Globally, the banking and financial services industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation, as more and more countries adopt digital banking practices and new players in the market launch a range of exciting, cloud-based banking products.

Somewhat surprisingly Japan, renowned for a lifestyle that revolves around high-tech innovation, has to date not joined the digital banking revolution that is occurring in many other countries across the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.

The reason for this is twofold: firstly, Japan remains a largely cash-based society, and secondly, traditional legacy Japanese banking systems are relatively antiquated. 

Change is on the horizon however, with the Japanese regulator looking to offer digital banking licenses‘ sometime in the future’.

While there is no specified timeline for this as yet, the Japanese market is poised to capitalise on these regulatory changes that will open up the market to attract new entrants and allow existing banks to offer innovative new digital products.

This puts the Japanese financial services industry in an exciting position, with regulatory changes around the corner which will see the market completely transformed.

Also Read: Digital banking in Asia Pacific: What we can expect to happen in 2020

At Mambu, we expect to see Japan do something of a ‘fast follow’ based on the aggressive approach taken by Hong Kong, where the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) was quick to approve and issue digital banking licenses to a range of incumbent banks as well as more ‘disruptive’ fintech.

With Japan’s track record in digital innovation in other areas, we anticipate the transition to a more cloud-based, digital banking industry will be an enormous success.

While traditionally the journey to launching new financial services products or entering new markets has been a long one, the days of lengthy and expensive core implementations are numbered, with new cloud-based banking services offering a speedy and cost-effective solution.

Rather than having to purchase, develop and maintain a collection of poorly connected systems or components, an API-enabled composable banking architecture lets institutions leverage solutions built on a flexible cloud infrastructure, completely managed and provided as a service by a trusted provider.

The right technology can give institutions the agility to constantly enhance the customer experience, streamline operations and create opportunities to diversify and differentiate. This could range from launching a digital banking spinoff to quickly launching products and testing new markets, all with the built-in ability to scale and grow.

The technology also provides a quicker time to market and the ability to create and illustrate the business value in months instead of years.

Also Read: Think like a fintech company: How banks can capitalise on the digital banking revolution

These could lead to alternative revenue streams, particularly for institutions that have achieved success utilising in-house technology but have reached a point where their ability to grow and scale is now critically limited by that same technology and internal capacity for development.   

On a global scale, financial technology has evolved to provide a vehicle that quickly responds to changing customer demands and market pressures, helping institutions navigate an ever-evolving market.

Once Japanese regulators give the green light for digital banking to proceed in Japan, those organisations that remain reluctant to change will quickly find themselves left behind by competitors and customers.

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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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Too often, entrepreneurs–especially inexperienced ones–take the “luxury” approach to funding, incorporating every bell and whistle into their expansion plan by trying to accomplish all goals at one time. That’s nice, but it’s usually not reality and often forces businesses to be cash strapped because of high debt repayments.

That’s why I suggest entrepreneurs take a three-pronged approach to their expansion planning. This exercise helps business people ruthlessly prioritise their needs and determine what is a must and what is frivolous.

A, and then B, and then C

Let’s say an entrepreneur believes he or she needs US$1 million to make their expansion plans a reality.

Now, write up a plan for that amount. What are the specific investments you will make? What will your cash flow look like afterward? What does your business, in general, look like?

Now do the same exercise with US$500,000. Ask yourself the same questions, as well as anything else that’s pertinent. Can you primarily accomplish the same goals with half the cash?

Finally, do the exercise one more time, this time with a loan of only US$250,000. What are the answers to the questions now? Might it be possible to do what you want to do with only a quarter of the original loan?

Also Read: 3 things cybersecurity startups can do to reinvent business amid COVID-19

And the answer is …

 

No set answer will be correct.

Perhaps your initial inclination that you need US$1 million was correct. And there’s a good chance that US$250,000 simply won’t get the job done.

But there is a decent probability that the middle option might be feasible, especially if it makes you realise that some of the more frivolous “wish list” things you’d like to do are best set aside for now. Remember, you don’t have to accomplish everything at once, and a scaled-down plan might allow you to better focus on more important things, preventing you from overextending yourself.

Of course, don’t get too stuck on exact numbers. Maybe this exercise will have you realise your plan can go ahead effectively for US$790,000 or US$615,000 or US$485,000 or any other number.

The purpose is to gain some clarity and sharpen your focus–not to mention to allow you to decide what makes you most comfortable and enables you to sleep at night. Don’t underestimate the value of that.

Also, keep in mind the time factor. The larger the loan you seek, the longer it likely will take to receive approval from a lender. The saying “time is money” always rings true, especially in this scenario. You might miss opportunities waiting for lender approval.

Remember, business tends to be more of a marathon than a sprint. You need to pace yourself in all aspects, including financing, to better your odds of finishing the race. Hopefully, this exercise helps you accomplish that.

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The article was first published on nfinitiv.

Image Credit: Austin Distel on Unsplash

Register for our next webinar: Best practices for communications during the COVID-19 crisis

The post How to determine exactly how much you need to push your business to the next level appeared first on e27.

Agaeti Ventures and Convergence Ventures, two early-stage venture capital firms in Indonesia, has formally announced their merger.

Named AC Ventures, the new entity will be managed by its partners Adrian Li, Michael Soerijadji, Donald Wihardja and Pandu Sjahrir, who represents Indies Capital.

AC Ventures’s Limited Partners include leading regional digital corporates, local Indonesian conglomerates, founders of China and US venture funds, and technology entrepreneurs, who have scaled billion dollar businesses.

Also Read: Report says COVID-19 might result in US$28B missing startup investment this year

The new VC firm will continue to invest in early-stage technology companies, with a great focus on e-commerce, digital content-enabled services, fintech, and MSME enabling technology. It plans to invest in 35 businesses in the archipelago over the next three years.

AC Ventures has a strategic alliance with Indies Capital, an alternative asset manager focusing on private credit and equity in Southeast Asia, to assist portfolio companies with later-stage capital as they scale.

Li and Sjahrir had been discussing opportunities to work closely together since 2018 when Agaeti was launched. The discussions on the merger started last year.

AC Ventures was formally established in Q3 2019 and over the course of the last six months, it completed several investments through Partners’ (LPs as well as the partners of the fund) capital.

The Jakarta-based VC firm said the prior funds will remain separate and are fully deployed. Their portfolio firms will now have access to the combined partnership to support their growth. The two VC firms have together invested in 70 startups.

“Our objective was to consolidate our resources to create a platform of exponential value that can provide significant support to our portfolio founders as they build and scale successful businesses across Indonesia, the largest market in Southeast Asia,” said Li.

“In addition, AC Ventures’s close partnership with Indies Capital enables support for the portfolio with later stage capital as the companies scale,” he added.

Sjahrir, who sits on the Board of gojek, is Chairman of Shopee Indonesia. He also represents Indies Capital in the Partnership.

He sees strong future potential for high-value creation in the country’s tech sector. “Indonesia already has an established track record of creating billion-dollar valuations for tech-enabled businesses. Given that Indonesia is forecast to be the fourth largest country in terms of GDP by 2030, we are still only at the early stages of potential future value creation through technology.”

Also Read: The global financial crisis gave birth to fintech. What will COVID-19 recession bring?

Alongside the formal merger announcement, ACV has also launched an initiative, called Leadership Talks. It is a series of talks by invitation to portfolio founders, featuring local leaders sharing their guidance on how to navigate the economic and business impact of COVID-19.

The first talk, scheduled for today, will feature Andre Soelistyo, Co-CEO of gojek, sharing his advice on how startups should be navigating the challenging times ahead.

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Disclaimer: Convergence Ventures is an investor in Optimatic Pte Ltd, the owner of e27.

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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.

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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.

Image credit: Mimi Thian on Unsplash

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‘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 🙂

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

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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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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.
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Photo by Sarthak Navjivan on Unsplash

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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.

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Image Credit: UNL,  henry perks

 

 

 

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The shock to the global economy from COVID-19 brings me back to the 2008 global financial crisis.

Although the nature of current shock is noticeably different than 12 years ago, I want to shed some light and share a story about how the 2008 crisis gave birth to fintech innovation. Probably … another great innovation might be born after the COVID-19 crisis is over. 

After the financial giant Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, the face of the banking industry would completely change, ultimately leading to the creation of a new breed of financial institutions – fintech startups.

At the time, many couldn’t foresee how the demise of firms such as Lehman would lead to the beginning of one of the toughest financial crises the world had ever seen.

The consequences were slowly starting to emerge: people were losing their jobs, families were losing their homes, but most importantly to our story, everyone was losing trust in the institutions that were meant to offer us financial support. Trust in a system that was fundamentally broken.

This general mistrust of banking was just the tip of the iceberg.

What has changed?

The term fintech stands for financial technology; so in order for these companies to thrive, they needed to address two fundamental problems. Fintechs needed to reimagine traditional financial products and offer them by means of new and disruptive technologies.

Also Read: 5 reasons why 2020 is the right time to invest in fintech

While the rapid evolution of technology reduced the barriers to entry for many aspiring companies in the fintech space (the first iPhone was launched a year before the beginning of the global financial crisis), something also needed to change in the financial industry.

Consumer behaviour

For decades banks had little to no competition, which gave them the power to monopolise financial services. This is the reason why the banks were able to charge abnormally high commissions, add in hidden fees directly to the rates they offered, inflate foreign exchange spreads and more.

Back then, if you needed money, you went to the banks. Consumers had little choice when it came to financial service providers and so they had to play by the banks’ rules, simply because there were no other viable options.

But the events that started on September 15, 2008, with the collapse of Lehman Brothers instilled a general sense of anger towards the financial system, as well as a lack of trust in the banking industry.

The shift in consumer mentality created a demand that offered new players an opportunity to join the market and offer better.

An opportunity to innovate

In the aftermath of the financial crisis, many highly skilled people working in the financial sector decided to part ways with traditional banking and take on an entrepreneurial route to reimagining and rebuilding the industry as a whole.

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This gave rise to a slew of innovators who started building their own companies that would soon become big enough to take on the very institutions they had been brought up with – this was also the case of Revolut, as Nik, our CEO and former trader at Lehman at the time, explains:

“Many of Lehman Brothers’ top employees who left in the aftermath of its collapse decided to start their own businesses. A generation of entrepreneurs rose from the ashes, but many were disillusioned with the financial system. At the time, I was working as a derivatives trader at Lehman’s when Nomura bought our division, but I ended up taking an offer from Credit Suisse, where I eventually met Vlad Yatsenko, Revolut’s co-founder and CTO. We were both frustrated with the fees charged to send money abroad and launched Revolut in July 2015 as a way to rebuild the industry from the ground up using technology. Fast forward five years, and Revolut is the world’s fastest-growing fintech unicorn, opening 25,000 new accounts each day with over 10 million customers across the globe.”

Focus on technology

Fintechs came to market with a technology-first approach which meant that these companies were hard at work developing new ways of managing our money, in the years following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

They started building financial services based on the evolution of technology and the internet, which allowed them to provide faster and more competitive services – disruption of the financial industry was well underway.

New regulations

It’s said that innovation precedes regulation and this was certainly the case with fintech. The crisis triggered a string of sweeping changes and regulations in the financial sector, aimed at preventing such catastrophic events from happening again.

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Since then, we have seen the introduction of e-money regulation and evolution of the Payment Services of Act. In Singapore, we have seen the transformation of the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Payment Services of Act, which governs many fintech companies, including Revolut, and aims to create an innovative environment for fintech.

In the last ten years, we’ve also witnessed an overhaul of the payments sector with the introduction of the Payments and Services Directives, changes in investment products through the introduction of Markets in Financial Instruments Directives and more broadly, new ways of handling privacy and data protection matters via General Data Protection Regulation.

Altogether, the introduction of these new rules is playing a key role in the development of fintech.

What does the future hold for fintech?

Twelve years after the financial crisis, we find ourselves living in a world where fintech is becoming mainstream and many of them are taking on the big banking players of the pre-crisis era.

More and more people are choosing to trust fintech over their traditional counterparts these days, while competition over who can offer the fastest, most diverse and cost-effective range of financial services has never been more fierce – something that will only improve the state of the finance industry.

Nik Storonsky, Revolut CEO said: “We believe that increased competition should be treated as an opportunity. As long as there is innovation, there is room for more players in the space. If companies are constantly trying to create better financial products for their customers, we’ll improve the financial services industry as a whole.”

So, what innovation will the COVID-19 economy crisis give birth to this time?

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