Day: December 29, 2019

Updates: Ruangguru has reached out to e27 with a more complete list of their investors in this funding round.

Indonesian edutech startup Ruangguru today confirmed a US$150 million Series C funding round led by growth equity company Global Atlantic and venture capital firm GGV Capital.

EV Growth, UOB Venture Management, and a number of new investors also participated in the round.

The funding round has been reported by various media since weeks ago, but the startup has declined to comment until today.

With the investment, Ruangguru is also set to appoint General Atlantic Indonesia Managing Director Ashish Saboo as its commissioner.

The funding round itself is meant to support the company’s expansion effort to Vietnam, where it has launched under the brand Kien Guru.

“We are committed to building a comprehensive curriculum and implementing artificial intelligence in developing fun and easy to understand learning experience. Today, 80 per cent of our users are based outside of Jakarta. This shows that our products are widely accepted and evenly distributed,” said Iman Usman, Founder and Director of Products and Partnership at Ruangguru.

Also Read: Indonesian edutech startup Ruangguru receives grant from MIT SOLVE programme

Prior to this funding round, the startup announced a Series B led by UOB Venture Management.

Ruangguru recently made headlines when co-founder Adamas Belva Devara Syah was appointed as a presidential special staff by President Joko Widodo. In addition to Devara, the president also named Amartha founder Andi Taufan Garuda Putra as a presidential special staff.

The year 2019 was a big year for edutech investment in Indonesia as we see fellow edutech startups such as HarukaEdu and Zenius announcing their funding rounds this year.

HarukaEdu raises its Series C funding round in November, which was meant to support its expansion to B2B services.

Zenius also announced their funding round in October and had launched a free-to-access content offering since.

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Image Credit: Ruangguru

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“Entrepreneurship is a trap.”

That’s the best piece of advice I’ve given to anyone wanting to “try their hand” at entrepreneurship in Singapore. In the last few years, I’ve worked in both the corporate and startup world. 

These are my findings.

School and tuition classes dominated my childhood, vying closely as my first and second homes, academic excellence was the foundation to set me for a traditional path of success. A hyper-competitive mindset and being results-oriented were the two cornerstones that never failed me. Until entrepreneurship came into my life.

Dabbling with entrepreneurship, working in the comfort

Someone once told me that if I was willing to work so hard for someone, why not do it for myself? That tipping point drove me to “try my hand” with entrepreneurship. We eagerly started two businesses while I was still studying in university.

They were fun experiences, but we did not go far with them. There were no consequences if we failed and we were comfortable with that. 

Also Read: NUS expands its Block71 initiative to Vietnam; aims to promote innovation and entrepreneurship development

Make it personal, have skin in the game

During a night out, my friend Ryan (now my partner-in-crime) and I were engaging in Singapore’s national past time – complaining. As we worked through our usual topics with work, and relationships, the haze became a big sticking point.

We both had respiratory problems. We hated it and surely, there were many others suffering too. It was motivating enough for us to develop a prototype of a paint that could purify the air and eliminate VOCs affordably.

We put our skin in the game and became our own guinea pigs, testing the paint in our own homes first. They worked, and we breathed easier, in more ways than one. The third time was indeed the charm.

Committing to entrepreneurship, working through discomfort

The thing about the corporate ladder is no matter how hard certain parts of the climb are, you can see the rungs clearly. My first two half-hearted attempts at entrepreneurship had humbled me to the effort that was required, I went in half-committed, and didn’t get half the results. I got nothing.

I was on a good career path and had to give it up. Everyday, I had to resist the siren’s call with the easy way back to my corporate nest when things got hard, having a choice to quit turned out to be one of my biggest hurdles. 

Also Read: How to know if entrepreneurship is right for you

However, we were making some progress. Our friends and neighbours that have used the paint gave us great reviews. This time we could go far, and we didn’t want to fail. That was my true tipping point as an entrepreneur, being uncomfortable and knowing that I couldn’t take the easy way out. I embraced the entrepreneurship life and it revealed to me the good, the bad, and the realities of the situation.

The good

At my last corporate job, there was a hierarchy in place, and that meant limited access to different levels of people. The latitude shifted up and down; the levels of conversations I had were dependent on the rank and role of both myself and the people I wanted to get in touch with. Being a startup founder, I found myself being able to speak on an even playing field, even if  I was on a lower playing field as a growing startup.

Flexibility and autonomy opened up a world of possibilities. It was a refreshing change of pace where the red tape and long decision-making processes were cut short. We could make decisions as quickly as market forces changed, taking that ownership every day is an exhilarating feeling. Even that is an understatement.

The satisfaction of building something with our own hands. From the beginning when we saw what we had as a concept get developed, seeing the initial wave of validation, to opening our doors commercially.

Best of all was knowing that we could turn our complaints into a legitimate business idea. My advice to all future Singaporean entrepreneurs is not to just complain but monetise your complaints.

The bad

Many of the benefits of the structures and hierarchies in our old life had to be either relearned or self-taught to fit the challenges and needs of our company. What was the growth structure of our company going to be like?

Could we be releasing our product too early, or too late? Are we expanding too fast? Are these the right partners that can bring us to the next level? This process never ends, and we had to be like the Timex watch that “takes a licking and keeps on ticking”.

I kissed work-life balance or integration goodbye and said hello to constantly having work on my mind. Granted, I’m slightly OCD, so that does work to my advantage.

Unfortunately, I find this approach necessary to stay on top of things. Ironically, the red tape that we found liberating could be the safety net preventing us from over-extending ourselves.

Also read: Why you shouldn’t become an entrepreneur

The circle of friends that I used to have has shrunk considerably. Though I know that is an inevitable part of life as we get older, I have lost more friends than I would have liked to, as a result of my choice to be an entrepreneur.

Mealtimes and time spent after hours with people become mostly work- and business-driven. It is a lonely path, and though I have to accept it, I don’t think I’ll ever get truly used to it.

The realities

The amount of work you put in compared to the gains you get can be discouraging. Some days, sometimes it feels like nothing works until it does. I have learned to quietly celebrate every little victory, and to take every loss as part of the process. 

In Singaporean society, there still is the stigma of entrepreneurs who fail, leaving many sceptical. Yet the romantic lure of entrepreneurship has turned it into a trend, and the statistics show that we are being overcrowded with pointless startups.

Don’t get into this journey because it is trendy; it is paramount to know the difference you can make.

To the aspiring entrepreneur fresh out of school with a head full of dreams, and the disillusioned corporate worker who thinks that the grass is greener on the other side -it isn’t.

Entrepreneurship will almost never work for you if you choose to dabble. Fail often, fail fast. If this is the path for you, it’ll be one of the best decisions you’ve made. If you’re just in it for the view, there is no shame in being a speed climber on the corporate ladder.

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In the last couple of years, blockchain technology has been thrust into the global limelight, which it is worthy of. Around the world, from small startups to big MNCs, many have embraced and integrated this technology in various capacities, in their businesses.

In the Asian sub-continent, Indonesia was quick to emerge as a forerunner in the race for blockchain adoption. In fact, Bank Indonesia (BI) was one of the first institutions in the country to announce the launch of its own digital currency, backed by blockchain technology.

Since then, the country has come a long way and displayed great vigour in the acceptance of blockchain. An Indonesia Blockchain Association was established back in 2018 and it has been a key player in the formation of a strong, local blockchain community.

Pioneers in Indonesia

A lot of the credit for the contemporary burgeoning blockchain community in the country goes to startups such as Blockchain Zoo, the first company to offer blockchain consultancy services in the country and Blockchain Space Asia, both of which are founders of the blockchain association in Indonesia

The year 2019 has seen the rise of some phenomenal new startups in the Indonesian market, all of which have been experimenting with blockchain technology. The year has also seen the establishment of several new cryptocurrency exchange platforms such as KoinX and DCX, all of which are backed by blockchain technology.

Constantin Papadimitriou, president of Pundi X had said in an earlier interview: “There are many small and medium businesses in Indonesia not able to deploy digital payment mechanisms, as credit card organisations have created walled gardens with a high price of entry”. 

Also Read: Rise of blockchain in Indonesia brings the promise of greater financial inclusion

Blockchain has in practice been able to break down this archaic system and facilitate an alternative credit rating and payment system for small businesses.

A notable startup in Indonesia that has been dedicatedly working in this particular aspect and that is Tokoin. Co-founders Reiner Rahardja and Eddy Christian Ng combined their individual expertise in business expansion and management and risk assessment and credit profiling skills, respectively, to create Tokoin.

The platform aims to help MSMEs create their business profile and oversee their identity management, which could be used for credit scoring towards financial inclusion. 

The growth of MSMEs and the government’s pro-blockchain stance has benefited the country’s local economic boom. As more and more local businesses warm up to the potential advantages of using blockchain, one can notice the definitive digitisation of these businesses, which is profitable for them in the long run.

Also Read: Why should universities teach blockchain to students?

Reiner Rahardja, CEO of Tokoin said, “I started by establishing a small business by selling cireng (a local fried snack in Indonesia) that I gradually popularised. Over the next nine months, I was able to open up around 40 branches, a bento styled restaurant with four branches and eventually took to selling imported wood parquets.” 

There are many such success stories all across Indonesia, of those who started small but made it big, and along the way realised the importance of new innovations in technology. Here’s wishing that this boom in the business of MSMEs continues to break down barriers and grow beyond the possible. 

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In the present era, artificial intelligence (AI) is taking place in adtech. Earlier advertising was only through newspaper, TV, and magazines but now the dimensions of advertising have increased with the new technology. Companies have started using AI to market their products.

There are various separate digital marketing agencies also that give marketing assignment help to companies that have also opened which involve AI to market the company’s product. AI will not just display ads but it will also create ads according to the customer behaviour on a particular website.

You must have seen the ads which pop-up when you operate any websites. And if you have noticed these ads are related to the website you have visited previously. This is how AI has been used which understands human behaviour on the company website and decides whether it can be converted into a potential customer or not and take action according to that.

In this article, we will discuss how AI can boost adtech.

Help in optimisation

AI will enhance the performance of digital marketing by studying the various algorithms of how ads created and how they perform on various platforms. AI gives recommendations and suggestions on how these performances can be improved.

Give instant feedback to the company which helps in improving the efficiency of the marketing strategy of the company. In some cases, AI will automatically take the action which you would have taken for the best results. This automation will save you time. Such technology will increase business life by improving business activities.

Also Read: How China’s Greater Bay Area initiative will create a testbed for AI and decentralised tech industry

Creating ads 

It also creates ads sometimes partially and sometimes fully depending on what will best results. This way AI will contribute to advertisement technology. AI saves time which earlier spent on creating attractive ads.

In spite of attractive ads, the conversion rate was low. But with the AI being used in digital advertising it has increased conversion rate as it only shows the relevant content to the customers and removes the irrelevant part.

In various cases, there are certain artificial intelligence tools that automatically take the decision on how a company can reach to the customers in the best way through advertising. It automatically manages and modifies performance and actions required.

Targeting the audience

Targeting the right audience is necessary. Targeting the right audience means showing the ads to the customers who have earlier visited that website and have seen a particular product. Just flooding the websites and applications with random advertisements will give no result. Through AI, it has become possible to target the right audience according to the pattern and visits of the customer on the company website.

AI has played a major role in the advertising sector. Through AI, the company is able to target the right customer and create a potential customer though there are still certain improvements and possibilities that could be generated in the advertising sector.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas by submitting a post.

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It’s hard to believe that 2010 was almost 10 years ago. As we near to close the decade, we look back to the most defining trends that have helped shape the tech and startup world to become what it is today.

The rise of ride-hailing apps

gojek was a relatively unknown company back then in 2010 when it was first launched by the now Indonesia’s Minister of Education Nadiem Makarim with his co-founders Michaelangelo Moran and Kevin Aluwi.

Started off as the same-day delivery service for fashion e-commerce Zalora, slowly the app gained traction as it directly tackled the traffic jam issue of the country by combining convenience of using smartphone -something that the nation has also started to experience before reaching the boom in 2014- and branched out to other on-demand services such as food delivery and e-payment.

On the other hand, Grab was founded by Anthony Tan in 2012 in Malaysia as MyTeksi, an app specialised in taxi-hailing, before moving its headquarter to Singapore.

Realising early on that the two startups are targeting the same markets, and that both have vast potentials when it comes to the regional expansion, they have taken off in their own rights and have reached the decacorn status as of today.

Both the presence of Grab and gojek have defined the everyday lives of the people in the region. At first, it might be only the people in their home market, now it has entered other significant markets in the region as well, with gojek taking the expansion race a little later than Grab.

Also Read: 5 developing trends that will define fintech in 2020

Today, as both have on-demand solutions for practically anything we can think of (with gojek leading the market providing from massage therapist to home cleaning service), it’s almost impossible to think to cruise through everyday lives without them. Nikkei Asian Review also reminded us that the two are practically startup investors themselves now, considering how big both have gotten.

The decades of new media

Did you know that Instagram was launched in 2010? And that one year later, Snapchat followed by releasing its app to the public in July?

Since then, we have come a long way when it comes to social media. We’ve seen multiple releases by Instagram that includes “stealing” the filter features from Snapchat, to the release of IGTV, its own small YouTube-like features.

We’ve seen what it did to the way brands did their marketing, as influencer marketing becomes a real job and a real word packed a real punch for businesses. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, businesses today are making US$5.20 for every US$1 spent on influencer marketing.

But towards the end of 2019, we’ve seen that the world seems ready to welcome another disruptive platform designed with the wave of the new generation in mind: TikTok. Combining fun and giving control to users as creators, Instagram scrambled along to also give the platform the creators’ steering wheel to keep up.

Watch out 2020, TikTok is going to find its way to become the next marketing medium as Generation Zs are taking the front seat.

The decade of listening to content

Podcast first emerged in 2004, but it’s not until the 2010s that podcasts really sank in as an information medium, which is ironic since it’s basically on-demand radio.

In Asia, Click2View Asia stated that the downloading figures of podcasts grew by 29 per cent in 2017, up from 18 per cent increase in 2016. Overall, podcasts attracted about 73 million people tuning in monthly by 2018 in the US alone.

The recent popularity of podcasts could be attributed to the decade Millennials dominated, made the market primed with younger and more educated generations seeking quality content. With more streaming choices available, podcasts started to become a go-to content, although it’s yet to become the go-to choice for paid content.

However, the outlook may differ in the next decade, as IAB and PwC have estimated podcast advertising revenue will grow to an impressive US$650 million by 2020. It is interesting to see how the podcasters will navigate more effective ways to reach out to listeners with ads and sponsored content without so much as interrupting the flow of the content.

Remote working as the new norm

Remote working has become a somewhat cultural phenomenon in the last decade. Going from what can only be described as underpaid Do-It-Yourself hours, remote working has become a more popular choice thanks to Millennials and Generation Z campaigning for introversion.

The reason remote working becomes popular is that it’s the look of the ideal and modern workplace, promoting flexibility and mental health above all. Global Workplace Analytics Costs & Benefits survey shows that teleworkers in a number of large companies are actually between 35-40 per cent more productive than their office counterparts.

Also Read: Top 9 data and analytics trends to watch out for in 2020

It only made sense for the remote working becoming almost a mandatory working lifestyle, especially with the numbers of co-working spaces popping out all over Southeast Asia.

Recent research by JLL shows that flexible workspaces in Southeast Asia have shown a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 40 per cent the last three years and now makeup two per cent of total office stock, from less than one per cent in 2015.

Working in co-working space became somewhat trendy for the past decade, and the trend doesn’t show any sign of stopping soon.

e-sports soared high

According to a piece by Nikkei Asian Review, e-sports started to garner attention in 2013, especially the professional competitions.

The trend was proven with the competitive video gaming entering the sports sector, marked this year when esports were included in an IOC-sanctioned event, the 2019 Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines.

Southeast Asia alone is the breeding ground for e-sports as PC Online and mobile gaming revenue hit over US$2.2 billion in 2017 with expectations that it will reach over US$4 billion by 2021. The number of PC online and mobile gamers in Southeast Asia is projected to reach 300 million by the end of 2017, rising to more than 400 million by 2021.

In this article by our contributor former FBI Analyst Jared Polites, it’s stated that Southeast Asia is one of the most attractive markets for online gaming in line with the online and mobile payments that are still on a steady rise, with online transactions expected to grow by 25 per cent in the following years.

On the mobile side, Southeast Asia has always been an attractive market for Chinese gaming firms, especially given the ease of entry compared to other markets. Coupled with the fact that Southeast Asia is the fastest-growing regional gaming market, we should expect to see more and more companies from western markets, China, and Southeast Asia drive innovation in space.

Hyper-personalisation startups were calling the shots

Last year, we saw Singapore-based personalised skincare startup Yours raised US$3.5 million in seed funding. Back in 2014, there was even Wityu.fm, a Thailand-based curated and personalised radio experience that learns and plays music according to each individual’s preferences.

Personalisation talks about customer engagement as customers have been the driver for information circulated online. According to this article on e27, customers are more aware and have the power to spread positive or negative word of mouth about a brand in no time.

“This trend has led companies to rethink their marketing strategies and give more weight to customer engagement as a means to build a better connection with their customers,” the article states.

Customers want much more from a brand than to simply buy a product in order to feel connected with it. Brands need to provide personalised experiences to the customers and keep in touch with them through consistent and relevant information, and the last decade has been the years to prepare for the personalised services.

A decade of AI disruption

If the tech industry were a high school, AI would most likely be voted “most progressive” given how it was futuristic stuff back at the start of the decade.

Google figured out in 2012 how a computer can be used to identify what a cat looks like after learning from thousands of cat videos, indicating the eerie yet untapped potential of deep learning in an advanced computer.

Now, AI has been a part of the daily lives in a form of facial recognition to unlock our smartphone, to voice recognition to search for something on the net.

It is important to note that with advanced AI, come to the realisation of data significance. This CNN article pointed out that AI, in itself, continues to require a lot of work on making machine learning systems better at generalising and learning from fewer examples, something that thoroughly depends on data work.

Now that data is the new sexy, AI in social networks, smartphones, and virtual assistants are touching new subjects such as healthcare and even art. It’s safe to say that AI will likely still progress in the next decade.

Fintech ranked on top

In the past decade, the financial industries witnessed the shift into inclusivity, backed by technology such as AI and blockchain taking over the financial sector by storm.

Big, traditional bank practices have seen what it’s like to be stubborn and gradually warmed up to the idea of moving transactions online. E-payment in many forms emerged, with Indonesia and Vietnam becoming the leading countries for fintech innovations in the region for the last decade.

Fortunly noted in its article that partnerships and mergers between established companies and fintech startups were becoming more and more frequent. It was not rare for a fintech business with a business-to-consumer model to transfer completely to a business-to-business approach, to be able to offer its technology to larger companies and access massive client pools.

Also Read: The growing IT outsourcing trends of 2019 that businesses need to look out for

Furthermore, Fortunly showed the number in lending space also peaked in the last decade, with global loan origination in digital lending was US$41.1 billion in 2017, showing 30.1 per cent year-on-year growth according to fintech statistics.

In Asia, fintech market size reportedly challenged for top spot globally in 2018, with a record amount of funds raised: $22.65 billion from 516 deals, according to CB Insights.

Blockchain’s boom

Still from the Fortunly’s piece, 24 per cent of businesses say they are very or extremely familiar with blockchain technology.

In 2017, blockchain companies reached a record high of US$450 million in funding, a 79 per cent year-on-year increase compared to 2016, according to fintech statistics.

In 2018, the cryptocurrency that was Bitcoin was on the high. 9 out of 10 banks in Europe and North America were exploring blockchain trends at that time and its market capitalisation has since expanded from nearly US$1.02 billion in Q1 of 2013 to approximately US$72.37 billion in Q1 of 2019, Leftronic shared.

According to Bitcoin wallet stats shared further in Leftronic’s article, in February 2011, the value only reached US$1. In July of the same year, one Bitcoin was standing at US$31 and then fell to US$2 by the end of the same year.

At the end of 2012, the Bitcoin price reached Us$13, while during the next year it was in the US$650–US$800 scope. In 2014, the value of Bitcoin reached US$745 but then fell sharply to US$317 by the end of the year.

A year later, the price of Bitcoin was US$760, while in November of 2017, it grew to US$19,498, an all-time high as of August 2019. At the end of 2018, Bitcoin dropped to US$3,832, and by mid-June, it regained strength by breaking the US$13,000 mark.

Also Read: UI and UX design: top trends you should know in 2019 and 2020

Blockchain, despite being dominated by Bitcoin and crypto exchange, are ripe for other facets of industries, especially healthcare. The decentralised concept works well in storing patients data, helps open up a plethora of new possibilities for further blockchain growth. At least this will be the future.

Sharing economy

According to Forbes, the sharing economy is an economic system in which assets or services are shared between peers or businesses for free or for a fee. The article states that the concept is to enhance the usability of assets, making their lifespan more worthwhile.

In the age where “Marie Kondo”-ing your life is the new cool and sustainability is more urgent than ever, sharing economy made perfect sense. Instead of buying a car, hailing a ride with the choices of gojek or Grab. Rent your clothes via Style Theory, instead of shopping for a new one.

In fact, owning stuff can now be a source of new income as almost everything can be rented out online. After all, that was the basic concept of sharing economy, and the trend’s beginning is likely to carry through.

From these trends of the decade, we’ve learned that it has longevity to it as they need the next decade to really boom and reach the next level of innovation. Bring it on, 2020.

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