Indonesia-based BRI Ventures has announced the launch of an independent venture fund, called Sembrani Nusantara, to help local tech startups survive and grow amid COVID-19, according to a press statement.

The new fund, which is targeting an Rp300 billion (US$21.2 million) first close from third-party Limited Partners, will primarily invest in startups in the education, agro-maritime, retail, transportation, and healthcare sectors.

Sembrani Nusantara, which means ‘unicorn archipelago’, has already obtained the required licence from the country’s financial regulator OJK.

The venture fund is currently on the lookout for institutional and other types of investors to back the fund.

BRI said Sembrani Nusantara aims to take a more hyper-localised stance by focusing on a single company with the investment philosophy of ‘value over valuation’.

According to BRI, as the tech landscape in the archipelago continues to mature coinciding with the aftermath of the pandemic, the industry’s focus has shifted towards companies that can survive in times of crisis.

“We can see that the industry is shifting dramatically. Until recently, the priority for local startups has been to grow at all costs. Now, the name of the game is to simply survive and reach sustainable growth,” said Nicko Widjaja, CEO of BRI Ventures.

Also Read: BRI, Visa join remittance firm Nium’s Series C round to facilitate tuck-in acquisitions

“The concept of the ‘unicorn’ itself is a word adopted straight from Silicon Valley. It’s a concept that we think is beginning to lose its alignment with Indonesia’s digital ecosystem. We feel that we need our symbol, one that can inspire local startups to rise from the ground and fly high. This is what the Sembrani represents,” he added.

BRI Venture has over US$250 million in assets under management and is owned by state-owned Bank BRI. The VC firm recently signed a strategic MoU to create new joint initiative with ride-hailing giant Grab to create unique growth opportunities for new-age Indonesian startups.

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Image Credit: BRI Ventures

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Last night, the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem was hit with another devastating blow as gojek announced the imminent shutdown of its GoLife and GoFood Festival services, followed by the lay-off of 430 employees.

The shutdown of these services is strongly related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which had prevented customers from using services that involve direct person-to-person contact.

The news came only days after its rival Grab announced theirs. Prior to this, fellow regional unicorn Traveloka has also been reported to lay off its workforce as the ongoing pandemic hits the travel and tourism industries hard.

Many have seen the COVID-19, and the impact it brings to various aspects of life, as a trigger to change. From government institutions to businesses to individuals, we are all encouraged (if not forced) to look at the status quo and decide how we can do better.

As we mourn for fellow startup community members, perhaps it is time to start questioning: What is next for Southeast Asian unicorns, particularly one as significant as gojek?

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

One thing at a time

In the past few years, unicorns such as gojek and Grab have been dubbing themselves as a super app platform. While these companies started off as a platform for on-demand transportation, in the next stages of their product development, it evolved to include a wide range of services from finance to entertainment.

To be honest, as much as I want to believe in it, I have always been skeptical of the idea of a super app. At least, of the extent of its success.

I was there in Jakarta when gojek –whom I first got introduced as the courier service my previous company was a regular user of– announced a flat tariff of IDR10,000 (US$0.7) per ride as part of a Ramadan promotion in 2015. The platform’s popularity skyrocketed; Grab (known as GrabTaxi back then) also introduced its motorbike-based service around the same time.

The market was never the same afterwards. In addition to being involved in price wars, the two companies followed by introducing more and more new services until the super app jargon was coined.

Here is the reason why gojek is so successful in what they are doing: The core of their business revolves around solving a problem that affects everyone’s lives –having access to affordable and reliable public transportation. Everybody needs transportation, and they need it on a daily basis. It is almost natural that GoRide, the company’s ride-hailing service, becomes their most popular service.

But their on-demand massage therapist and manicurist? Well, I have never met anyone who needs to have a manicure, like, twice a day.

Also Read: South Korea is nurturing a fast-growing herd of unicorns. Here is how they do it

The next move

Within the past few years, more and more unicorns are dipping their toes into fintech. With this pandemic, as more customers embrace digital payments to avoid the use of cash, the opportunities could not be more exciting.

gojek has recently announced an investment from Facebook and PayPal — which is said to include the integration of PayPal to the company’s platform.

Facebook itself has launched WhatsApp Pay in emerging markets such as Brazil. While the service in Brazil has been suspended, so far there is no indication that it will hamper its upcoming launch in Asia.

My guess is that this is the route that Facebook is going to take with its investment into gojek: Having GoPay integrated into the platform, or something along that line. This move makes a lot of sense as both WhatsApp and GoPay are some of the most widely used platforms in Indonesia.

Putting the head in the game

The pandemic has forced businesses to adapt by changing their direction, becoming more focussed on what they need to achieve this year. For many, efficiency is the name of this game. Instead of burning money to build good-to-have products, it is time to focus on products that customers actually need. The kind of products that people need to use regularly. A more steady revenue stream.

In the context of our unicorns, we predict that they will continue with their super app strategy. But instead of branching out into launching all sort of services, they will focus on revamping existing ones. Making them stronger and more thorough. They will also collaborate with various parties, most likely their own investors.

It is time to trim those extra fats so that you can live a healthier life.

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Grab puts partnership with scandal-hit German firm Wirecard on hold

Grab said it has put a partnership with German payments company Wirecard on hold, days after it disclosed a US$2.1 billion financial hole, says a Reuters report.

The two companies had signed an agreement in March under which Wirecard was to process transactions made via the GrabPay e-wallet, starting with markets in Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore.

Wirecard had not begun processing payments or signing up merchants on behalf of Grab, whose e-wallet is accepted by more than 600,000 merchants and small businesses in the region.

Singapore’s cell-based meats startup Shiok Meats raises bridge funding

Singapore-based foodtech startup Shiok Meats has raised US$3 million in  bridge funding ahead of its Series A round, says a TechInAsia report.

Investors are Agronomics, US-based VegInvest, UK-based Impact Venture, and UAE-headquartered Mindshift Capital Fund.

The startup will use the capital to set up its first manufacturing plant in the island state.

With this, the total funds secured so far by the company has touched US$7.6 million.

Established in 2018, Shiok is a cell-based clean meat company, arguably the first of its kind in Singapore and Southeast Asia. The firm aims to bring clean and healthy seafood and meats by harvesting from cells instead of animals.

Shiok Meats produces cell-based crustacean meats (shrimp, crab, lobster), and its meats are animal-, health- and environment-friendly.

Early backers of Beyond Meat, Impossible Foods launch China investment fund and accelerator

Lever VC, a global alternative protein VC fund whose partners were early investors in Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, and Brinc, a global venture accelerator firm, have launched a joint investment fund and accelerator to back plant-based and cell-cultivated meat and dairy companies across China.

The fund is supported by Lever Foods, a Shanghai-based consultancy that advises on the alternative protein space.

Also Read: BRI Ventures launches new fund to help Indonesian startups thrive amid COVID-19

Corporate partners include the VC arms of food and beverage leaders COFCO, and Yili; national industry trade group the China Plant-Based Foods Alliance; and top global alternative protein ingredient and services companies Givaudan, Cremer, and others.

The Lever China Alternative Protein Fund will invest RMB40 million (US$5.7 million) over the next four years in entrepreneurs and early-stage alternative protein companies focusing on the burgeoning mainland Chinese market, with Brinc providing a comprehensive three-month accelerator programme on a rolling basis for interested portfolio companies.

Up to RMB160 million is available in potential follow-on funding from the Lever VC Fund, for a total available investment pool of RMB200 million.

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Image Credit: Shiok Meats

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As the world enters the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we’re seeing the convergence of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing, Blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) and their capacity to reshape entire industries.

Yet while these technologies provide revolutionary growth opportunities for businesses, they also have great potential to address some of the most pressing environmental issues facing the world today.  

Often cited as carbon-emitting technology, Blockchain has come under fire due to the energy-intensive processes that underpin some of its applications. Bitcoin is one of them, and is only a specific application of the blockchain technology, yet confusion between these two remain in the perception of the general public.

However, this does not apply to all blockchain technologies, and some blockchains use much greener consensus mechanisms.

But how energy efficient is a certain blockchain technology is an intrinsic characteristic that does not solve any problem by itself. However, we have seen very recently the emergence of new ‘green tech’ that use blockchain technology to actively address the most urgent environmental issues we are facing and that take various forms: greenhouse emission, plastic pollution, forest conservation, protection of endangered species, etc.

Also read: ‘We want to make the clean energy space more dynamic’: Electrify CEO Martin Lim

Dr Simon JD Schilleeckk, whose research at Singapore Management University (SMU) focuses on digital innovation and sustainability, refers to this emerging domain as the ‘Digital Green Economy’.

He describes it as ‘a nascent ecosystem of start-ups, projects, and activities in which blockchain and other digital technologies such as AI, ML and IoT are employed to reinvent legacy industry processes, develop new solutions in existing markets and create entirely new markets in which private businesses put sustainable development at the very core of their business models.’

So how can this ‘nascent ecosystem’ have an impact on climate change?

Democratising environmentally-friendly impact investment

The idea of providing financial incentives to businesses and governments with green behaviours has been around for a while, however, has been limited by the systems used to manage them. Governments have set up regulations to try to mitigate climate change by forcing companies to compensate for their greenhouse emissions by buying Carbon Credits. These credits are then used to finance projects that have a positive impact on the environment, like the plantation of trees.

Carbon credits are bought on carbon markets that have lots of intermediaries and that is known to be quite opaque.

Furthermore, only big corporations have access to this market. Why is it a bad thing? Because consumers may also want to offset the carbon emitted in the atmosphere they are responsible for. When a consumer buys a pair of shoes for 100 USD, the carbon footprint of this purchase is around 250g of CO2, which could be offset for 23 cents only.

This is not possible with the current carbon markets, which trades carbon in tonnes. Blockchain could make a difference and allow transaction in grams.

Add to this the inherent characteristics of the blockchain technology like traceability of the transactions, it becomes a tool for the consumer to track where its money goes – which again is not possible with carbon markets. Blockchain solves this.

Minimising the structure cost

In traditional carbon offsetting platforms, between 30 to 80 per cent of the price you pay to offset your carbon footprint goes to verification, through consultants, and intermediaries.

The transparent nature of blockchain makes it the optimal system for tracking and verifying that the money that goes into the system finds its way to its intended project.

A brilliant example of this is the Global Mangrove Trust (GMT), a non-profit organisation based in Singapore that is developing a solution to support the reforestation of mangrove forests, one of the most effective carbon stores on the planet. They are pushing this concept of Peer-to-peer philanthropy by developing a new kind of crowd-funding tool for forest conservation.

Their platform gives the ability to everyone to track on a dashboard the impact of their contribution over time: where the trees were planted, how much carbon it has absorbed from the atmosphere, the impact on the biodiversity, how many jobs it has created, etc.

The evolution of the forest is constantly monitored with satellites and the images are translated, using AI, into the amount of carbon stored by the forest.

Despite sounding expensively high-tech, the automated way of working coupled with the blockchain infrastructure allows for a very low operational cost (less than 10 per cent of the token value), resulting in more value going towards the environment in comparison to other projects that do not use AI or blockchain.

Also read: 5 Asia-based startups that are making blockchain part of everyday life

In collaboration with a major Singaporean bank, GMT is building a platform that can easily be integrated into existing payment platforms, which will hopefully drive mass adoption. The long-term vision is that this model of the platform will be integrated into the value chain in a fully automated way to offset carbon emissions of individuals and companies.

Brands will be able to make the promise of being carbon-neutral or even carbon-negative by buying such tokens on behalf of their consumers to offset the carbon generated by the life cycle of the product they sell, engaging their customers in that process and automatically delivering reporting on their impact on the environment. Game changer.

Creating real-time precision and cost-efficiency

Platforms that facilitate carbon emission offsets already exist, however, are often complex and opaque. Blockchain solutions have begun to replace current systems to provide transparency and efficiency in terms of time and cost.

For example, when buying a plane ticket from Singapore to Paris for US$1000, the airline may offer to offset your carbon footprint for an additional US$20.

The airline will then use your US$20 to buy carbon credits on the carbon credit market which is currently only accessible to large corporations. These carbon credits go towards funding green projects such as the construction of solar panel farms or financing reforestation.

The formula the airline uses to calculate the US$20 offset is defined by the UN and based on a complex equation that includes details on the airline, the airplane, and route amongst other factors. What’s more, it’s not updated regularly, so it is only a guide to the amount needed for the offset, not a pure calculation of the exact amount needed at that point in time.

With a blockchain-based technology, real-time data is fed into the formula. If the airline has bought 50 new planes that are 20 per cent less pollutant than average, this will affect the offset figure. The blockchain ledger will record the formula as well as the exact source of data that was used to calculate the carbon offset price. 

But it’s not just about reaching more accurate figures. Traditional offset approaches also have high structure costs which reduces the amount of money that can be redirected to green projects.

The first reason is that UN regulation imposes audits on the projects financed by carbon credits, which averages US$100k per project. Secondly, they have high banking structure costs due to the high number of relatively small payments.

Smart contracts have the potential to disrupt the way these activities are conducted. Put simply, a smart contract is a piece of code that runs on a blockchain and executes a specific transaction when some condition is met.

It automates transactions such as payments in a transparent way (you can see which wallet sends and which one receives), and it does so instantly without the intermediation of a bank.  Consequently, the use of smart contracts will reduce the operational costs of these platforms, and hence more of the money will go directly to the environmental projects.

Facilitating the Machine-to-Machine economy

Imagine your washing machine is smart enough to decide when to start and when to stop based on real-time information about the price of electricity, or the availability of excess wind or solar energy near your home.

Now imagine that your machine could be paid for offering greater flexibility to the smart grid. A smart IoT device could be linked to a smart wallet and be reimbursed when it is willing to delay its operations to a moment when there is less peak energy needed. Your electrical vehicle could decide when to charge its battery or when to offload energy back into the grid to help provide stability.

This is already possible with the machine to machine (M2M) economy, which will be blockchain-enabled and will have a massive impact on the energy market.

Over the next few years, the blockchain infrastructure will become much cheaper to operate, fulfilling its promise of enabling micro-payments that are currently too expensive to run on the existing payment railroads of global financial infrastructure like SWIFT, VISA, MasterCard, or AMEX. This will produce a cheap, feasible, and ever-present M2M economy, connecting billions of IoT devices all over the world.

However, having a smart grid and smart machines will not automatically reduce energy consumption. Yet there is an indirect effect on the environment. Most governments currently provide massive subsidies to fossil fuel industries to ensure grid stability at times of peak demand – for example when it is unusually hot in Singapore and all air-conditioning units are working hard.

The ability to meet peak demand comes at a high cost in terms of the required infrastructure – in this case, gas plants that lie dormant most of the year only to be fired up rapidly when demand is rising.

This infrastructure comes at a massive cost, running into the billions of dollars. By increasing demand flexibility through M2M systems, we could reduce the need for these largely redundant fossil fuel plants, dramatically decrease the subsidies that go to fossil fuels, and use the money for much-needed projects that address climate change.

 We’re currently in the middle of a climate awakening as businesses, governments, and individuals all start to accept the severity of the environmental situation and look to address it. Blockchain technology allows the development of platforms that are trustworthy, cost-effective, efficient, with transactions that are traceable.

The ability of this technology to democratize tokenisation at an individual level will also help drive green behaviours, bringing a more relative and personal dimension to the debate.

In the near future, we can imagine a standardized blockchain-based system that incentivizes consumers to recycle, and then pays them in a cryptocurrency for doing so. Consumer-driven aspirations may also encourage the adoption of such technologies by major brands and retail companies, driving the emergence of an ecosystem that systematically rewards plastic recycling and carbon offsetting.

The combination of blockchain technologies with IoT and AI gives us a glimpse of the major changes set to happen across numerous industries.

In the near future, IoT devices will capture real-life data to be processed by cloud-based AI engines, producing actionable insights whose value can be exchanged or traded seamlessly on blockchains, in an automated fashion, and without the use of intermediaries.

Beyond the fairy tale picture, these technologies present limitations in their adoption. A big hurdle in the short-term is working out how to scale these technologies so that they can be maximised across industries. For the IoT, the lack of industry-wide standards does not allow interoperability at the current level of maturity.

But for now, we should be celebrating the innovations of many of these projects and looking at how we can leverage the technologies further in pursuit of positive environmental impact.

Blockchain, and the platforms it enables, have the potential to transfer climate-friendly consumer choices into real action in an efficient and transparent way.

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Managing a business has become more challenging as COVID-19 took over the economies of nearly all countries around the world. Only a few mitigated the worst effects of the pandemic. Even in the “less affected” countries, it has become difficult to go back to doing business as usual.

Many cities have already started reopening their businesses, but these don’t mean a return to the old normal. To cope with the health crisis, businesses need to implement necessary modifications. McKinsey & Company partners Kevin Sneader and Shubham Singhal cite five major changes businesses have to deal with after the pandemic.

These are greater government intervention, the switch to a contact-free economy, the need for greater resilience, the return of protectionism, and more business scrutiny. “The implication is that companies will have to rethink, not tweak, their business models,” Sneader and Singhal write in a commentary published on the McKinsey website.

In light of these points, it makes sense for businesses to work on developing better strategies, adopt suitable workforce arrangements, and be mindful of regulations and meticulous scrutiny. Managers need to be more dynamic and ingenious as they face the challenges of the new normal.

Strategy building

With all the community quarantines and the need for physical distancing, almost all businesses have to reconsider their strategies. A new feasibility study may be in order, considering how the pandemic has significantly disrupted markets and economic conditions.

Also Read: Data management startup Delman secures US$1.6M seed funding from Intudo Ventures, others

An article by Michael Wade and Heidi Bjerkan on the MIT Sloan Management Review lists three strategies companies will have to use in response to COVID-19, summed up as follows:

• Same products, different channels – This is what most companies resort to in the midst of a pandemic. They digitalise and sell their products online and through other means as they are forced to suspend their brick-and-mortar operations.
• Same infrastructure, different products – Under this strategy, companies that suffer from the underutilisation of their factory capacity, for example, switch to manufacturing other products that are more in demand.
• Same products, different infrastructure – This strategy applies to companies that tend to benefit from demand surges during the pandemic. They need to raise their production capacity and augment their infrastructure to meet existing demand. 

Sticking to the status quo is out of the question for going-concern businesses. However, it’s not enough to be merely reactive. Wade and Bjerkan share a useful decision tree for businesses affected by the pandemic.

In summary, a struggling business faced with two questions: (1) is it possible to offer products/services online and (2) is it possible to acquire infrastructure to expand production. If the answer to the first question is negative, the logical course of action is to look for alternative products to produce or sell to make use of existing capacities.

If it’s not possible to switch to a new business, only then will loss mitigation (read: giving up) be considered. The decision tree does not consider succumbing to difficulties without taking into account all possible solutions.

Also Read: Entrepreneurs in 2020: How to become more powerful

Workforce management

Another key area companies have to look into is human resource management. By now, it’s clear that businesses should shift to remote work arrangements as much as possible. Not every job is compatible with telecommuting, but many can be shifted to telework setups not only to comply with compulsory physical store/office shutdowns but also to reduce operating costs.

Remote work management, however, is far from easy. It’s already challenging to supervise employees personally; it’s even more difficult to oversee their work from a distance. The shift is bound to create inefficiencies and problems first before things normalize.

Managers need to be creative and resourceful in helping employees deliver their optimum performance. They need to provide adequate orientation or training. Likewise, they have to supply suitable productivity tools such as task managers and schedule-makers to help employees stay on track and avoid procrastinating or succumbing to distractions at home.

The inability to stick to schedules is one of the biggest obstacles in successful telecommuting. The management should provide all the necessary support to avoid serious issues with it. “With nobody managing your time but yourself, it’s easy to get distracted when these challenges appear in your life,” says Amber Baldwin, founder of StoryChasing.

The same acclimatisation challenges emerge if a business reorganises its infrastructure or switches to new products or services. Employees need proper orientation, guidance, and supervision as they adapt to new systems or scales of operation.

Also Read: Looking for the silver lining for your business amidst a pandemic? Here’s how

For other companies, retrenchment will, unfortunately, be inevitable if they cannot come up with new plans or strategies to make use of their existing human resource pool. This will be another major management headache that should be dealt with prudently.

Regulation and scrutiny

Regulatory policies are external concerns that significantly impact businesses during the pandemic. They will continue to affect company operations even after the lifting of the lockdowns. Companies cannot shrug off new policies or rules, lest they risk the possibility of getting shut down by law enforcement agencies.

Physical stores must fully implement social distancing measures according to the directives of local and national authorities. Limits on the number of customers allowed in a building should be observed. Also, companies should adhere to pricing guidelines and product quality standards. Close coordination with regulatory agencies is a must to avoid legal and regulatory issues.

It’s not only the government that will evaluate the actions of businesses. Customers or the public, in general, will also be watchful for violations and questionable actions. The pandemic and recession are big enough problems. It’s totally unnecessary to get involved in more especially when it comes to laws and business ethics.

Optimism in improving management

Strategy rethinking, employee management, and the response to regulation and scrutiny may entail significant or even radical changes. However, it’s better to think of these as a chance to strengthen the resilience of the business, test its flexibility, and take advantage of opportunities. Asians are generally resilient and optimistic businesspeople. As Jack Ma said: “Try to change, nothing bad can happen.”

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