Of all the later stage funding rounds that we covered in October, we noticed that there were several names that kept on coming back.

Apart from Indonesian unicorns such as gojek and Bukalapak, who are fundraising for an ongoing round, we also saw regional power players such as ZEN Rooms.

There were also some surprises from companies that we had not heard in a while such as TouchTen.

Check out the complete list of later stage funding rounds in October:

Mobikon
Funding: US$12.5 million in Series B
Investor(s): Binny Bansal (lead)

Singapore-based F&B customer engagement startup Mobikon will use the funding to further dominate the market share in its existing geographies and to establish a strong foothold in Australia and Indonesia.

Scommerce
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Temasek

Vietnamese logistics service provider Scommerce will use the funding to accelerate the nationwide expansion of its two business units.

Also Read: 5 ways in which crowdfunding can help your start-up grow

gojek
Funding: US$50 million
Investor(s): Cool Japan Fund

Cool Japan will work with Gojek to spread Japanese culture in Indonesia through both the platform’s food delivery and video streaming services.

Zenius
Funding: US$20 million
Investor(s): Northstar Group

The funding round could potentially be the first external funding that Indonesian edutech startup Zenius has raised.

Curiox
Funding: US$15 million
Investor(s): KB Investment, Dayli Partners, Quad Investment Management, IMM Investment, SV Investment Partners, and HB Investment

With the funding announcement, Curiox revealed plans to pursue an IPO on the Korean stock exchange KOSDAQ in the next 36 months.

Aerodyne
Funding: US$30 million in Series B
Investor(s): InterVest/Kejora Ventures, VentureTECH, Gobi Partners, and 500 Startups

Aerodyne Group, a drone-based managed solutions provider in Malaysia, plans to use the funding to undertake select M&As, further invest in R&D and technology, hire talent globally and continue to expand into its key global markets.

Also Read: Vietnamese healthcare startup Med247 gets seed funding from KK Fund, broadens users coverage

Alodokter
Funding: US$33 million in Series C
Investor(s): Softbank Ventures Asia, Golden Gate Ventures, Philips, Heritas Capital, Hera Capital, and Dayli Partners

The Indonesian healthtech startup will use the funding to expand the company’s network with hospitals and to develop an insurance service.

ZEN Rooms
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Yanolja, Access Ventures

ZEN Rooms and Yanolja will work to deploy automation technology to enhance customer experience and further reduce budget hotels’ operating costs.

TouchTen
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Prasetia Dwidharma, Sheila Tiwan, Indra Leonardi, CUEBIC

With the new funding, TouchTen aims to boost its efforts to address the often-ignored women gamers market.

Bukalapak
Funding: Undisclosed
Investor(s): Shinhan Financial Group, Emtek Group

Though the value of the company’s investment was undisclosed, a press statement by Shinhan GIB said that the close has brought Bukalapak’s valuation to surpass US$2.5 billion.

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The e27 Startup Database connects the community to the hottest internet companies in Asia. We encourage startups to visit their profile and regularly update their information.

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It’s generally accepted by the start-up that it’s easy to take ideas that have worked in developed markets and reproduce them in developing markets.

Cultural nuances, differences in propensity to spend at both the personal and corporate level, as well as differing opportunity sets,  mean that it’s rarely as easy as stencilling a solution onto Asia inc.

Companies that are looking to expand or replicate themselves in Asia need to be mindful that each market is inherently different. Solutions that work in one market won’t work in another. Lacking a strong rule of law, companies and consumers are less likely to “take a chance” on an emerging brand and will tend to rely on established brands.

Also Read:4 ways corporates can work better with Chinese startups

Further, the opportunity sets can differ significantly as the cost of labour in Asia can be negligible when compared to developed markets. This can be leveraged, creating more opportunity for local populations and allows different business opportunities to emerge in developing Asian markets than would be possible in developed markets.

Cultural nuances

It’s easy to be complacent if you’re taking models that have worked in largely homogenous developed markets like the US or Europe and then try to apply that model to Asia.

Laws and cultures may be more-or-less similar across the EU, which has a population of 341m, or all of the United States of America, which has a population of 372m. This isn’t necessarily the case with Southeast Asia, which has a population of 641m — looks like a bigger market, but it is it?

Commonly, I see start-up decks that extrapolate the population to insinuate that the revenue opportunities could be larger in SEA than they are in the other developed markets. SEA is an agglomeration of thousands of islands and subsets of populations, some of which are ideologically opposed to others. The strategies that work in one market won’t necessarily work in another.

In one of the most egregious cultural faux pas that I’ve heard of, one company that had offices across the region appointed a new general manager. The general manager decided that there was no place for pictures of the King in the Thailand offices.

Anyone who has been to Thailand would have noted the pictures of the beloved King in restaurants, bars and any other establishment. There was a significant decline in company morale which almost led to an internal mutiny. This is an example of a cultural nuance that could only be understood by spending a bit of time on the ground and talking to people.

Don’t let the numbers fool you. While it’s large in aggregate, SEA is composed of a number of small and heterogeneous markets. Companies need to be aware of the cultural differences and adapt their strategies accordingly.

Propensity to spend

Brands and relationships are important in developing markets, maybe more so than in developed markets. In developed markets, people are able to rely on the rule of law and consumer rights regulations. These facilities are less prevalent in emerging Asia. As a result, it can take a lot of time and capital to build up the credibility to get consumers or companies to trust an emerging brand.

In Singapore, there’s the concept of Kiasu, which could be interpreted as being afraid of losing in a relative sense to another person. This means that people will want to have what someone else has but they would be less willing to take a risk on a new and unknown product — because there’s no one to be jealous of. This is a hurdle that new brands need to conquer to be successful in one of the more developing markets in Asia.

Further, Go-Jek, which went from a “transport app” to an “everything app” knew early on that they needed to be focused on cash usage because credit card penetration is around 1 per cent.

They knew that transactions were typically going to be small ticket items and built out their platform around that, taking advantage of the differing incomes in the country according to the propensity to spend.

The things that high-earning time-strapped employees in developed markets are willing to spend money on don’t necessarily translate to countries where subsiding is more important than self-actualisation.

Opportunity sets

The opportunity sets that are available in each geography are markedly different. Clusters and ecosystems naturally form around existing players. It makes sense that a company could exist to supply tools to cloud providers improving efficiency or reducing costs if it’s surrounded by dozens of companies that can pay for the services as well as help to iterate the product. Proximity matters. This is a reason that Silicon Valley has an edge as the tech hub of America.

The opportunity sets in Asia are different. Different opportunities = different solutions. One example of this is Sampingan, an Indonesian-based start-up that helps companies scale by connecting them to a network of trained freelance agents who perform tasks on a pay-per-performance basis.

This takes advantage of the personal nature of business in Asia (people talking to people c.f. digital advertising) as well as the large casual workforce and the lower cost of living (relative to developed countries). This is an opportunity that likely wouldn’t be exploited in other developed markets.

Summing Up

Entrepreneurs in Asia that are able to find solutions in an environment where it’s difficult to get consumers to part with their cash are more likely to be successful in developed markets. Once a company has ground it out in an untrusting market, it will be easier for them to operate in developed markets with trusted brands already on their roster.

Leaders that are able to spot the opportunities in small fragmented markets won’t have any issues in driving a wedge into the larger opportunities in developed markets.

If you’re building a business in Asia that could scale more broadly, please reach out!

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Image Credit: Mario Gogh

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The Crewdible team

The e27 Community has voted –and the winner for October’s Startup of the Month is Indonesian micro warehousing platform Crewdible!

Startup of the Month is a fun initiative that gets our community on Telegram to vote for the startup that has made notable achievement or milestone during the month.

Crewdible stole our attention with its US$1.5 million pre-Series A announcement led by Global Founders Capital (GFC) recently.

The company helps small, individual online sellers on social media and e-commerce platforms by turning empty facilities (houses, offices, and warehouses) into a warehouse for their inventories.

Its history started in 2015 when founder Dhana Galindra ran a sporting brand called Lean. As his business grows, Galindra began partnering with staffs from logistics companies, paying them a commission for storing Lean’s inventories in their houses.

This system enables the business to grow without renting a specialised warehouse or hiring dedicated staff, and the founder eventually developed a mobile app and turned it into a separate business.

Congratulations to the winner!

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While there may be turbulent waters ahead, Singapore’s leaders have reason to to believe better days lay ahead

For the most part, the world’s mature economies are looking ahead to the 2020s with some combination of trepidation and cautious optimism.

The issues faced by large mature economies such as the United States and the Eurozone are quite different from those faced by smaller economies, which by necessity must look abroad for human and fiscal capital.

Singapore offers a clear case study in the challenges and opportunities that smaller economies are likely to encounter in the decade ahead. With the caveat that we cannot know for sure what the future may hold, what can this city-state of some 5.6 million souls expect between now and 2030?

Silicon Valley, Straitside?

On an April visit to the United States, Singapore Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat told The Straits Times and other Singapore-based news organizations that fundamental transformation is necessary to maintain the competitiveness of the city-state’s economy in the years to come.

“I think we must position Singapore as a global Asian node of technology innovation and enterprise,” Heng said.

Speaking from Singapore’s Bridge Forum, in San Francisco, Heng nodded to the successes of America’s Silicon Valley, the ideal upon which most global innovation hubs model themselves.

Heng noted that the Valley’s innovators recognize the disruptive potential of technology, marveling at the “speed and scale at which they are taking this challenge very seriously.” To compete, he added, Singapore’s government and business community “must invest a lot of time and resources.”

Diversity as a Strength

Heng also marveled at the diversity of background and thought that characterizes Silicon Valley’s most successful enterprises.

While Singapore is known for a diverse cohort of Asia Pacific based financial services firms and an education system renowned for producing top-shelf finance graduates, Heng indicated that the city-state’s economy has room for improvement. A small city-state, said Heng, must necessarily look beyond its borders for talent.

Also Read: Aiming at deep tech startups, SGInnovate partners with five new co-investors

“That is another major area we need to look at — how we can grow this talent pool,” he remarked.

The Benefits of Limited Bureaucracy

Singapore does have one significant strength: a unified government with minimal bureaucracy and a streamlined framework for making and implementing policy decisions. This is an important contrast with representative governments in larger mature economies (such as the United States and the United Kingdom) as well as emerging economies (such as India).

Singapore’s low-friction government alleviates a perennial concern for central bank directors: keeping monetary policy responsive amid macroeconomic uncertainty.

“If there is a need for us to use counter cyclical monetary and fiscal policy to manage [a global economic slowdown], we will,” Heng told The Straits times.

The Elephants in the Room

However, central bank policy only goes so far. Singaporean decision-makers like Heng watch developments abroad with some trepidation.

A Bloomberg report on an earlier Heng trip makes clear that the ongoing U.S.-China trade dispute is a source of significant concern for Singapore and other ASEAN economies. So too is the Brexit saga, which remains far from resolution.

Reclaiming the Mantle of Globalization

Ultimately, notes Heng in conversation with the South China Morning Post, Singapore is in a strong position to prosper in an increasingly globalized world — provided it can demonstrate its relevance and appeal to a wide range of international businesses, not just the highly regarded finance firms that remain its core strength.

That includes redoubling incentives to attract new investment and prevent high-profile departures, such as the recent closure of an IBM technology plant. That plant’s closure was partially responsible for Singapore’s cratering electronics exports, a worrying sign in a traditionally strong sector.

“We must expect there will be changes in how companies relocate their operations in different parts of the world,” Heng said, according to the South China Morning Post. “For Singapore, as a small open economy, we must be prepared for changes in the global environment,” he added.

A Dash of Optimism, a Pinch of Caution

It’s clear that Singapore’s government and business community will contend with a host of challenges in the years to come.

In some instances, notably the long-running trade dispute between China and the United States, their ability to directly influence outcomes will be limited. Instead, they’ll need to act strategically, with an eye to minimizing collateral damage and finding silver linings in sub-optimal circumstances.

Also Read: An open letter to the Almost But Never Quite There

In other instances, such as talent acquisition and retention, Singaporean leadership will have a far stronger hand. If Heng’s San Francisco comments are any indication, the city-state’s public and private decision-makers understand what needs to be done to shore up its global competitiveness and position its economy for growth in the years and decades ahead.

That’s not to say any of this will be easy. But, at minimum, it’s encouraging that a consensus appears to be forming around a way forward. The same can’t be said for some other mature economies.

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