grylls meme but it’s true, the startup life is mostly about adapting, improvising and (hopefully) overcoming the obstacle as it comes.

There should be a limit on the “In the future/next time” talks and more focus on the “now”. You could be really excited about the future and lose sight of what needs to be done for you to get there.

It’s always good to give some future talk to boost the team morale, but make sure to stay in the present and don’t plan ahead if you are not done deciding on the next few actionable steps.

4. Don’t be afraid
Lastly, do NOT be afraid to reach out and ask for help.

When I was starting out, I was really reluctant to ask for help because I was afraid of them doubting my ability as a startup founder. Although it took me quite some time to get out of my comfort zone, I’ve learnt so much from getting people’s input and sharing of experience.

Also Read: Digital partnerships: When is agency experience an asset or a liability?

You should still research and read up on whatever you can before you ask for help. It’s wasteful to take up people’s time to explain things you can read about online when you can learn much more from their practical experiences.

What’s next

Although we have already launched our public beta, we are still very much at the start of our journey. We recently onboarded new members and are currently preparing for our demo day in mid-April.

We are also currently getting more beta testers so that we can collect more feedback to improve on the product. There are also several pretty interesting functions coming down the pipeline that we are very excited to share.

We hope everything works out for the best, and even then, to stay grounded, appreciate failure and never give up! All the best to all the startups out there.

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Outside is currently in Cohort 1 of The Start, a pre-accelerator program by StartupX and Temasek and Cohort 2 of Found8’s Elevate.SG. Keep an eye out for them here.

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

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Also, Coins.ph collaborates with Western Union for global remittance access in the country, and public transport startup TRON launches operation in Indonesia

Malaysia-based golfing startup Deemples raises US$105K funding [Press Release]

Deemples, an app-based golfing startup, announced yesterday that it has raised US$105,000 funding, rounding up a total of US$270,000 funding it has received.

Deemples said it plans to use the funding solidify their position in their existing market across five Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, The Philippines, and Brunei.

Furthermore, the company that was launched in 2017 as a platform to help golfers find golf buddies continues to fulfill its mission to make golf “more accessible and breaking the stereotype of elitism surrounding the sport”.

Deemples allows users to find a golf partner to play with and enable them to organise games at preferred locations and time slots. “Golf was the one thing that made me look forward to every weekend. However, it was difficult to find people to play with as my schedule with golf friends didn’t always match. To solve this problem, I decided to build the Deemples Golf App that helps golfers find each other and get on a course for a round, regardless of when and where,” said Deemples Co-Founder and CEO David Wong.jw

Western Union partners with Coins.ph to bring better remittance access to the country [Eji Insight]

Philippine e-wallet provider Coins.ph, that’s recently acquired by Go-Jek, announces its partnership with Western Union to help opening up access for Filipinos to receive international and domestic money transfers directly from Western Union’s global network.

Coins.ph said it will integrate Western Union into its e-wallet app to allow users in the Philippines to receive and hold international money transfers initiated from Western Union’s digital network, and directly deposited into Coins.ph e-wallets.

Also Read: AirTrunk closes US$332M funding, launches data centre in Singapore

“There are many overseas Filipino workers who send money back home regularly and are always looking for additional remittance options,” said Coins.ph co-founder and chief executive Ron Hose in the press statement. “By pairing Coins.ph’s payments technology with Western Union’s expansive global network, we are giving Filipinos a seamless choice to receive money digitally, on the go.”

Together with Moneygram, Western Union will provide support for around 10 million Filipinos working or residing overseas, as announced by the Philippines’ central bank,

TRON launches in Indonesia, provides on-demand public transport service [Deal Street Asia]

TRON, an on-demand public transportation provider, has announced its launch to the Go-Jek and Grab-dominated Indonesia.

The platform is operated by Teknologi Rancang Olah Nusantara in collaboration with global share mobility solutions provider Via. It allows users to request a 15 person shared van in real-time using its mobile app, which then will direct the passengers to a nearby virtual pickup point indicated in the application.

TRON said that its service is similar with public minivans, which used to be the intra-city transportation of choice for many Indonesians, before being slowly replaced by GOJEK and Grab.

The new service will begin with 150 vehicles in the city of Bekasi, on the outskirts of Jakarta.

TRON application will work in affiliation with Digiasia Bios, an Indonesian fintech player with three licensed services with its cashless payment service, KasPro as the payment option for TRON passengers.

Cambodia launches a government-funded business startup centre [Khmer Times]

Techo Startup Centre, a new startup incubation centre located in the Royal University of Phnom Penh, is the latest government initiative to support young entrepreneurs and aid government plans to transform Cambodia into a digital economy.

The facility was officially launched on Monday by Aun Pornmoniroth, Deputy Prime Minister, and Hangchuon Naron, the Minister of Education. It is said to be focussed on skills students need to succeed as tech entrepreneurs in the digital age and to foster the creation of new tech startups and SMEs through a clear support programme.

Also Read: Indonesian recruitment platform Ekrut raises pre-Series A funding round

The centre was built with government funds and covers an area of 6,720 square metres.

“The new Techo Startup Centre is a place where students will be able to carry out internships, do research and have access to mentors. It will connect universities to the labour market and the private sector to prepare ahead of globalisation and the impact of Industrial Revolution 4.0,” said Minister Pornmoniroth.

Coca-Cola Amatil to invest in Indonesia’s startups [The Sydney Morning Herald]

Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) has showcased its interest in emerging startups in Indonesia and has said that it’s looking to invest in tech companies in the country before the spike it can have triggered by the recent signing of a free-trade deal.

The ASX-listed company based in Australia has launched its venture capital program Amatil X a year ago with US$10 million to invest in companies.

The company will launch a program in Jakarta to extend its search, working with a local startup accelerator to scout out potential investments.

“You’ve just got to look at the size of the population – and a very young population,” said CCA’s group director of partners and growth, Chris Sullivan.
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The company also is reportedly set to take over the Philippines operations of the online classifieds giant OLX Group

Carousell, the Singaporean P2P e-commerce site, has raised US$42 million from OLX Group, as first reported by Tech In Asia.

OLX Group is owned by Naspers, one of the world’s leading technology investment firms whose big win is being one of the first investors into a young Tencent.

Furthermore, DealStreetAsia is reporting that Carousell has acquired the the Philippines operations of OLX Group, presumably part of the deal.

If we add up the investments on e27 data, the new investment brings Carousell’s total funding to date to around US$170 million. Its most recent round was a US$85 million in May 2018 after a US$35 million deal in August 2016.

The investment makes OLX Group the third largest stakeholder in Carousell — now owning 11.5 per cent of the company. Rakuten (who just invested in Shopback) owns 29.6 per cent of the company and Sequoia India owns 15.1 percent.

Tech In Asia reported the story based on company filings, which they report value the company at US$365 million.

e27 has reached out to Carousell for comment and clarity about specifics of the deal.

Also Read: Exclusive: Sea Group gaming arm eyes future in live streaming

Carousell and Naspers have been dancing with each other for awhile now, with TechCrunch reporting plans of investment about 10 months ago. According to that article, the investment in Carousell is the core strategic move for Naspers in Southeast Asia. Naspers is based out of South Africa.

TechCrunch also reports that the deal was agreed upon awhile ago but was delayed because of Naspers’ IPO in Europe.

OLX Group is a bit of a throwback to the marketplace companies that first help build the startup ecosystem in this part of the world. The company is essentially a conglomerate of various marketplaces in emerging economies (it has operations in countries like Indonesia, Brazil and India). The company is headquartered in The Netherlands.

Also Read: ShopBack secures US$45M funding led by Rakuten, EV Growth

Assuming the DealStreetAsia report is true, an acquisition of the Philippines OLX operations is logical for Carousell. It would allow the company to scale quickly without having to search for unfamiliar properties in the country.

From an investment perspective, OLX is a natural fit for Carousell as it gives the Singapore startup a partnership with the world’s largest classified’s business.

Carousell operates in Australia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

 

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From cosplay to pyrotechnics, Garena World 2019 really had it all

Over the weekend, the publicly-listed Sea Group hosted its annual Garena World event in Bangkok. For people relatively new to the eSports industry (I count myself in this group), it was an eye-opening experience.

With nearly 300,000 people in attendance, the scale was unlike anything in the tech space and the enthusiasm of the audience was palpable. Furthermore, because of who it attracted, it was fairly common to see people playing games on their phones while they were watching the professionals.

A core takeaway from the event was the undeniable importance of mobile phones as the most important channel for games. New games are clearly designed to be played on mobile first, and then other “consoles” are the secondary consideration.

“The trend is heavily on the mobile phone. It’s everything. We think, if you develop the game, it has to be mobile. If [gamers] have it on PC, they will have another on mobile,” said Nok Maneerut Anulomsombut. 

Also Read: Exclusive: Sea Group gaming arm eyes future in live streaming

Garena World 2019 was something to behold, so let’s have a look!

The scale

As mentioned above, the scale of the venue upon walking into BITEC was jaw-dropping. Thousands of people thronged a gigantic space and many of the games were watched by people willingly sitting on the floor.

The cosplay

While definitely not the majority, there were a decent amount of people who attended the event dressed in cosplay. They were not paid by Garena and only a few of them seemed have been representing individual companies. The rest appeared to be hardcore fans who just wanted to take the opportunity to show off their styles to a large amount of people.

The champions

Free Fire, the game developed by Garena, hosted its global championship during the event. It is a Battle Royale game that harkens to Fortnite or Apex Legends. The competition featured teams from as far away a Brazil and Colombia.

The winning team was EVOS Capital out of Indonesia.

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In this conversation, the Warung Pintar CEO reveals how the company plans to revolutionise the supply chain of FMCG products

Get insights from Agung Bezharie Hadinegoro and more at Echelon Asia Summit 2019. Happening on May 23-24 at the Singapore Expo. Tickets are now available at US$10 each!

In the past one year, Indonesian new retail startup Warung Pintar has made several exciting milestones.

But for CEO and Co-Founder Agung Bezharie Hadinegoro, there are two most important milestones that they have achieved: The number of mom-and- pop shops or warung that they have managed to help (which has reached beyond 1,300 shops) and the significant increase of their monthly income (which has gone beyond 41 per cent with 22 per cent of them experiencing at least 10 per cent growth each month).

“[Through these milestones] we were able to validate that offline transactions are in dire need of ‘online touch’, especially seeing how much efficiency has been brought by the Warung Pintar platform. Plugging into our software turns out out to be really helpful for their business process,” he says in an interview with e27.

Launched in January 2018, Warung Pintar aims to help warungs –an essential part of the daily lives of Indonesians– embrace the digital era by enabling them to perform online transactions and digitising their bookkeeping, warehousing, distribution, and cash register process.

However, the company’s five-year vision goes beyond enabling cashless payments on warung. In addition to help these small businesses becoming more efficient, they also aim to help the FMCG industry generate and track data.

Hadinegoro explains how the FMCG industry has a “very big market” in Indonesia with almost 70 billion items moving in the supply chain.

Also Read: Warung Pintar acquires a platform that connects farmers with direct sellers

However, 70 per cent of distribution of these goods are still being done through traditional marketplaces or sellers. This has made it impossible for businesses to track its data, as well as measure inefficiencies and losses.

“We always talk about how to use Big Data, but the main problem here is how to generate the data first. There is very little data generated at the supply chain and retailers; you can never bring in efficiency with that as the data is neither big nor clean enough to know what is happening,” he elaborates.

“There are still many people who trade in the same way as 50 years ago. This is what we try to revolutionise. We might change the way we do things through disruption, but through a revolution, we aim to come up with something entirely new,” the CEO adds.

Getting them to stay

 

When asked about the challenges that the company faced in acquiring its users, Hadinegoro said that instead of acquiring users, the greatest challenges actually lie in maintaining them.

“You can ask all tech companies, their problem would be the same. You can get 100 merchants on board each month, but how many of them are actively using the platform?” he says.

“So the question is how you can make them stay … [User] acquisition is all about spending money but keeping them is all about how good your product is,” he continues.

Hadinegoro points out that Warung Pintar’s target audiences are not the usual early adopters of tech companies’ services. The problem is not that they are unwilling to do it; the problem is that the products are not designed for them.

Also Read: Grab partners with micro retail tech startup Warung Pintar to champion digital inclusion

“Smartphones may not be made for ojek drivers, but Go-Jek and Grab are made for them. So it’s all about building a human-centered design,” he concludes.

In addition to that, the company also puts emphasis on hiring quality talents for their product team.

Staying inspired

 

Hadinegoro is one of those startup founders who actually began his entrepreneurship journey by working in a venture capital firm.

Warung Pintar started out as a side project at East Ventures, but external investors then began to convey their interest in the project.

Hadinegoro’s involvement in the project was fueled by his passion in helping small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In his work, he claims to be inspired by the achievements that his grandmother has made.

A paediatrician and an academic, his grandmother works in developing vaccines and has advised the government in public health-related matters.

“She could have made a lot of money but her country needs her money more … I learned that infant mortality rate, from the time she began working as a doctor, has decreased dramatically, thanks to the hard work of her and her colleagues,” Hadinegoro says.

“In measuring the value of what we do, we need to go beyond using ‘happiness’ as a reason. Ironically, many tech blogs on Medium seem to focus on that. What we need isn’t happiness; what we need is usefulness,” he continues.

“Because you can be happy and useless at the same time. But when you’re useful, you will feel happy,” he closes.

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Image Credit: Warung Pintar

The post Warung Pintar CEO: How my grandmother inspired our vision for Indonesian mom-and-pop shops appeared first on e27.