The funding is the extension of its Series B funding announced last year, led by Kakaopay corp.

Marketplace lender based in South Korea PeopleFund announced that it has raised an additional US$5 million for its Series B round, continued from last year, bringing the total equity raised to date to approximately US$21 million. The Series B round last year was led by Kakaopay corp.

PeopleFund claimed to be the first “Korean marketplace lender” that has secured foreign funding. The startup also said that the US$30M in debt financing will be used to scale up its lending business.

In laymen’s terms, the company connects buyers and lenders to provide customers with more diverse financing options and lenders with an additional revenue channel.

In its official statement, PeopleFund mentioned that Korean government designates fintech as a top priority on the nation’s economic agenda. This initiative, the company believes, has helped propel growth of the marketplace lending sector.

Along with the funding, PeopleFund also appointed three new advisors that will be focussed in providing strategic counsel for the company’s expansion plans beyond Korea.

Also Read: Fintech startup Arax Wallet merges with crypto exchange COSS

In Korea alone, there are currently 150 marketplace lenders in Korea, in which only 50 are operational and only the top 5 players, including PeopleFund. The sector serves more than 60 per cent of the market.
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Becoming an accomplished entrepreneur isn’t just about creating a great product

Being afraid to lose. Thick skin. The patience to queue for hours. While these traits form part of the (stereotypical) Singaporean’s DNA, such qualities might not make for a successful entrepreneur.

Instead, what traits would be required? The best way to find out is naturally to ask people who are successful entrepreneurs themselves. That’s what Dr. Lillian Koh, CEO of fintech education provider FinTech Academy, did in a “The Art and Science of Entrepreneurship” panel discussion at the Young NTUC’s recent inaugural LIT DISCOvery conference, which involved veteran entrepreneurs such as:

• Christopher Yeo, CEO of artificial intelligence platform Sentient.io,
• Rachel Lim, co-founder of fashion e-commerce store Love, Bonito, and
• Entrepreneur and investor Teo Ser Luck

Drawing from their wealth of experience, they shared their thoughts on five traits that Singapore’s entrepreneurs need to develop to excel in their business ventures.

Self-awareness

Self-awareness refers to being aware of who you are as a person, such as your interests, qualities, and shortcomings. With entrepreneurship being all the rage these days, being self-aware can help you decide whether this is what you really want for yourself before you take the plunge.

For example: are you keen on pursuing a particular business venture because you have passion for it, and believe it can – as Lim puts it – “make a dent in the universe”? Or was that business idea the first one that came to mind, and you’re charging in blindly because you see entrepreneurship as your ticket to fame and stardom?

When you start building your business, you’ll likely also have to build a team that can complement your strengths and weaknesses – assuming you know what these are in the first place.

“If there’s one thing I wish I had known earlier, it’s that I had known myself inside out,” shares Lim. “It’s only in knowing yourself and your values, what makes you tick, your motivations, what are the areas of the business that you can and want to focus on, that allows you to have that knowledge to bring the right people to come and team up with you. And the right people at the right time is everything.”

Business-mindedness

Let’s say you’ve exercised your self-awareness muscle, and decided that entrepreneurship is the right path for you. You’ve also decided that your business will be one selling your favourite snack: salted egg yolk fish skin.

However, imagine that we live in an alternate universe where absolutely no one will eat nor buy salted egg yolk fish skin. Do you go ahead with this business, even though you love salted egg yolk fish skin to bits?

Probably not. Remember, you’re running a business here. If you don’t have a product or service that enough people will pay for, you may face difficulties covering your expenses, let alone make any profits.

You can’t afford to be too romantic about your business. The longer you let a failing business drag on, the more money and time it’ll cost you, Teo says.

“If nobody’s paying for your services, or the products you’re trying to develop fail, or you can’t raise money, maybe you should review your business model, your products and services, and take a hard look,” he advised.

“Cut your losses [if you need to] and do it quick, then review if you can make a comeback.”

Salesmanship

To complement your workable business model, you need to be able to make sales. Your revenue certainly is going to materialize out of nowhere.

Based on his experience in the fintech industry, Yeo opined that the “biggest blind spot for entrepreneurs who are geeks and techies is actually in sales […] many of them are so deep into their tech that they think customers will just bash down their door to say ‘Let me buy, let me buy’.”

Also Read: A customer-centric and cross-channel approach to payments will drive growth for your business

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Having the world’s best product or service isn’t going to do your business any good if you can’t persuade people to open their wallets for it.

Yeo said that even if you don’t do the selling yourself, you’ll likely need to manage the sales team you’ve hired to close the sales. Naturally, you can’t do this well if you don’t have some prior sales knowledge or experience, so be prepared to brush up on your sales skills.

Avoid micromanagement

Congratulations! After a long search, you’ve managed to hire the right individuals who identify with your values and business goals, and have the required skills, to help make your vision a reality.

The next step is to give your team space to actually do their work.

“I like to empower my team members to make decisions without micro-managing them,” shared Yeo. “I think people appreciate that you trust them, and allow them to do their job without you looking over their shoulders all the time.”

Your business is your baby – we get that. It can be terrifying to see your business in the hands of others, because there’s a chance they’ll make a mistake that erases all your hard work. But remember that you hired these talented people because you trusted they could get the job done.

So learn to let go and let your team do what they were hired to do, Yeo advised. More likely than not, their competence and dedication to your cause will exceed your expectations by a mile.

Grit

In theory, starting a business is really easy. All you need to do is to engage a corporate secretarial firm to incorporate a company for you, and voilà! You can immediately put the title of Founder on your CV.

But growing and scaling your new business is the tough part. Every day, new problems will present themselves, shares Teo. You’ll need to have the grit to press on through these, even if others may just admit defeat.

Lim is no stranger to adversity. To start her blog shop (which later evolved into Love, Bonito), she dropped out of university and broke her government scholarship bond. And to repay the bond, she had to borrow a five-figure sum from her mother — wiping out her mother’s entire life savings in the process.

Also Read: How to avoid the pitfalls of starting up

“At that time, my dad had also just gone through bankruptcy so it was financially a very tough time for us. That gave me even more impetus to make sure I wouldn’t fail, that my business would do well, because I really didn’t want to waste my mum’s sacrifice,” recounted Lim, to applause from the audience.

You’ve heard from the experts. Now, it’s your turn.

You may be tempted to mug the five traits shared above like how you would for study for an exam back in school.  Unfortunately, entrepreneurship is not something that you can memorize your way to success.

Instead, you’ll have to practice these five traits throughout your entrepreneurship journey until they become second nature to you. And if you’re serious about being an entrepreneur, there’s no better time to start than now.

Good luck with your business, and godspeed!
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Image Credit: J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash

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

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Climate change presents a real existential threat to the human race, but can technological solutions stop it in its tracks?

Early June, New Scientist published an article with a chilling headliner:

“Is it true climate change will cause the end of civilisation by 2050?”

The article paints a disturbing future of the consequences of lethal soaring temperatures hitting the globe: imagine, ice being non-existent in the Arctic during the summer; rising sea levels; the total collapse of the Amazon ecosystem; and more than half of the world’s population subjected to nearly a month’s worth of fatal heat — it’s not a pretty picture.

While efforts have been made to circumvent the inevitable end, we all play a huge role to prevent this from happening. It’s important to really consider the implications of your day to day activities that are currently affecting the environment.

Cities are responsible for 70 per cent of global emissions and 65 per cent of global energy demand. In 2030, cities will account for more than three-quarters of electricity use. How can we leverage technology to accelerate our cities into being zero carbon – transforming us from climate culprits to climate solvers?

That is why it is important to find out how companies are taking measures to contribute to reducing their impact on the environment.

As urban residents, our carbon footprint is largely determined by our city’s building infrastructure, transportation options and food systems. FASTRACK explores technology’s role in making significant changes at a wider scale quickly for a zero carbon city.

When you attend Fastrack: Tech for zero carbon cities (presented by ENGIE Factory, in collaboration with e27), attendees can find out more on current and upcoming technologies that pave the way for zero emission buildings, green mobility and sustainable food systems.

Plus, discover the exhibition of innovative startups, earth-friendly products and services (and how their products and make your business greener), and great networking after!

Find out more about the event at this link

RSVP now at our Eventbrite link

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Image Credit: Roxanne Desgagnés on Unsplash

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It is important to stay on top of the trade war news, but picking sides is an egregious mistake

I have spent the last month procrastinating on a Huawei column. To me, it felt like breaking up with a significant other because it is a terrible experience but one that is necessary. Being a tech reporter and not commenting on Huawei is like being a culture writer and ignoring Keanu Reeves.

The reason I had been so reluctant to write my opinions about Huawei is because the entire discussion has been poisoned by nationalism.

This is problematic for me because I despise nationalism. I think it is a common thread in most wars, it allows people to make racial proclamations that are almost always wrong and it creates emotional stubbornness that is quite ugly.

Then, I realised, that is the column.

One of the first learnings any immigrant will experience is the realisation that every person thinks their home country is the best in the world. This is why debates over food, culture or national preferences are so pointless. Truly being stuck in a nationalistic mindset is a fantastic way to miss out on great food, excellent conversations and new friends.

When this mindset is transferred to a telco brand caught in the middle of a bilateral trade war, it results in a truly toxic conversation.

I am an American, which means that if I wrote an anti-Huawei column it would immediately be picked apart as another bullet fired to defend my team.

But the thing is, I don’t care about Huawei, I think both Washington and Beijing are acting like spoiled children in the trade war and the only good thing that has come out of the Huawei mess is the sliced Apple logo metaphor (because it’s clever).

Also Read: Fintech startup Arax Wallet merges with crypto exchange COSS

If Huawei navigates the global turmoil and supplies the world’s 5G, then great. If they collapse because they can’t survive without the American market, then so be it.

Huawei is not a friend, colleague or even local small business, so why do we care about their success or failure (except for the job stability of the average employee). Huawei is a gigantic corporation, not some plucky startup trying to take on giants. They are the giant.

And yet, people either root for them — or wish them ill — as if their success actually makes a difference in our lives.

This is because Huawei has done a brilliant job of leveraging the victimhood narrative to build its brand. The clear winner of the trade war has been Brand Huawei (only the c-suite actually knows if this transfers to Company Huawei).

The result is that the media now covers media “Apple-style”…aka no matter how minor the update, Huawei will receive coverage. This is the dream of any public relations team, even if sometimes the news is not positive.

Because of this, Huawei has become the substitute for all things trade war. When people talk about Huawei, they aren’t really talking about the company, they are talking about China.

Most arguments fail to acknowledge that Huawei could dominate 5G for the next decade, while China struggles to recover from the trade war. Or, Huawei could collapse in financial ruin but China could skyrocket blast the US and become the next global hegemon.

Unfortunately, neither of these narratives fit the nationalism that drives the discussion around Huawei. One good example is the impending launch of HongMeng (Huawei’s new operating system).

People were absolutely certain this thing would be a TOTAL FAILURE or RESOUNDING SUCCESS. Anybody making these all-bold predictions have no clue what they were talking about. Only the people personally involved in making the operating system have any ability to predict if it will work or not — and even then they are just making an educated guess.

Also Read: e27 partners with Wholesale Investor to help startups raise funds

But in our desire to defend or destroy a gigantic corporation, absolute certainty is the only way to approach the subject.

I guess the hope of this column is to remind people to continue to watch the trade war, stay informed and make decisions accordingly. But, don’t pick sides.

Try to remember that both China and the US are great-but-extremely-flawed nations. A person making decisions out of nationalistic tendencies is going to make zero impact on the actual outcome of the war, and in doing so is going to close themselves off to regular folks who don’t care about Apple, soybeans, Huawei or rare earth metals.

It’s okay to be patriotic, but nationalism leads to wars and it is up to the individual to act as a saucer and cool off the boiling tea.

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The startup also offers a Bluetooth-enabled dive computer, called COSMIQ, which lets divers track and calculate important information, such as when they need to take a decompression stop

(Editor’s Note: Here’s a story from our archives we feel is relevant even today and deserves your attention)

In 2011, James Tsuei, a scuba diver enthusiast, decided to plan a vacation and get his Open Water Diver certification, an entry-level autonomous diver certification for recreational scuba diving. But the process of planning and finalising the trip took a whole month, which consisted of hours of internet searching for suitable destinations and finding the right dive operator, along with multiple postings on dive forums looking for advice.

“There wasn’t any centralised information resource on the internet for scuba trip planning, and all dive-related bookings required a long emailing back-and-forth process with clarifying details to accomplish,” Tsuei tells e27. “I saw a business opportunity here, and this led us to founding Deepblu, which aims to solve problems associated with dive trip planning and booking.”

As per some estimates, there are currently about six to eight million active divers (defined as people who make three or more diving sessions each year), and dive trips are big investments. Divers spend an average of US$1,000 on equipment and certification, and then even more money on dive shops (businesses run by dive professionals who provide training and tours), flights and accommodation. However, information about diving (destinations, quality of dive operators, etc) are all very fragmented online with no central location to assist divers with their trip planning process.

Founded in 2015, Taipei-headquartered Deepblu brings resources for divers onto a centralised platform. In addition to a social network for divers to share dive logs and photos with other enthusiasts, the startup also offers a Bluetooth-enabled dive computer, called COSMIQ. A wristwatch-like device, COSMIQ lets divers track and calculate important information, such as when they need to take a decompression stop.

“Divers can capture and record their dive experiences through the COSMIQ device. They can also capture all of their precious dive memories under their Deepblu profile stored in the cloud. It also enables them to share their dive adventures through social media posts on Deepblu with location tags,” he explains.

Divers are also able to ask questions or exchange opinions in the discussion groups on the social networking platform.

Also Read: As Southeast Asia pushes to digitise SMEs, Echelon is here to help facilitate the process

Recently, the startup rolled out Planet Deepblu, an interactive dive travel booking and planning tool. “Planet Deepblu is a marketplace, where dive shops can list their services on the platform, and divers can chat directly with dive shop owners, making for a personal experience. We position it as the ‘Airbnb for diving’,” he adds.

According to Tsuei, Planet Deepblu enables users to research thousands of dive spots throughout the world. The platform has accumulated over hundreds of thousands of user generated content (UGC) shared by its users about dive destinations including dive data, dive spot reviews, photos, and videos covering over 10,000 dive sites around the globe.

“Planet Deepblu already has over 500 dive experiences for scuba divers to discover and book directly with dive operators. Divers can directly contact the dive operators through the in-platform messaging feature to learn more about their services and book their trip,” he shares.

While the current focus is the North American market, the company plans to quickly scale Planet Deepblu to cover Southeast Asia and the Asia Pacific, which has the world’s most stunning dive sites.

Tsuei claims that the niche scuba diving market has a considerable economic scale. The total global spending in recreational scuba diving and snorkeling was around US$25-30 billion in 2017. The largest piece of the average diver’s spending on scuba activities outside of scuba travel-related expenses (transportation, lodging and meals) is on dive experiences, which is approximately 30 per cent of the total pie. This is the focused business of Planet Deepblu.

As of now, Planet Deepblu is a free-to-use platform. In future, as it matures, it will pivot into a commission model, wherein it will take a cut from booking transactions. The firm also plans to expand to a wider audience by moving into other water activities like snorkeling to earn additional revenues.

Deepblu recently raised US$3.9 million from Silverlink Capital, which helped it to bring COSMIQ to the market and build the Deepblu social platform. It is now raising its second pre- Series A and looking for strategic investors that will be able to help us to develop Planet Deepblu and its services to the next stage.

Currently, US based users account for the the largest user base for Deepblu, followed by China.

In the scuba dive booking space, Deepblu competes with PADI. But unlike PADI, Tsuei claims, Deepblu does not just provide a limited selection of expensive live board experience, but all kinds of diving experience such as wreck diving, shark diving, cave diving and even dive experiences for physically challenged divers.

“In emerging market like China and Southeast Asia, scuba diving is perceived as a trendy sport amongst young professionals and a great way to explore the world. We hope to leverage this trend to grow our platform,” he concludes.

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Echelon Asia Summit 2018 is e27’s flagship platform that brings together startups, investors, corporates, governments, tech ecosystem players and customers. Register for your conference passes today.

The post ‘Airbnb for diving’ Deepblu connects scuba divers with dive shops around the world appeared first on e27.