East Ventures, is an early-stage venture fund focused on investments in Tokopedia, Traveloka, Ralali, Shopback, etc. Started in 2009 at the onset of digitalisation, the founding partners believed in the digital ecosystem and this guided their philosophy to invest in early-stages of a company. They rely on the idea “natural entrepreneurship” and feel a startup is a tipping point in this journey.

With over 170 investments in companies across Southeast Asia and Japan; they recently launched a new fund (their 8th) of US$88 million that is sector agnostic. In our recent webinar, we spoke to Melisa Irene, the first female partner at East Ventures to know more about them.

Irene joined the company in 2015 as an Associate and successfully closed multiple deals for the company. In such a short time of three years, Irene was the firm’s principal before finally promoted as the first female partner.

Also read: East Ventures forms new US$88M seed fund for startups weathering COVID-19, announces first close

Key takeaways

• East Ventures have invested in a lot of pre-seed-stage companies that have no revenue or traction. “Our philosophy is people first; then potential market. If the person is right and they have chosen the right industry market, he/she will be able to create the product to solve market problems,” said Irene.
• The key traits they look for in founders are integrity, self- awareness, and paradoxical traits (visionaries but have light ear; global knowledge with local wisdom)
• COVID has not necessarily affected growth trajectories. Because growth also depends on the sectors they are operating. Some are positively impacted; gaining traction faster; some negatively impacted by the government operating restriction. Growth at all cost model has already been challenged even before COVID.
• Exits for startups will still happen but the timeline to execute it might take longer.

Also read: Meet the VC: Click Ventures’ Carman Chan on the most exciting changes in Hong Kong startup scene today

• While investors are becoming more careful, the growth-stage investment might return back in 2021 as the market is still predicting a recovery post-vaccine.
• They usually go by referrals from the founder network for deal sourcing.
• Synergies among portfolio companies are of course preferred but it cannot be forced. There is ripe timing for effective partnerships. Examples are, many portfolio share offices at Cohive; or headhunting being helped by Ekrut; or collaboration between Warung Pintar and GrabKios; or how our SaaS solution is being used by most portfolio companies to support their back end operations: Xendit (payment), Mekari (Jurnal – accounting and Talenta-HR), Jojonomic (expense management).

Resources

Watch the full webinar via the recording below:

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The startup paradox: Altruism juxtaposed with toxicity; You want to help every startup founder in the same boat and they want to help you back; It would be great if we could somehow bottle this altruism and provide the same level of support to our own teams. e27

Delivery app Line Man merges with Thai restaurant review platform Wongnai; The new entity has received US$110M from BRV Capital Management; The move is expected to help Line Man as it tussles with other regional players like Grab, gojek and foodpanda in the food delivery war. Bangkok Post

Meet the VC: In conversation with East Ventures’ first female partner, Melisa Irene; With over 170 investments in companies across SEA and Japan, it recently launched its new sector-agnostic fund worth US$88M; According to her, VCs are becoming more careful, and the growth-stage investment might return back in 2021 as the market is still predicting a recovery post-vaccine. e27 

Startup funding rounds in July: Survival was the name of this game; One of the most notable was Traveloka’s US$250M fundraise amidst COVID-19; New protein sector was a popular sector in July, with companies like Burgreens and Karana announcing their funding rounds. e27

Rachel Lau of RHL Ventures on the kind of thinking that allows innovation; She says the tech industry has changed tremendously over the last 3 years; Now, there’s a lot of emphasis on sustainability and margins; There’s a lot of maturity coming from investors and they are more involved in the ecosystem and building it, instead of just being invested in a company. e27 

This Singapore startup turns jackfruit into plant-based pork; Karana’s whole-plant pork is available shredded or minced, and it’s also catered for Asian recipes; Recently, plant-based products have come under fire for being unhealthy, highly-processed products from food industry executives and health experts. Vulcan Post

Visa joins Thailand Tourism Authority to expand ‘new normal’ digital payments; Visa will be working with financial institutions to support businesses partners in upgrading their payment acceptance service to card payments; According to a recent study, 3 in 5 Thais are forming cashless habits, preferring to pay with cards or through mobile applications over cash. Pattaya Mail

The roadblocks on the smartphone commerce journey; Security concerns and limited usability can be obstacles to buying via smartphones; But consumers use their phones to get an overview of available products; If the smartphone develops into a universal digital wallet, synergy and network effects will emerge that could accelerate the change. Digital Commerce 360

Why we need to stop glamourising startups with fancy labels and focus on real metrics; The unicorn status has reached such ubiquity that it’s hard to kill; The other labels seem to be either a response to global situations or a response to the shortcomings of unicorns; Whether you’re a startup unicorn or camel, your business is still being fuelled by the man-hours and ingenuity you put into the company. e27

HashStacs, Bursa Malaysia to develop blockchain platform for tracking investor holdings; This will also enable investors to automate the movement of funds and securities — increasing liquidity and asset servicing for the market; This is done by enabling the participant banks and the exchange to securely share a single data source that can be trusted.

Startups get insights into overcoming challenges; The world is undergoing a great transformation with four ‘bigs’ playing a leading role — Big Tech, Big Media, Big State and Big Health; Businesses need to abandon traditional, pre-COVID ways of doing things and adapt to the VUCA normal — volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. HRM Asia Media

Being geek and gay in SEA: What startup ecosystem can do to foster diversity and inclusion; If you ask an LGBTQ individual in SEA about how they are being treated by society, the answer will vary depending on where they reside; While countries such as Thailand are perceived as more accepting, other countries leave a lot to be desired. e27

The unstoppable rise of fintech in SEA; A collaborative approach is endemic to the fintech industry; It is not a ‘winner takes all situation’ — the market is huge enough to accommodate partnerships, collaborations, to innovate with customer-centric products and carve out new areas of niche services. Tech Collective

The road to recurring revenue for hardware startups; Hardware has one advantage over software: customers understand there is a cost to your product; This allows hardware startups to generate revenue with their first iteration, but it’s unsustainable as the company grows and needs to innovate. TechCrunch

HR-tech firm Globalization Partners (GP) bares full-scale expansion into APAC; This expansion comes on the back of its US$150M funding round; The new APAC ops will support companies based in Asia that are looking to expand both within and outside the region; GP’ claims its solution enables any company to hire anyone, anywhere, in as little as 12 hours into every market around the globe. NewsBytes.ph

Filipino edutech startup touts AI-powered school management system; Its software analyses data that schools from K-12 to colleges can use in their planning and operations; It utilises smart algorithms and AI; The firm claims it has achieved its target to help over 25K students across 10 schools. NewsBytes.ph

Filipino fintech firm Bayad Center to push for more branches, online platforms; To date, it has set up 39K payment touchpoints around the country, with daily transactions of over 10K; Aside from bills payments, it also services domestic and international remittances, insurance sales, medical reimbursement, ferry and airline ticketing, ATM withdrawal, and loan disbursement. Newsbytes.ph

6 leading investors assess the remote-work startup landscape; VCs do not believe that the remote-work services and tooling world is solved; It would be simple to presume that a growing library of apps and services would lead to SaaS fatigue, but the VC group isn’t too worried about the concept. TechCrunch

 How brands in Asia are paving the way for a post-pandemic recovery; As the world navigates the unchartered territories, it is a time for learning, experimenting and adapting; Some brands have shown that when the status quo does not work, new approaches and strategies cannot only help them survive and recover, but also pay rich dividends in the future. Appier blog

Is Cambodia’s startup ecosystem ripe for a new era of growth?; 47% of its population is aged under 25; Combined with a mobile and internet penetration rate of 120% and 84% respectively, it is safe to say tech-savviness resides among the top traits of the population. e27

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Grocery delivery battle in Vietnam: David versus Goliath?; The e-grocery war may witness another ‘David vs. Goliath’ story in the foreseeable future – with Loship being natural Davids, fighting against larger and more established competitors who seemingly have all the advantages of strength, size, and resources. e27

Sea Group surpasses DBS Group to emerge as Singapore’s most valuable listed firm; NYSE-listed Sea was valued at US$54.2B compared with DBS’s US$38.6.5B as of July 22; Sea managed to narrow its net loss to US$280.8M for Q1 from US$689.6M last year; Sea operates 3 main lines of business Garena, Shopee, SeaMoney. SGSME

‘Acceloration’: What happens after disruption; Acceloration is the accelerated collaboration phase that occurs after the initial disruption phase; If we peel the layers of the onion deeper, we find many examples of leading companies that, although looking like disruptors in the first instance, are actually not; Instead, they are accelorators. e27

How to build customer trust even amidst a recession; Loyal customers are more likely to stay with your brand regardless of changing market rules and operational conditions during the lockdown; The loyal audience is a self-fuelling organism that generates increasingly more returning customers. e27

‘We’re imagining a world where any commerce can happen just by phone conversation’: iKala CEO Sega Cheng; He hopes iKala commerce can handle all channels, social platforms, stores, all kinds of e-commerce platforms you have in your hand; “That’s the direction that we’re going”. e27

Indonesian fashion e-commerce platform Sorabel to shut down by end-July; In Feb, it shuttered its Philippines unit Yabel; Sorabel has so far raised US$27M in four rounds from Gobi, Golden Equator, etc.; The firm had achieved break-even and was on its way to be profitable. e27

Hiip secures bridge funding led by Vulpes Special Opportunities Fund; The Singapore-based influencer platform plans to take advantage of potential acquisition opportunities that have arisen as a result of COVID-19; Hiip claims to be helping 500 brands to connect and work with more than 10K social influencers based on Big Data and AI. e27

Is ethical hacking the next big thing in the talent market?; Organisations are starting to place more emphasis and investment on cyber security by hiring more ethical hackers; They are highly sought-after and receive attractive renumeration which can go as high as US$81K annually. HRM Asia

Startup investments in SEA nearly double despite COVID-19; As per a DealStreetAsia data, the value of fundraising deals rose 91% y-o-y to US$2.7B; The number of transactions climbed 59% to 184 for April-June quarter, up from 116 in the same period last year. Nikkei Asian Review

HSBC, MDEC ink MOU to drive digital leap for Malaysian businesses; They will identify targeted investments in tech, healthcare, electronics, manufacturing, education from China, the US, the UK, Japan; The agreement also includes providing advisory and other banking services to businesses. Bernama

How Malaysian companies can accelerate beyond basic digitalisation; The digital economy contributed 18.5% to the nation’s economy in 2018 with a CAGR of 8%; Majority of companies is skewed towards digitisation, in which 73% inferred digitalisation to be the use of IT system (30%), converting manual to digital (27%) and use of data (16%). Tech Collective

What Ant Group’s upcoming IPO means for the SEA startup ecosystem; For the region, this will trigger even tighter competitions among local e-payments companies, especially those with ties to Chinese tech giants; The group is making big moves in foreign markets such as Indonesia. e27

COVID-19 triggers supply chain and logistics transformation, but there are still gaps, says Marc Dragon of Reefknot Investments; He elaborates on how the recent US-China trade war has led industry players to consider how their businesses are being run. e27

ESG, NRF commit US$29M to National Innovation Challenges (NIC) in Singapore; Startups and firms will work on 28 challenge statements focusing primarily on solutions that leverage Big Data analytics, automation, sustainability and post-COVID-19 efforts. The Straits Times

How Machine Learning (ML) is changing mobile app development; With ML app development, companies are better able to realise and set their goals; Developers are able to recognise a quicker way to develop an app; Users find it easy to operate a ML-based app. Tech Collective

Does profit matter more than impact?; There are many entrepreneurs who may be crossing the money and ethics line without really knowing it; You don’t have to choose ethics or money; Just put ethics first, hold your intention to help others as front and centre, and create products or services that people love. e27

Building your startup’s customer advisory board (CAB); The idea here is that you’ve a feedback loop from customers back to your product where you build, you go get feedback, you iterate; CAB should consist of about 3-6 customers, who should be luminaries or forward thinkers in the market you are serving. TechCrunch

gojek’s VOD service GoPlay expands to interactive live-streaming service; It allows users to interact with one another, buy food and watch in better screen resolution within one platform; GoPlay Live would cover more events soon, including reality shows and online public movie screenings. The Jakarta Post

Japan’s credit card firm JCB partners with Shopee to offer online merchants enhanced payment options; It will be first implemented in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam; A report found that the SEA internet economy soared to US$100B in 2019 after more than tripling in size over the previous 4 years. Vietnam News

Vietnam digital economy could be US$30B by 2025; The nation has 96.9M people but 145.8M mobile phone subscribers, 68.17M internet users, 65M social network users; A survey says Vietnam will obtain US$162M more in GDP in the next 20 years if it successfully carries out digital transformation. OpenGov

Ant Group unveils new blockchain brand AntChain; Currently, over 100M digital assets are uploaded onto AntChain on average every day; The group also unveiled an all-in-one workstation that reduces the deployment time of the company’s blockchain-based solutions by as much as 90%. FintechNews

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Stories of compelling company identities and innovative brands circulate the internet alongside a swarm of articles stressing the importance of culture. The reality of the matter is not at all embellished, as company culture when well-established, can frame the brand in a multitude of ways. 

The current fast-growing workforce is influencing just how important culture is across a variety of industries. The Millennial candidate especially finds this very important when seeking a new position.

It’s an enticing and captivating aspect of the business that when built and leveraged correctly, can attract the best talent for the job, influence employee retention, and even make the company more competitive in its niche. 

According to research conducted by Deloitte, 94 per cent of executives and 88 per cent of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.

Furthermore, research from CultureIQ displays clearly that employees’ overall ratings of their company’s various qualities such as collaboration, work environment, and mission and value alignment are 20 per cent higher at companies with strong cultures. This is invaluable for the development of a motivated and engaged workforce.

Also Read: Is your new work-from-home culture stressing your employees?

The vision

Defining the goals to be accomplished within the company early on is the foundation of effective company culture. Your vision for the organisation needs to be captivating and unique to align the workforce.

It’s then vital to outline what needs to be accomplished and how your team can take the company from point A to point B. Identifying this journey is a major component in the creation of a collaborative workforce with a complete understanding of your business goals.

This understanding allows your HR or recruitment team to set specific goals while sourcing talent. It takes the recruitment process from a “minimum requirement” based approach to a more detailed campaign targeting a well-defined candidate profile.

Moreover, a solid company vision is a great way to show potential applicants the opportunities for growth that lie ahead, and the lengths to which the company goes for the employees’ professional growth.

For example, Google’s Tech Talks are one such display of company culture. The very concept is centred around professional growth, employee insights, and engagement beyond the scope of their operations. It plays an informative role, creating a community out of the workforce that collaborates and shares information that’s helpful for everyone’s professional growth. 

Also Read: 4 reasons why company culture is so important with startups

What does that say about Google? It says that this is a company where employees are encouraged to innovate, create, and to share without fear of being rejected or silenced. It says, to candidates and professionals in the industry, that Google stands behind employee contribution.

This is what makes the company culture dynamic.

Though employers traditionally prefer that employees behave in the same way set by management and executives, a dynamic business culture dictates the active contribution of each employee. Given the fact that company culture is most important internally, it stands to reason that its very foundation is built by the team.

Define, display and reward cultural values

For company culture to endure, there needs to be an established system that not only defines and displays culture values but also emphasises the elements that best define the brand.

For a dynamic company culture, the employee’s input and contribution are extremely important. Employers need to implement an approach where the workforce can come together and explore each other’s ideas and insights. 

Some companies create recurring events in which everyone’s perspective is shared and explored. The most brilliant of companies rely on this input to better orient the company and its strategy.

Also Read: Is this the end of the coworking culture?

But most importantly, it encourages positive behaviour within the organisation and shows potential candidates how your current workforce is given the opportunity to grow. This reinforces the values set in the vision.

Over time, as the culture itself becomes more solid, its nature begins to shape the brand. Google is renowned for how much it values its people, Apple for its appreciation of innovation, Amazon for its “Customers first” mantra, and Netflix for its “excellence, excellence, excellence” model.

These are just a few of the giants whose company culture and brand go hand in hand. For the everyday candidate, these values and goals are a promise of a better position, a better career, and an employer that shares the same values.

The right tech to foster change

At the very core of it, technology fosters the dynamic nature. Collaboration, communication, and efficiency are the hallmarks of a developing culture and significantly accelerate its growth. These aspects can be facilitated by implementing software and HR tech with an impact on all levels of the organisation.

Seeing as there is no single software to meet a company’s every need, a good strategy would be to build an internal ecosystem of interconnected software. Companies with this type of approach to technology are able to grow faster than competitors lacking the tools for digital change.

Not only that, tools that aid and support employees in their roles can save them valuable time and increase efficiency, giving the workforce the bandwidth to focus on innovative input for the next company event.

Also Read: Managing the millennial workforce over coffee and culture

The direct link between people and tech is the essence of the modern dynamic business environment. To that end, it’s a good idea to invest in tech that facilitates collaboration, communication and allows the team to contribute on different levels.

For example, implementing and normalising the use of tools such as Slack and Zoom for company-wide interaction and announcements gives the workforce a platform for open communication. Implementing HRMS software provides Human Resources with a way to navigate employee input. 

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is capable of automating such a large portion of the recruitment process and providing a range of features that help apply the dynamic company culture in the hunt for suitable candidates. 

Different tools serve different purposes. But one thing is certain, a company’s culture is as dynamic as the ecosystem it creates to simplify internal processes and encourage the characteristics needed to shape the brand.

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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.

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Innovation is the process of coming up with ideas that creates value for your customers. As the world becomes increasingly competitive, corporate innovation is crucial not only for a company to grow, but also to sustain itself as it allows companies to adopt new technologies, and keep up with the changes in the market.

So as an employee, how can you innovate within your company? Let’s take a look at Canva and what you learn from it.

Canva is an Australia-based collaborative platform startup designed to help people who aren’t graphic designers to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and more. The user growth of Canva has hit over 10 million users within five years, and it has recently closed a US$60 million funding round, bringing its valuation to US$6 billion.

Canva has managed to carve out a new market of users for itself, even when Adobe has dominated the design industry for years.

So how did Canva innovate to become so successful, and what can you do to adopt the learnings into innovation within the company?

Also Read: The Jay Kim Show with Canva Co-founder Cameron Adams

Increase the value of your company’s social currency

Let’s first understand what social currency is. It is the amount of influence that your users have on others as they share about your company. When consumers choose to share information, “a person ‘spends’ social currency and places their reputation on the line”.

Social currency has enabled Canva to achieve high user growth over the years, and the good news is that it is not something exclusive to Canva alone. Large companies can make use of social currency to increase and grow their users too.

It’s important for employees to understand that they all have a part to play in increasing the value of social currency for the company.

For example, if you are a front-line service staff within a company, being friendly and exuding warmth to users can increase affiliation, which is the sense of community among your customers, and thereby improving the value of your company’s social currency.

Even if you are holding higher-level management roles within the company, you can still innovate as there are other dimensions of social currency that can be more relevant to your role.

To harness the value of social currency within your company, you should first learn to understand what social currency is, figure out which dimensions are applicable to your role, and then find different ways to add value within your means.

Also Read: Australian graphic design startup Canva raises US$40M in Series C, secures unicorn status

No matter what role you hold within your company, there will be different ways within your scope of work in which you can add value to the company’s social currency.

Iterate but do it wisely

The iteration process is something that should be familiar to both startups or large companies. With iteration processes, companies strive to improve existing products and services to meet the changing needs of their consumers.

Simplicity and integration– these were two things that caught my attention when I was analysing the way Canva built its product.

Integrating features is something all huge corporates always do. Adding new features, new designs, new upgrades to their product portfolio … and the list goes on. Companies are always rushing to build everything that consumers ask for, or throw a variety of products (or options) in their faces for them to do so. But is it always necessary?

Iterating without a clear purpose and stuffing too many features into a product may result in feature fatigue and cause your users to disengage and stop using your product instead. As a result, iteration resulted in more harm than good for your company.

For example, If you are a product manager in the company, you should consider “offering a wider assortment of simpler products instead of all-purpose, feature-rich products”.

Also Read: With Mogees, the world becomes your musical canvas

This point also emphasises why integration worked well for Canva because while they integrate different processes together, they also ensure that there is the element of simplicity. In an increasingly complex world, consumers are overloaded with information and spoiled with choice.

Companies should make their consumer’s lives easier instead of making it confusing and harder for them to make decisions and complicating their way of life.

Whether you are on the management level or a regular employee within your company, if you do see that your company is innovating in a way that is making the user’s life harder, it’s best to sound out and feedback on the problems in any way that you can, so that your company can seek improvements and iteration in the right direction.

Don’t be too focused on the competition

Canva didn’t set its direction by focusing on trying to defeat Adobe or trying to disrupt the industry. They decided on a future that they wanted to see – one that focussed on solving a specific problem, and they set off to achieve it.

For large companies, they would have found the solution to the problem a long time ago, which was how they get to grow and scale in the first place.

But as they grow larger and more competitors come into the market, bigger companies start to be “at war” with each other and sometimes, they lose sight of the problem they wish to solve in the first place.

Also Read: Australian online design platform Canva raises US$15M in Series A

There are many large companies that have always been at war with each other. Famous examples include Apple Vs Samsung and Snapchat versus Instagram. Even recently, Apple’s new iOS 14 sparked a debate as many commented that its new interface layout is similar to that of Samsung phones.

At times, large companies may lose sight of their company’s mission and as they are too focused and too tied up with their competitor’s movements.

It is not a must to be able to provide the same functionalities and features as your competitors – unless extensive research and experimentation prove otherwise.

A recent example would be the shutting down of Lasso, Facebook’s version of Tik Tok which was launched back in 2018 in a bid to become more competitive in the social media industry. It is quite apparent that Facebook is trying ways and means to fight this new competitor and without much success.

The main takeaway here is to always remember to focus on the end-user and not the competitors. It’s okay to take a look and see what your competitors are doing but don’t be too focused on what they are doing and forget what you originally set out to achieve.

As you go about your roles within the company, use competitors as a reference point to improve but never as an idea generator. Focus on your own users, own problems and iterate accordingly.

Also Read: Canva wants to make design simple and collaborative

Enhance the emotional value of your product or service

Feeling confident, proud and accomplished. These were emotions that Canva users felt while using the platform and these emotions were real – not just marketing tools used by Canva to advertise themselves.

Canva enabled users to realise these emotions by creating a platform that is easy to use, made users comfortable in playing around with the features, and they made sure that the users can achieve the results that they want. All of these sparked positive emotions throughout the user journey.

Another point is that Canva doesn’t use emotional appeal actively as part of their marketing campaigns but rather, to showcase these emotions through storytelling during interviews such that it becomes more credible and trustworthy. They also understood that the users will naturally feel these emotions on their own, so there was no real need to use emotional marketing on their end.

On the other hand, large corporates love to use emotional play in marketing. A well-known example is Coca-Cola, where they portray the feeling of happiness in their campaigns.

One of their iconic campaigns that you may be familiar with is the ‘Open Happiness’ campaign, launched back in 2009. But as companies forcefully shove the emotional appeal into the face of consumers over and over again, the overuse of emotional appeal may actually harm your credibility instead.

Rodolfo Echeverria, the Global Vice President, Creative at The Coca-Cola Company, mentioned that “emotion had pervaded popular culture and advertising” and Coca-Cola eventually ditched their ‘Open Happiness’ campaign in place for ‘Taste the Feeling’ which reduces the focus on the emotional appeal in 2016.

Also Read: Australia’s latest US$31.1M series A fund Blackbird Ventures invests in collaborative online design platform Canva

As you innovate within the company, it is good to think about how you can enhance the emotional aspect of the company’s product or service without blatantly shoving the emotional appeal to your audience.

A good way to do so is by enhancing the positive emotions and eliminating the negative emotions during their user journey. To figure out what emotions are triggered at the different stages of a user’s journey, you can use different methods to do so such as by conducting user testing, research and feedback channels, face-to-face communication, and so on.

Figure out what is the best way to understand the user journey, and what you can do about it within your means to enhance emotional value for the users.

Also, large companies tend to spend lots of money to hire third-party agencies to conduct user research to find out about their sentiments and they do not come up with actionable that solve their user’s problems afterwards.

Companies should learn to make use of the results, listen to the user’s comments and come up with targeted solutions to the problems that surface as these data carry the emotional value that your product has on its users.

If you would have to take away just one lesson from this entire article, you should remember to always put the users first. By focusing on your users, you will be able to increase the value of the social currency, iterate wisely, not get side-tracked by the competition, and enhance emotional value. And that way, you can innovate in the right direction.

Also Read: The only advice VCs and founders in APAC need right now

Also, it may be challenging to act on every single lesson so do adapt and adjust these pointers according to your company’s needs. It’s time to use your efforts innovating and creating something that creates positive impact and growth.

As I end off, I hope that you will now be able to improve and innovate better within your company!

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: Vertex Ventures

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.

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The post What Canva’s astonishing growth can teach us about innovation appeared first on e27.

Rachel Lau has been actively contributing in our e27 contributor channel platform since the beginning of COVID-19’s physical distancing back in March 2020. Her first contribution shone a light on the edutech startups in the time of what would be a global pandemic.

Her recent one, just published on Thursday, posed a question on why the Philippines’ economy couldn’t rely solely on technology despite being one of the biggest markets in Southeast Asia.

Lau is the Managing Partner at RHL Ventures, a Southeast Asia-based private investment firm that focusses on growth capital investments in Southeast Asia and the US region.

Previously, Lau was the Vice President at Heitman Investment Management in Hong Kong and Australia. Lau helped manage US$4 billion of global long-only and absolute return equity strategies, focussed on the APAC region. Prior to this, Lai worked as an investment analyst with Dutch investment manager NN Investment Management, which manages US$225 billion

How tech has changed during her time

Lau shares her time in the tech industry with e27, since her comeback three years ago.

“I think it has changed tremendously over the last three years. At that time, it was more focussed around marketing, and now, even pre-COVID-19, there’s a lot of emphasis on the company’s sustainability and margins, which is a good thing and I really like it,” she shares.

“And also, I think, there’s a lot of maturity coming from investors, them being more involved in the ecosystem and building it, instead of just being invested in a company,” she adds, on her overall view of how the tech industry has changed so far.

Also Read: How the Coronavirus is teaching edutech startups a much-needed lesson

On writing

With nine contribution articles on e27 and counting over the course of five months, we’re curious of what inspired Lau to write and actively share her thoughts.

“I like to keep it topical. Like during COVID-19 time, it’s mostly about how COVID-19 affects the industry or a certain sector that I’m inspired to write about,” she explains.

She then shared further examples, stating how we now have to work from home instead of from the office as one of the interesting topics to explore, and the polar opposite of the more relaxed topic, like supply chain stuff, where the industry saw a lot of issues in production and how it is delivered to the consumer.

She also shared that she’s especially intrigued to explore on how the world now is in shifts thanks to the US-China trade war. “Southeast Asia is literally in the middle. Like, I’m Chinese but I work with the US, so that’s also an interesting topic that I like to talk about,” Lau adds.

“At the end, I think it’s necessary to think about what happens in our surrounding dictates how we react, which is also true in how we treat our investment at RHL Ventures as well,” Lau concludes.

Thought leadership

With e27 striving to become the platform for thought leaders to contribute and become the voice of the tech ecosystem in Southeast Asia, Lau also shares about her take on the whole thought leadership thing.

“I think thought leadership is someone who’s not afraid of welcoming new ideas and is willing to try the alternative to the norms, which is good for us (as an investor), right?” she says.

Also Read: RHL Ventures launches accelerator programme for startups in emerging technologies in Malaysia

“I don’t feel the need to write about what’s widely accepted and I kinda like the fact that people don’t like what is widely accepted, and therefore become extremely different from what we normally have and seek. I think that’s what thought leaders are,” she adds.

Lau emphasises on the need to set yourself apart as a thought leader, or otherwise, there will be no innovation. “You need to be dared to be different to change the status quo,” she says.

Lau thinks that writing can be a tool to become a thought leader, but not necessarily limited to that. Choosing e27 as one of the platforms where she regularly shares her views surrounding the tech ecosystem, however, has been a great experience, she admits.

“The visibility has been great. Like, someone from LinkedIn would occasionally say to me ‘Hey I read your article on the Vietnam stuff and I think it’s great”, and it’s nice to get that kind of message. I think the contributor channel has the right exposure from the right target audiences, which also becomes a challenge to me to write to the right target audiences,” she shares.

“If you’ve been wanting to contribute, you know, just start writing, you never know where it may take you,” she said.

Eyes on Indonesian logistics and micro landscape

As an active investor in Southeast Asia’s startup, Lau shares that RHL Ventures is now heavily focussed on building the infrastructure for the e-commerce space in Indonesia. “Which put us in perspective to really take a look at the logistics sector of the country. Because e-commerce is great, but it’s even more important to keep it going, and so we’re looking at that now,” she says

Besides that, Lau also shared that the sector and in this case -topics- that has been capturing her attention has a lot to do with understanding the micro landscape.

Also Read: Why technology alone will not save the Filipino economy

“Things like the individual impact between US and China war, and how China is really coming up with its huge edge in terms of hardware, and in the dawn of 5G network, there might be a Chinese company that comes to take over the whole thing, you know?” she says.

Down at RHL Ventures, the VC also does a little more digging on that. “We also take an interest in the education sector. It’s interesting to watch what will happen in this sector next,” she adds.

Final thoughts

Her latest contribution post on how the Philippines’s tech advancement isn’t enough to save its economy may best summarise what it’s like on her mind, and where it may take her next: the impact the global issues may bring to Southeast Asia’s tech scene and society as a whole.

“I think, to some extent, COVID-19 forces a reverse mobilisation, whereas you know the US is trying to force foreign students out of the country, which means well-versed people coming back to where they’re originally from with skills they gained having lived in the US, I wonder would that mean we’ll have better talents and well-equipped people where they’re supposed to. These questions are what intrigued me,” she says.

Taking an example from how Malaysia has less diversity in terms of its governance of management, Lau is convinced that this shows how people are not so accepting of diversity after all. “There are issues like Black Lives Matter and the US-China war. It might not be so much of a technological and innovation issue, but it’s necessary because to have a look into in navigating the tech industry as well, simply because it’s tricky times,” she closes.

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Image Credit: RHL Ventures

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Startup land is incredible in many ways. It’s a place where world-changing companies are built. It’s the arena where the biggest talents congregate. It’s a scene where the ‘pay it forward’ concept of helping others is in full effect.

But, conversely, it’s also a realm where some of the most toxic leadership and management styles imaginable converge. That’s part of the reason we wanted to start C-suite, our ‘lifetime learning platform for executives’. More on that later.

Now, with all that said, disclaimer time. While I’ve worked for some startups over the years, my background is very much media and events.

I started out as a journalist and although I climbed the management ranks over the years, I’ll always think of myself as a journo first. Therefore, I’m not a full-blown creature of the startup scene just yet.

However, many of my friends and industry contacts are. Because of that, I know how bad things can get. I’ve seen people on the verge of a breakdown due to toxic work culture. Their whole lives dominated by trying (unsuccessfully) to rationalise the lack of professionalism and humanity in the workplace.

I’ve witnessed people being relentlessly belittled by those higher up in the hierarchy. And it’s not just limited to early-stage startups –where the pressure is admittedly immense due to the threat of failure, and the inexperience is palpable– as portrayed in the Netflix documentary Print the Legend.

Also Read: For COMEUP 2020, the post-pandemic future will be led by startups

No, in his brilliant book Idea Man, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen laments the lack of compassion for colleagues shown by his co-founder Bill Gates; even after unicorn status was achieved and chasing revenue, and users no longer meant the difference between survival and success.

Why is this negative scenario more of a norm, rather than an exception to the rule? Why have many first-time managers decided the Steve Jobs book of dysfunctional leadership (Apple design genius Jony Ive famously felt he had to present Jobs with two solutions, in order that the CEO could slam one of them and feel righteous) is the way to go when chasing their startup dream? And why does tech rival politics, in terms of the elevated level of skullduggery in play?

The answer is simple –a lack of training, feedback, experience, and self-awareness. Disclaimer time again (sorry if this leitmotif is getting annoying, but bear with me – it serves a purpose).

I’ve come to realise that at times in my career I wasn’t always the best leader myself. My Damascene moment came via some candid feedback from colleagues, microscopic leadership training, and a progressive career mentor who helped me along the way.

Seeing the benefits of these things first-hand inspired me and my co-founders Don Tsai (COO) and Alan Yudhahutama (CTO) to create C-suite.

All three of us believe deeply in its mission to nurture leaders, managers, and aspirational professionals across all of the knowledge economy industries (not just in tech).

Also Read: In brief: Investments in SEA startups double in Q2 despite pandemic; GreenPro invests in Ata Plus

So what is C-suite exactly then? You might ask.

Here’s a blurb from our pitch deck (which I’m happy to send out to anyone with even a passing interest, just drop me an email): “C-suite is a lifetime online-to-offline-to-online learning platform for executives, where management becomes leadership. It is an exclusive community hub, a social network, news and views forum, and a recommendation engine – in the coming ExecTech wave.

“Super-serving Singapore and Asia, but in a global context, our mission is: ‘To help managers become high-performing leaders. To help leaders become better managers. To help aspirational professionals join the C-suite ranks. And, as a result, to help businesses win.’

“We do so through a paid-for app, virtual gatherings, real-world conferences, and much more besides. Our focus is to support the three pillars of community, content and connectivity.”

Ok, that’s enough of the spruik, back to the matter in hand. Sticking with the startup scene, I mentioned earlier the ‘pay it forward’ behavioural tendencies. As a new co-founder, I’ve found this to be somewhat of a revelation. The camaraderie among those starting new companies is breathtaking.

People are so willing to help you – whether it’s providing free advice, making introductions, or even revealing their trade secrets. You reciprocate. It’s beyond quid pro quo.

In short, you want to help every startup founder in the same boat and they want to help you back. It would be great if we could somehow bottle this altruism and provide the same level of support to our own teams, don’t you think?

Also Read: 3 mistakes early stage startups in Singapore make in product development

Only through mutual learning, as opposed to command and control, can we achieve this. That’s the crux of it all. Indeed, the startup paradox of altruism juxtaposed with toxicity is a topic I want to explore further in our ‘Leadership Mixer’ series of virtual events.

Beyond that, I’ll be blogging on a regular basis in order to take you behind the curtain on the journey of a startup. At times, it might be warts and all. My hope, though, is that the transparency about the challenges faced along the way will provide some value to others on a similar path or to those in a leadership position.

Of course, speaking honestly, the goal of these tasters is also to start building a community around the C-suite brand before our product even launches. For you can expect our MVP app in quarter four of this year. In the meantime, enjoy the free content and please do donate to our cause if you like what you see.

Also, we are running a Kickstarter campaign whereby the first 1,000 contributors can get lifetime C-suite ‘professional’ membership for just US$100. Check it out here.

Well, that’s all from me for now. I hope you enjoyed this first installment of the blog. If you did, I’d love to hear from you, so please do email me at dean@c-suite.sg. And if you didn’t, I’d still be delighted to receive your constructive criticism.

For with everything we do at C-suite, we want to listen deeply to users so that we can iterate and evolve. Only with this agile approach will we be able to create a sustainable platform that gives you the added value you need.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: Gobi Partners

Register now: What is corporate venture building and why this is the right time to look at capturing venture opportunities across South-east Asia.

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.

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As individuals spend more time indoors, online streaming continues to thrive. Global over-the-top (OTT) media services have seen their subscriber numbers surge in the last number of weeks, with Netflix proudly declaring that they had 16 million new sign-ups in the first three months of the year as audiences continued to look online for entertainment.

Though we can’t share numbers, many of our own customers have also seen a marked increase in subscriptions and active users in the past few months.

However, the reality is that pre-pandemic, there was already a massive surge in streaming across Southeast Asia. As users continue to cut the cord, many anticipate a rise in consumption and revenue over the next few years from over-the-top (OTT) media services.

A report by Dataxis predicted that Southeast Asia would grow to 6.2 million subscribers by 2022 — and there’s no doubt that we are right on track!

During the economic downturn, digital service providers will be exploring how they can innovate and increase their revenue. But from the perspective of their customers, it is the relationship with their provider that holds the keys to everything.

Genuinely engaging with consumers to help them manage and subscribe to new services without being invasive requires excellent diplomacy.

However, digital service providers are surrounded by innovation. Replacing a legacy mindset with a new approach focussed on delivering value to customers can provide the elusive game-changer moment. For example, flexible merchandising and monetising through capabilities such as bundling and promotions can help both upselling and cross-sell capabilities.

Also Read: One billion downloads later, Amanotes is optimistic about the future of non-streaming music platform

Preparing for an age of uncertainty

The internet has offered viewers a lifeline during the global pandemic we are currently facing. Traditional TV has been replaced by on-demand entertainment where we can stream or download our favourite content for later viewing. But there is no room for complacency.

As OTT streaming services in Asia soon begin to lose their captive audience to the great outdoors, they will need to remain vigilant in these uncertain times and future-proof themselves for what lies ahead.

In addition to this, global players such as Amazon, Netflix, Apple, and Disney are flexing their virtual muscles and utilising their resources to compete to stay on top. As competition throughout the region continues to intensify, many predict that the consolidation which crippled the traditional cable distribution model will soon come to OTT services too.

Pitfalls to avoid during the pandemic

As streaming services were offered an opportunity to capitalise on increases in subscribers during country lockdowns, OTT platforms across Asia will inevitably be faced with profitability challenges in an increasingly crowded market.

We know that COVID-19 will pass, it’s only a matter of time, and when that does happen it will be critical for these platforms to keep evolving in tandem with the digital landscape in order to keep up with the demands of their digital-savvy customers.

Also Read: Streaming wars: Why are streaming giants spending big bucks on acquiring content

Understanding the need to entice consumers to keep membership for the coming months, not just during lockdown periods, will determine the future success of streaming platforms. We know that the inevitable drop-off rates will begin in the run-up to the removal of lockdown orders.

To thrive and survive, companies will need to adapt quickly with a more proactive rather than reactive approach and have the agility to respond accordingly with new bundles, services, and special retention offers to keep users on their platform.

How to adapt to the different markets in Asia

The business landscape is littered with cautionary tales of household names that have struggled to innovate. Giant companies that found the secret to success and attempted to keep relying on the old way of doing things, even when it was no longer relevant, endured a predictable demise.

An unwillingness to innovate, listen to their customers, and adapt, coupled with a refusal to evolve with the market will have devastating effects on any business. For any streaming service to be successful in Asia, it’s critical to have a deep understanding of payment and content preferences. It’s also essential to adopt a continuous learning mindset and avoid the temptation of replicating models that work elsewhere.

Every country and region is entirely different, and these variances must be identified from the get-go and given the respect they deserve. The ability to listen to your audience and quickly pivot both your systems and your people will help keep you on the course for continued success.

Integrated Revenue and customer management platforms are already transforming the world’s leading OTT services.  It’s these advances in technology that are enabling companies like Evergent to reduce time to market for products and services. But also finally begin to simplify the complex monetisation models and back-office processes so that they run more efficiently.

Also Read: Streaming wars: Why are streaming giants spending big bucks on acquiring content

Add these improvements together, and they dramatically improve the customer experience too. Enabling customers to digitally manage all aspects of their connected services provides superior customer experience and sets the stage for personalised offers that are much more likely to succeed.

Navigating forward in unchartered digital waters

Businesses need to be able to set themselves ahead of the crowd. Communications companies are delivering convenience with everything under one roof style packages. When everything is at their fingertips, it quickly becomes too much hassle to go searching elsewhere — moving forward, this is where the focus needs to be.

Communications companies are also well poised to capitalise on their subscriber bases to move the needle for their own services and for other services like Netflix and Amazon Prime, which they can help aggregate and monetise.

For OTT streamers this provides a valuable distribution channel – it’s a win-win situation for both sides.  In addition, platforms that can support monetisation of bundled services will invariably set these service providers apart for consumers.

Traditional TV fell out of favour for being too restrictive and limiting for digital consumers who demanded greater freedom. Customer expectations are also dramatically evolving. They want to watch what they want, wherever they want it, and on any device they choose.

Also Read: [Updated] From streaming music to preventing oil theft, meet the 5 startups graduating from ZILHive incubation programme

If companies cannot provide it, they will turn to one of the many other OTT providers or communications providers who can serve their needs. The positive side — these are all problems that can be turned into opportunities.

OTT streaming opens up greater localisation and greater niche capabilities that can be targeted towards specific market segments. Time to market, product agility, and seamless deployments are the secret ingredients to success in an increasingly digital world.

Although we may expect some consolidation in the industry, it will be platforms that serve their audiences with customised offerings for specific regions that will stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: Vertex Ventures

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.

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

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Having kept their borders shut for close to a quarter, countries around the world are coming out of the daunting shadows of coronavirus as a ray of hope shows itself in the form of subsiding new cases.

As policymakers introduce new social distancing measures and people once again fill up office buildings, the world is, without a doubt, making its way towards the post-pandemic new normal. Nevertheless, amid the recovery, came the resurgence of a US-China dispute.

Being the world’s largest economy, it is said that when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. Now the world’s biggest exporter, China poses a similar level of influence. Certainly, when the superpowers are engaged in a tug-of-war, the global supply chain is bound to be disrupted. In relation to that, emerging markets in Southeast Asia (i.e. Thailand and Vietnam) are expected to be beneficiaries of investment (factory) relocations due to their pleasant investment climate.

However, the Philippines, in particular, is expected to be one of the smallest beneficiaries, if not a loser. This is by no means arbitrary, as the country’s foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows have been falling incessantly since 2017, reaching a four-year low of US$7.65 billion last year when its regional peers experienced an uptick in FDI.

Once viewed as one of the most prospective emerging countries, why is the Philippines so unappealing in the eyes of foreign investors?

For starters, the Philippines lacks a nurturing climate for business investments. Referring to World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index as an indicator of investor-friendliness, the country was ranked at 95^th, compared to 2^nd for Singapore, 12^th for Malaysia, and 21^st and 70^th for Thailand and Vietnam respectively.

Also Read: Why it is important for tech companies to expand outside metro cities in the Philippines

To further elaborate, it was revealed that the Philippines is especially inadequate in providing credit and enforcing contracts, in which it ranked 132^nd and 152^nd respectively, in addition to other challenges such as cross border trading issues and property registration. Seeing that these factors have a substantial bearing on businesses’ sustainability as well as their ability to expand, it is hardly surprising that foreign investors are discouraged.

Other than that, the current Philippine government’s policies have also put pressure on foreign capital inflows. In anticipation of the Corporate Income Tax and Incentive Reform Act (CITIRA) from the government, investors remained wary of the future status of their tax incentives.

Currently still pending in the Senate, the CITIRA bill intends to reduce corporate income tax by one per cent every year, from the current level of 30 per cent to 20 per cent by 2029. Intended to spur foreign investment, the viability of the bill has raised a number of questions, as capital gains tax on unlisted shares of resident foreign corporations and nonresident foreign corporations is expected to increase from five to 15 per cent, prompting investors abroad to take a wait-and-see stance.

On top of that, political risks have also deterred foreign investors in recent years. The government’s “anti-oligarch” and “anti-big-business” rhetoric has raised doubts on regulatory bodies’ justness in reviewing and renewing contracts in the Philippines.

For instance, the state water regulator recently cancelled a 15-year extension of the water utilities’ concession with Manila Water and Maynilad after pressure from Duterte. The existing concessions will expire in 2022, instead of 2037 as initially agreed in 2009. At the same time, raging allegations of human rights violations in the country (think the killing of drug addicts) have also come under international investors’ radar.

As a result of the mentioned incidents, the Philippines is seen as a relatively unfavourable destination for investment with raging political instability.

Also Read: Grab launches new card to encourage cashless payments in the Philippines

Naturally, as an enabler of businesses, many have wondered if technological advancement could improve the status quo in the Philippines and, in turn, facilitate FDI inflows. Undoubtedly, by helping the unbanked and fostering credit, technology could make business processes more efficient.

Notwithstanding that, political risks and failures to enforce business contracts would surely weigh on investments. Thus, in order to spur FDIs, the government needs to take the sanctity of contracts and regulations to heart, thereby instilling political stability in the country.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: Vertex Ventures

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.

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I recently wrote about whether the startup ecosystem in Laos was ready for a unicorn. This time we turn our attention to Cambodia today and explore if it’s ecosystem is ripe for the exponential growth as recently seen in Indonesia and Singapore.

Adopting a top-down approach, we will briefly analyse Cambodia’s macroeconomy before exploring deeper if the population is ready for the tech boom. Lastly, we will dive in to explore whether the ecosystem is strong enough to cultivate and support this growth.

Rocketing economic growth

According to World Bank statistics, Cambodia’s economy is spearheading the economic boom in the region with an average GDP growth rate of eight per cent between 1998 and 2018, making it one of the fastest-growing economies worldwide. As a result, Cambodia reached a lower-middle-income status in 2015 and the government aspires to attain upper-middle-income status by 2030.

All these statistics paint the picture of a booming economy ready to take on the powerhouses of the region and startups will play a key role in the transformation.

However, these macro indicators only represent the economy as a whole. Therefore, we will need to explore deeper if the anticipated tech boom can be supported by Cambodians.

Also Read: How student entrepreneurs can tap into the fintech ecosystem in Cambodia

Tech-savvy demographic

With a staggering 47 per cent of the population aged under 25, Cambodia’s greatest asset lies in its youthful population. Combined with a mobile and internet penetration rate of 120 per cent and 84 per cent respectively, it is safe to say tech-savviness resides among the top traits of the population. Instrumental to this growth? Cheap data plans.

With 4G data plans starting at US$1 for 10GB, it is small wonder why seemingly everyone in Cambodia utilises a smartphone. With access to the internet and its wide outreach, the sky is the limit for Cambodia as it looks to technology to drive its next phase of growth.

Deep diving into the ecosystem

Thus far, the Cambodian economy (economic growth fuelling increased business prospects and investors) and its population (high digital penetration resulting in citizens being constantly exposed to new technologies) look ready to support the growth of tech startups in the Kingdom.

However, the key to producing successful startups is the ecosystem in place to support entrepreneurs in the uncertain road to create a company. Given the novelty of ideas startups look to solve, it is paramount to have the right community providing advice and resources for them to navigate through the notoriously plentiful difficulties in their journey.

At this juncture, given the young demographic and high mobile usage statistics, the majority would have the view that Cambodians are youthful, tech-savvy and open to change.

However, we have missed the fact that the key consumers with the highest spending power in the economy are middle-aged career professionals that grew up before the tech boom swept across the country. Therefore, it is often opined that the Cambodian consumer market is not receptive to new ideas that startups propose.

Also Read: Will Laos be home to a unicorn someday?

What’s stopping them

BookMeBus founder, Chea Langda, certainly shares this view. BookMeBus was conceptualised in 2015 as a ticketing platform which allows travellers to book their bus tickets within Cambodia and across the borders of neighbouring countries. Chea shares specifically that there is a very little trust given to online platforms by locals and they often worry online products might not be authentic.

More than this, they have a stigma that buying things through an agent is always more expensive and full of scam. This myopic fixation has led consumers to forgo the pain points BookMeBus solves, convenience and cost-savings. Thus, consumers fail to fully value the service and utilise it.

He subsequently shared that while it would be difficult to change existing mind-sets, public marketing campaigns will go some way to reduce such concerns. Therefore, it is paramount that this key demographic would be receptive to new online solutions as startups, even with a great product and market fit, can only go so far without customers to generate substantial revenue to fuel future growth.

Another hurdle faced by startups penetrating the Cambodian market is the high unbanked population. Statistics have shown that 78 per cent of the population is unbanked and less than 15 per cent utilise mobile banking services. Therefore, it has been tough for B2C tech startups to provide the optimal consumer experience with both exorbitant payment processing fees and limited digital payment outreach hampering their overall service.

However, similar to how successful entrepreneurs view difficulties as opportunities, this problem looks ripe for fintech startups offering digital payments to enter the fray and solve it. Given the success of digital payments in Indonesia, it is not surprising that more than 50 new startups have entered to capture what could be a future goldmine.

Mentorship

The scarcity of mentors is a by-product of the relatively young startup ecosystem present in the Kingdom. Due to a lack of entrepreneurs with experience in the field of building and scaling a startup successfully, budding founders have few mentors to turn to for advice in times of need.

Also Read: Cambodia’s Muuve scores funding from Ooctane to take its food delivery service to new cities

Given that research has shown that mentorship is one of the most important needs for a startup to succeed, the fact that over 50 per cent of founders have zero or very infrequent mentorship, is chilling. The uncertain environment that startups operate in due to the novelty of the problems they solve makes it even more important for mentors to be present in the ecosystem to provide experienced guidance for these young entrepreneurs, where more than 80 per cent reported to be working on their first startup project.

Support

Despite the above-mentioned challenges faced by the ecosystem, there have been steps in the right direction to nurture startups in Cambodia. Corporate giants such as Axiata, Toyota and Grab have sponsored incubator-like programmes and hackathons in a bid to provide young entrepreneurs with the platform to pitch their ideas and resources to assist in the implementation of their business ideas.

Regulatory frameworks in the Kingdom have also assisted in priming the ecosystem for growth. Over the last three years, the government has introduced significant policy initiatives aimed at propelling the tech sector and startup ecosystem to the next level. In its five-year national development plan announced in 2018, an initial vision of Cambodia’s digital economy was panned out.

The National Entrepreneurship Fund, with an aggregate capital of US$5 Million, was launched in 2019 and took government funding dedicated to the tech startup ecosystem to US$12 Million. Therefore, by virtue of the amount of resources poured in the build-up the ecosystem, it is clear that policymakers view startups as the next key driver for economic growth in the country.

Eyes on Cambodia

Overall, despite the young startup ecosystem in Cambodia being inexperienced and local consumers taking time to warm to new technologies, I do believe it is ripped and ready to usher in a new era of growth. The ecosystem has been receiving increased government support, both financially and in the way of policies.

Furthermore, the increased attention from others in the region has led to the creation of a conducive environment for investors to enter and boost the confidence of budding entrepreneurs to take the leap and create startups that would ultimately fuel Cambodia’s economic growth.

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Register for our next webinar: Meet the VC: Vertex Ventures

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.

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