McKinsey Global Institute Study shows organisations that harness Big Data and Analytics are …

• 23 times more likely to acquire customers
• 9 times more likely to retain customers, and
• 19 times more likely to be profi­table

But a few years ago, Gartner estimated that 60 per cent of big data projects fail. As bad as that sounds, according to Gartner analyst Nick Heudecker‏ Gartner was “too conservative” with its 60 per cent estimate. The real failure rate? “Closer to 85 per cent.”

Since then, the tweet Heudecker sent has been deleted. This is a hard truth that illustrates the problem isn’t the technology, it is you!

Leadership troubles

Leadership and strategy work hand-in-hand. In the past, Big Data Analytics would be a strategy in itself but with the maturity of the technology now and with the abundance of data, the strategy is to sit and look at the crucial problem statement.

It is true but very upsetting to know that the biggest failure in this Big Data implementation is that the C-suite underestimates their involvement to carve out the problem statement.

The key decision-makers in the C-suites should sit and discuss the primary pain the company is facing. They will need to work on a few that would make the biggest impact.

These issues are usually left to the Chief Data Scientist (CDS) (who is usually a very intelligent geek) or the Chief Data Officer (CDO) (again – who is a very smart person that knows how to manage the company’s overall data governance and sees the big picture for data priorities and strategy).

Also Read: The big data heroes of today: citizen data scientists

I remember having a conversation with an ex-Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a multi-billion Dollar company, who suggested that we should churn out more business-minded Data Scientists.

I believe that we are looking at this all wrong. If a Data Scientist can address the business problem and the business strategy, the work of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and CFO would become irrelevant.

This statement can anger the C-suite. It is hurtful but it is important to remind the management that strategy starts from top-bottom.

When this is left to the Data Science group and the line managers or individual departments, you are then left with 200-300 Big Data projects which I predict more than half will fail. After all, failing to establish order and governance over big data projects leads to chaos and poor business decisions and places businesses at a severe disadvantage in today’s data-driven world.

Harvard Business Review indicates that a data strategy helps organisations “clarify the primary purpose of their data and guides them in strategic data management.” Astoundingly according to McKinsey, only 30 per cent of banks have a data strategy.

Deciding to become data-driven can be a long, difficult process that once decided can spur a rush to try to attract data specialists and make scientific inferences before knowing the real problem. That may not seem like a problem because after all, we need data and these specialists know how to handle it.

But do we stop to think about what data we need? This is where a data strategy can be overlooked and therefore crucially missing from a business’s overall strategy.

Poor communication

‘Communications’ are often still taken for granted by management as something that just ‘happens’ through emails, WhatsApp messages, calls or spreadsheets. However, without a well-defined communication strategy, many companies are facing money wastage with every project they attempt to execute.

Also Read: Challenges and opportunities for Big Data enterprises

Poor communication is the primary contributor to project failure one-third of the times and can have a negative impact on project success more than half the time. Once the C-suite has identified crucial strategic initiatives, they must communicate these initiatives down to the line managers.

Now, it is extremely important not to pass it down without equipping these managers with relevant technology and talent. Being in this vulnerable state can lead to ambiguity, noise, and complexity, especially if teams aren’t ready to discover, interpret and use the data in decision-making.

Line managers from various departments need to come together and exchange notes on what data is required to help achieve the problem/strategic statement defined by the C-suite. Having a clear mission will help to recognise data that is going to support business objectives and the sources that might distract from achieving goals.

Everybody says critical thinking is a must-have skill but never has this been more true than when it comes to investigating insights. Don’t purely and blindly take data as fact without ensuring its accuracy or assessing the potential impact this data-driven decision could have on your company.

The tricky part is getting them to identify, store, collect (if needed) and run analysis on the data. This brings us to the next topic.

Lack of skills

Based on my observations and several conversations with other industry leaders, I believe that the lack of skills in organisations contributes to 30 per cent of the failure. This affects or takes effect on several levels:

• C-suite not having the digital leadership mindset to drive strategy
• Line managers not understanding the data they have within them
• Rest of the company, not understanding the lingo of analytics

The danger lies in there not being a culture that normalises embedding analytics in their daily work. Usually, this would be 80 per cent of the company population. No initiative from above can be driven because the rest of the organisation is still stuck in the past and everything that is being spoken would either be perceived as ‘back to the future’, therefore perpetuating resistance to change.

Also Read: Challenges and opportunities for Big Data enterprises

Unfortunately, dataphobes are likely to squander promising business opportunities and often fail to see problems until these problems become full-blown crises. As we know, it is human nature to fear what we don’t understand. Most people, let alone companies, are not prepared to adopt radical changes and to become data-driven.

The challenge lies in ensuring big data projects perform reliably and efficiently enough so that organisations can flip their mindsets from considering big data as only a defensive tool for current activities to using it as a catalyst for business growth.

Ambitious intentions

Nearly all companies that embark on data-driven organisation or digital transformation initiatives are too ambitious. They either spend millions of ringgit on infrastructure or claim a framework for analytic or digital transformation that might not be wholly sustainable or stable. Having observed this for years, it is clear that this has to be tackled from above and below.

The C-suite may try to achieve sweeping change throughout the company to go data-driven—which can lead to counterproductive and overreaching. Organisations are expected to give a quick ROI because of the investment made.

The issue here is that the investment can be made with a lot of assumptions. The reality is the investment was made based on how traditional businesses would do it. They will tender and buy equipment then assume that with a click of a button, it would solve the company issues. I usually say that the selling point is that – press that button and it would solve world hunger.

Data is based on reality by examining what is actually happening. Therefore, decisions should be grounded in facts as much and as often as possible.

Emerging victorious in this landscape of digital transformation will not be made by making huge bets. Winners of the digital age will be agile, pragmatic and disciplined. They will follow a carefully devised transformation roadmap to optimise performance in the functions and operations that create the most value while building the technical proficiency and resources to sustain the transformation.

Scope for hope

60 per cent or 85 per cent is a big number and cannot be brushed aside. But this could be rescued by having some simple but hard measures put in place.

Also Read: Top 5 skills needed to carve a niche in big data

People from the top must define clear problem statements. They need to have a data-driven session to thrash out the strategy and priorities. From there, the C-suite has to parallelly initiate the whole organisation to be data ready. This would be a top-down approach whereby the journey will allow you to meet in the middle, thereby allowing quick wins and long-term initiatives to be driven clearly.

Another important thing is that, based on the maturity of the industry, companies could strategise on if they need to quickly build their used cases or have a team whether internal or external to operate on the problem statement so that they can hit the ground running. This helps to get the buy-in from the management quicker.

Always built a talent strategy around whatever problem statement is produced to ensure there is an opportunity to inherit the solution. Companies can then take it and run it on their own.

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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. We are discussing inclusivity at work and women all of March. Share your thoughts, tips and best practices on how we can make the startup ecosystem more inclusive, gender and culture diverse.

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The boom of Southeast Asia’s (SEA) online gaming market is difficult to ignore. Much of its rapid growth can be attributed to the fact that the region is largely mobile-first. According to Southeast Asia and Chinese Taipei Mobile Games Report & Five Year Forecast by ResearchAndMarkets, the region is home to over 500 million smartphone users, which will reach 628 million by 2023.

Gaming culture in SEA is still highly fragmented as each country has its own nuances. If marketers want to connect with gaming communities properly, understanding their idiosyncrasies is crucial.

Nevertheless, there are over-arching commonalities that help put the SEA gaming market in perspective.

Game face on

For one, the ubiquity of mobile has created a low barrier of entry for anyone looking to get involved, and smartphones are quickly becoming the gaming platform of choice for both casual and competitive gamers. For example, highly popular games such as PUBG and Garena’s Free Fire don’t require high-end phones to play.

Since the region is made up of players with mixed-income levels, this has helped democratise gaming talent. The new generation of gamers will be able to compete at a high level without expensive hardware, therefore levelling the playing field, naturally resulting in SEA claiming the title of fastest-growing region for e-sports worldwide.

Last year alone, the e-sports gaming scene saw more than 50,000 competing teams. An Esports Charts report highlighted Arena of Valor (ROV) and PUBG Mobile as the top two leading games in the Asian market.

Also Read: Blockchain gaming trends in Asia: here’s what you need to know

Arena of Valor claimed the title of most-viewed e-sports mobile game, amassing a total of 72 million hours watched over the past year, peaking at 764,000 viewers tuning in at the World Cup held in 2019.

Another battle royale, PUBG Mobile, has earned the silver spot, collecting a total of 55 million hours watched in 2019. Its most popular tournament, PUBG Mobile Club Open Spring Split Global Finals, gathered 596,000 viewers at its peak.

The total prize pool for the PUBG Mobile Club Open will be increased to US$5 million in 2020, reflecting significant participation growth ahead.

Where there is competition, there is talent, and the fandom will follow. Online gaming communities are rife with influencers that have built a reputation out of streaming gameplay and lifestyle content, generating a large and highly engaged following.

Each market typically supports homegrown talents. Bacon Time, Thailand’s top Arena of Valor team has 640,000 YouTube and over 300,000 Facebook subscribers. Resurgence, competing in AOV, Mobile Legends, and Hearthstone in Singapore has over 400,000 social followers.

Fandom ecosystem

Fans’ devotion extends beyond just consuming content. Gamers often receive large donations from their fans, showing how deep-rooted audience support really is. Donating money is seen as a way to cheer for their favourite gamer and for fans to feel as though they have contributed to their success.

In a way, these fandoms are like self-sustaining ecosystems that collectively make up SEA’s broader gaming community. Players rely on their fans’ support to propel them further in their gaming careers – the equivalent of a political candidate rising to prominence through crowdfunding campaigns before they go mainstream.

Brand value

In this respect, the growth of SEA’s gaming culture has been fairly organic, but it is still nascent. For it to scale, we must find ways to connect the dots between gamers looking to professionalise their talent, and the brands or agencies that can grant them that opportunity.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: 500 Startups invests in e-sports platform ESPL; Indonesia’s Datasaur secures US$1M funding

To do that requires arming gamers with the business-savvy and skills they need to build their brand. It will be fundamental to developing their talents into something long-term and scalable.

Initiatives can be as simple as sharing industry insights, giving guidance on content planning to help build relevance, or how to work with brands while staying true to their authentic voice.

On the other side, brands must better understand the dynamics of gaming culture in diverse regions such as SEA, and how to best operate within it.

Fortunately, a fair amount is being done to catalyse gaming as the ‘industry to watch’ not just in SEA, but the world over. For example, e-sports was recognised as a medal sport in the SEA Games 2019 in the Philippines, and it will also be recognised in the 2022 Asian Games and potentially in the 2028 Olympics.

Singapore is undertaking initiatives to position itself as an e-sports hub – hosting gaming trade shows such as ‘Gamescom’, and competitions such as the ‘Singapore Major’, with a prize pool of S$1.36 million (US$940,000), this year.

In the academic world, university degrees and higher-education courses are focused on the business dynamics of gaming, with some colleges also offering varsity e-sports programs and scholarships for students.

Brands looking to seize SEA’s growth opportunity need to get involved now if they want to guarantee their relevance in gaming once the region really takes off.

Also Read: Thailand E-Sports Arena raises funding from Japan’s GameWith; to foray into Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia in 2020

Needless to say, the appetite for online gaming is there and it’s hugely driven by both fans and gamers themselves. The infrastructure of SEA’s gaming ecosystem is still in its infancy, but its growth is both rapid and extremely promising. It won’t be long before the region cements itself as the global frontrunner and once it does, its momentum will only get faster. Game on!

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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. We are discussing inclusivity at work and women all of March. Share your thoughts, tips and best practices on how we can make the startup ecosystem more inclusive, gender and culture diverse.

Join our e27 Telegram group, or like the e27 Facebook page.

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Finance

HR tech startup EngageRocket secures US$3M in Series A funding led by Qualgro

EngageRocket, the employee engagement and performance software, announced a US$2.1 million investment led by Qualgro, a regional VC based in Singapore.

Existing investors SeedPlus, Found. Ventures, and JobsCentral co-founder Huang Shao-Ning were among those who increased their investment into the company.

EngageRocket has just opened a new office in Jakarta in addition to its Singapore HQ, while exploring other Southeast Asian markets.

The company aims to triple its revenue in 2020 and double its headcount, specifically adding advanced capabilities in engineering, people science, as well as in customer-facing roles in each SEA market to deliver personalised support.

Founded in 2016, EngageRocket offers enterprise customers a solution to make better people decisions with real-time analytics. Its intelligent platform empowers HR professionals to gain better visibility into their organisation’s health and performance.

Singapore’s City Development Limited invests in property tech startup Pupil

Singapore-based City Development Limited has invested in London-based AI startup Pupil, a real estate measurement platform. The funding round brought the total raised since the company was launched in 2016 to US$26.3 million.

This funding follows an oversubscribed angel funding round and values Pupil at over US$100 million.

As the lead investors in this round, City Developments Limited acquires a minority stake alongside a number of US-based investors who were early backers of Rightmove, several European family offices, high net worth individuals, and the managers of some of the world’s largest hedge funds.

Pupil was founded by entrepreneurs James D Marshall, Oliver Breach, and David Mullett to combine enterprise software and machine learning applications to measure the built world through its patent-pending digital twin technology.

Its first product Spec was launched in June 2019 and it has been rolled out across more than 500 estate agency branches, capturing and generating thousands of digital twins of residential property every month.

Chennai-operated CoreStack raises US$8.5M in Series A funding round led by Naya Ventures

CoreStack, a Seattle-based enterprise-cloud governance tech startup with R&D Centre in Chennai, announced a US$8.5 million in Series A funding round led by Naya Ventures with participation from strategic investors.

The company plans to add 20 more cloud specialists to its existing workforce of 64 in its Chennai R&D Centre by the end of 2020.

The fresh financing round will bring CoreStack’s total funding to US$13 million, enabling expansion of sales and marketing efforts. It will also accelerate product development in the area of Single and Multi-Cloud Enterprise Governance Solutions.

The company also expanded its Board with Dayakar Puskoor (Managing Director, Naya Ventures) joining CoreStack’s Board of Directors.

Also Read: IoT startup KeepTrax raises US$1M led by Naya Ventures

It was founded in 2016 by Ezhilarasan Natarajan, Sabapathy Arumugam, Krishnakumar Narayanan, and Thiruvalluvar NB.

Business

ViSenze, Pixibo partner to offer personalised product recommendation for online fashion customers

Singapore-based AI commerce company ViSenze has announced a partnership with Pixibo, a fashion retail platform that facilitates size and fit recommendation.

Also Read: Rakuten leads US$10.5M Series B in AI startup ViSenze

The integration of discovery and size recommendations will make buying decisions simpler for consumers and will hopefully help increase conversion rates and lower return rates for the retailer.

MatchMove announces bid for a digital full bank license with strategic partners Singapura Finance, Lightnet, others

Singapore-headquartered fintech company MatchMove confirmed that it has submitted an application for a Digital Full Bank License (DFBL) to the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

The MatchMove-led application brings together a consortium comprising of Singapura Finance Ltd, Lightnet Pte Ltd, and OpenPayd Holdings Ltd, all regulated financial institutions in their respective markets, with capabilities and experience across the spectrum of digital financial services.

Shailesh Naik, Founder and Group CEO of MatchMove commented, “At its core, MatchMove aims to improve the quality of people’s digital life by extending essential and safe banking services to them anytime anywhere. Our proposed digital Banking-as-a-Service will accelerate this objective by leveraging our existing and already available capabilities to address current pent up demand and reach digitally underserved segments like SMEs and gig workers, amongst others.”

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Image Credit: EngageRocket

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We have always kept our focus on our mission of empowering entrepreneurs with the tools to build and grow their companies. A couple of months ago, we began building a platform that we envision to do just that.

When we quietly launched e27 Pro, our community has been most supportive; offering encouragement and feedback that helped us design e27 Pro into what it is today: a membership programme that is designed to give you actionable insights, exclusive business-building programmes, and tools that enable your company’s success.

We’d like to tell you more about the early adopters of e27 Pro who have helped and are continually helping us make the platform better.

iGlobe Partners

Describing themselves as independent thinkers who partner with the change-makers, the builders, and the explorers in the quest to realise their dreams, iGlobe Partners is a Venture Capital firm based in Singapore with a strong and proven track-record.

iGlobe Partners is created to fundamentally change the way venture capital works — a fund that operates on a global basis, with partner networks in North America, Europe, and Asia working together to help young companies become global market leaders.

The firm pursues breakthroughs, technological disruptions, and fresh perspectives that can potentially advance the future.

Also read: Why e27 Pro is enabling companies’ success

 

Quest Ventures

Quest Ventures is a venture capital firm founded in 2011 in Beijing, China. The firm is a leading venture fund that mainly focuses on companies that have scalability and replicability in large internet communities.

With deep and extensive networks in China and Southeast Asia, Quest Ventures’ multi-dimensional environment, social, and governance strategy was the first in Asia for a venture firm, and supports a range of social good initiatives across Asia for financial inclusion, gender, healthcare, and education for all.

By the end of 2019, Quest Ventures’ portfolio of 50+ venture-backed companies operate in more than 150 cities across Asia, creating employment and advancement opportunities for more than 4,400 employees, while their Enterprise and ESG efforts directly impact thousands more.

 

Qualgro Venture Capital

Staying true to their name being a wordplay on “Quality” and “Growth”, Qualgro is a venture capital firm based in Singapore, investing in B2B companies that deal with Data and SaaS, with regional or global growth potential. They are an ASEAN-focussed fund that invests into internet and technology-based businesses, as well as into education and healthcare.

Operating under the mission of providing high-impact support to exceptional entrepreneurs and to the ecosystem through the quality and values of their people and their networks, Qualgro invests across Southeast Asia, Australia. and New Zealand, at Series A & Series B.

Their goal is to support high-quality teams building high-growth businesses and help them become regional or global leaders in their space.

 

Wavemaker Partners

Wavemaker Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2003 and dual-headquartered in Los Angeles and Singapore. They have over US$380M in assets under management, have invested in over 350 portfolio companies, and have consistently delivered top quartile returns to their investors.

Wavemaker is the regional partner for Southern California and Southeast Asia of the Draper Venture Network (DVN), the world’s leading VC collective comprising 10 firms across 5 continents.

They invest in thoughtful founders who have built an internal conviction through experience and reflection and identified a huge opportunity because they see things differently from most other people, and who run businesses that are scalable, capital-efficient, and sustainable while aiming to create significant value by solving meaningful problems 10x better than existing options.

 

We’ll be sharing with you some more of e27 Pro early adopters soon! Watch out for them.

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Be a member. Sign up for e27 Pro today >>>

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Are you a startup and keen to connect with these 4 funds and 160 others this April? Let us know today >>>

 

 

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Sequoia Capital reportedly chases US$7B in new funds amidst market slump

Sequoia Capital is reportedly seeking a major fundraising push for its venture funds, according to DealStreetAsia.

A spokeswoman for the California-headquartered VC firm has refused to comment on the fundraising plans, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The news comes only a few weeks after it sent an RIP good times presentation and a memo to companies warning them of tough times ahead following the coronavirus scare.

“We sent that memo because we wanted to signal to our founders they should take this seriously,” said Sequoia partner Alfred Lin. “We need to focus on survival. For many of our founders, that means focusing on their cash flow and understanding how much cash they have to get to the other side.”

In the past, Sequoia has a history of investing in billion-dollar startups (Airbnb and Dropbox), during highly volatile periods like the Great Recession and has proved it holds the capacity to withstand such times.

StanPlus raises US$1.5M for expansion 

StanPlus, an Indian healthtech startup which provides 24/7 emergency and medical transportation, announced today it has raised a US$1.5 million in financing from Pegasus FinInvest, according to Inc42. 

Hyderabad Angels also participated in this round.

The proceeds will be used for local expansion. 

The 3-year-old Hyderabad based startup currently has over 350 ambulances operating in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Kochi, and plans to support more than 50K people in the next six months.

The startup has previously raised US$1.1 million in seed capital from Kstart, CM Diamant, a chain of medical centres and hospital in Canada and Africa, and INSEAD Angels (Asia).

Adjust data shows 63 per cent e-commerce revenue rise during Ramadan 

Data from Adjust, a mobile measurement company for data-driven marketers, has revealed a 63 per cent rise in revenue during March and June 2019. The analysis is a result of 13,536 apps based in UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore between the above months.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: HR tech startup EngageRocket secures US$3M in Series A funding led by Qualgro

The rise in revenue and sessions (34 per cent) has been attributed to the festival of Eid as observers were seen to be buying last-minute presents and preparing for the festivities, just over a week before the festival.

“This year, despite the COVID-19 situation that has caused some disruption in the supply chain, our team is still expecting to see a similar increase in GMV during the Ramadan period. This is largely because people are staying home, practising social avoidance and thus, they will be shopping online more during the Ramadan period,” said Ming Chen, Founder of social commerce company Mucho Indonesia.

India’s Vivriti lands US$50M for product enhancement

Vivriti Capital, a Chennai-based digital lending platform, has raised US$50 million in a Series B round from LGT Lightstone Aspada. The company is majorly owned by Creation Investments Capital Management, a private equity firm.

The additional capital will be used for product enhancement.

“The capital will be used to ramp up the technology and the analytical engine powering the online marketplace, and to shore up the balance sheet lending of the company,” said the co-founders Gaurav Kumar and Vineet Sukumar.

Also Read: Government intervenes as 77 honestbee employees file salary claims

The platform claims to have around 2,000 users, 250 issuers, and more than 120 investors on its platform. 

The company claims it has facilitated deals of over US$3.3 billion since its founding.

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