Day: September 28, 2019

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East Ventures invests in Indonesian rental marketplace CUMI, eyeing growth and expansion

CUMI, translates as “just renting” in Indonesian colloquial, was inspired by the unnecessary purchase the founders often make to support their travels

CUMI (Cuma Minjem), a rental marketplace platform encompassing multiple categories on Android devices and the web, announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from East Ventures.

The investment, the company said, will be used to accelerate CUMI’s mission to speed up their user’s growth, acquire more talents, and expand their coverage in Indonesia.

CUMI stands for cuma minjem or “just renting” in Indonesian slang.

The three founders of CUMI, Christian Sugiono, Pandu Wirawan, and Yazid Faizin shared that as travellers, they often have reservations when it comes to purchasing items that will only be needed for a short time.

Renting from a trustworthy and accessible rental vendor is a better alternative, which resulted in the founders creating CUMI.

Also Read: A decade of innovation: How East Ventures is building Indonesian tech ecosystem from the ground up

The sharing economy of Indonesia, that includes services that CUMI offers, has been projected to grow from US$15 billion in 2014 to US$335 billion in 2025.

“The trend of sharing economy has long shifted the behaviour of generation today. Enforced with the influence of social media and access to information, we witness a fast-growing demand from millennials today to publish themselves even more and have as many experiences as they could while keeping them on budget. CUMI was born to allow its users to access resources without necessarily purchasing or owning them, as well as opening a new opportunity to fully utilise and monetise their excess or idle inventory,” said Christian Sugiono, Co-Founder and CEO of CUMI.

Yazid Faizin, CMO of CUMI, explained, “We are providing a platform that streamlined the process of market entry for renters, facilitates searchable listings for consumers, and keeping everything under one roof to smoothen customer’s discovery journey.”

CUMI aggregate vendors from 12 categories such as Automotive, Fashion, Pocket WiFi, Cameras, Games and Toys, Books, Office, and Stationery and Electronics and Gadget. CUMI require vendors to pass identity checks utilising phone number, bank account confirmation, and ID card verifications.

First launched in May 2018, CUMI claimed that it has gained more than 5,000 users and 500 verified vendors from various locations among Greater Jakarta Area, Surabaya, and Bali.

Just dubbed as the most active VC with staggering 12 funding raised by May 2019, the latest funding it raised was for Base, a personalised direct-to-consumer (DTC) beauty and wellness company.

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Image Credit: CUMI

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These 5 toxic factors cause people to quit even before they have another job, according to a recent study

Founders and managers must know how to retain employees and maintain a good working culture

For anyone who has been in a toxic workplace or worked for a toxic boss, you know there are days when you want to just up and quit. But would you quit in desperation, before even having another job lined up? And if so, what in the world would drive you to such a radical move?

A study completed July 25th by joblist.com has the surprising answers.

First, a whopping 35 per cent of those surveyed in the study said they quit their job before having another one secured. That speaks to the state of toxicity in the working world today.

Of course, it begs the question, why? I’ll share the top five reasons as cited in the study and add analysis. But first–no job is worth staying in a moment longer if it’s seriously affecting your health and happiness.
Yes, because life is too short but also because it can negatively impact your overall outlook and optimism, which in turn can show up in future interviews in unhelpful ways.

These are the five factors that make people pack up and storm out of their office Jerry Maguire style.

1. Managers didn’t resolve issues reported (48.1 per cent)

People need to be heard. Especially on real issues they share and expect action to be taken on.

This doesn’t have to be so difficult. My experience shows that people want to know they’ve been heard and their thoughts considered, even if not acted upon.

Many times I followed up with an employee that was furious about an issue important to them, like a troublesome co-worker or a massive budget cut. I didn’t always have the solution they craved, but I always took the time to let them know they were heard, what was being done about the situation, and was honest with them about why the solution they wanted wouldn’t work (if that was the case).

2. Work culture wasn’t a good fit (45.8 per cent)

Either the culture wasn’t as advertised before the person took the job (shameful), or the hiring managers did a poor job ensuring that the well-known culture matched up with the job candidate they hired.

The mutual solve is for leaders to create a foundational culture that feels more like a community than a corporation–the kind of culture anyone could fit into. You do that by fostering three elements in particular: caring, teamwork, and authenticity. Anyone would want to be a part of this and any job candidate could smell a mile away if the company didn’t live up to it.

3. Poor managers (43.9 per cent)

Gallup’s new book It’s the Manager shows that the quality of managers is the single biggest factor in an organization’s long-term success. So then why do so many companies allow such a dreadful pool of leaders to keep ravaging employees?

If you’re a manager of managers, it’s time to rachet up accountability for leading, not leading people to drink. If you’re an employee working for a bad boss, remember no single situation or person defines you, so stay true to yourself until you can no longer be yourself, then move on.

Also Read: Mind your emotions: why emotional agility is the key to personal growth

If you have to stay, resist the temptation to label your bad boss further as uncaring, unintelligent etc., try to build small bridges, and be brave and share feedback in a genuine attempt to help him/her improve.

4. Toxic environment (39.6 per cent)

Signs of an overall toxic environment include no one feeling comfortable speaking their mind to management, only those with a certain style (not yours) get promoted and that tends to include those demonstrating shameless, self-promoting behaviours, and taking risks is encouraged but punished in reality.

These factors often show up as “unwritten rules”–nobody calls it out, it’s just the way it is. Therein lies the single biggest problem with toxic environments, when leaders let the issues go unaddressed (see point number 1).

Leaders, care enough to find out what’s toxic about your workplace and don’t leave it for someone else to fix. Employees, be brave to raise the issues as best you can, offering to be a part of the solution–up to a point.

5. Felt underappreciated (36 per cent)

This is the easiest of the five to fix because it just requires that leaders care. Be frequent with giving praise (but not frivolous), being certain to praise results (not just activity) against goals that have been clearly touted as important. Personalize the praise and give an effort to make it come from the heart.  If it comes from the heart it sticks in the mind.

If you’re thinking of storming out of your office tomorrow, at least know you’re in good company. If you want to foster a good company, enable the opposite of this article.

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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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Image Credit: DDP

First published at Inc.com

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Twitter’s Biz Stone invests in Sieve, a startup founded by hearing-impaired Indian entrepreneur

Founded by Sanjay Nediyara, Sieve is a platform for freelancers, which provides them with websites, digital signatures, invoicing, and payment management

Sieve Founder Sanjay Nediyara receiving an award from Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan

Biz Stone, Co-founder of microblogging and social networking service Twitter, today annouced an investment in Indian startup Sieve.

Stone announced this through a video conference during the inaugural ceremony of the second edition of the startup event ‘Huddle Kerala 2019,’ in Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of South Indian State of Kerala.

Founded by Sanjay Nediyara, a hearing-impaired entrepreneur, Sieve is a platform for freelancers and agencies. It provides them with all the infrastructure — from websites to digital signatures to invoicing to payment management. As per its website, Sieve is a “complete platform for running your freelance business without paying a percentage of your earnings”.

Sieve, mentored by Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM), currently serves in the US market and will soon be expanding to Europe.

Commenting on the investment, Stone said: “I have used the product of Sieve as a freelancer. As an angel, I consider the person first and the product second. I find Sanjay as a dedicated, empathetic and extremely hardworking individual.”

Also Read: These 5 toxic factors cause people to quit even before they have another job, according to a recent study

Nediyara said this is one of the rare investments made by Twitter India and the first in Kerala. “Our larger vision is to build truly Internet companies in the cloud where people can form companies and work from anywhere in the world. Our other investor is Friends of Oorjja, which is an ecosystem for empowering the differently-abled community. Friends of Oorjja consists of senior professionals from the banking/finance industry, the UK, and Otis Elevators company.”

Nediyara was also selected as one of the Forbes fellows in 2018 and he has bagged Reach Award instituted by Eric Weihenmayer foundation in the US. He was also invited by Google to attend their largest developer conference Google IO as their guest.

Facebook to invest in Indian tech startups

Earlier in the day, social media major Facebook said it would make substantial investments in technology startups.

“We now have shown willingness to make direct investments in technology startups in India,” said Ajit Mohan, Vice President and Managing Director (India), Facebook. “We are willing to spend our time, and energy to tap the massive depth of engineering talent in the country.”

The two-day event at Hotel Leela Raviz, Kovalam is being organised by KSUM in association with Internet and Mobile Association of India.

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Today’s top tech news: Uber reveals “super app” plan, Bitcoin falls below US$8K

In addition to Uber and Bitcoin, we also have updates from WhistleDrive and Asia’s venture capital market

uber_ipo_news

Uber reveals plan to implement “super app” concept – The Verge

Ride-hailing giant Uber announced that it aims to merge all of the various services that it provides into a single app, as part of its ambition to become “the operating system for your everyday life”, The Verge wrote in an exclusive report.

In an interview, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi explains, “We don’t just live in the digital sphere, and the real world comes with all kinds of complications … And for us, the challenge is: how do we navigate those complications and how do we make sure that we’re a constructive part of everyone’s life?”

The “super app” concept has also been implemented by Southeast Asian ride-hailing giants gojek and Grab.

Bitcoin price falls below US$8K – Bloomberg

Bitcoin price dropped below US$8,000 for the first time since June, Bloomberg reported, extending the five-day losing streak.

Bitcoin fell as much as nine per cent to US$7,736 in New York before bouncing off the lows of the day.

The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index that tracks a basket of cryptocurrencies slumped more than eight per cent as peer coins such as Ether and XRP also sold off.

Also Read: In India, should you buy a car or just Uber/Ola everywhere?

India’s Whistledrive raises US$10M in Series B funding – Dealstreet Asia

Indian tech-enabled fleet services for corporates Whistledrive today announced an INR72 crore (US$10 million) Series B funding round Colosseum Group, Dealstreet Asia reported.

“We are looking to enter Pune by coming January and February. With the series-B funding we just got, we are looking at scaling vertically, and plan to enter the National Capital Region (NCR),” said WhistleDrive CEO and founder Rakesh Munnanooru in a press conference.

ByteDance in talks to sell overseas news app Topbuzz – The Information

ByteDance is reportedly being in talks to sell its newsfeed app Topbuzz to potential buyers including “some US-based media companies”, The Information reported.

According to the report, the sales talk has been going on for at least three months and it remains unclear whether the sales talk will result in a deal.

The app itself has not proven to be as popular with overseas customers as TikToK

A ByteDance spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

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“We need to break gender imbalance in the internet space,” says Facebook India MD Ajit Mohan

India has the potential to transform its economy into an internet economy, Mohan says

Facebook India MD Ajit Mohan speaking at Huddle Kerala 2019

Ajit Mohan, MD, Facebook India believes that massive growth can be unlocked when women participate in the Internet economy.

A considerable part of every company’s efforts should now go into breaking the gender imbalance in the Internet space, he added.

He was speaking on the first day of the second edition of the startup event ‘Huddle Kerala 2019,’ in Thiruvananthapuram.

“Although we have brought a broad and dramatic number of people online in a very short period of time, public data suggest that only 30-35 per cent of them are women,” he added. “A lot of our energy should go into breaking gender imbalance. We have to think about the barriers that limit women from coming online.”

According to Mohan, the tech industry has to think of the barriers that limit women from coming online.

Also Read: Twitter’s Biz Stone invests in Sieve, an Indian startup founded by hearing-impaired entrepreneur

“When he spoke to people around the country, a couple of things threw up. One is in terms of safety. Women are fundamentally concerned about their safety when they come online. The other is privacy,” he added. “All this suggests that tech companies should put breaking of gender imbalance on their agenda, and they should keep this mind when designing products.”

Mohan is also of a view that video is an excellent enabler for bringing more people online.

“If you look at the Internet evolution in India in the past five years, especially in the last three years, there has been an explosion of access to affordable 3G, triggered by the disruptive model of Reliance Jio followed by other telcos. What it did was that in a short period, it moved the number of people, who have access to mobile broadband, from 10-15 million to more than 400 million. Today, we have 4G. Now, we need to find ways to bring Internet access to more people across the country. Video can be a great enabler here,” he observed.

India is at a stage where, as a tech ecosystem, it has to start thinking about the drivers that have brought a massive number of people online. We need to leverage this scale to begin truly transforming the economy into an internet economy, he told the audience.

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