The inaugural Infineon LG </> Make Hackathon aims to empower Asia Pacific’s tech ecosystem in creating IoT solutions

Infineon Technologies and LG Electronics announced that they have debuted an Internet of Things (IoT) Hackathon in Singapore on Monday, June 17, 2019.

The official statement from the occasion noted that the goal of the hackathon is to empower Asia-Pacific’s ecosystem to create IoT solutions that will run on the LG webOS open source platform with Infineon microelectronics capabilities.

Infineon and LG both provided “interested innovators” with technological guidance as well as access to products and software, helping the shortlisted teams develop and showcase proofs-of-concepts to a panel of judges at Infineon Asia Pacific office in Singapore.

“This hackathon is about a shared community of innovators that seek to use technologies to build a better future. A globally connected ecosystem is the purpose, with easier, safer, and greener life,” said Chua Chee Seong, President and Managing Director, Infineon Asia Pacific.

Sharing the sentiment, I.P. Park, President and CTO of LG Electronics said, “Our goal is to build and grow a global webOS community where developers may lever-age a wide range of webOS functionalities such as AI, connectivity, and IoT in their work to produce solutions and services.”

In the hackathon, GoReMas Enterprise and Wangi Lai PLT were awarded the top and second prize respectively. Both companies are originated from Malaysia.

Also Read: Malaysia’s Kenanga Investors launches fund for investing in unicorns

GoReMas Enterprise’s prototype Floodsensed is an IoT-based flood monitoring system that included social media alert feature, for platforms such as Facebook, Slack, Telegram (with images and location maps), and YouTube Live Stream.

The equipment gathers rain volumes, water levels, temperature, and barometric pressure from device gateways and nodes, then sends the data to Floodsensed IoT platform that comes with dashboard visualisation for users.

Wangi Lai PLT’s BAWA Cane is a clip-on module for existing white canes that helps the visually impaired identify and avoid obstacles with shared insights and foresight through data analytics.

The winners, who won S$5,000 (US$3,648) and SS3,000 (US$2,189) for first and second prizes respectively, were selected from a pool of 14 startups and student entrepreneurs from countries such as China, India, Malaysia, Ukraine, and Singapore.

The winners were determined based on criteria ranging from problem identification, concept development, and innovation, to ease of implementation, stability, and presentation.

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The goal is that by helping founders forge close-knit relationships and become more attuned with the global environment, they can effect transformational change in the world’s economy

Think about the last event you attended that made a deep impression on you: what was it that stood out? Was it the quality of the talks or the networking sessions? Or maybe it was that VR rollercoaster that gave you an adrenaline rush and made your legs wobbly.

For many attendees, it is usually a combination of many such factors. These days, the event experience is no longer confined to just passively listening in to talks; it is about delivering a dynamic and interactive experience that involves the active participation of attendees, thereby establishing a tighter bond between stakeholders that transcends beyond the span of the event.

So what does it mean, and why is it important?

To understand this, we have to take a macro view and first establish why so many conferences, particularly startup events, are held in the first place.

The fundamental thread that binds them, is that they seek to educate stakeholders in the industry through valuable insights from experts, and build and strengthen connections between all participants. This is the key to building a tight-knit,  long-enduring community.

Open Circles, an invite-only entrepreneur community that curate and delivers experiences designed to spark social awareness and innovation in entrepreneurs, is working for higher goal — to effect a transformational change in the world’s economy by helping founders to become more attuned with the environment around them.

To do this, it is going one step further in establishing trust to foster collaborations and strengthen long-enduring relationships between disparate stakeholders in the ecosystem. While it is still a business event, its goal isn’t so much about teaching entrepreneurs the business science of how to build or scale their businesses, but more to help them to really introspect and reconnect with themselves.

Also Read: e27 partners AsiaIOA and iCube Innovation to enhance startups, investor ecosystem

It is a socially-driven, holistic approach that aims to immerse entrepreneurs in an experience that will realign themselves to their true purpose in life and not miss out on other important things along the way that, which, at first glance, may seem peripheral to the business.

To paint you a clearer picture, check out the Open Circles’s Bali agenda, which will run from June 20 — 23 this year.

One of the talks, “Torrid Love Affair: The Secret to Desire in a Long Term Relationship”, conducted by emotional intelligence & transformational coach, Colleen Schell, may seem more suited for a dating seminar than a business conference — but that’s a simplistic dismissal.

All too often, many discount the role of empathy and emotional support from a spouse or long term partner in the success of your business — they can provide valuable guidance and advice; they are also your pillar of support in the good times and times.

Then there is the “Fighting Fyre: Responsible Use of Social Media and Managing Public Failures, from Fyre Festival to Online Scandals” talk, which seeks to address the issue of accountability in the business world. The infamous Fyre Festival held in 2017 not only demonstrated the dangers of social media hype and but also put a spotlight on the lethal relationship between gullible investors and snake oil entrepreneurs — it very clearly showed that there needed to be more checks and balances in the business community.

To cultivate cross-culture exchanges, Open Circles Bali (OC Bali) is featuring a stellar line-up of speakers from the Eastern and Western business communities.

Some of the Western speakers include:

1. Alicia Silverstone, Hollywood actress, entrepreneur and environmental activist;
2. Andreas Ehn, Spotify’s first CTO;
3. Erika Cheung, a key whistleblower who brought down Theranos;
4. Russell Simmons, Co-founder of Def Jam (a famous music record label)

From the East, there are renowned business leaders such as:

1. Melisa Irene, Partner at East Ventures;
2. Hendrik Susanto, CIO at Traveloka;
3. Yusmadi Yusoff, a Senator at Parliament of Malaysia, and the Founder of the RIGHTS Foundation.
4. Audrey Yeo, Founder, Yeo Workshop Art Gallery

Besides talks, attendees will also partake in physical activities designed to heal and take away physical and mental tension. These include massage sessions, Yin yoga and Hatha yoga sessions, and even aqua aerobics!

Adding to that are the Agni Hotra Fire Ceremony, an ancient Hindu fire ceremony that purportedly helps to purify one’s thoughts as well as the environment, and Reiki & Singing Bowl Therapy, an Eastern form of sound meditation therapy.

All in all, events like these demonstrate that there is a growing sense among business leaders that social initiatives, health & wellness activities, and environmental-driven issues are no longer just checkboxes they should tick off to show that they are ‘progressive’.

Entrepreneurs have become aware that such initiatives, which might traditionally be regarded as frivolous, have to shift to the forefront of their business strategies if they want to build sustainable businesses that will survive in the long run.

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Image Credit: Open Circles

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As the company achieved hyper-scale, it had to make critical changes to its management structure

Go-Jek is a growing transportation network that’s come a long way since its start. Established in 2010 as a motorcycle ride-hailing phone service in Indonesia, Go-Jek evolved to provide on-demand transport and lifestyle services in over 50 cities across Southeast Asia. To learn from their journey, I interviewed Diwakar Kaushik, Head of Product, to discover more about how they’ve scaled their product.

What has been Go-Jek’s journey so far?

Go-Jek’s journey has been enriching and fulfilling so far. The most satisfying part is being able to use technology for changing the everyday lives of drivers, small merchants and users who rely on us for the variety of everyday use cases that we offer.

That keeps everyone at Go-Jek going even in the ever-challenging environment. The large scale reflects the validation of how technology can touch and change lives in a positive way in the largest countries of the world.

What are the biggest challenges you face as a growing team?

One of the biggest challenges we face is deciding whether to build for scale or to offer more innovative and new products. Over the years, we have built a good sense of judgement on this critical piece for creating a multi-product company by making regular short- and medium-term product development trade-offs.

The second challenge that we have is change management. Go-Jek has grown immensely in business and organization scale and that brings a lot of organizational debt as well as technological debt. Managing these along with dealing the needs of growth is challenging for everyone in the organization and we are learning to cope with this all the time.

Another challenge that we face is that our product scales faster than our teams and hiring becomes a big challenge.

Hiring is one of the top challenges that product leaders face. What is your approach to hiring?

Hiring is a first-class problem for internet and technology companies across the world and we are thoughtful enough to treat it as one. We deal with it in three ways, First, by going really strong on referrals and getting people who the current set of people have worked with in past. This adds the first round of filter and also adds overall accountability in the org about the kind of people we get.

Also Read: Go-Jek acquires Indian recruitment platform developer AirCTO

Second, we stay extremely diligent on our hiring process and even under extreme pressures of increasing teams we don’t compromise on process quality and details. While it helps us make sure that we hire the right people who will thrive in our setup, it also gives the candidates enough time and interactions to understand what kind of people work at Go-Jek, what’s the culture and whether they would be fit in a demanding, transparent and high ownership environment.

Third, we hire for attitude and a culture fit. We focus on more than just the core skills.

What are your tips for ensuring strong communication within your team?

Especially for geographically distributed teams, there is just one big tip – Over-communication never hurt anyone. Also, it’s important to find a process in your communication. Trivial as it may sound: define your cadences and write as much as possible.

At Go-Jek we have clear cadences for different product groups, within teams, between different functions – and all of the decisions are always well documented. The documentation Ninjas make life easier for everyone, and little time is wasted on indexing our minds for what happened when.

Also, try to build a culture of not-so-fancy weekly/monthly updates and don’t put pressure of perceived quality for these updates. The message should pass on. Less experienced team members are generally anxious about the quality of communication and that leads to a lack of communication which hurts.

We set the expectations clear by doing simple yet regular communication to large groups. At Go-Jek, these ways keep us well communicated, and this information symmetry helps execution of complicated cross-functional products smooth.

Is there something that you’ve learned through the process of growing that you wish you knew before?

Many things, but the most important one is to let go. A lot of us in the startup world get too close to an idea or to a feature or to a wish that at times we continue to waste time and be irrational in our decision making. But as we build products in the ever-changing world of user behaviour and technology, we need to be ready to let go of our inhibitions when some significant new information arrives.

Also Read: The essentials of managing your business financials at 4 stages of its lifecycle

The other thing that we are learning every day is finding the right way of choosing what to do and what not to do. The combined aspirations of all the passionate people getting together to do a startup (irrespective of the scale) will always be greater than the amount of code that can be written, products that can be made, and businesses that can be scaled. So, it’s necessary to continuously improve your velocity (where the direction is even more important than speed) and be prepared to break comfort zones whenever required.

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If you found this interview interesting, follow more of the ScaleUp Valley content for further discussions on how others have scaled their companies. For example, the ScaleUp Valley podcast – where we speak with successful scale-ups about their growing process – is a fountain of valuable learnings brought to you directly by the source.

Mike Dias is the CEO at startup education firm ScaleUp Valley

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The automobile rental marketplace has also rebranded to Otomo

Automo, an online automobile marketplace that connects customers directly to rental companies and driver services in Indonesia, has closed its seed round of funding at SGD205,000 (US$145,000).

Investors include an angel from Prestige Corp in Indonesia, owner of Singapore-based Cars and Trips, and another unnamed angel. The round also includes SGD30,000 Startup SG Founder Grant.

Also Read: Indonesian tech startup Automo offers not just bike and car rentals, but private jets and Yacht too

“We are currently in talks with a few VCs from Singapore and Indonesia to raise between up to SGD400,000 (US$300,000) to realise our goal of becoming of automotive lifestyle portal,” Automo Founder Charles Lin told e27.

Additionally, Automo has rebranded itself as Otomo. “We came up with a brand new identity that reflects a more global long term vision that we are planning ahead,” he said.

Otomo is an online platform for tourists to find drivers or automotive rental in Indonesia. It is designed for tourists (locals and foreigners) to help them find drivers or automotive rental, as well as to help local vendors to sell their services digitally to a global market.

The company works with local vendors in Indonesia to provide a wide range of automotive options, from a simple sedan to luxury cars like Rolls Royce and Lamborghini, as well as private jets and yacht. Motorbike rentals are also available.

Otomo’s customers come mostly from Southeast Asia. Major MNCs such as Salim Group used its platform to book big buses for their corporate events, says Lin.

Also Read: Viking Garage puts the brakes on dodgy bikes and rents out trusty roadsters like Harleys

“We started out with SaaS solutions and used two different systems, which ran into issues in terms of fully supporting the business needs and scalability. As a result, customers found it hard to search specific listings. Also, we were not able to make much changes to the user flow and technical upgrades which made it difficult to navigate,” he added. “This is when we decided to invest into building our own custom solution that is scalable. It will also allow us to customise everything from user experience to vendor functionality.”

The company has also expanded its offerings to also include long-term rental options in Indonesia. It is also in the midst of rolling out attractions & tour packages.

The post (Exclusive) Indonesia’s Automo closes seed round; in talks for fresh funding appeared first on e27.

The network, which runs independent startup accelerator program in Singapore, aims to accelerate the growth of the region’s seed-stage startups with the first 10 startups

Accelerating Asia (AA), an Enterprise Singapore-supported startup program focussing on early-stage companies has announced the launch of its initial accelerator cohort. The cohort features 10 startups from the verticals of remittance, transportation, and human resources across Asia.

AA said that the program seeks to identify and accelerate the seed-stage startup’s development in Asia. Along with the launch, AA is close in finalising its pre-seed VC fund in July with up to US$5 million ready to be invested in over 40 regional startups.

Speaking about how Accelerating Asia will fit into the ecosystem, Craig Dixon, Co-Founder, Entrepreneur in Residence and Program Director, Accelerating Asia said,

“There is a profile of more mature startups in the region who are too advanced for existing accelerator programs but are not quite ready for institutional venture funding. These startups are led by incredible founders and have great financial and customer traction, but are still missing some key elements they need to scale to success.”

In its first cohort, AA welcomes startups in verticals such as big data, e-commerce, human resources, logistics, software-as-a-service, transportation, and remittances; hailing from all over Asia including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

Also Read: Meet the 10 finalists in the 2nd batch of Grab Ventures Velocity

“AA’s program is specifically designed to provide our startups with the necessary funding, mentorship, and support they need to scale their growth,” said Amra Naidoo, Co-Founder, Partnerships & Operations Director, Accelerating Asia.

“As an independent accelerator with various revenue streams that ensure long-term sustainability, we don’t rely on one source of funding and thus can better aligning our outcomes with the startups we work with and ensuring that our founders will always be our priority from day one.”

The program itself has two parts: a three month program period with weekly activities followed by a one-month final period which includes a Startup Mastery Program in San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

It will be followed by a Demo Day where founders will pitch their startups to a private audience of the investors in the region, multinationals, government partners, and other relevant ecosystem players.

Let’s take a look at Accelerating Asia’s 10 participating startups:

• BeamAndGo (Philippines), payment and digital marketplace that empowers migrant workers by giving them control over how their remittances are spent by their families back home, all through the use of SMS text gift certificates.
• Datanest (Indonesia), a Data Science as a Service Startup that helps companies to drive their performance and profitability through an AI and Machine Learning algorithms. By employing AI and ML algorithms, Datanest helps the client forecast issues, identify trends, and abnormal behaviour, ultimately optimising a company’s workflow process.
• DeafTawk (Pakistan), an online sign language interpretation services that empower deaf community across the globe by bridging the communication gap. It provides online sign language interpretation services, audio-video translation services, and sign language training.
• Klaud9 (Singapore), an online platform that matches photographers and brands to create amazing photos for their social media & marketing campaigns. It helps brands to scale their photo shoots across the region within 24 hours and low cost.
• Loop (Bangladesh), a technology-enabled marketplace for full truckload freight by using software that creates a communication, payment, and data infrastructure for shippers and carriers.
• Medlink (Vietnam), a healthtech that connects consumers, pharmacies, and pharmaceutical company in Vietnam by ensuring that customers have access to authentic medication, preventing the circulation of counterfeit and low-quality products.
• Panalyt (Singapore), a startup that puts actionable people analytics in the hands of managers across organisations through user-friendly dashboards and AI-driven insights.
• TalentTribe (Singapore), a millennial recruitment platform that is reimagining recruitment for a new generation of job seekers, and helps employers hire early-career talent that fits. The platform provides job seekers with insights that they deeply care about, in turn connecting them to jobs that they truly resonate with.
• Web2Ship (Malaysia), a booking platform for logistics in Asia that help online sellers to search, compare and book different courier and postal services by identifying the best shipping services.
• Zantrik (Bangladesh), an automotive service and resource platform that ensures seamless and standard maintenance experience for vehicles, by connecting service providers and applying quality assurance standards.

Participating startups will each receive S$100,000 (US$73,150) in funding, office space in Downtown Singapore, and facilities with providers such as Amazon Web Services, Hubspot, and Tribe Theory.

Also Read: e27 partners AsiaIOA and iCube Innovation to enhance startups, investor ecosystem

The announcement of AA’s cohort comes after its launch of the ASEAN Smart Cities Accelerator (ASCA), a joint partnership with the Australian government that will support entrepreneurs with ideas to promote the development of smart cities in the region. Its first Demo Day will take place on October 3rd, 2019 and applications for the next cohort will open in early October.
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