Things have changed in the dynamic B2B commerce world.

Frost & Sullivan predicts that the global B2B e-commerce sales will reach over US$6.6 trillion by 2020, surpassing business-to-consumer (B2C) valued at US$3.2 trillion by 2020.

In Asia, Forrester haspredicted a growth of 12.1 per cent per annum in B2B e-commerce with B2B marketplace being the prevalent mode of business. The adoption of B2B marketplace is booming especially in Southeast Asia, China and India.

With names such as Ralali, Global Sources, and Zilingo, B2B is booming with reasons to borrow from their success path.

So what are the common underlying key success factors of these B2B marketplaces?

The chief criteria underlying the success these B2B marketplaces were transparency, market visibility, and a plethora of business solutions to their buyers and sellers. Here are four success factors which we believe has made them successful.

Adoption of an omni-channel strategy 

These B2B e-commerce sites and marketplaces also have self-servicing functioning that offered its customers an omnichannel experience to easily access any information about the products they wish to purchase on any platform. Moreover, both buyers and sellers are assured to make safe payment transactions via a systematic and secure payment method.

Embed customer-centric processes 

Many customers come into the B2B marketplace scene with prior experience of convenient omnichannel B2C e-commerce sites. With this preceding expectation, they alter their processes to readily meet the needs and expectations of incoming buyers and sellers.

Also Read: Standard Chartered, Assembly Payments form JV to bring payment solutions for global e-commerce industry

Easy to use platform with great user experience 

Ease of use is a table stake to reach marketplace users but not an easy feat in B2B. Unlike B2C shoppers, B2B shoppers have a slightly different buying experience as they are compensated as part of their job to do so.

They prefer not to spend hours browsing through websites and catalogue to find what is needed, especially if it is a recurring purchase. Often, they are on a budget that could be subjected to a pre-approval limit or require request approval before purchase could be made.

Therefore, today’s B2B marketplaces make a specific impact on such features as requests for quotes, bulk ordering, custom pricing, as well as personalisation features to create an almost self-servicing B2B user experience.

For example, India’s JimTrade’s simple registration process ensures certain platform features to be streamlined easily in order to improve user experience, while IndiaMART has been investing in a lead management system since 2017 to help the suppliers better manage the leads generated.

Augment platform with solutions to create strong ecosystem delivery 

Successful B2B marketplaces collaborate with other platforms or solutions to develop new offerings, manage customer experiences or filling gaps in existing business and supply chain processes.

For example, Zilingo announced last October that part of its US$100 million investment will leverage smart technology-led solutions to offer financial services solutions including unlocked credit, working capital financing and insurance to its ecosystem users.   A second example would be smart warehousing.

Smart warehousing is warehouses that are manned by drones and robots to help sort, scan and move goods. By seamlessly integrating new technologies with warehouse systems, smart warehousing help to boost efficiency, productivity and cut costs.

OfficeMate invested over US$33 million in 2019 to develop smart warehouse capabilities with a clear objective to upgrade service quality and deliver a better user experience.

Also Read: A beginner’s guide to the B2B e-commerce business

No matter which industries these B2B marketplaces service, there is an underlying baseline for success: Offer an easy to use and optimised platform, recruit wide-ranging suppliers to offer a wide range of products and services, and as well, to further accentuate the perks of your marketplace.

It is also important to take into consideration an optimal commercial fee that is suitable for your market landscape to best monetise your e-commerce platform. All these attributes add as building blocks to the success of your e-commerce marketplace.

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I am Aulia Halimatussadiah, the co-founder and CMO of Storial.co.

Writing is my go-to sanctuary and with over 30 published books under my kitty, I now run Indonesia’s only, online self-publishing platform with 150,000 writers Storial.co. It is a social storytelling platform that allows writers to do direct publishing digitally, get direct feedback from readers and directly monetise their book per chapter.

I am also a marketing pro and the Co-Managing Director for Girls in Tech Indonesia. I have been a mentor for young mentees in entrepreneurship.

If you are wondering how I juggle it all, here are my daily productivity hacks. Worth a steal!

I wake up at 5.30 am and start my day with the intention of having a better day than yesterday.

I listen to a guided meditation by Dr Joe Dispenza for 20 minutes.

I sit at my home office and start writing the things that I’m grateful for in my gratitude journal. (I’ve been doing this practice since 2014 and it has helped me a lot to keep myself optimistic).

I am a checklist person, so I start making my to-do list of the day on my paper notebook. I start checking emails that are mostly related to approving something (press releases, storyboards, campaign ideas, etcetra) and make connections with potential partners.

Also Read: 5 simple yet effective ways to enhance remote team productivity

I have signed up for automatic email reports on the things that I want to measure like the number of newly registered users, active readers, and writers, number of chapters written and bought. I study the data and find out ways to optimise traffic sources and make new strategies.

I prepare for a morning meeting, two hours before it starts.

I listen to an audiobook at Audible while I shower and eat. The latest book that I listen to titled, This Could Be Our Future by Yancey Strickler, Co-Founder of Kickstarter. I like this book for it is offering a concept to build a society that looks beyond money and toward maximising the values that make life worth living.

I read a book on Kindle through the cab ride. This time, it is a spiritual book by a Russian quantum physicist Vadim Zeland. I like to have a strong positive start in the morning with good books.

At the office, I meet with my team, update the status of current marketing campaigns and review the success as well as planning for our next campaigns. We are in the business of supporting our writers to get exposure to more readers. We believe that everyone should have a chance to express themselves in writing and be rewarded for the effort they make in creating their stories.

I prefer lunch meetings with investors and mentors. I update him about our three times growth in revenue this month, our partnerships line ups and our plans for 2020. As a good mentor as he always been, he never throws us any compliments, just an ‘almost compliment’ such as, “Not bad, la!”

Also Read: Indonesia’s Storial, the startup that will fuel your literary ambition

I use calls with foreign investors to reevaluate our direction. They give us great feedback on what the industry needs and expects from us. My CEO and I usually can execute one or two initiatives after these calls.

I like to use the afternoons to go to the gym using the brand new MRT in Indonesia. I enjoy my time pondering while walking at Jakarta’s sidewalks and grateful for new developments in Jakarta. While I’m on the treadmill, I continue listening to my Audiobook and make a little progress, as I never run more than 10 minutes.

I support a cause related to youth, women, and refugees in Indonesia. I visited refugee learning centres in Jakarta to see how can I help more in their facility. Refugees in Indonesia cannot work and cannot go to school. They need more volunteers to teach refugees kids some math, English, Bahasa Indonesia and basic skill to use a computer.

I catch up with my best friends over dinner and they are all mostly entrepreneurs themselves. Our conversation topics would be around fundraising, growth strategy, reaching KPIs, managing team, juggling personal life and staying sane in the process.

I try my best to sleep around 10.30PM, while reevaluating my day, what and how I can do better that day, I listen to any random guided meditation on Youtube and fell asleep.

I guess a day in the life of a Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) sounds like a normal day in the life of another person. It’s just sprinkled with tons of empathy, curiosity, patience, excel sheets, PowerPoint presentations, and a mess of data on her plate.

Bon Appétit!

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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 and earn a byline by submitting a post.

Join our e27 Telegram group, or like the e27 Facebook page and sign up for our upcoming webinar on how to manage founder’s burnout. 

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Finance

Grab nabs US$700M from Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group to bring financial services to users

Singapore-based ride-hailing startup Grab has announced that it has raised more than US$700 million from Japan’s bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, as reported by Bloomberg. In total, Grab now has about US$9.8 billion in its dispense.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group intends to integrate its financial services to Grab’s users.

Grab last raised an extensive Series H round in 2018 and 2019, worth US$1.5 billion investment from SoftBank Vision Fund. It was then followed by a US$300 million funding led by Invesco.

Facebook participates in Indian edutech startup Unacademy’s US$110M Series E funding

Unacademy, a Bengaluru-based edutech startup, has onboarded Facebook as one of its latest investors in its Series E round of US$110 million funding. Inc42 reports that General Atlantic also joined the Series E round, along with Sequoia India, Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital, Blume Ventures, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, CEO, Flipkart, and Sujeet Kumar, cofounder, Udaan.

Unacademy has said that it plans to use the funds to launch more exam categories, test preparation categories, acquire top educators, and create more learning experiences for the learners through its content and product. In addition to raising the funding, Unacademy also provided exits to some of the angel investors.

Founded in 2010 by Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh, Unacademy first began with a free YouTube tutorial to teach students. In 2015, the company began offering free learning in lessons on every possible topic in multiple languages.

Also Read: Unacademy raises US$4.5M, now educators to create free online courses

India clocked a staggering US$2 billion in the edutech industry, with Datalabs by Inc42 recorded around 4450 edutech startups in India with most capital injected into the test preparation and online certification segments.

Business

Singapore’s biotech Life3 Biotech to introduce an agri-food pilot facility

Supported by Singapore Land Authority and Singapore Food Agency, the city-state will have its first plant-based alternative protein production facility to enhance food security developed by biotech startup Life3 Biotech.

Based in Singapore, the startup synergises knowledge in urban agriculture, biotechnology, and food science to develop sustainable functional food and beverages, and it will set up an integrated agri-food pilot facility located at Paya Lebar. The facility will be used to kick-start the production of Veego, Singapore’s first plant-based alternative protein source.

The pilot facility is a testament to ongoing progress in the local alternative protein scene. Life3 Biotech aims to promote health and wellness and reduce the occurrence of chronic diseases through alternative protein food production. The facility will also serve as a showcase that integrates the farm-to-table concept for intensified local production of sustainable alternative protein sources, as well as does test-bed innovative concepts and conduct deep research to achieve eco-circularity and sustainability.

Founded in 2015 by Ricky Lin, their flagship product is a proprietary plant-based protein (Veego) that aims to meet the rising demand for environmentally-friendly and healthy alternatives to meat.

Talent-focussed investor Entrepreneur First shares its newest deep techs cohorts

Entrepreneur First reveals its sixth cohort of 19 deep tech startups coming from Singapore, Bangalore, and Hong Kong. The cohort comprises startups from technologies such as using platforms to monitor the performance of electric-vehicle batteries, and others, according to a report by The Business Times.

Also Read: Foodtech in Singapore through the eyes of startups

However, because of the Covid-19 outbreak, the supposed investor day that was scheduled on February 13 had to be cancelled. The startups were instead pitching to investors directly.

Entrepreneur First’s method is matching individuals with deep expertise in various fields to each other to form a founding team. Each startup formed then pitches to investors at the end of the programme for venture-capital funding.

The new cohort has four companies that are graduates of a joint programme between Entrepreneur First and startup accelerator HAX that focuses on hardware development. Nine startups in the sixth cohort are from Singapore including Quantship, a price-prediction technology startup for freight and charter rates for bulk shipping companies, and TeOra, a startup that programs smart microbes to replace synthetic materials with natural and sustainable products.

Alchemy enters the trial phase in Singapore, integrating Binance into payment service

The CEO of Binance Changpeng Zhao has announced on a Twitter post that its payment service has been integrated into the blockchain startup Alchemy’s system following a trial phase in Singapore, The Coin Republic reported.

Alchemy states the need for a strong infrastructure to enable the utility provided by cryptocurrencies. Alchemy seeks to solve the need for a base system to allow cryptocurrency transactions, smart contracts, apps, and such in the corporate sector that can be easily integrated within existing businesses.

Alchemy’s backers include Coinbase; Alphabet, Inc. Chairman, John Henessy; Samsung; Linkedin co-founder, Reid Hoffman; Yahoo’s co-founder, Jerry Yang; Chris Kelly, former legal chief at Facebook; and Stanford University.

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Picture Credit: Life3 Biotech

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Agriculture, the third-largest contributor to Indonesia’s economy, provides livelihood to millions of its people. As per a 2018 survey, nearly 33.5 million farmers from across the country are engaged in agricultural activities, of whom eight million are females. Nearly 4.5 million of them are connected to the internet, with 725,000 being females.

In 2018, Indonesia spent IDR30.1 trillion (US$2.18 billion) for the development of agriculture. This suggests the government is serious about the growth of the industry.

The advent of technology in agriculture

The strong growth of the agri sector has opened a plethora of opportunities for innovators and tech companies. The beginning of the last decade saw the emergence of several startups, which promised to address the inefficiencies in the sector and increase the yield for farmers using hardware and software solutions. Although they failed to make a mark in the beginning, continuous awareness campaigns by the private sector and government clicked. As a result, the industry saw a gradual adoption of technological solutions by small farmers.

A nation-wide programme, called “Hackathon Merdeka”, was held in 2015, which raised the issue of food and agriculture in Indonesia.

Also Read: Singapore Budget 2020 and what it means for the tech ecosystem this year

The event was supported by the Office of President of Indonesia, Kemenkominfo, Kemendag, Kemenkopolhukham, and was organised by the developer community Code4nation in partnership with East Ventures. This also worked in favour of the startups operating in the space.

Opportunities

The opportunities for agritech startups in Indonesia are aplenty. A large growing population, with a fast-expanding middle-class, is any startup’s dream market. As the domestic market grows, it will have a higher domestic consumption of food. This is what startups are attempting to leverage.

According to Pamitra Wineka, Co-founder of TaniHub, an e-commerce platform that connects farmers with the consumers, Indonesia needs to make food security a priority since it is now a net importer of agricultural products. Hence, there is an opportunity for agritech to help increase yield and productivity.

In addition, a majority of the food crop imports are for animal feed. Hence there is a room for domestic production of alternative animal feed as well.

Melisa Irene, Partner at East Ventures, says there exist massive opportunities in the retail/consumer segment to increase the efficiency between supply and demand.

Which are the most active agritech startups?

As per our research, the list of the most active agritech startups in the country include 8villages, Aruna, Crowde, Eden Farm, eFishery, Eragano, HARA, iGrow, Jala, Kedai Sayur, MSMB, Minapoli, Sayurbox, TaniHub.

Among these, TaniHub, Kedai Sayur, eFishery, Eden Farm, and Crowde are top-funded.

500 Startups and East Ventures, with three investments each, are the most active VCs. Other notable investors are Golden Gate Ventures, Insignia Ventures Partners, Intudo Ventures, among others.

e27 has prepared a well-researched and in-depth report on Indonesia’s agritech industry and it has many other details and insights and comments from multiple industry leaders. The report will be released next week.

Stay tuned.

Photo by Jan Kaluza on Unsplash

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SOCAR raises US$18 million to expand car-sharing platform

SOCAR, the platform which provides car-sharing services in Malaysia, has raised US$18 million in a Series A funding round from Eugene Private Equity and KH Energy.

Based in South Korea, the startup aims to use the fresh funds to enhance its platform, grow within Malaysia, and expand into new countries by Q4 2020.

“The extra capital will also be used to improve its app’s user experience, add new modes of car sharing, support more payment options, and expedite the onboarding and processing of license approvals for new users,” said Socar Malaysia CEO Leon Foong.

The company is currently operating its 27 different models in over 1,000 locations in the Klang Valley, Johor Bahru, Penang, and most recently, Ipoh.

UangTeman closes US$10M in series B round led by ACA Investments

UangTeman, an online lending platform which lends money to borrowers with no credit history, reportedly raised US$10 million in the second part of its Series B funding round, according to Tech in Asia. The round was led by Singaporean private equity firm ACA Investments with participation from Pegasus Tech Ventures and Japan’s Spiral Ventures.

The first part of the company’s Series B funding round was led by Draper Associates and Japan’s KDDI Open Innovation Fund.

Also Read: Startup of the Month, August: UangTeman, an online lending platform in Indonesia

“Whilst headline growth rate is sexy and will fetch high valuations, I believe that at the core of viability of every business – startup or otherwise – is its economic fundamentals and sustainability for the long term,” says Aidil Zulkifli, the founder and CEO of UangTeman, who expresses his desire to build loan products that are less risky and more sustainable in the market.

e27 to reveal Indonesia’s most active agritech startups in an in-depth industry report 

e27 is set to launch a report that aims to provide an in-depth analysis of Indonesia’s agritech industry along with insights and comments from multiple industry leaders.

Set to be launched next week, the report will reveal the most active and top-funded startups in the region.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Singapore’s Life3 Biotech to have its first plant-based alternative protein production facility

It will also reveal the most active VC firms in the agritech sector in the region.

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Image Credit:  Luke Ow

 

 

 

 

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