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e27’s remote staffers sharing their work-from-home experience

For those who like to work from home (WFH), Covid-19 is a “blessing in disguise”. They can now wear minimal clothing during the work, have a short power nap in the midst of work, cook own food, login and log out anytime they want — all staying off the surveillance radar of their boss. Not to mention the huge amounts of money and time being saved by not travelling to work.

The list of the benefits of WFH is endless. As Covid-19 spreads rapidly, we at e27 have also been forced to prepare for a scenario where we need to be a fully remote team until the pandemic is checked forever. But we already have a few employees working from home for quite a few years.

Here in this article, e27‘s ‘work-from-home pioneers’ share their experience and give you tips on how to do WFH effectively.

Nina Palad, Accounts Manager

Allocate a dedicated workspace to yourself that has good ventilation, and keep a routine. What we do with the Business Development team is that we have a list of our weekly focus aligned to our tasks and OKRs, so we don’t lose track

Team discussions on Asana are open and tagged to relevant people, for decks, deals, weekly challenges, etc. Good music in the background helps too, when not in a call with clients.

Anisa Menur, Editor

Have a proper support system. If you have family/friends/landlords, communicate and make sure they understand that just because you’re at home, it doesn’t mean you’re available for chit-chats. You’re still working; you’re in that productive head-space and can’t be distracted.

Also Read: Why remote working is the future for startups

Prepare a work corner. A space in your home that is all about work, everything you need to be productive should be there. When the time comes to rest/take break/”go home”, get out of that space.

Get some sun. Seriously. It affects your mood.

Do not deny yourself some bits of fun. I always work with music/Netflix/Youtube playing in the background. Helps prevents boredom/loneliness.

Be clear, sufficient, and straightforward while communicating with the team members. Let them know if you’ll be away from desk.

Shower and wear “outside” clothes. This is weird but it helps you to get in productive mode

Lyra Reyes, Marketing Manager

Stick to a schedule. Generally, I wake up at 6 am, do my morning routine, reading and finish household chores before 10 am.

Speaking of the morning routine, I prepare as if I’m going out. Shower, a bit of makeup, things like that. It helps me mentally get ready to work.

I have a designated workspace. Never work in bed because it’s very very easy to just lean back and fall asleep.

For me, checklists are my friends. At 9:45 am, I sit down and write on a notebook my priority for the day and a checklist of things I need to do and what time I will do them. It helps with prioritising and scheduling. You can also do this digitally, it’s just that handwritten works best for me.

I set up an hourly alarm to remind me to stand up and stretch my legs. Walk around some.

Allot time throughout the day to check and respond to messages. For deeper work, muting the notifications can help.

If you don’t live alone, let people know your work hours so they know not to disturb you.

When you communicate with people, make sure you’re communicating clearly. It’s very easy to confuse other people by beginning a conversation that you’re already halfway through in your head.

Also Read: There are some dark sides to working from home (but I do not care)

Play music while you work but it depends on your distraction level. I have specific playlists for specific types of work. I also sometimes play documentaries in the background. Just not during calls or meetings.

Wencis Jude Acosta, Quality Analyst

I have a dedicated space to work. If you have children, let them understand and respect your workspace.

Invest in a comfortable chair, table and equipment, it helps you work faster.

Let everyone know if you are going to be late or if you need to be out for a while, but always make up for the lost time.

Always have measurable targets for the day, it helps you to feel good.

Do not wear pyjamas, it will get you in the mood to sleep.

Hung Nguyen, Business & Innovation Development Consultant

Communication is very important, not just about work, but sometimes, chitchat with my teammates once in a while can keep the spirit up.

Celebrate wins (small or big) because the feeling of it keeps us going.

Stand up, walk around, or even go outside of the house and take a short break once in a while. I will go crazy if I sit down in a one spot in a room by myself for too long

Snacks are important, it keeps me awake and focused. So does music.

I have a digital clock in front of me to tell me time is running out so I better complete my stuff.

I don’t eat too much for lunch when food coma hits me, and I’m at home, it’s bad, and it might affect the rest of my afternoon.

Prisca Akhaya, Writer

Sync your phone with your laptop, so you can work around your demanding kids/family. Since you’re home all day, kids tend to forget that you are working because you don’t look like you’re.

I agree with sticking to the routine. I just get my kid ready first for breakfast and the day kicks off for me.

The Pomodoro method if you’re super easily distracted (block time to work and reward afterwards for 10 mins winding down).

Mili, Writer

A book and a pencil to jot down tasks and often doodle can be handy.

Second the power of a morning ritual: get up and dress up!

I take small breaks and reward them with a snack or a song or social media checks after every big task strikes out on my to-do list.

Keep the right notifications on. You don’t want all app notifications but surely some.

Zoom, Google Hangouts and Slack for the phone are pretty handy. I prefer to walk around while on calls, to give the muscles a break

Shagun Karki, Writer

Having a good wakeup routine gives me a fresh mind (it’s meditation for me, it can be pilates, cardio for someone else).

When I was working from Singapore, I had a routine — I wake up, take a shower, prepare for the day and commute. But when I work remotely, there’s a temptation to skip that entire process and simply wake up and open my laptop and start working.

I feel that a sense of discipline is important while remote- working.

I like to stick to my everyday schedule, regardless of where I work from, and that helps me with starting the day on a good note and having a fresh mind when I start the day

Having the right mindset is important. If you think working from home will affect your productivity, then it will. But if you see it as an opportunity to be creative, many things can happen.

Infographics: Advantages and disadvantages of remote working

Also, remote work encourages focus on personal well being, and work together. It can’t get better than that.

Different people will experience different things that will work/not work for them. Try different things and experiment.

Sainul Abudheen, Editor

I have been working from home for seven-plus years. Unlike my colleagues, I want my kids around while working. They pump in energy and keep me motivated. (While I am writing this, my two kids and nephew are watching a Tami super hit song from the 2000s in full volume, and I don’t get distracted).

I wake up at around 05:30 am, go to morning prayers, come back, and at 6:30, I head to the football ground on my two-wheeler, which is eight km away from the home. After an hour’s play, I come back, take a shower and log in.

I check my mails. If there any urgent work, I finish them. And then take a 30-minute power nap. Most days, I log out after 8 pm.

I don’t have a dedicated/designated workspace. I can work in my bedroom, dining hall, or even courtyard. If I travel, I carry my laptop along and can even work inside a cab.

Image Credit: 123rf Stock Photos

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Bloomberg: gojek raises US$1.2B to support competition against Grab

Indonesian ride-hailing giant gojek has raised US$1.2 billion, taking the total secured in its current funding round to “just under” US$3 billion, according to a Bloomberg report.

Citing an internal memo, the report stated that the new funding was finalised “just over the past week” at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak around the world. It did not mention the identities of the investors involved in this round.

“We’re not stopping there as we are still seeing strong demand among the investment community to partner with us … There are a number of exciting ongoing conversations that we will be able to update you on very soon,” wrote gojek Co-CEO Andre Soelistyo and Kevin Aluwi in the memo.

Also Read: Afternoon News Roundup: JD.id becomes Indonesia’s 6th unicorn after funding from gojek

The funding round came just after gojek had been reported to be considering a merger with rival Grab — a report that gojek has denied.

The report stressed that this latest funding round will enable gojek to “negotiate from a position of strength” if they do decide to follow on with the merger, especially since both companies have been known burn money in realising its expansion plan.

However, reports of the merger have been met with opposition from competition watchbody in various Southeast Asian markets.

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Afternoon News Roundup: Grab-IMDA partnership aims to help Singaporean startups expand overseas

Grab-IMDA partnership aims to help Singaporean startups expand overseas

Ride-hailing giant Grab today announced a partnership with Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to pilot an accelerator programme for Singapore-based startups to help them grow overseas, according to a press statement.

“Grab is committed to helping more Singapore startups, and micro SMEs build strong digital capabilities, and capture opportunities in the digital economy through leveraging our expansive reach across the region, assets and capabilities and partnerships… The effort is also aligned to Singapore’s interest to become the global-Asian node for tech, innovation and enterprise,” said Chris Yeo, Head of Grab Ventures.

Grab Ventures Ignite (GVI) will be a 14-week programme, held alongside GVI Vietnam programme, to help each other learn and share ideas.

Two startups will be selected for GVI, and the other three will be joining a 3-day bootcamp hosted by Grab, IMDA PIXEL and Digital Industry Singapore (DISG).

foodpanda launches contactless delivery amid Malaysia border close

As companies continue to be hit by the outbreak of coronavirus, the Malaysian government has recently announced a partial lockdown of the region. On that note, food delivery company foodpanda has decided to continue its services and opted for “contactless delivery” in a company statement.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Y Combinator accelerator plans to run next cohort completely remote

Customers can place their order online and inform the rider via the chat function to opt for a contactless delivery. Food will be placed at the designated drop-off spot at the customers’ home or office, maintaining a 1-meter distance at all times.

foodpanda has also urged customers to switch to online payments in a plea to reduce human interactions to a minimum.

“We value the safety of everyone in our community. Our rider hubs provide hand sanitizer and masks free of charge to all our riders, who are instructed to wash their hands every two hours and after each time they handle a delivery,” said Sayantan Das, Managing Director, foodpanda Malaysia.

Indian microlending startup SmartCoin raises US$7M Series A

The Bangalore-based startup announced today that it has raised US$7M in Series A financing from LGT LightstoneAspada and existing investors Unicorn India Ventures and Accion Venture Lab.

Also Read: e27s remote staffers sharing their work-from-home experience

The fresh funds will be used to primarily to grow the company’s loan book, expand its data science team, launch new products and grow the user base.

The company touted its success in re-engineering the complete loan cycle to make it entirely automated, fast, convenient and personalised for the customer.

Image Credit: KiwininSaigon

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As Malaysia closes borders, travel and delivery startups share responses to the current crisis

In a televised address, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said today Malaysia will be closing its borders to overseas travellers for two weeks to check the spread of Covid-19. With this, Malaysia becomes the second country in Southeast Asia to go for a partial lockdown.

On the other hand, Malaysian residents, who re-enter the country from overseas, will have to undergo health check-ups and self-quarantine for 14 days. 

Foreigners will not be allowed to enter the country at all during the said period.

Earlier this week, Italy, one of the hardest-hit countries, also imposed nationwide lockdown, with confirmed Covid-19 cases crossing the 12,000-mark as of yesterday. Several other countries have also implemented quarantine measures and more countries are expected to follow suit.

Of course, this does not subject startups to wait around and react to the situation, as many companies have already started implementing necessary precautions, forcing founders to rethink and revise their 2020 goals/strategies.

On this note, e27 spoke to travel and delivery companies on how they are coping with the situation.

Malaysia-based tour company Tourplus, which eases travel planning by connecting customers to local tour guides; food delivery companies foodpanda, and dahmakan express how they are coping with the situation.

A disaster for all travel-related business

Tourplus told e27 that they’ve seen a major decline in bookings, coupled with increased requests for cancellation and refund from customers, who have booked for April and May. The firm expects further drops as government-initiated partial lockdown prevents international travellers from entering Malaysia.

“Being a travel tech startup, the coronavirus has affected us very much. It has impacted our timeline, goal, and expansion plan. We were to expand into China market by early this year, however, since the virus broke out in China during Dec 2019, we were forced to delay our plan and change our strategy to focus on the domestic market, and when Malaysia partial lockdown, this could be a disaster for all travel-related business,” said Tourplus CEO Rickson Goh.
“We received numbers of cancellation and refund from our customer who have booked for Apr and May, and we will be seeing an immediate drop of booking as the partial lockdown commences. At this moment the option for us is less, what we can do is to lower down our financial burn and sustaining and survive, and that is what we have been doing for the past 5 years,” he added in an email response.

Food delivery services, however, are not as affected as travel companies are. Restaurants will not be open for dine-in but food delivery services will continue to operate, which means Grab Food, Foodpanda and Dahmakan will continue daily operations.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Y Combinator accelerator plans to run next cohort completely remote

The ban does not restrict grocery stores and shops that provide daily necessities either.

Dahmakan CEO Jonathan Weins has also pointed out that supply uncertainty from ingredient suppliers is a major problem. 

Switching strategies

In times of crisis, planning is valuable and just as valuable is switching strategies while being ethical and taking necessary precautions.

Even though Tourplus’s expansion to China has to be called off, the company is offering masks and hand sanitizers to its customers during trips. It is also running a free mask campaign to help tourists with free masks in Malaysia and offering free airport transfer. 

“For our internal business operation, we can start working remotely using Zoom or Slack to communicate, and our direction for the team is to focus on internal development and preparation for a return after three to six months’ recovery,” said Goh as he plans for a bounce back.

foodpanda has also started a contactless delivery service where customers can place their order online and inform the rider via the chat function to opt for a contactless delivery. Food will be placed at the designated drop-off spot at the customers’ home or office, maintaining a 1-meter distance at all times.

Also Read: Why Korean investors are getting attracted to Southeast Asia

“We value the safety of everyone in our community. Our rider hubs provide hand sanitizer and masks free of charge to all our riders, who are instructed to wash their hands every two hours and after each time they handle a delivery,” said Sayantan Das, Managing Director, foodpanda Malaysia.

Dahmakan is also practising ethical strategies and has implemented remote working, social distancing, correct hand washing, among others.

More content will be added to the article as responses continue to flow.

Image Credit: Macau Photo Agency

 

 

 

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Meet the VC: Stephanie Strunk of Amadeus Ventures on why women should support women

Stephanie_Strunk

Five women. Sixteen travel tech startups. One mission.

That is how I would sum up my conversation with Community and Investment Manager at Amadeus Ventures in the Asia Pacific, Stephanie Strunk.

Cited as one of the women to watch in the startup industry in APAC, she was the best person to talk about women in VCs, startups, and travel tech.

Strunk first joined Amadeus Asia Pacific in 2012 and has primarily held roles in Corporate Strategy and Business Development. She has been working with the travel tech startup scene in APAC since 2015, supporting seed stage companies with tech building, expert advice, market access, and funding referrals.

Amadeus has been honing its craft to support the travel business for over 30 years now; they launched Amadeus Next five years ago to help travel tech startups with funding and support. Today, it has extended as Amadeus Ventures with “more skin in the game”.

As an early stage investor for startups sitting at the crossroads of technology and travel, it provides funding, industry expertise, technology, and customer reach to its portfolio companies, executing business ideas that will, directly and indirectly, improve the experiences of travellers.

Also Read: Amadeus Ventures to invest in high potential early-stage startups across APAC

While traditional VCs focus on ROI, Amadeus Ventures –led by five women across the globe– is looking beyond the financial value and seek strategic value to help the parent company fill gaps in their tech offering in the B2B travel space.

More power to women

Strunk is the entry point for travel tech startups in APAC. In her journey so far she says, “finding a female founder in travel tech has been very rare.” Startups with at least one female founder tend to raise more in venture capital funding in later stage rounds (third and fourth), than companies with all-male teams (21 per cent more), she adds.

Gender diversity in the travel workforce is not so skewed as 50 per cent of the global workforce is female. But it is balanced only at the entry-level and thins out as one goes up the ladder, says Strunk.

“If you don’t have a diverse representation of both the genders how will you address the needs of your customers?” she exclaims.

While at Amadeus, about 75 per cent of the business units are led by women, there is scope for improvement in the VC world overall. And she believes in addition to the historic gender imbalance, lack of confidence in women is to be blamed for this disparity.

Women in the workforce need some support to feel confident and this she believes can come from both men and women in the workforce. It could, in fact, be as simple as providing comfort, praise, feedback, etcetera. “But it is definitely important to know what you are good at to start with,” says Strunk.

Also Read: Women in tech: Carman Chan’s Click Ventures is one of the most consistent VC funds globally

She emphasises that external view on how we are is important, but so is internal and we can do so by “getting comfortable with the uncomfortable”.

Working in the startup space is all about the brand, networking and finding opportunities to grow. “It’s all about the personal brand” she adds.

The ratio of women at tech conferences is 4:1, Strunk says. She notes that speaking opportunities have helped her grow and gain exposure. It was Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In that led her to seek more speaking opportunities.

Amadeus Woman Network

The Amadeus Women’s Network’s event in Bangkok

In addition to working on oneself, it is fruitful to have programmes and initiatives to help women build social and business credibility. It should be a collaborative effort and we should have “more women to support women.”

She was quick to note about the Amadeus Women’s Network, an employee-led support group has helped them share best practices at Amadeus. The network also led to the development of a powerful mentoring tool.

APAC focussed

The all-women team at Amadeus Ventures is working with 16 travel tech startups from across the globe, including BookingPal, FLYRBetterezAvuxiCrowdvisionSitumVolantioDawexPanaRefundit; and Strunk is leading the pack in APAC.

Five years ago, travel tech in Asia was in its infancy and since then has made lots of progress. Increasing purchasing power and budget flights have contributed to the travel boom in Southeast Asia (SEA). With India and China becoming rich inbound markets from smaller and more tourism-dependent countries in SEA such as Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines; travel tech startups emerged rapidly.

According to Google’s e-Conomy SEA 2019 report, more than US$37 billion of capital has flowed into the internet economy over the last four years.

Also Read: Amadeus is expanding Amadeus Ventures across APAC to support travel startups

While the majority has gone to e-commerce and ride-hailing unicorns, over US$7 billion in investment funding went to more than 3,000 internet economy startups in the last four years in Southeast Asia. China is also driving ahead of Silicon Valley and the rest of the United States on venture capital dollars invested into startups.

Travelution, a report released by Vynn Capital recently, says that 2019 saw an all-time high of 159 acquisitions and funding activity in the travel tech space while Asia led the number of capital raising with 54 per cent.

Recognising this potential, Amadeus is expanding Amadeus Ventures across APAC in Q1 of 2020. Strunk adds, “APAC is the region for growth and we see a lot of opportunities. The market is diverse and we are paying close attention to Singapore, Thailand, and Indonesia.”

“We initially wanted to build a community to support travel tech in Asia which was not as evolved as North America or Europe. There are a lot of pain points in the travel industry in Asia which we want to solve and a copy-paste solution won’t cut it,” says Strunk.

Also Read: Amadeus Ventures to invest in high potential early-stage startups across APAC

She emphasises on the need for greater localisation in Asia and adapting to local market needs as a recipe for success in the APAC region.

 

 

Image Credit: Amadeus Ventures

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