The startup aims to open more than 30 franchises in the Asian country by the end of 2019

Mr Jeff, an on-demand laundry startup headquartered in Valencia, Spain, has announced its expansion into Singapore.

The startup aims to open more than 30 franchises in the Asian country by the end of 2019.

According to the company, the laundry services market in Singapore is primarily made up of small, local shop owners, with a limited customer reach and, consequently, limited opportunity for business growth.

Also Read: A refugee in Germany in the 80’s, this entrepreneur is now back in Southeast Asia to achieve his dreams

“With our digital approach and our subscriptions plans, we intend to change the traditional function of the dry cleaning sector. Singapore is one of the countries in which maximum revenue is expected,” said Julio Suero, Mr Jeff’s Head of Expansion Asia.

The venture was founded in 2015 by three Spanish entrepreneurs Eloi Gómez, Adrián Lorenzo and Rubén Muñoz. It provides laundry and dry cleaning services to its customers, who can choose the exact location, time and day of pickup. A driver visits the user’s house and collects the garments and later on delivers them back, cleaned and ironed.

The app is available on Android and iOS platforms and works through a monthly subscription system and one-off orders in stores, called Mr Jeff Hubs, that are distributed across different cities, forming a network of franchises that completely change the traditional laundry model.

Mr Jeff is currently operating in more than 10 countries, including Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica and Panama. It is also undertaking an international expansion process with more than 370 Mr Jeff Hubs, including franchise opportunities in Singapore.

Also Read: eziPOD’s smart laundry locker doubles as your courier delivery point and personal storage

The company has more than 300 direct employees and more than 1,100 indirect employees.

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Here is how the company scaled its culture and product and engineering teams

Funding Societies supports SME owners in starting or expanding their businesses by providing access to funding from individuals or institutional investors.

Founded in 2015, the company has grown into a 300-people organization with over S$500 million (US$370 million) in funding. During this process, Funding Societies penetrated a few Southeast Asian markets and faced different challenges: growing a unique and positive culture while iterating its products a few times. I had the opportunity to speak with Ishan Agrawal, VP Engineering at Funding Societies, to learn more about the lessons extracted from this hyper-growth journey.

What has been Funding Societies engineering journey so far?

Funding Societies was started in 2015 by two Harvard grads out of their dorm rooms. Being fascinated by the success of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) lending in the Western world but having no technical background, our co-founders engaged a consulting firm in Indonesia to build the first version of the product and launched the company with that.

Four years on, we have grown to a 300+ people company, funded over S$500 million (US$370 million) in business loans, and become the largest P2P lending platform in Southeast Asia with licensed/registered operations in Singapore. Indonesia (we are called Modalku there) and Malaysia.

To drive this growth from the engineering side, we built an in-house team spread across the three countries. We have built a best-in-class investing experience (in Southeast Asia) on our apps and website. Our borrowers receive highly customized financing solutions seamlessly and fast.

Internally all this is powered by humans and algorithms working together to achieve speed, precision and a delightful experience for our users, with application to approval time is as low as two hours. Lastly but most importantly, we have created an excellent working culture that we are very proud of.

This, of course, hasn’t been easy. It has involved many late nights and weekends, some tough decisions, and tons of learnings.

What started as a .NET shop, is now a Nodejs, Golang and Angular backed product. We have rewritten our systems multiple times in the process, moving from a monolith to a microservices architecture, from manually configured infrastructure to infrastructure-as-code in Terraform.

The evolution of the business from a single-country company offering term loan products, to a multi-country company offering an ever-growing suite of customized loan products has prompted several re-writes of our components. Even currently, we are in the process of an architectural upgrade to support the ever-growing scale.

Personally, I feel it’s been a journey of tremendous personal growth, one that’s humbling and rewarding in more ways than I can describe. It’s very fulfilling to wake up every day knowing that my work enables businesses to grow, creates more jobs and contributes to the GDP of nations.

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

Most engineering leaders in Southeast Asia would agree that hiring is the biggest challenge any fast-growing engineering team faces here. The pool of local talent is limited with plenty of fast-growing startups in Southeast Asia vying for the same talent. Few engineering teams in Southeast Asia have seen the kind of scale where you really need to build high scale distributed systems.

Hence, finding such senior talent in the region is hard. The best products have the best people behind them, so we spend quite a bit of time and resources in making sure we hire the best. Hiring in itself can be hours of discussion so let me also turn to some other challenges.

Also Read: Traveloka reveals the greatest challenges engineers face

Training existing engineers to keep improving technically is really really important and something that companies often miss out on. One of our core values is to “Grow Relentlessly“, and we believe that everyone can achieve his/her fullest potential if he/she learns continuously. We encourage our team members to:

1) Read furiously;
2) Share knowledge and learnings in bi-weekly sessions;
3) Reflect every week on how we can do things better;
4) Pursue higher education and online courses parallelly.

As the team expands, there is a need to add processes and policies to keep a smooth ship sailing. There are many ways to do this. We realised that while it’s important to look at how other companies do it, it’s also equally essential to build our own unique set of policies based on our product offering and the needs of the company. Processes and policies should also be revised periodically to meet the changing needs of the company.

Another challenge is the gap between formulating policies and implementing them as there is always an inertia to change human behaviour. You need to rationalize, inspire, find champions and finally incentivize to drive some bigger policy changes.

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

Southeast Asia faces the challenges of a lack of experienced engineering talent and many fast-growing startups are competing for the same talent. So we don’t just limit hiring to Southeast Asia, but hire across the world. We work with recruiters (external and internal) and post on job portals. But we find that we get our best talent via referrals. What works for us is the culture we have created, where engineers are excited to bring their friends because they find it a good place to work and of course generous referral bonuses don’t hurt as well.

We never look for ‘Engineers who know X’, but for people with the strong fundamental knowledge and a track record of delivering great work. As a fast-growing company our requirements change all the time, so people who enjoy learning and can learn fast are a better fit for us.

Also Read: We analysed the hiring trends of Southeast Asia’s top e-commerce players, and here’s what we found

We offer candidates a speedy process and a positive interviewing experience no matter the outcome. For us, interviews are always two-way and never just one side asking questions with the other side answering. We are a data-driven company in whatever we do, so measure our hiring funnels, analyses drop-offs and iterate the process to maximize for an optimal two-way decision and a wonderful candidate experience.

I believe hiring doesn’t stop at closing a candidate. That’s just one-third of the work. The next third comes in the form of good onboarding. We have an intense structured onboarding programme to give an insight to the various teams, products and familiarize our new colleagues with the codebase.

The final third lies in retention by providing a great working culture and psychological safety in our team. We ensure our engineers get challenging work and have the autonomy to make decisions. We also actively weed out political chatter to let the team stay focused building out towards shared goals.

We are still a young fintech startup and a small engineering team, evolving and growing every day. Each engineer plays a key role and creates a direct and material impact on the success of the company, thereby the success of many SMEs and investors in Southeast Asia.

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

Good communication within a team is directly reflected in its performance. In fast-growing teams, forms of communication keep evolving as the team grows and increases in complexity. Since we are a geographically distributed team where facetime is limited, strong communication becomes even more important.

Documentation is the single most effective form of communication for engineering teams. We copiously document the decision-making process for all big decisions, technical architecture and assumptions made.

I conduct weekly one to ones with my direct team to serve three main purposes:

1)  Have a two-way timely and actionable feedback;
2)  Talk about career progression;
3)  Drive changes across the team.

It is a highly effective way to align their personal goals towards a shared goal. Taking a tip from Reid Hoffman from Greylock partners, we try to make ‘everyone a hero of their own life’s story’.

You cannot talk about communication without talking about meetings. They can easily suck the time out of your day without any real productive value, so we limit meetings only to discussions and decision making with pre-done research, documentation and asynchronous discussions over Slack and Confluence.

Effective and authentic communication is a big part of working together so we give it a strong weight age in performance reviews for the team.

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

There have been countless lessons learned over the past three years at Funding Societies|Modalku as we grew from just a few people in a room to a 300+ strong team.

Remember that you are not alone in this. The problems I face as an engineering leader are not far from what my peers face at other companies. Over the past few years, I have started connecting with other engineering leaders in the region over cups of tea to share and learn about the challenges we face and different approaches to solving those problems.

Also Read: How startups can defeat challenges in customer satisfaction

Rewrites always take longer than planned, and migrations (especially database migrations) are the most complicated part of a rewrite. If you are in a fast-growing company, rewrites will be the norm. But always spend more upfront time in the planning and coding the migration, than the rewrite itself. A smooth migration will save you a lot of trouble from doing damage control later.

Cliched as it may be, you are only as strong as the weakest link in the chain. Don’t hire too fast, and spend time training and upskilling the team. Tailor the tasks to be challenging and impactful, with the right match to the individual’s skills.

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Mike Dias is the CEO at ScaleUp Valley – a business that provides scaleup off-site sessions, leadership programs and relevant content about the scaleup process to help companies overcome the ScaleUp Valley!

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5G will ramp up digitisation efforts in many areas of society

Across the Asia Pacific region, the economy is undergoing unprecedented change as a result of digitisation, hyper-connectivity, 5G and big data convergence. The cost of rolling out and implementing 5G across all sectors of the economy globally is expected to reach at least US$2.7 trillion by the end of 2020, according to research from finance house Greensill. The telecommunication sector alone is investing an estimated US$1 trillion by 2020 to implement infrastructure upgrades.

In this new operating environment, where the speed and low latency of 5G will trigger a wave of innovative applications and services, organisations need to rethink their business and operating models to drive revenue.

Digitisation and the rise of Industry 4.0

The enabler for the new wave of globalisation is digitisation and, to a greater extent, the emerging phenomenon known as Industry 4.0. We’re now in an era where mass connectivity will give rise to intelligence and capability never before experienced, and to survive in Industry 4.0 companies need to fundamentally transform their mindset and culture as well as their existing operator models along with the underpinning strategy and structure.

Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) used to take decades to grow in new markets. With digitisation, new entrants can launch in multiple markets within months. Digitisation also enables closer links with consumers, eliminating many parts of the traditional supply chain at a stroke, while data analysis gives organisations instant insights into consumers’ preferences and desires.

Operators recognise that 5G is not a new network; it is another layer on top of a secure 4G network. The challenges of legacy and the introduction of new technologies to compete more effectively are focus areas for all operators.

Also Read: Why the traditional story arc is obsolete for brands

Telstra is investing more than US$300 million in building Australia’s first 5G network and a further US$1 billion in digitisation capability to connect more people through a greater number of services available on a variety of devices. The rise of 5G has given the opportunity to diverge traditional business models.

However, operators face the constant challenge of significant capital investment to build on top of 4G as well as prepare their networks for the arrival of 5G. The ROI in capital invested in most telecommunications companies is in the 4-5 per cent range across the APAC region. Telcos need to consider opportunities to become differentiated rather than continuing to invest in a deflationary economic model. The line between free and paid services are becoming a greater area of concern for MNOs.

Big data

Big data will power every decision organisations make and the way they interact with consumers. Today, consumers are wanting control of their data. Data portability should and will continue to add value to the daily lives of consumers.

5G will open the gates to enable richer and immersive entertainment, breakthroughs in health, and improvements in education. IOT will make our cities smarter by allowing driverless cars to connect to smart streets, smart shops, and more. Outside smart cities, in more remote areas, 5G will enable the 1.7 billion people without a mobile phone who are significantly underserved to finally have access to services that 3G and 4G could not provide, including access to education.

Also Read: What role does big data play in the insurance industry?

Singtel is doubling down its efforts to take advantage of hyperconnectivity and big data. Speaking at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the company shared its plans to focus its business on three key areas: creating intelligent connectivity through analytics and automation; building stand-alone, cloud-native digital business applications that enable richer engagement opportunities with customers; and building regional digital ecosystems across payments, IOT and analytics to create additional sources of revenue and engagement opportunities for operators and their partner ecosystem.

Mobility

Mobile revenue growth is stagnating. The average revenue per user is declining across most operators. Mobile data traffic will be 4x higher than it is today as the world now works with data. Telecommunications companies across the globe are at the core of this and are sitting on a gold mine of data about consumer behaviours. However, traditional mobile revenue growth is expected to shrink from 5 per cent to 1 per cent. The commoditisation of connecting is becoming a huge issue as we move from transactional connectivity to intelligent connectivity.

The value creation which needs to be provided is taking place through significant investment in cloud-native applications, platforms and services. In the era of data, intelligent connectivity will be key to stopping commoditisation. It will be a new way of differentiating.

Also Read: Success through planning — a wakeup call for “startup snobs”

The ability to monetise the platform at speed and scale will be key. Providers will need to build new applications using cloud-native principles, so that these use cases can be taken to the customers, leveraging a common framework.

The network should be virtualised and be in containers. The purpose behind cloud-native is scale, reuse and the ability to run in any environment. To accommodate these, MNOs are dealing with flexible business models to stay ahead of the competition.

MNOs need to build software using cloud-native principles and agile methodologies. This together with an open source PaaS platform, such as Pivotal Cloud Foundry (PCF), will enable MNOs to build rich cloud-native services as well as help deal with legacy software through industry-leading containerisation capabilities.

This will ultimately bring services closer to the edge, all enabled by 5G.

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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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The Vietnam-based company said it has received an undisclosed amount for its fifth funding round

Base.vn, a Vietnamese Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding from Nextrans, a Korean venture capitalist.

Previously, Base had raised US$1.7 million in a pre-Series A round by four other VCs: Beenext, Alpha JWC Ventures, VIISA, and 500Startups.

Nextrans has more than US$400 million in fund, investing in around 60 companies that are mostly based in the US and Korea. In Vietnam, Nextrans was the investor in Luxstay, Jamja or EcoTruck.

Regarding its decision to invest in Base.vn, Nextrans said that it has reviewed 600 companies in different sectors for two years and found 10 more “enterprise-based solutions.”

Also Read: Spanish on-demand laundry startup Mr Jeff expands to Singapore

Base was founded in 2016 by Stanford University alumni Pham Kim Hung.

It claims to be the first SaaS platform in the region that helps enterprise streamline activities with features such as Base E-hiring (an applicant tracking system), Base Wework (a task and project management platform), and Base Request (internal request management).

“Our ultimate goal is to bring quality products that have great impact and values in enterprises’ growth. With the funding, the more important things are the values that we can generate towards our customers,” said Base Co-founder and CEO Hung Pham.

Base said it aims for international investment funds with extensive experience in SaaS to work with the company to become the leading SaaS platform in the region.

Its applications have been used daily by more than 1,000 customers in Vietnam in different industries including banking-finance, e-commerce, F&B, and education.

The company plans to raise its next round of funding in late 2019.

 

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The startup battle by Unilever’s global corporate innovation pillar was held at the recent Innovfest Unbound 

Unilever Foundry, the FMCG giant’s global corporate innovation pillar that focusses on partnering and accelerating innovations across the company’s 400+ brands and functions, has announced the startups Kora and Rytle as the joint winners of Unilever Foundry Startups Battle 2019.

The startup battle was held at Innovfest Unbound from June 27 – 28, 2019.

“The variety of startups that competed in this year’s battle under the banner of Smart Retail demonstrated that we need to look at innovation through the lens of an ecosystem of technologies that goes beyond buying and selling,” said Barbara Guerpillon, Director, Unilever Foundry Asia.

Guerpillon further added that Unilever Foundry is looking at the integration of the latest technologies in the retail industry, as well as how they are transforming the rules of consumer engagement and opening up new opportunities.

Kora is an Indonesia-based startup that distributes over 500 different consumer products through a network of 2,800 individuals called Poskora.

Rytle is a Singapore-based startup that combines technology and environmental protection for maximum flexibility in city logistics.

The other finalists in the competition that went head-to-head with the joint winners included Fairbanc, Perx Technologies, and Fabulyst.

Also Read: Insurtech Singapore Life raises US$90M funding from Sumitomo Life

Unilever Foundry Startup Battle was launched in 2015 and has been joined by 500 startups from across the region, piloting more than 159 startups with Unilever brands and functions. Unilever Foundry focusses on areas such as marketing tech and adtech, enterprise tech, products and ingredients, new business model innovation, and social impact.

This year, the battle focussed on smart retail with startups covering categories such as smart vending, supply chain, retail experience, product loyalty, and shopper analysis.

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Image Credit: Unilever Foundry

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