Didian introduces B2B proptech marketplace, claiming to be the first [Press Release]

New proptech firm Didian Realtor Sdn Bhd announces the launch of Malaysia’s B2B property marketplace aimed at reinventing property sales. The platform is available in both web and mobile app versions claimed to help both property developers and real estate agents and negotiators to connect and drive the property sales of curated units at projects that are under construction or close to completion.

The Malaysian-made platform considers variables such as location, skillset, and expertise. The system also features digital booking, real-time data access, commissions status tracking, and supports backend administrative processes.

Didian Realtor Sdn Bhd also entered into a strategic collaboration with StarProperty, a part of The Star Media Group Berhad, that would see both parties work together on co-marketing the platform to both the real estate fraternity as well as property developers.

UAE’s Mubadala Capital injects US$60M to Berlin-based scooter startup Tier Mobility [DealStreetAsia]

German scooter startup Tier Mobility reportedly raises US$60m led in part by UAE’s Mubadala Capital, who is one of the sovereign wealth vehicles behind SoftBank Group Corp.’s Vision Fund. Also joining the round is Silicon Valley’s Goodwater Capital.

Also Read: Why Malaysia is an ideal startup hub

Berlin-based Tier Mobility said it would use the money to accelerate its expansion across the continent.

In 2017, Mubadala committed US$15 billion to SoftBank’s US$100 billion Vision Fund.

“We firmly believe that micro mobility as a form of transportation is here to stay, especially in Europe,” said Amer Alaily, senior principal at Mubadala Capital.

Other new backers of Tier include Axa Germany and Finland’s Evli Growth Partners.

Vietnam-based edutech startup MindX secures US$500K from ESP Capital Fund

MindX, a chain of school for training new skills, announced that it has completed the first round of US$500,000 funding led by ESP Capital and a number of other individual investors.

MindX (formerly TechKids) aims to build an ecosystem that includes schools for new skill sets of 4.0 era (programming, robotics, design, 3D drawing, etc.) and coworking space. Each complex is considered a little Silicon Valley that contributes to nourishing inventors, social change agents, or talented entrepreneurs.

Founded in 2015, MindX now has 5 centers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, claiming to have trained more than 8,500 students and working adults.

Also Read: Stripe officially launches in Malaysia, to migrate more businesses online

At the same time, MindX also facilitates an office complex that hosts more than 200 domestic & international technology startups and investment funds such as Wefit, Ninja Van, Nextrans Capital, and more.

With this investment, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, Co-founder, and CEO of Education said that the company would focus on opening new centers in Ho Chi Minh City and upgrading the current syllabus of Designing, 3D Drawing, and VR/AR.
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Being an entrepreneur is a lot harder than I thought — and things are even harder in Asia where there’s more stereotyping of women in society.

I thought being an entrepreneur was all about building a product or service you believe in, filling that gap in the market, and marketing and selling it as hard as you can.

But as an Asian female entrepreneur, you have to work twice — maybe five times — as hard to make people take you seriously, or let alone, believe in what you are capable of.

Not until I entered the startup world did I think women empowerment and female support was more important than ever before. With that said, here are some things I’ve learned about being a female entrepreneur in this part of the world:

1. You’ll have to surround yourself with the right people

People are what make the company — but people are also what makes your life a lot easier. Surrounding yourself with people who don’t believe in what you’re doing, whether in business or in your personal life, is a real time-waster. And I can tell you that from experience. You don’t have to convince these people why you’re building this company — that’s what you have to do for customers and investors.

Also Read: The importance of working with great co-founders

Your life shouldn’t be one giant pitching session. This is obvious for employees, but sometimes women don’t understand how important this is for people who are involved in your personal life. as well.

As a female entrepreneur, you’re already trying to beat the odds, there’s no point in adding more odds to the equation. On the other hand, surrounding yourself with people who support and believe in what you’re doing can really help your business multiply.

2. You’ll want to build a product you can talk about for hours

It doesn’t matter whether you want to build a compression algorithm or a wedding platform, you’ll need to be seriously passionate about it. My first startup idea was in finance — I really believed in it (and I still do), but it’s not something I can talk about for hours. Weddings, on the other hand, are something I’ve always loved and dreamt about as a little girl.

Just because we’re ambitious women doesn’t mean we have to prove something extreme to make a statement. If you like baking cakes or handcrafting jewellery, you can still be a fierce female entrepreneur.

3. You’ll need to use your strengths to outdo competitors

Use your femininity as your advantage. I’m not talking about sex appeal, but the ability to relate. When I first started Asia Wedding Network, I understood that there were tons of older male founders in the wedding technology space. I tapped into my femininity and really looked at the product and the world from a female perspective — after all, we are building a platform for brides.

The ability to understand your strengths and what only you could bring to the table is what will make your company better than others’.

4. You’ll need to trust your intuition

Coming off of the last point, you’re going to be intimidated by your competitors. I know, I was — they were twice my age and armed with a handful of experience. But once you learn to trust your intuition and once you see customers switching over to your product, you’ll learn to take control and trust your instincts.

5. You’ll need to learn to brag

Nobody likes people who brag, but as a woman, you’ll need to brag when the time is right. I feel that women, especially in Asia, are too humble — and that’s okay in normal circumstances. But when you’re talking to an investor or selling you product, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be bragging about how great your company is.

Also Read: Bootstrapped and proud: Companies that don’t need VC money

Talk about the awards that you’ve received or which big company is using your product (if it’s not confidential). As Asian women, we were taught to not brag and be loud- but when you enter the male-dominated startup world, rules do not apply.

6. You’ll need role models

This sounds cliche but I feel that role models are extremely important, even if you don’t know personally know them. For me, I look up to role models, because they show that they have defied the odds, and the things I want to achieve are actually achievable. I’m not defying the odds — they’ve already done that.

Role models show you that the things you want to achieve are actually possible and that if you put your mind to it, you too can do what they’ve done — and maybe even more.

7. You’ll need to use your emotional intelligence

I’m about to stereotype us but here it goes: Women are sensitive. Now, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Use this emotional instinct to your advantage. If you trust your gut instinct, you can read people, customers, and investors. This will help you forecast their next steps.

Also Read: 5 lessons in leadership from top female executives

8. You’ll need to learn ‘tough love’ leadership

Women in leadership roles tend to either be pushovers or strict and unyielding to the extreme. I find that women need to show more love to their employees — tough love, that is. Yes, you need to make sure people are meeting deadlines and working hard on their projects, but you’ll also need to show some compassion when it is most needed.

I’m not talking about befriending your employees or letting them walk over you, but I’m talking about showing leniency when it matters. Nobody wants Cruella de Vil as their boss but you’re still building a company here.

Females in the Western world are founding companies, leaning in, and taking control of their #girlboss lives. It’s time for women in this part of the world to also start building great businesses, fulfilling their dreams, and start chipping away at the invisible glass ceiling.

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Smart credit startup Flowcast snags US$3M Series A funding co-led by ING Ventures, BitRock Capital [Press Release]

Flowcast, a smart credit startup powered by AI that helps financial institutions and corporates make decisions, announces that it has raised a US$3 million with additional funding from existing investors including Katalyst Ventures and Alpana Ventures.

The company noted that the proceeds of this round will be used to fund the acceleration of Flowcast’s go-to-market strategy, global market expansion especially in Singapore and the APAC region, and the continuing product development and improvement.

Flowcast offers an AI-enabled platform to power smarter credit decisions for financial institutions and corporates. Flowcast’s API-based machine learning platform harnesses alternative data to unlock credit at scale, which helps empowers lenders and corporations to extend and monitor credit that is historically unavailable with conventional lending and credit scoring methods.

Flowcast shares that it is also participating in the SAP.iO Foundry Singapore program, which aims to accelerate startups via providing them access to curated mentorship, exposure to SAP technology, and application programmable interfaces (APIs) with opportunities to collaborate with SAP customers in the Southeast Asian region.

Lao ride-hailing service app LOCA to showcase business model at Thailand’s Mekong Innovation Startup in Tourism [Eleven Myanmar]

LOCA, a ride-hailing service operating in Laos will be showcased at the Mekong Innovation Startup in Tourism (MIST) meeting in Thailand next week, as reported by Eleven Myanmar. It will represent Laos in the final pitching competition at MIST on October 8-9 in Bangkok, Thailand.

Also Read: Mekong regional initiative aims to help travel startups

LOCA is a Lao startup that claims to dominate the ride-hailing business. It has been operating since early 2018 with more than 300 cars.

The co-founder and CTO of LOCA, Souliyo Vongdala, said that tourism is a major contributor to GDP and that innovative startups will help attract more tourists to Laos.

Right now, there are two ride-hailing services in Laos – LOCA and the Cambodia-based Drive-up. These two were recently launched and it is expected there will be more in the future.

Mekong Innovative Startups in Tourism is jointly managed by the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office and the Mekong Business Initiative.

The initiative is supported by the Australian government and the Asian Development Bank and organised by UNWTO Affiliate Member Chameleon Strategies.

Indonesian logistics startup Paxel reportedly gears up to close series A round from East Ventures, SIG, SMDV [Tech In Asia]

Indonesian logistics startup Paxel is reportedly in the dawn of closing a Series A funding round that will likely be US$7 million in total, as reported by Tech In Asia. East Ventures reportedly leads the round, with participation from Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Sinar Mas Digital Ventures (SMDV).

In September, Paxel reportedly raised a seed round led by one of its founders, Johari Zein, who is also a founder of omnipresent logistics provider JNE. One person familiar with the matter adds that the founding team put in US$10 million of their own money in the seed round.

Paxel was founded by Bryant Christanto and Zaldy Ilham Masita. It is an app-based logistics startup providing same-day delivery services for a flat rate to several major Indonesian cities, promises customers to get their money back in the event of failure fulfilling the delivery within a certain time limit.

Nikkei acquires a minority stake in Singapore’s AI startup DC Frontiers [Nikkei Asian Review]

Japanese media group Nikkei announces that it has acquired 14.79 percent of DC Frontiers’ stake, a Singapore’s AI startup, looking to enhance data and news service scoutAsia with the collaboration.

Nikkei and the Financial Times launched scoutAsia last year, creating an extensive database of Asian companies and regional business news. Nikkei acquired the FT back in 2015.

Also Read: Singapore Press Holdings unveils AI initiative and stock photo marketplace

Founded in 2011, DCF offers the use of AI for tasks like article tagging and creating maps that illustrate relationships between companies, individuals, and investments. DCF’s AI and machine-learning technologies are aimed at improving the accuracy and efficiency of searches for news and corporate data.
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Having pioneered Singtel Ventures, a corporate venture capital arm, in the late nineties and through the subsequent years of working with social enterprises, I’ve observed some commonalities and unique qualities that set successful social entrepreneurs apart.

In essence, they are extremely talented people who see opportunities in building sustainable and viable commercial businesses with a prime focus on solving social issues.

Take Singapore’s online marketplace, Bompipi.com, for example.

The business was founded on the premise of encouraging more people to give back to society, and it developed a creative and sustainable revenue stream anchored on the growing demand for affordable online grocery shopping. The founders’ passion for giving back to society then inspired an innovative reward system that allows customers to offset a part of their online shopping costs by volunteering with partner charities.

Bompipi.com was one of seven social startup ventures shortlisted to be part of a six-month-long social innovation programme called Singtel Future Makers. Its novel pitch won the hearts of the judging panel from Singtel, Singapore’s National Council of Social Service, SPD, raiSE, 500 Startups and Adrenalin Group of Social Enterprises.

Also Read: Revealed: 7 Singtel Future Makers winners set to create greater social impact

To become and stay successful as a social enterprise it requires all the essential capabilities needed in running a commercial enterprise while creating social good. The business challenges are compounded as often the social cause which they support is niche, lacks the scale or is costly to serve at the onset.

Bear in mind that you could also be serving a need where the risks, stakes (and mistakes) can be a lot higher for the end beneficiary they serve, depending on the inherent vulnerability which they face.

So, what have I learnt from two decades of working with commercial start-ups, and more recently social start-ups? They all have the same ingredients needed to become successful entrepreneurs, albeit social entrepreneurs come with the additional factors of:

Empathy

Having an extremely deep sense of understanding for the social issues that they seek to address. Often they have personally experienced the issue or through someone, they know.

Many of those whom I have met can tell a very personal story behind their causes. It’s analogous to having deep customer centricity in your business model. Going back to Bompipi.com, two of the founders grew up in families with financial difficulties and could not afford daily necessities.

Even as both men became successful businessmen, they never forgot their origins and have turned their insights into a business opportunity built upon the social cause they champion.

Purpose

Having a deeper and more grounded sense of PURPOSE that may be missing in non-social entrepreneurs. It’s this sense of purpose that will be their core foundation of resilience when the going gets really tough.

Many a time, they will ask themselves: Am I blinded by my cause and purpose, and will I ever make it through? Where do I draw the line between my purpose and cause, and the realities?

Courage

Having the capacity to deal with the paradox of making money, sometimes from the needy and vulnerable ones. Sustainability is key to staying in business and achieving positive social impact. The successful ones are those who dare to challenge the stigma of profiteering from and helping those who are vulnerable and needy.

But, vulnerability may not always mean one cannot afford. Sometimes the solution just doesn’t yet exist, even if one is willing and able to pay. Regardless, for those who cannot deal with this inherent paradox, it’s best to consider staying in the charity model.

Also Read: For social enterprise, how to balance social good with the realities of business?

That said, there are potential attributes of social entrepreneurs that can undermine their success, when:

1. They become too fixated on their cause that they cannot adapt to the realities of the situation and are unable to see opportunities to ‘pivot’, especially when their solution is too customised to a cause, making it difficult to find scale.

2. Their sense of purpose and passion toward the cause may undermine their openness, agility, and adaptability, thereby holding them back from collaborating, synergising and sometimes ceding to others who might hold the key to bringing the venture to the next level.

3. They lack organisational skills to run a growing team and don’t know how to build diversity and talent in their teams that can complement their own competencies.

Unfortunately, there are no panaceas to circumvent all of these potential pitfalls, but no successful social entrepreneur ever gets to the top alone. For most, if not all cases, there is always a mentor guiding them from behind.

What a mentor can provide is the much-needed guidance and alternative perspectives to overcome common pitfalls as the ones I’ve highlighted earlier. It’s with this belief that the Singtel Future Makers programme puts a strong focus on mobilising a diverse set of mentors from every sector. Building capability and capacity goes beyond just providing cash funding.

No doubt, the social enterprise business model will continue to be refined and evolve. But, here in Singapore and Australia, the ecosystem of social enterprise is starting to take shape and will grow from strength to strength.

Successful social enterprises can also demonstrate to larger corporations that profiting and effecting positive social changes are not mutually exclusive concepts. Only time will prove our fundamental belief that doing good is good business in the long run.

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OYO Hotels & Homes, one of India’s largest hotels aggregators with significant operations in Southeast Asia, today announced that it is raising US$1.5 billion in Series F round.

RA Hospitality Holdings will infuse approximately US$700 million as primary capital, with the remaining US$800 million coming from other existing investors.

RA Hospitality is owned by OYO Founder and CEO Ritesh Agarwal. Earlier this year, RA Hospitality received Competition Commission of India’s approval to invest US$2 billion in OYO.

In order to facilitate this transaction, existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital are selling a part of their shareholding in OYO to help Agarwal increase his stake.

Also Read: Token sales being abused as a fundraising tool by many, will mostly go away: LuneX VC’s Kenrick Drijkoningen

A huge chunk of the money will go into continuing its growth in the US and Europe.

This round comes about a year after OYO raised over US$1 billion led by SoftBank Vision Fund. Existing investors Lightspeed, Sequoia and Greenoaks Capital also participated. New strategic partners like Airbnb also co-invested.

In a short span of six years, OYO has expanded its presence in 80-plus countries. It includes China (with presence in 338 cities and over 590,000 rooms), followed by Indonesia (presence in 100-plus cities and over 27,000 rooms).

In the UK, OYO has a presence in 30 destinations and over 3,500 rooms, and in the US in 60 cities, 21 states and over 7,500 rooms.

At the moment, OYO employs over 20,000 people.

Agarwal said: “The growth across verticals in India and globally has been phenomenal and we truly believe that we will be able to build a truly global brand out of India while ensuring that the business is run efficiently and with a clear path to profitability. Our immediate goal, however, is to make forward-looking investments so we can achieve our mission while delivering on our fiduciary responsibility to our investors by building a sustainable business.”

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Mobile game company TouchTen has secured an undisclosed amount in fresh funding from investment firm Prasetia Dwidharma.

Indonesian business leaders Sheila Tiwan (CEO Carsurin) and Indra Leonardi (Kingfoto Group) also joined this round.

Existing investor CUEBIC, a leading digital marketing company in Japan, is also investing this round, as TouchTen boosts its efforts to address the often-ignored women gamers market.

“Gaming has often been considered a male-centric pastime, but our world is changing,” said TouchTen CEO and Co-founder Roki Soeharyo. 

Also Read: Token sales being abused as a fundraising tool by many, will mostly go away: LuneX VC’s Kenrick Drijkoningen

“Today, half of all mobile gamers are female. And the data shows despite lacking content that appeals to them, more women are playing games than ever before. This is what truly excites our team — to bring joy to underserved players globally through games that we love.”

Prasetia CEO, Arya Setiadharma commented: “TouchTen has extensive experience in developing mobile games. Prasetia is excited to join this round because we believe TouchTen is the perfect team to tackle the huge market of female mobile gamers. TouchTen is very data-driven in developing their games, and this is what we find most attractive about the company.”

TouchTen claims its revenue and user base grew 238 per cent and 93 per cent, respectively, in the past year. 

The company has added to its portfolio a new flagship game focused on the intersection of puzzle gamers and pet lovers for the US and European markets. The game will feature the most adorable pets in the entire puzzle genre while bringing a fresh twist on the familiar match-3 puzzle gameplay. 

The team is also working on an undisclosed project for the Indonesian market slated for release in late 2019.

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Singapore-based maritime solutions startup Claritecs has secured an S$850,000 (US$600,000) in pre-Series A funding from INNOPORT, the corporate venture capital unit of the globally operating ship owner and ship management company Bernhard Schulte. A separate private angel investor from Singapore’s maritime industry also joined as investors.

Wong Hong Lee, CEO of Claritecs said that the company will use the funding to support product development and market roll-out.

Haymon Sinapius, Investment Manager for Asia of INNOPORT, shared, “Since our establishment, we have been seeking out high-potential, early-stage maritime and logistics startups in Europe and Asia for investment, with a view of supporting their scale-up.”

“Claritecs identifies pain points faced by the bunkering industry and addressing them with holistic digital solutions based on their strong domain knowledge.”

Claritecs is a maritime solutions startup that leverages a foundation of maritime expertise to develop digital applications for decision-makers in shipping operations and commercial management.

Also Read: PSA unboXed partners with Israeli startup theDOCK to support maritime logistics tech

Claritecs’ suite comprises BunkerMaestro, an algorithm-based SaaS platform that provides data-driven insights for bunker scheduling, aiming to increase work efficiencies and bunker fleet optimisation.

BunkerMaestro tackles the complexities of multiple grades of marine fuels required by ships to meet the IMO 2020 sulfur cap regulation. It taps on real-time data sets from Singapore Maritime Data Hub and MarineTraffic to monitor vessel movements to predict vessel arrival times and bunkering related operations.

In addition to BunkerMaestro, the company said it has also developed Auto Profiling, a tool for quick diagnostics of mass flowmeter bunkering data.

“New product innovation is a key area of focus for Claritecs. We are currently in talks with like-minded partners for possible collaborations so that we can assist our clients in their digital transformation journey,” said Wong.

Claritecs aims to raise its Series A round by the first quarter of 2020 to support its international expansion and future product development.
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Businesses with deep pockets don’t have a monopoly in reaching consumers globally. Even startups can attempt to win international customers. There are simple but effective strategies new businesses can do to generate sales globally.

They don’t require massive investments. You may have already heard about them, but haven’t paid attention, thinking that they’re too basic and generic.

1. Optimised e-commerce site

Anyone can put up an online store and start selling to prospective international customers, although not everyone knows how to optimise their e-commerce operations.

That’s why many end up failing to get the results they desire. However, optimising an e-commerce venture is not that difficult.

Take note of the following pointers.

1. Search engine optimisation is an essential part of establishing an online presence, more so in launching an e-commerce operation.

Without it, it will be difficult to rank high in search engine results, which means attracting potential customers is going to be challenging. You need to research the relevant keywords you can use to make your site searchable online. You then have to place these keywords in your content, metadata, headers, and other parts of your website.

2. It’s not enough to have an online store if your goal is to attract global customers. Potential buyers in different countries or regions use different languages.

How do you expect them to consider buying your products if they don’t understand the language you use in your site? That’s why you need to localise.

Localisation, however,  is not just about translating your content from one language to another. It entails a conscious effort to present your store and products in ways that make them more relatable to your intended audience.

This means using slogans, catchphrases, pop culture references, idioms, and other textual elements that are more familiar to the target customers.

At the same time, it calls for the removal or replacement of lines that are deemed offensive or unfamiliar to the intended customers.

Localisation can be tedious, but it’s not too difficult. You need to find someone who understands the language and culture of the new market you are targeting.

Addressing Payment Difficulties. Making payments faster, easier, and less complicated encourages more sales to international customers.

Provide several payment methods so there’s at least one way customers would find convenient. Eliminate the currency exchange barrier by offering a dynamic currency conversion service or an automatic online calculator.

Quality Customer Service. Customer service starts with marketing to post-sale customer care. It commences in extending courtesy and patience when answering the inquiries of potential customers.

It also includes the way you treat customer complaints and suggestions to improve your service. Encourage customers to post reviews of your products or store through a comments/reviews section and on social

Don’t expect to succeed in your optimisation efforts in your first try. Often, there are many areas where you can still improve. As such, you need to monitor your e-commerce operations regularly.

Track the number of visitors to your site, the pages they visit, the ways they reach your site, the bounce rate, the duration of their stay on your pages, and various other data. These will help you pinpoint the flaws and introduce the necessary tweaks.

Making Things Easier: You may have an excellent product and an enthusiastic customer service team, but you may not have the expertise in making your business easily searchable online.

There’s nothing wrong with hiring a third party to do SEO and localisation for your business if you get a significant international sales to boost in return.

2. Localised online marketing

Online marketing encompasses several digital marketing strategies, including email marketing, social media marketing, and online ads (displayed on sites, blogs, games, and video streams).

If you are trying to reach out to a global audience, you can’t just use one language for all of your marketing materials. Additionally, a simple translation is not enough. Your online marketing should be localised to suit different regions or countries.

In localisation, the marketing content is not only converted into a different language.

Some words, expressions, references, or themes may be modified to make them more appealing to the target market or to avoid things that may be considered offensive or inappropriate. Images, symbols, or parts of a video may also be changed for the same reasons.

Making Things Easier: Again, you have the choice to entrust the localisation of your online marketing campaign to reputable digital marketing companies with a good track record in localisation. You don’t have to do everything on your own.

3. Participating in trade organisations and events

On the non-online side, you can also boost your sales to international customers by getting involved with nonprofit and governmental organisations created to help exporters.

In the United States, for example, there’s the US Chamber of Commerce, the United States Commercial Service,  and Export.gov, which assist businesses that are trying to break into the international market.

You can also find organisations that specifically facilitate trade to certain countries. For American companies that are planning to expand to South Korea, for example, the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea can extend some help.

Additionally, you can participate in trade shows designed to connect exporters or businesses that target global customers with prospective customers and other businesses.

These shows serve as a platform for meeting business partners or potential customers. They provide excellent networking opportunities. They can also serve as a way to learn about competitors and obtain ideas useful in operating a business and attracting new customers.

In summary

Optimising e-commerce operations, localising an online marketing campaign, and getting involved with trade organisations and events are effective methods for gaining customers from abroad.

Startups don’t need massive amounts of resources to penetrate the international market. With the ways discussed above, attracting global customers should be fairly easier.

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How to convince people of what has never been done before – and why startups in Asia must think bigger?

Let us be honest – the world still looks to Silicon Valley for the next tech startup bringing us another breakthrough product or service to change the lives of millions forever.

The ‘Valley clearly has a monopoly on giving birth to many of the world’s most valuable technology companies.

These ‘zero-to-one’ ventures are supported by a community of investors who know that the most valuable companies do more than copy/paste what has worked elsewhere.

Nonetheless, investing in an unproven concept always requires a great deal of trust, and perhaps this is why a culture that puts faith in exploring uncharted territory is crucial to nurturing startups reshaping the status quo.

Our entrepreneurship community in Singapore is thriving, and we should also focus more on transformational innovation.

Singapore already provides world-class infrastructure for startups and a vibrant startup scene, but there is no escaping that innovation must at some point involve doing something genuinely new.

Singapore has exceptional foundations to do just that, and more ventures of this kind would further increase our global influence. We are effectively a ‘unicorn country’ that rapidly transformed into a preeminent nation.

What lessons can we learn from our history to become the launchpad for Asia’s most transformational startups in years to come? Availability of risk capital is one part of the equation, and we have a good amount of it.

Also Read: Why trust is the biggest barrier to entrepreneurship and innovation

The much more significant (and easily overlooked) factor is our motivation and risk-taking culture. Singapore startups are in such a privileged position that they need to think bigger. We need to trust in our ability to make a global impact – beyond translating good concepts into Asian markets.

While this shift is underway, it remains challenging to pitch and fund a truly transformational idea. Specifically, it requires others to trust our vision. My upcoming book is about just that – building the trust you need in order to innovate, in six simple stages.

Using this well-researched trust model, here is an effective sequence for how to pitch zero-to-one ideas the right way:

Present the right version of yourself : Stage 1, Reputation

Often it is not who you are, but how you tell your story that matters.

We are different things to different people, and is associated with the right people in the right capacities makes a huge difference.

Before your idea gets a stage, you must convince people that you are worthwhile engaging with. As the saying goes, investors put their stake in people first and ideas second.

Create a hook: Stage 2, Temptation

Before you can expect interest in your pitch, you must activate your audience. We are familiar with this process when using technology (i.e. you do not expect your car to move before you turn on the engine) but strangely seem to overlook this with people. You can do this in several ways, e.g. by talking about an everyday task or object in a new way, or with surprising insight.

Another great way to do this is by creating suspense – a simple example would be: ‘Last Friday I had an experience that completely changed my life’. The more relevant your prompt and the more curiosity it arouses, the better it will activate your audience.

Tell a great story : Stage 3, Connection

Humans are wired to connect with stories, and history has been passed on and influenced with the power of stories for thousands of years. Observe the traditional storytelling format – a likeable hero (your target user) who faces an insurmountable challenge (your problem statement) and suddenly encounters a perfect solution (your idea). You are doing it right if your audience physically reacts to your story, i.e. changes their body language as you narrate (think of the last time you went to the movies).

Throw in a supporting fact or two: Stage 4, Validation

If your audience has entertained you for this long, it is time to reward them with a fact that affirms their positive impression of you. Make sure you have hard evidence that your problem is real and worth solving, and/or experimental results that demonstrate people’s inclination to your idea. The best possible validation is pre-orders for your product or service, which you can collect in online or offline ways. Nothing makes for a better business case!

Give people more of what they like: Stage 5, Attachment

Say you have sold your audience on the content of your pitch. Now, it is tempting to go directly to the ‘ask’ – investment, resources, etc. A better way to continue from here is to repeat stages 1 to 4 in a summary of your pitch that takes your audience through the same sequence again in a much faster rhythm.

Fuse with your audience: Stage 6, Affiliation

Finish off your pitch by removing the distinction between you and them. By now, your audience should be so convinced that they want to associate with you.

Speak about how ‘we’ can have an impact, and what ‘we’ can do together. Then, go for your ‘ask’. By now, your audience will see you as part of them, and asking for funding will no longer be viewed as a one-sided request.

Instead, your value in the partnership has already been firmly established, and now the investment is framed as their contribution to a collective effort. The key is to help your audience imagine that you are already a team, before asking for any contribution – a small but essential difference.

Feel free to use this in your next pitch, and I wish you all the very best to make your ideas succeed.

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Most may even be surprised that some of the services they enjoy, especially in the financial sector, already employs blockchain technology. 

In the Philippines, over 500 companies now tap fintech firm Salarium’s blockchain-powered human resource services for payroll disbursement. In Hong Kong, listed firm Chong Sing Holdings Fintech Group is slowly transforming its back-end office as its new blockchain-enabled platform prove to be faster in processing loan applications. 

Truly, the blockchain has proven itself worthy of the dime and time spent by investors in the financial sector, but there are a handful of companies making a case for its disruptive potential in other industries, too.

In Singapore, a startup called Pundi X believes blockchain can pave the way for a decentralized telecommunication industry. Later this year, the startup is launching its first smartphone product—the XPhone—which can be used for calls and texts even without a service provider. Instead, the device will run on Pundi X’s blockchain-powered ecosystem called Function X. Developers envision it to be the next global mobile ecosystem as it will be opened to other smartphone manufacturers, too. 

Also Read: Realtime analytics and trends will help unlock the secrets of the blockchain ecosystem

Set to do more than just trade cryptocurrencies, the Function X can publish DApps or decentralized apps, and access websites through the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), described by the MIT Technology Review as a “peer-to-peer file-sharing network”. This platform is poised to be blockchain phones’ gateway to its own Internet, its own HTTP. Its main difference from the traditional Internet is how it shares information to users. 

Accessing websites or any online assets in the HTTP today means requesting access to the original server hosting them, which takes massive amounts of bandwidth and time.

It’s partly the reason why data services remain costly in most countries. But with IPFS, data is identified by unique cryptographic codes. Anyone who wants to access any site or data may connect with another user who may have accessed it before, the location of whom may be closer than the original server hosting it.

The process makes data access faster and more efficient. According to MIT, those codes cannot be faked, securing users from cyber attacks. 

Pundi X developers believe that as more manufacturers adopt the ecosystem, blockchain phone users will be able to create a decentralized community, completely removed from traditional web and telcos.

It’s an effort to create a mobile experience that can preserve users’ private data as Function X runs on a “trustless system”, meaning, no one entity owns the platform. On the business side, developers may run and distribute scalable apps and programs even without third-party platforms like GooglePlay and Apple’s the AppStore for example, cutting costs for game and software studios. 

Those savings could be channelled to investments that could help developers create and run more efficient and cheaper programs and tools. That’s a win-win scenario for both businesses and consumers. 

The big and small companies betting on blockchain phones

Pundi X is not alone in this effort. Last year, Israel-based Sirin Labs also launched a blockchain phone called Finney, similarly running on a decentralized ecosystem called Sirin OS. Both the XPhone and Finney can be interchanged between Android and “blockchain” modes, to cater to both mainstream users and cryptocurrency owners. 

Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC is also betting on a future with a decentralized web. In January, the company, which helped Google develop its flagship phone Pexel, started selling Exodus 1, a smartphone that allows users to trade, send and store a number of cryptocurrencies on its phone through an app called Zion. 

While it still can’t run DApps, HTC is already hinting that the phone will have more blockchain-enabled functions. Even smartphone giant Samsung released its flagship phone S10 with a pre-uploaded cryptocurrency trading app.

It’s worth noting that these smartphone developers made sure that the futuristic functions their devices possess are matched with great hardware.

All of the smartphones mentioned have the features of a top-tier device: a respectable phone camera that can compete with most brands’ flagship phones, robust battery life, and sleek designs. These features somehow help blockchain phones be easily enjoyed and accepted by most, somehow democratizing their advanced functions. 

Once these devices take off to the mainstream, the decentralized web is only imminent. Remember that IPFS will only work as envisioned if there are already thousands of devices hosting data.

Not only will it create a more efficient Internet service, but it will also mean a more secure web. With thousands owning their own data, platforms are no longer at risk to massive hacks and breaches. And that’s a future that not just blockchain enthusiasts and experts will enjoy.

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