When COVID-19 first struck, I immediately called a number of our most exposed clients to ask them how we could help. 

It is an interesting time because business-as-usual practices have gone out of the window, forcing companies big and small to innovate to survive.

COVID-19 affects everyone, and there is a noticeable shift in the habits and behaviours of consumers, whether they are spending less on travel, retail, or simply staying indoors. 

Business needs have changed in light of COVID-19

Businesses are seeing a fundamental shift in how their workforces operate and engage internally. So those that can innovate fast will be able to weather the storm, while those who aren’t will likely struggle to survive.

It’s apparent that while video will be a crucial form of communication over this period, companies are keen to ramp up their efforts on other types for content to inform their customers and keep their brand in front of mind.  

Adapting business strategies rapidly

Shootsta is headquartered in Singapore which felt the impact of COVID-19 earlier than some of our other regions. So we’ve been able to use that time to guide and even pre-empt the needs of our clients, especially in times of uncertainty. 

Also Read: Afternoon News Roundup: Lifetrack Medical Systems partners Philippines government to identity COVID-19 patients

Teams are quickly becoming remote, and our work environments are changing faster than we can communicate with our teams. We’re working with enterprises to adapt to the situation and innovate how they communicate to a distributed workforce, both internally to employees and clients. 

To facilitate the increasing need from companies to communicate digitally, we’ve now brought forward our plans to expand beyond corporate video. We currently coach and assist companies in creating pre-produced webinars, podcasts and explainer animations, furthering clients’ digital content strategies through Shootsta.  

The need to innovate instead of sticking to tried and tested solutions

We’ve established our reputation as an agile and dynamic company, and our clients look to us for innovative solutions to ensure their businesses face as little disruption as possible.

This also means filming and creating video content in ways that are unusual yet allow them to achieve their business objectives.

Beyond enabling companies to create and distribute video content swiftly, we step in as consultants to enterprises, advising clients on the importance of regular communication to ease worries, engage teams, and establish trust among stakeholders.

We’re already experts at video production. The introduction of our new products will help our clients rapidly deploy new strategies to adapt to what are very challenging times and create more innovative forms of stakeholder communication, through podcasts, pre-produced webinars, and mobile phone-filmed announcements to global teams.

Also Read: Indonesia is ripe for further disruption by tech-enabled firms: Adrian Li of AC Ventures

 New opportunities for business

 The way I see it, every incident presents new opportunities for business. The reality is that with the economic slowdown off the back of COVID-19, companies are now extra careful with their expenditure and investments.

We’ve seen how companies are trimming the fat and taking a lean approach to keep up with changing times. 

We see the actual value of digital transformation that it is not merely a nice-to-have, but a critical need to stay afloat and come out unscathed post-COVID-19.

For those who have yet to embark on their digital transformation journey, now is the time for businesses to make their processes digital, immediately.

To strengthen the trust with their clients, companies need to be in hyper-care mode with their brand and stakeholder relationships. Therefore we’ve taken on the role of risk and reputation specialists, working with our clients to be authentic, transparent, and over-communicative through digital channels. 

Maintain a work-life balance and social interaction while working remotely

Mental health is something I take very seriously, and I prioritise my team members’ overall well-being above all else. There are enough tips and guides out there talking about how employees can stay productive while working remotely at home so I won’t dwell on that.

Also Read: Good vibes only: Sailing through COVID-19 crisis with mindfulness meditation

Instead, I think it is essential that we set boundaries for work and leisure. Especially for those who are used to working in the office, being at home shouldn’t mean we disrupt our entire routine. Some tips I tell my team: wake up at the same time and get ready for work, put on office attire to get into that office mindset, and clock off at the time we normally would.

Being at home means we don’t interact with our colleagues nearly enough as we are used to, and one way we counter that is to schedule casual check-ins with individual teams. Every day, we set aside time for fun conversations and witty banter.

This keeps us sane and helps us stay close-knitted as a company.

For those working with kids in the house as well, I have started a fun arrangement with my daughter, in the same way, we tell her to eat her dinner, one vegetable, one piece of meat, one vegetable, one piece of meat.

I’ve told her I would focus on one section of work undistracted; then I’ll play with her, later work, then play. We need to realise that our family still needs our attention and compartmentalise our lives. 

Tech tools I use to help with productivity while working remotely 

A few apps I love: apps that regularly notify us to stretch and drink water, music streaming platforms to ensure we maintain our rhythm and flow in a new work environment, and video conferencing software to maintain a business-as-usual presence with our clients. 

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

Our team is constantly creating videos to communicate important messages internally and externally, and we rely on both our LinkedIn network as well as our CRM database to share the content we film.

I’m also a huge fan of Slack and use that to talk to our teams who are working remotely. Beyond work-related conversations, we take the time to check in with one another, ask about their mental health, and share messages of encouragement to ensure that even when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

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In mid-March 2020, 21 founders from SEA Founders got together on a Zoom call to discuss the impact of COVID-19 on their startups. The top three concerns were delayed revenues, burn rates, and movement restrictions.

In order to preserve the runway, many founders are keeping a close eye on cash flow. Especially the salary cost, which is the largest component of many budgets.

Shorter workweeks, unpaid leave, salary and bonus cuts, and freezing hires are some of the early cost-containment measures already in place.

The Singapore government has also unveiled new support measures in the Resilience Budget, for example, bridging loans, job support scheme, tax, and fee deferments to help businesses stay afloat.

Despite all these measures and the best of intentions, many founders are facing the grim reality of letting some people go.

Yes, that dreaded ‘R’ word. Retrenchment.

Also Read: {Updated} Singapore’s Madison Technologies develops global contact tracing portal to combat COVID-19 spread

Up till now, the startup scene has only seen the growth story. This sudden downturn has caught some founders and their fledgling HR teams by surprise.

I think managing planned exits is a delicate process. The key is to balance the needs of all the stakeholders while minimising disruptions to your core business.

At ConnectOne, we have developed the 3C Model to help founders and their HR teams manage exits: Compliance, Compassion and Communication.

Compliance revolves around laws and regulations that are in place to protect both employees and employers. These include notice periods, severance payments, tax declarations and cancellation of employment passes for foreigners. Startup founders need to be aware of legal requirements in order to manage their financial and reputational risk.

Compassion is the vital ingredient required in any retrenchment exercise. It is emotionally-draining and mentally-exhausting for all involved. From founders to retrenched employees and even those who remain. My advice is that “while many may prefer to remain in the comfortable realm of data and the rationale, this is one instance when founders will have to dig into their emotional reserves to ensure that people exit with their dignity and self-confidence intact.”

Communication is crucial during times of crisis. It’s not a single step — but a continual process. In order to balance compliance and compassion, there are internal and external stakeholders to identify, assess and target messages for.

While this black swan event continues to unfold, let’s continue to hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

As a gesture of support to the startup community, ConnectOne will host a one-hour free webinar on retrenchment advisory. This is exclusive for founders, their HR representatives and VC partners only. Register here.

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Most of the startup business owners put a lot of effort into gaining new customers and increasing their sales. But they tend to forget one of the most crucial parameters of monthly recurring revenue or MRR – the ‘customers’. 

This behaviour of customer negligence leads to loss of customers over time which is also referred to as customer churn.

As per the authors of ‘Leading on the Edge of Chaos’, a mere five per cent reduction in customer churn can increase your profits from 25-125 per cent.

Further, studies show that as much as 97 per cent of customers leave companies silently. Even the mobile phone industry experiences a churn rate of 21-38 per cent in a year.

This brings us to another term – churn rate. Churn rate is defined as the percentage of customers leaving a company, in a given period.

But, what is the best way to predict customer attrition or loss? Are traditional transactional analytics still relevant for effective customer churn analysis? How to leverage unstructured data for customer churn analysis? And, what is customer churn analysis, to begin with?

Also Read: How to market your tech startup?

Let us find out answers to all these questions one by one and find out some of the best ways for customer churn analysis.

What is Customer Churn Analysis?

Forbes defines customer churn as an event when customers cancel their subscriptions. It refers to the process of losing customers over a period of time. And the process of analysing customer churn data to measure, monitor and lower the churn rate is called customer churn analysis. 

Let us explore the term and its types in detail.                               

Classification of Customer Churn Analytics:

There are two types of churn analytics:

• Unstructured churn analytics
• Transactional or structured churn analytics

Transactional churn analytics focuses on structured data collected over time to predict, monitor and offer ways to reduce customer churn. Most of the companies opt for this traditional analytical method when it comes to predicting churn. 

However, they fail to realise one simple fact – Customers don’t leave a company or a subscription or an app overnight.

The true answer to finding actual reasons for customer churn lies in the unstructured data which also offers 80 per cent of information about customers. 

Why don’t businesses leverage unstructured data?

Unstructured data comprises data collected via human-to-human interaction such as emails, chats, messages and communication logs. Creating an organised repository of such haphazardly collected information is a herculean task.

Also Read: Morning News Roundup: Antler pledges up to US$500K in funding to startups battling COVID-19 

Though most of the service and customer-centric companies employ automation and smart tools such as an online helpdesk system to collect data, there is a long trail of customer information and interaction left in different places. Event-generated data such as data generated after product failures etc is yet another source of unstructured data. 

Now, it is clearly understood that the root of customer churn lies in unstructured data. But still, many retention strategies don’t leverage it. Let us understand why.

Almost all the retention leaders are already using some sort of transactional analytics tools. After investing millions of dollars in the traditional analytics models that can predict churn they believe that they already have a churn analytics tool. So, investing in another novel system seems to be out of the question.

Further, the unstructured data has a lot of redundancy and sorting it to form an organised data repository requires a lot of time and effort. 

After having had an overview of customer churn analysis and its types, let us move ahead to find why it is important to analyse churn.

Why does customer churn analysis matter?

Customer churn amounts to a loss of revenue and a higher customer acquisition rate or CAC. Angry customers can spark a chain reaction with their negative feedback which is more than enough to kill your reputation within a matter of days.

Churn works against financial growth and eats up your revenue. Further, acquiring new customers is five to 25 times more difficult than retaining pre-existing customers. 

Also Read: TNB Aura’s special fund to invest US$2M each in COVID-19-affected startups in SEA

Let us try to understand the stats with the help of an example. 

Remember the time when the world-famous automobile brand Toyota recalled nearly nine million vehicles worldwide because of some mechanical issues? It was one of the most trying times for the brand known for its quality cars. More shocking was the way the PR team handled the situation. The brand reputation was in shambles and the revenues hit a record low. Later it was speculated that a vindictive regulation team might have been the reason behind this massive scandal. 

Well, all in all, the brand took a fair enough time to be back on track and the bleak memories of its massive customer churn are still fresh. 

An efficient, robust and smart customer churn analysis empowers you to devise a long-term customer strategy. Using the data you can predict whether your current customer support system is worthwhile or not.

Netflix is a recent customer churn analysis example where the brand used AI-based algorithms to analyse data such as demographics, preferences, watch history and ratings, etc to offer personal recommendations. This boosted its revenue and helped it overcome churn.

Other important reasons to invest in customer churn analytics is to deliver better customer experiences and to optimise services and products in a proactive manner. 

Hence, businesses around the globe invest millions of dollars in customer churn analysis.

After learning the importance of customer churn, let us move on to find the best ways to do customer churn analysis.

Also Read: TNB Aura’s special fund to invest US$2M each in COVID-19-affected startups in SEA

Leverage unstructured data

Invest in an intuitive, efficient and smart online help desk system to record all the communication with your customers in ONE place. Depending on your setup you can either opt for ML or AI-powered data analytics to find actionable insights into the unstructured data such as messages, communication logs, chats, and emails.

Doing this will offer you a direct idea about the customer happiness index and customer satisfaction. Work on the root cause of problems and proactively communicate the results, updates and novel upgrades to your customers.

Takeaway:

All the answers for customer churn lie in direct vendor-customer communication. Employ this information to improve the churn rate.

Choosing the right automation

Invest in automation that employs innovative analytical techniques rather than traditional transactional analytics. Predictive behaviour modelling, AI and ML-powered analytics, and micro-segmentation of customer data are some of the novel practices in churn analytics.

Takeaway:

Upgrade your traditional predictive analytical system and opt for hybrid automation to gather more relevant data. Use Machine Learning for better customer retention.

Look beyond churn prediction

To stay ahead of attrition, it is important to look beyond churn prediction and simple inferences. It is important to identify the first signs of customer lifetime maturity.

Prediction of customer’s lifetime value, identifying customers with high-risk towards churn and proactively working towards increasing the revenue from existing customers are some of the ways to make your customer churn analysis better.

In addition to this, getting customer feedback on a regular basis can help you realise their potential tendency to churn. 

Takeaway:

Don’t limit your scope to predictive churn analytics. Look for more options that can help you identify the customer’s lifetime and value attrition etc.

Also Read: How can startups survive COVID-19?

Proactive customer retention with targeted goals

Go for proactive customer retention even before a customer reaches a high-risk stage of churn. Sending proactive emails, improving product integration and onboarding processes and employing metrics such as ARR (Annually Recurring Revenue) and MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue), etc are some ways to fight proactively for customer retention. 

Takeaway:

Devise strategies keeping every individual customer in mind. Instead of marketing and targeting a group based on geographical location, employ smart clique-generating principles to form groups with similar preferences, interests, problems, and expectations.

Humanistic automation approach

As per Forbes, opting for a humanistic automation approach for delivering better customer experiences and tackling churn can give a new life to your startup business. Robotic email responses and pre-recorded customer support messages only make your customers feel uncared for. They don’t feel valued if your customer support team doesn’t show a humanistic side during problem resolution. 

Doing customer churn analysis with AI-powered algorithms can help you in this regard.

Takeaway:

Your customers are human and expect that distinct feel of being valued by another human while using your products and services. Don’t consider the job done by just buying a customer helpdesk. Try to tailor the customer experience as much as possible.

This completes our discussion on the best practices for customer churn analysis. We hope all our readers find thoughtful takeaways from here to fight churn in a novel and better manner.

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The COVID-19 outbreak has affected all of us and disrupted our way of life. It has wreaked havoc in many markets and industries, with its impact on businesses apparent — in terms of operations, sales and headcount.

The communications industry has, undoubtedly, seen its own set of challenges, especially on brands’ reputation and corporate image. The last few weeks have certainly been rough for everyone, especially in the communication industry — we are, after all, the first line of defence when crisis strikes.

A few days ago, we ventured into hosting our very first webinar, where we invited a panel of expert communicators hailing from the startup industry to discuss how to tackle communication challenges and why brands matter more so than ever during such times to remain relevant and trusted during these turbulent times.

When I made the call to some of my friends while thinking about getting them all together for this online panel, Jacquelyn Cheok, Communications Manager, gojek (Singapore) said: “We surely do need some distraction in the midst of all the crisis that has come upon us. This can be educational and we certainly can learn from each other.” That was my starting point.

Keep the channels open

As communicators, our lives have also become unpredictable. The daily news has controlled how our day goes. That got me thinking: Are brands thinking that way? Do they realise that communicating during bad times is as crucial as communicating during good times?

Also Read: 8 ways to position your brand to target the right customers

We work with several startups, some of whom we have seen grow far and wide in this region over the last few years. This pandemic has forced us all to pause, think and absorb. The effect is way beyond just your consumers. It now affects your employees, your partners, and probably even their families. Hence, keeping the channels of communication open becomes more important today.

Prantik Mazumdar, Managing Partner, Happy Marketer, said during the webinar: “Keep the focus on your staff, customers, partners and leverage social media to amplify positive happenings or just ensure your current communication is truthful, positive and helpful.”

Don’t kill your brand

Brands should maximise the downtime wisely by working on their recovery plans, planning for the future with current assets, and utilising the time to remain visible and afloat. This can be done through methods such as website marketing, email marketing and phone calls.

Chope, one of the oldest startups in our local ecosystem and a disruptor in the F&B sector, has been the forefront of this crisis with an estimated 200,000 people in the F&B industry at risk of having their livelihoods disrupted. Being in the midst of this industry, they play a crucial role to better understand the impact on their partners.

Their recent white paper in collaboration with Professor Sheryl E. Kimes, Emeritus Professor of Operations Management at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration and a visiting Professor of Analytics and Operations at the Business School at the National University of Singapore, unveiled findings on restaurants’ preparedness for long term impact of more than six months, decline in revenue and reservations, and more.

The white paper also provides advice to restaurants on mitigating strategies, apart from covering key risks and recommendations for F&B businesses on handling unprecedented closures and mandatory measures. This was a responsible step taken by Chope.

Also Read: e27 Webinar: Why silence is not golden

It clearly positioned them as one that cares for its partners, a player that is taking its role seriously. Some of the key findings of this report were alarming — not to forget, this research was done and released before Singapore went into the ‘circuit breaker’ mode on April 7, 2020.

• 93 per cent of restaurants surveyed saw a decline in revenue
• Close to 80 per cent of restaurants reduced casual labour hours as cost-cutting measures
• Chinese restaurants were the most affected, while cafes and alfresco spots proved more resilient
• More restaurants turned to takeaway and delivery but found it less effective compared to targeted discounts and 1-for-1 offers and even special occasions

“Through social media marketing, prioritise the spread of positive messages and encourage discussions of positivity in these tough times. Pause campaigns that do not make sense and allow social media to be another Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) channel,” as rightly put by Heather Cheong, Vice President (Regional Marketing) of Chope, during the webinar.

She further elaborated: “This is the time to protect your brand and price. Never cheapen it as it will be hard to recover. What brands decide to do now will have an impact in years to come. Instead, brands should relook at their partnerships, use this time to engage with companies with deeper resources.”

Being connected is key

This pandemic has surely taught us that being connected is both good and bad. The world is at a point today where it took no time for a crisis like this to spread far and wide. Guess those are some of the ill-effects that come out of a digitalisation process.

The irony as communicators is that we can’t live without it today. Neither can a business. It is the only way to reach out to employees, customers, media, and the public at large, especially at a time like this.

Also Read: How building a brand personality helped us up our startup game

Hence, it is important to use this time to understand that digitalisation will be the new normal or sure remains a critical communication platform untill the virus situation stabilises. Nothing compares to physical connection, but until we are able to do so, the digital world is giving us options to stay connected nonetheless.

Pause, think, read, listen and analyse

Aptly put by Prantik: “This breakdown has surely forced us to feel the need to pause, think, read, listen, analyse and strategise because marketers usually are always too busy ‘doing’. It is important to look at a macro view and realise every bit count.

The governments in this region have set great examples for us to follow by keeping the channels of communication open. This has surely helped us to stay positive and better understand the reality.”

For any communication professional, crisis communication is probably the best on-the-ground learning process, but who would have thought it would be of this scale and nature. This may turn out to be the most challenging case study any marketer in any part of the globe has worked on during their professional career.

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The world has never encountered anything like COVID-19 before and this has inadvertently given rise to the true power and meaning of community, where different communities have rallied together against a common “enemy” to do their part, to flatten the curve.

Community builders and leaders from around the world have been challenged to pivot and re-strategise on how they can engage their communities, moving all activities from offline to online, in the combined efforts to practice physical distancing and yet preserving social connectivity.

These efforts serve not just to keep brands and businesses alive and relevant, but also to preserve the sanity of community members who will suddenly find the need to fill a void in their life.

Kampung Collective, based in Singapore, very quickly pulled together a dipstick survey involving 66 community builders from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, China and  India.

This exercise also involved 30 Community Builders from a diverse representation of verticals and industries involving startups, venture capitalists, freelancers and government bodies, in both the profit and non-profit spaces, who participated in an online discussion addressing five key challenges that COVID-19 has impacted their respective communities.

Also Read: theAsianparent onboards ex-Mumbrella Asia GM Dean Carroll to drive offline initiatives for brands, communities

We summarise below the points of discussion and further findings from Kampung Collective:

Challenge #1: How do I build deep relationships with my community online?

One thing is certain, all who participated in the online discussion unanimously agree that over-communication on the online space to community members is preferred over not being heard at all.

The data also suggests that even though members might not be interactive and engaged through the online channels, it does not mean they are not seeing and reading information and activities that are happening real-time as you read this report.

Understanding what your community wants and needs is crucial as this will determine if the connections should be one-to-many or one-to-one and how regular the “check-ins” need to be and at what intensity.

Challenge #2: Our people are facing distress, how can we help?

Show vulnerability and talk openly about feelings because this shows authenticity and builds trust to allow for deeper connections even on the online space.

Now is the time to be creative – explore and start activities and challenges that take members outside and away from work-mode. Adopt more than one channel of connection for each member and understand what works best for each.

Also Read: All in the family: How to build a community that accelerates business

By identifying other empathetic community champions and leaders within the community, we can elevate them and empower them to further your reach and touch more with the personal touch.

Challenge #3: What are some ways we can engage with our community online?

Whilst most people are going to the more accessible and traditional platforms such as Zoom and Google Hangouts, there are actually quite a number of other free-to-use (or paid) platforms available for you to explore, from intimate one-to-one to one-to-many conference-style options.

Challenge #4: Our people are finding it hard to survive or secure their jobs, who will care about community?

It never is easy to communicate a cause and message that is larger than life and especially one that is eating up every aspect of everyone’s life, but as leaders in your respective communities, it is your responsibility to help your members understand this.

As Winston Churchill aptly put it, “To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”

Now is the time for Community Builders to lead our communities to the common goal to flatten the curve and help bring normality back to everyone’s life again.

Challenge #5: Unsure what type of content should we be sharing now with our community

With the large amount of unreliable information being circulated on different channels, it is important as leaders in your community to be careful to only communicate facts! Content should be positive and can be interspaced between news, resources and fun facts.

Also Read: The Unicroach approach: 10 tips on community building

Understanding what your community would find valuable and useful will help you decide which channels and mediums to use and what sort of innovative initiatives to roll out.

Also for your interest:

The discussion also brought to light more areas for further consideration and have been tabled for the next online meet-up.

Some key areas to highlight would be the issue of digital overload and fatigue with everything now being brought onto the online space; the possible consolidation of resources and channels as a solution to sieve through all the content (noise) for the most relevant to the receiver; attending to those who do not have the means to have the information delivered to them through online channels; and also understanding if the new engagement systems that have been put in place will be the new norm as a long-term implementation for community builders, even after the COVID-19 crisis.

For a more detailed report of the data, you may access it here

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India has a population of 1.3 billion and countless daily wage workers are stranded, jobless and hungry. Migrant workers, including teenagers, are walking all the way back home to their villages (sometimes over 50 miles away) and their entire families are starving and in dire need of help.

Indian entrepreneurs and startup investors living abroad all around the world — from Silicon Valley in the West to Hong Kong in the East — have come together in solidarity to urgently raise a US$1M #Covid19IndiaFund to meet the immediate and urgent needs of the most vulnerable families in rural India. 

Prominent entrepreneurs, investors, tech executives and celebrities, such as Craig of Craigslist, Joanne Wilson, Padmasree Warrior, Mira Nair, Shekhar Kapur, Ranvir Shorey, Arlan Hamilton, Nakul Mandan, Nora M. Denzel, have supported #Covid19IndiaFund through donations and/or social media shares. 

With very little action, we can literally save lives in India! In India, our dollars can go incredibly far. With only US$30, we can give food and hygiene kits to a family to survive for a whole month.

After evaluating several options, we have selected American India Foundation (AIF) as our partner non-profit of choice. They already have a vast infrastructure in place, including 300-plus staff members in India, and they will provide us with a transparent impact report a few weeks after the fund deployment.

AIF is a top-rated 501(c)(3) non-profit with corporate partners such as Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Dell and IBM, and board members such as Mastercard’s President & CEO Ajay Banga.  

AIF has already been active on the field (press coverage by India Today and The Economic Times), and our fund will help them further reach hundreds of thousands of Indians in dire need of help. 

This is a race against time, and we hope that you will donate whatever you can afford. Every penny counts! The campaign page transparently describes where your money will go. All donors will get receipts for tax deduction under Section 501(c)(3) of US Internal Revenue Code as well as an impact report post fund deployment.

We hope that you will donate whatever you can afford and invite your friends to contribute. Sharing campaigns on social media can increase our donations by as much as 350 per cent.

Here’s a template you can use: 

Countless daily wage workers are jobless & hungry in India amidst #COVID19 lockdown. Please donate & invite your network to contribute to $1M #Covid19IndiaFund https://bit.ly/Covid-19IndiaFund. Help 25k+ vulnerable families in India with food/survival kits and medical help!

We sincerely appreciate your consideration!

If you have any questions, feel free to contact any of us active volunteers: Ashish Aggarwal (San Francisco), Charu Sharma (San Francisco), Mohan Belani (Singapore), Pritish Sanyal (Hong Kong), Syed Musheer Ahmed (Hong Kong).

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In times of global health crisis like this, where many countries are facing either partial or even full lockdown, one of the things that we miss the most is visiting restaurants. For me personally, my favourite part about dining in is seeing the menu –and wondering the process that they had gone through to develop them.

But today, I learned how artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics can play a part in developing a well-loved restaurant menu.

Meet Wrap Bstrd, who dubs itself as the first F&B brand and dark kitchen in Singapore to be driven by AI and data analytics.

As a result of a partnership between tech-driven F&B company Ebb & Flow and AI solutions company SQREEM Technologies, Wrap Bstrd offers a range of wrap dishes that were developed combining behavioural data capabilities and pattern analysis with the skills of chefs, creative professionals, and branding experts from the two companies.

In an email interview with e27, SQREEM Technologies CEO and Co-Founder Ian Chapman-Banks explains how the company’s evaluation of over 200,000 individual data points to map behaviours and trends of distinct consumer groups in Singapore allowed the team at Ebb & Flow Group’s Dark Kitchen Lab to analyse customer journeys, predict demand, and map behavioural intent to purchase.

Also Read: 3 of the strangest uses of artificial intelligence that could make sense in the future

“What this means is that everything that went into the creation of Wrap Bstrd was derived from our ability to pinpoint the exact tastes and preferences of office workers in the CBD area – local comfort food that comes in convenient packaging,” he says.

How exactly does this process better than the conventional way of menu development?

According to Philipp K. Helfried, Chief Investment Officer at Ebb & Flow Group, it starts with enabling the company to take a lot of the guesswork and manual research out of the usual process required to build out F&B brands from the ground up.

“The ability to analyse 200,000 data points and convert these into actionable insights means we are able to glean a very specific direction to work towards when crafting our brands, and the menus. This way we can augment the creativity of our chefs by giving them the tools they need to make sure their recipe is a hit with a very specific demographic; in this case, office workers in the CBD area,” Helfried elaborates.

“Our use of data and analytics also spans more than just the creation of the menu, it also informs our decisions with regards to branding, and marketing; how, where and when we reach our audiences. It also allows us to trial new concepts and brands at a fraction of the cost of conventional methods, so we can test out new menus and fail fast with very minimal cost impact,” he continues.

Also Read: Artificial intelligence has been flourishing incredibly in these 5 Southeast Asia technology hubs

Technology in your plate

 

In their Artificial Intelligence Trends to Watch in 2020 report, CBInsights revealed some of the biggest themes to come up in the world of AI this year: from commercial deepfakes to AutoML to tackling small data problems in AI.

Implementation of AI in industries such as F&B –especially later when businesses will try to survive the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic– might also present an unprecedented urgency to it.

Chapman-Banks is certain that the use of AI in F&B industry will be a trend in the future.

“In the F&B sector, AI or tech is traditionally only used to simplify operations. But we plan to go one step further and use it to craft concepts, develop brands, inform marketing decisions and even help companies make key strategic and business decisions,” he says.

“If you are able to not just know, but really know what your customers want, your course of action becomes much clearer. Which means you can innovate that much faster,” he adds.

Also Read: Artificial intelligence is a key consideration for companies looking to adapt operations to optimise user experience

But as a tech company, SQREEM is aware that the barriers of adoption amongst non-tech business include lack of information.

“Non-tech businesses may not be aware of the possible use cases,” Chapman-Banks points out.

Together with Ebb & Flow, SQREEM is set to launch at least eight AI-driven delivery-only brands.

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Aerodyne makes strategic investment in Middle East’s drone solutions firm FEDS

Malaysia-based Aerodyne Group, a provider of drone-based asset management solutions, has made a strategic investment in FEDS Group Holdings, a drone solutions provider in the Middle East.

The transaction details were not disclosed.

This investment would allow Aerodyne to leverage on FEDS’s growth trajectory and financial performance to further enhance value for its shareholders.

In the Middle East, FEDS provides premium turnkey aerial inspections of infrastructure assets in the energy utilities, geospatial survey, public infrastructure, and telecommunications sectors.

This strategic investment is part of Aerodyne’s two-year global plan, which will potentially see the completion of seven M&As within the period.

In December 2019, Aerodyne announced a similar strategic alliance with Measure UAS in America.

SFA collaborates with MAS, others to support fintech industry affected by COVID-19

Singapore FinTech Association (SFA) today announced the results of the recently-conducted survey with its members on the impact of COVID-19 on the fintech industry.

SFA has been working with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and key ecosystem partners, including National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute), on initiatives to save jobs and fintech companies.

The key findings of the survey are:

• 81.2 per cent of respondents have implemented business continuity plans (BCP)
• 47.8 per cent of respondents feel that COVID-19 has had a significant impact on their business.
• Larger fintech companies seem to cope better with COVID-19 as compared to their smaller counterparts with less than 20 employees

Also Read: Singapore’s SFA signs MOU with ASEAN’s AFIN to promote fintech marketplace APIX

Top-3 areas which fintech companies need immediate assistance on are:

• Advice on available government grants
• Fund raising
• Lead generation

Commenting on the survey results, Chia Hock Lai, President of SFA, said, “We urge fintech companies to take this opportunity to future-proof their business, build up new capabilities and seize new opportunities during this period. Singapore will emerge as a stronger fintech hub as the ecosystem is standing united to overcome the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

In response to the survey findings, SFA will be working closely with MAS and key ecosystem players like NTUC and e2i to address the main issues of saving fintech jobs through job redesign and upskilling of workers, lowering business cost through the new Financial Sector Technology and Innovation (FSTI) Digital Acceleration Grant for fintech.

Startups can obtain a co-funding up to US$120,000, which can be used for digital solutions and services, facilitating sales with an external auditor to come up with a new self-assessment framework, and funding stimulation through one-on-one access with investors.

Wavemaker Partners adds Gavin Lee to lead the investment team

VC firm Wavemaker Partners has announced that it has appointed Gavin Lee as a new Partner. Lee will be responsible for building the investment team at Wavemaker and is responsible for all investment-related activities.

Lee has led and participated in more than 100 investments and actively supports several Wavemaker’s portfolio companies including Shield and eFishery.

He started his career in venture capital with Matrix Partners China and Infocomm Investments, a Singapore government venture firm now called SGInnovate. He graduated with a BA in Financial Economics from Columbia University and is currently completing his Executive MBA in Finance at Tsinghua University.

CIMB, iSTOX to expand access to private capital markets through DLT

The Singapore branch of CIMB has signed an agreement with ICHX Tech, the operator of the capital markets platform iSTOX. The partnership will allow CIMB clients in the ASEAN region access to a faster, more flexible, and efficient way to raise funds at a lower cost.

iSTOX is the regulated capital markets platform available in any major financial centre to support the one-stop issuance, custody, and secondary trading of digitised securities.

Leveraging on the power of advanced smart contract and distributed ledger technology (DLT) to streamline the issuance and trading process, iSTOX allows investors and issuers to connect directly and removes barriers that have prevented a far greater pool of investors from access to private capital markets opportunity.

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Picture Credit: Aerodyne

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