Day: April 5, 2020

Social distancing regulations to combat the coronavirus outbreak are forcing millions of people around the world to work remotely. 

Now that more offices are sending more workers home for the foreseeable future, what are some of the ways that you can make working from homework for you? Below are those five ways to improve your productivity when you are working from home:

Physical demarcation of workspace

The first thing that you should do is to give yourself a dedicated workspace away from distraction. Choose a separate space for work and home that might be your drawing room, your living room where you work or if you do not have that much space then just choose a space in your room.

Have a dedicated workspace, a place where you can organise all of your work materials and a place where you go consistently to do your work.

It is important from an organisational standpoint as all of your work stuff is in the same place but also from a mental standpoint as having a dedicated workspace draws a boundary between your personal life and your work life working from home.

Thus, physical demarcation of workspace is quite important, mentally and physically. In addition, it makes things more easily accessible in the workplace making you much more productive.  

Also Read: e27 Community shares their proven tools and tricks to work from home

Stick to regular working hours

A lot of people struggle to keep regular working hours because of the fact that they are working at home and can fundamentally work whenever they want.

But the bottom line is if you keep regular working hours, it will help you not only keep your schedule in good health but will also enable you to know when there are start time and stop time each day.  

A strict routine is essential when you are working from home as the lack of physical boundaries makes it hard to be able to switch between home and office mode.

Make sure that you start, pause and finish working at the same routine you would in regular office hours. 

Hit pause

Taking a break may feel a little counterintuitive in terms of being productive or being motivated but in reality, it is not.

Ensure that you take a break whenever you need a breather or want to get away from what you are doing and you will notice that you always come back with an added level of motivation and energy to solving the problem.

Take short breaks, go to the window, look outside, take a walk, take a pad of paper over to a different chair, give yourself five minutes, doodle.

Also Read: e27 Webinar: Work-from-home or work-from-office, which is better?

Take a long 30 to 40 minutes break too; you can watch your favourite shows or movies online. In fact, by using a VPN for Netflix, you can bypass the country restrictions and watch movies of other countries as well. 

This is important to give your brain a rest and what happens when you do take a break is your brain actually keeps working on the problem that you were just working on many times. 

If you are looking for inspiration, if you are looking for an idea then, just by resting your brain, it will go into those machinations and a lot of times it solves the problem on its own.

Therefore, when you come back to it you may be sparked with a new idea or a new approach or added energy for how to deal with what you are working on. 

Clock out on time

Clock-out is the time when you are going to end your day, don’t let it drag. Don’t be that person who says, “I will finish this work after dinner” and then it is eight, you will panic and say, “well, I really need to finish this project” and then you stretch it till 10PM, guess what?

It will be 10:30PM and would still be left with a lot of work uncompleted. You will again push yourself to finish the project no matter what and the next thing you know, it is 1 in the morning.

So, to avoid such situations make sure that your start time and your end time look like bookends. Make sure that you have got two bookends to your day.

Communication is key

When you are working from home, it is essential to have efficient communication with your team to be more productive.

Also Read: Work-from-home: Watch out for cyberthreats amid COVID-19 pandemic

While email might seem like the practical way to stay connected to team members but utilising services such as Skype, Google Hangout, Zoom, and FaceTime is also important as they allow for face to face conversations and allow you to see facial expressions of other team members of your team. 

If you are in an office and you are sitting back to back with someone, then you might feel free to ask him or her any questions you have but it is much harder baseline when you are in a virtual setting, you have to open Slack, you have to send an email making it even harder.

Remote work requires transparency, thus, making over-communication an important factor to convey what is considered traditional workplace emotion and conversations.

Try to check-in with your team members on a regular basis. Create a list of the work on a daily basis and share the sheet with your team members so that they are informed well about the status of your workload and to ensure that they know you are on top of your work.

While working from home does come with many perks, it also does have some real challenges because there is less structure, you may actually work too much and focus too hard and get burned out. The opposite of it is equally possible that it might just be hard for you to focus and get as much done as you really want to do.

The key to overcoming both of these challenges and to be productive while working from home is to set boundaries around your time and space. So when you are working, you are working and when you are not working, you are not.

—

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.

Image credit: Mimi Thian on Unsplash

The post 5 ways to improve your productivity by working from home  appeared first on e27.

‘Stay at home’ is the lifestyle of the year. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has run over all our goals and plans for the year and left us with an indefinite vacuum to fill in and lots of time to internalise and reflect.

But the downward spiralling of the global economy, drastic lockdown measures by countries, and the rising number of positive cases and deaths are enough to drive the calmest of minds into a state of panic. Fear and anxiety are natural byproducts of this fast-spreading pandemic.

Living in a lockdown, lack of social interaction and worrying thoughts about the future — together with the uncertainty of when all this will end and when normalcy will return — can be overwhelming and cause strong emotions in adults and children.

Everyone reacts differently to stressful situations. How you respond to the outbreak can depend on your background, the things that make you different from others, and the community you live in.

It is essential that we channelise all this time and energy to remain active and productive. From yoga-on-demand to free e-learning courses to finally starting to work on that pet project to catching up on family time, bringing about healthy changes to the lifestyle will help us keep all incessant worry at bay.

Also read: How e27 is going to lend a helping hand for the startup ecosystem during the COVID-19 crisis

Life is not easy for the business folks either. Thanks to Slack and Zoom, work-from-home birdies are feeling less idle. But the fears of layoffs, cancelled events, and a creeping recession are enough to keep working professionals and founders up at night.

Amidst all the chaos, e27 understands the need for us to stay calm and focussed. 

Join us for a live meditation session with Bjorn Lee on April 2 at 1:30PM SGT and learn to keep your cool through the COVID-19 crisis.

Lee is a serial entrepreneur and technology executive with experience in Asia and Silicon Valley. He is also Founder and CEO of MindFi, a mindfulness app and B2B wellbeing platform.

He will share the theory and practice of science-based mindfulness meditation that includes 1-minute and long 10-minute daily practices to help working professionals to be

• more positive
• manage their focus and concentration
• ease any worry or anxiety

In 2011, Lee was the Co-founder of Stickery, an educational games startup in San Francisco that was funded by Google Ventures. During that time, he suffered from stress-induced chest pains that were “cured” after he took his doctor’s advice to learn meditation.

In a subsequent role at Zendesk, his exposure to the high-pressure customer support industry made him realise mindfulness is not just a personal problem but a business problem, too.

Lee will share his learnings from life and share his meditation technique to fight panic and anxiety in these trying times.

Register for the e27 Webinar: Keep calm and carry on- Mindfulness meditation for working professionals amidst COVID-19

 

The post Stressful times ahead: How this e27 webinar will help you keep calm and carry on appeared first on e27.

Everybody has a plan – until they don’t. In a hypercomplex and equally connected world, expecting the unexpected is prudent. Except that politically, environmentally and now epidemiologically, we didn’t see global issues coming until they were all too real.

Although I call myself a trust futurist, I am less inclined to make bold future predictions than to understand and anticipate human behaviour. Instead, I believe our choices reveal what we value and trust.

Psychologists will tell you that this is often short-term gain at the expense of our long-term future, but the last thing you and I need right now is a pessimist stance.

We need a plan

Here’s my take: Never before have I seen such an extreme paradox in the forced agility of governments thrust into a crisis-response mode and the proactive gestures of many private-sector players. Everyone’s trying to do the right thing, and it’s worth celebrating all these success stories and acts of kindness.

We seem to have learned from the GFC that waiting out a crisis by looking the other way is about the worst posture we can assume. Instead, airlines and hotels are issuing refunds they don’t have to, retailers in many places are donating items they could sell, and news publications are lifting their paywalls to keep us informed.

Also Read: How e27 is going to lend a helping hand for the startup ecosystem during the COVID-19 crisis

On the flipside, overwhelmed legislators are taking drastic measures and making decisions at speeds political systems usually cannot take. Unsurprisingly, this means that the proactive measures taken voluntarily across industries have greatly relieved the negative effects of mandatory restrictions.

Tough times like these call upon all of us to get out of our seats set aside individual differences and do what is right for the greater good. Every initiative we take to help will ease our shared global burden. It means that relying on governments to bail us out of the situation isn’t going to do it.

Although many societies rely heavily on distrust-driven measures to regulate behaviour, i.e. constraining people with penalties or prohibitions, we should embrace the unifying power of a common enemy to proactively come up with creative solutions in our fight against this pandemic.

It’s an opportunity to dramatically accelerate our digital shift, embrace the future of work and make our value propositions more resilient. Equally, we can use the power of digital to influence communities towards adopting the right behaviour beyond just pure compliance.

Self-control and following rules aren’t one and the same, because the former requires that we care. Never before was it more important to care for our fellow humans, wouldn’t you agree? Focusing on the opportunity at hand will lock our attention on more productive pursuits than resenting restrictions. It will give us a universal purpose.

Also Read: Stressful times ahead: How this e27 webinar will help you keep calm and carry on | e27

The courage to embrace something new and willingness to collaborate will require us to trust each other and our shared contribution to the solution. When we look at the sharing mindset that the Trust Economy has inspired us to adopt in recent years, the benefits are obvious.

Until recently, the distrust economy got away with the notion that rules are all we need and if we act selfishly in the market, that will suffice to create a collective gain. But if we try to apply this purist take on economics to COVID-19, we might as well hoard all the toilet paper we can find and prepare for the apocalypse.

But I’m not just a trust futurist, I’m also an eternal optimist. My home base of Singapore has shown how a balance of well-designed rules and precautions (reactive measures) and public mobilisation (proactive encouragements) are fruiting to contain the viral spread.

Beyond all this fire-fighting and fire-prevention, we should take this time to rethink what really matters, and how we can contribute to a brighter tomorrow.

Hopefully, that will inspire us to be more proactive in how we manage crises, create change and shape our shared future.

Let’s connect virtually if you have ideas on how to do this 🙂

–

Register for a live meditation session with e27 and Bjorn Lee and learn to keep your cool through the COVID-19 crisis.

–

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.

Image credits: Drew Beamer on Unsplash

The post COVID-19 may drive us apart today, but it could bring humanity closer in the future appeared first on e27.

Southeast Asia’s venture ecosystem pledges to support a community-led database for startups talents impacted by COVID-19

Saison Capital, FutureLabs, Jungle Ventures, Alpha JWC, Convergence Ventures, Patamar Capital, Rainmaking, TRIVE Ventures, and Tribe Accelerator are among the Southeast Asian venture capital firms that have pledged to support a community-led talent database to bridge laid off startup employees impacted by COVID-19 with new opportunities.

The official statement said that the initiative is inspired by a ​similar venture-led list in the US​.

“We want conversations to happen so those good folks can find the right companies to thrive in. Doing well in a startup environment is more than about skill sets; it’s also about multi-tasking, taking ownership and dealing with chaos. Especially in tough times, talent remains the most important resource for any startup,” said ​Chris Sirisereepaph, Partner at Saison Capital.

“Individual VCs, founders or startup teams can make their own talent posting by filling out a form on the site. This will be added to the database once it can be verified that it’s come from a real person,” said Chia Jeng Yang, Principal from Saison Capital.

“The talent database is public and transparent so that the community can take the initiative to organically reach out to the right people on an individual basis,” he continued.

These are 10 fintech startup joining F10’s first incubation programme in Singapore

F10, Swiss fintech Incubator & Accelerator, has marked its expansion to Singapore this year by welcoming pre-seed and seed-stage fintech, regtech, as well as insurtech startups into its worldwide collaboration and incubation programme.

According to an article by Fintech News Singapore, the first batch of the P2, the Prototype to Product programme in Singapore will start in May 2020.

Also Read: Tribe Accelerator facilitates additional US$15.7M fundraising to boost blockchain innovations, commencing collaboration with Dubai

The 10 startups are:

Bond180, a startup that aims to make debt markets faster, cheaper, and better with its data-driven reverse enquiry engine for alternative and private debt.

DEXTF, an on-chain non-custodial asset management protocol on blockchain that empowers professionals and financial institutions to effortlessly create and manage digital-native funds.

Fencore, an enterprise data management platform designed to make data management easy for financial institutions.

HedgeSPA, a core platform for global, full-multi-asset investing by institutions powered by AI, big data, and high-performance computing.

Inkredo, a startup that gathers data intelligence from financial PDFs.

Maesh, a Stripe-like fintech that instead of cards, allows consumers to pay to online merchants using their bank’s app.

NOTARUM, a startup that empowers the compliance team to conduct better due diligence checks faster, as a fraction of the cost.

PiChain, a regtech with a mission to make compliance sustainable using a cognitive platform for sustainable compliance via AI and blockchain.

Staple, a startup that can read, interpret, and extract data from business and finance documents regardless of layout, format, or language.

Tokenomatic, a startup that focusses on asset management platforms for creating, managing, and trading portfolios of digital assets.

“When selecting startups for our programmes, we ensure that the teams address challenges that the global finance industry is currently facing. In accordance with the Corporate Members, we have placed the focus on data management, asset management and regulation for the first batch in Singapore. The underlying technologies used by the startups are mainly AI, Big Data, and DLT,” said Lisa Schröder, Operations & Program Lead at F10 Singapore.

F10 Corporate Members in Singapore will have access to startups with the opportunity to collaborate with them. Three Members are already on board in Singapore, namely SIX, Julius Baer, and R3.

US-based gene therapy startup ElevateBio raises funding from EDBI, Vertex Ventures

EDBI and Vertex Ventures, Singapore-based venture capital firms, have taken a part in the US$170 million Series B round for ElevateBio, a startup that builds and operates a portfolio of cell and gene therapy in the US. Both VC firms joined other investors such as US private equity firms The Invus Group and Surveyor Capital, and existing investors like F2 Ventures, MPM Capital, EcoR1 Capital, Redmile Group, and Samsara BioCapital.

Also Read: Swiss fintech incubator F10 enters Singapore, soon to kick off accelerator programme

EDBI is the investment arm of Singapore’s Economic Development Board, and Vertex Ventures is backed by Temasek. As reported by Business Times Singapore, both are first-time investors in the US-based startup.

The funding is said to be used for centralising 140,000 square foot innovation and manufacturing hub, BaseCamp, that provides cell and gene expertise for ElevateBio’s portfolio companies and strategic partners, as well as for starting clinical studies. It is to become a fully operational manufacturing that complies with Food and Drug Administration regulations in the US.

Grab welcomes Peter Oey as Chief Financial Officer

Grab announces today that it has added corporate finance veteran, Peter Oey, as Chief Financial Officer.

Oey brings over 20 years of corporate financial and strategic planning experience to Grab, joining from legal technology solutions provider LegalZoom where he served as CFO for more than five years. Prior to LegalZoom, he was CFO of MyLife.com, a US consumer internet business, and spent over 12 years at Activision Blizzard in various roles including VP, Corporate Controller.

Based in Singapore, Oey will report directly to Anthony Tan, Grab’s Group CEO and Co-Founder. Oey will helm Grab’s finance operations, treasury, tax, procurement, and real estate and facilities department while also work closely with Grab’s President Ming Maa, who will continue to lead strategic business planning for the company.
–

Photo by Sarthak Navjivan on Unsplash

The post Morning News Roundup: SEA VC firms launch talent database of startup employees laid off due to COVID-19 appeared first on e27.

 

Every month, the team at e27 runs a monthly Startup of the Month poll where we pick the best startup to give it some extra coverage and attention that it deserves. Five startups are selected internally by taking into account idea, team, funding and founders. Three eventually make it to the final round, where we take in votes from our Telegram community.

The winner for March is a Singaporean startup UNL:// which aims to build “the internet of places” using a 3D grid to give every cell a unique location ID.

Building location inclusivity 

There is a prevalent example of how digital changes have impacted businesses and everyday life. In the early 2000s, tourists and locals in London were using their extremely reliable and highly respected “black cab” service.

These servicemen had all the places in London memorised! All drivers were meant to pass the Knowledge, which said they had to remember over 25,000 streets in London. This was a big deal because this was not a regular driving examination, and not everyone who took the test passed it.

However, with the entry of services ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft, there was no longer a need for London’s black cab service”.

These services relied on Google Maps. With more people using it, the need for digitised addresses is increasing. However, even though Google Maps have made it increasingly more comfortable for people to find locations, there are still places which lack digital addresses.

Also Read: Ex-Oway Director’s e-commerce app Ezay makes life easy for rural woman retailers in Myanmar

According to the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), approximately 20 per cent of addresses in developed countries, and 80 per cent in developing countries, are not verified. Moreover, an estimated amount of four billion people don’t have an address.

UNL tries to solve this problem by using its technology. The firm has come up with a way to divide the world into a 3D grid of micro-cells, so that rural and even urban locations have unique ID addresses. 

“Most of the world either doesn’t have an address or is poorly addressed,” said William Bao Bean, General Partner at SOSV and Managing Director at MOX, one of the investors of the company. “UNL’s ability to bring an accurate location to developing and emerging markets will enable services from delivery to micro-loans for the next four billion internet users.”

The startup, which aims to bring on the Internet of Places, also wishes to target locations that are not easily accessible such as rural areas, urban, indoor spaces, underground and even airspace aiming to build inclusivity.

The backers

UNL has recently raised US$2M in early-stage funding round from a diverse set of investors co-led by mapping and location platform solutions HERE Technologies and early-stage deep-tech VC fundElev8.vc.

Other investors who joined the round include US-headquartered VC SOSV and its programme Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX), deep-tech investors SGInnovate, and digital venture capital platform Venturerock.

“Even today, billions of people lack a physical address, hampering their ability to access both essential services and reap the benefits of the digital economy,” said Hsien-Hui Tong, Head of Venture Investing at SGInnovate.

“This issue exists not only in the developing markets but also in rural communities found deep in large, sprawling countries. UNL is tackling this problem with its unique addressing solution, which can break the barrier between the physical and digital worlds, enhance connectivity and contribute to the growth of smart cities,” he added.

Also Read: Afternoon News: gojek’s senior management donates 25 per cent of annual salary to COVID-19 affected partners

According to the company, the new money will be used to develop its technology further and for expansion in Asia. The company is currently building local teams in Singapore, Indonesia, India, and Japan.

“UNL is a whole new way to think about locations. It’s about the economic impact and unlocking places to become the gravity points for location-based services. And it’s about economic inclusion: bringing four billion unaddressed people into the global digital economy,” CEO and Founder Xander van der Heijden said.

–

Image Credit: UNL,  henry perks

 

 

 

The post Startup of the Month, March: UNL://, a smart addressing platform for unmapped locations appeared first on e27.