MDI Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) owned by Indonesia’s state-owned Telkom Group, has announced the launch of a new US$500 million tech fund.

The new fund aims to bolster the digital transformation agendas of the archipelago’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at large.

The push is as part of an ambitious goal of building out a full-fledged, state-owned digital ecosystem.

Also Read: Meet the VC: How Indonesia’s MDI Ventures managed 3 overseas exits within a month

MDI Ventures claims with the launch the new fund, it has now become the largest corporate-backed, multi-fund VC firm in the nation, with more than US$790 million in assets under management.

Since 2016, MDI Ventures and Telkom have worked together to expand the telecoms company’s in-house digital capabilities. So far, it has invested in more than 44 startups from more than 12 countries.

The CVC is now on the lookout for tech startups that aspire to dominate the local market and help traditional, and largely offline SOEs, join the nation’s thriving digital economy.

So far, SOEs have played an essential role in Indonesia’s US$1 trillion modern economy. As the country’s consumer market is quickly shifting toward digital-first and digital-only user experiences, transformation is seen to be a top priority for local SOEs moving forward.

“Indonesia’s digital economy managed to reach US$40 billion in 2019, with the e-commerce sector acting as the main catalyst for the spike,” said Donald Wihardja, the newly-appointed CEO of MDI Ventures. “Increased ease of digital payments across the country and widespread consumer adoption also significantly contributed to this growth.”

“To maintain their strong footholds in the market well into the future, our SOEs know they need to embrace digital business models more profoundly than ever before. By allocating this fund in accordance with the government’s bold mission and by partnering with local tech innovators, Indonesia’s SOEs will be ideally positioned to thrive for generations to come,” he added.

In recent years, Indonesia had already been transitioning major SOEs into a fully digital paradigm. State-owned banks, for example, had released various tech innovations since 2018 and some even launched their own online and app-based lending platforms for SMEs.

They had also established key partnerships with numerous fintech startups such as Privy, Oy, LinkAja, and ModalRakyat.

Meanwhile, Telkom has been the driving force behind SOE digital transformation efforts at large. Since 2016, MDI has created multiple in-house synergies for its parent company and also cultivated a slew of highly profitable portfolio exits.

These included Melbourne-based Whispir’s IPO on the ASX, Naspers’s acquisition of Red Dot Payment at a valuation of US$65 million, and the acquisition of Singapore-based cloud communications platform Wavecell by US-based 8×8 in a deal worth approximately US$125 million.

Also Read: MDI Ventures names Donald Wihardja as its new CEO, aims to announce new funds this year

Sandhy Widyasthana, COO of MDI Ventures, commented: “SOEs and tech companies can establish symbiosis by allowing startups to instantly access large corporate clients and their consolidated networks of consumers. Meanwhile, these startups will furnish state-owned companies with value-added digital services that will help them adapt to a rapidly changing business landscape in Indonesia. This also means startups can potentially have more exit opportunities later on.”

—

Image Credit: MDI Ventures

The post MDI Ventures’s new US$500M fund seeks to push digitisation of Indonesia’s state-owned firms appeared first on e27.

Singapore’s edutech startup Doyobi announces US$1M in funding from 500 Startups, others

The story: Singapore-based edutech startup Doyobi has raised US$1 million in funding.

Investors: 500 Startups and Xoogler Angels.

What is Doyobi? : Launched early this year, Doyobi is an online school for kids which offers coding courses that are supported by Google, the Singapore government, as well as educators from around the world. It uses videos, quizzes and projects to make teaching and learning fun and easy.

More about the story: Some of the companies partners include Tutor ID (Brazil), Coding & More (India), Galileo (US), Tenopy (Singapore).

Investment in edutech companies have also gained a lot of interest and according to Holon IQ has grown from US$500 million in 2010 to US$7 billion in 2019.

“VCs have been looking at edutech in a big way even pre-COVID-19. Asian parents spend more on their children’s education than sometimes even food – but the pandemic has been an accelerator of this – governments and parents see how powerful alternative platforms such as Doyobi can be. We’re grateful Doyobi chose us to be one of their partners to provide scalable education solutions for our children’s generation,” said Khailee Ng, Managing Partner, 500 Startups.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Anchanto raises US$12M; MAS earmarks US$182M more to boost fintech innovation; How Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy

Lightspeed India closes US$275M fund for early-stage companies

The story: American venture capital firm Lightspeed has closed US$275M of its new fund Lightspeed India Partners III from global institutional LPs.

“The new fund is the biggest for India and will enable Lightspeed India Partners to make early-stage bets on more than two dozen startups in the region,” said Hemant Mohapatra, a partner at the firm.

Where it will invest: Early stage, seed, and Series A companies from India

How it will support startups: By leveraging its global network, building customer partnerships, talent acquisition and growth capital. Some of its portfolio companies include Byju’s, Indian Energy Exchange, Oyo, ShareChat and more.

About Lightspeed: It is a multi-stage venture capital firm which invests across several stages and sectors in India, including technology-led businesses as well as non-technology sectors like advertising and media, business services, financial services, healthcare, education and retail. It currently manages more than US$10 billion across global Lightspeed platform.

Lu International partners Kasikornbank to develop Thailand’s online wealth management platform

The story: Singapore’s Lu International has partnered with Kasikornbank, one of Thailand’s largest banks, to establish an online wealth management platform for retail investors in Thailand.

Behind the partnership: Lu International will leverage on Kasikornbank’s wide customer base in Thailand whereas the Thai bank will use Lu International’s technological capabilities and experience in doing business to help address the financial services gap in the market.

–

Image Credit: Doyobi

The post In Brief: Doyobi announces US$1M in funding from 500 Startups, others appeared first on e27.

At the recent Against All Odds Startup Summit 2020 online conference by Freshworks for Startups, Saleswhale Co-Founder & CEO Gabriel Lim explained how he and his team built a global SaaS platform from Southeast Asia (SEA) with a US$1 million annual recurring revenue (ARR).

But he began his presentation by dubbing his presentation as a “glossary of f*ck-ups.”

“We broke every single rule there is about building a startup,” he pointed out. “But life is not linear and we made tons of mistakes.”

Based in Singapore, Saleswhale builds AI assistance for demand generation. Lim wrote the first lines of codes for the platform when he noticed the disputes faced by sales and marketing teams, where the leads generated by marketing teams are often deemed unsuitable by the sales team.

A Y Combinator alumnus, Saleswhale has gone through the journey and lived to tell the tale. So here are the five things that Saleswhale has learned about building a global SaaS platform from Southeast Asia.

1. You have to decide about being a global SaaS company since Day One

Lim began by explaining how for many SaaS startups based in SEA or APAC, their earlier customers are usually the people in their own network. While this is not inherently a bad thing, these startups have to be careful as it might prevent them from building a product that suits the market that really matters: the US.

“For example, we did not realise how important it was to be integrated to Salesforce — this is because we have been so focussed on Asian users,” Lim elaborated.

Also Read: AI sales assistant Saleswhale raises US$5.3M Series A round led by Monk’s Hill

Which leads us to the bigger question: Why is it so important for Saleswhale to enter the US market?

“Because you should become a dominant player in the US before you can become a global player,” Lim answered.

2. In SEA and APAC, avoid sales-led go-to-market (GTM) motion

Lim spoke of the time when the company experienced a decline in their sales, and he attributed this to its lack of proper marketing motion.

“We did not have a proper product-led motion; a lot of it was led by sales,” he said, stressing on the importance to have a consistency in marketing, lead generation, or some kind of virality in one’s own product.

“It’s going to be extremely painful to get a sales-lead business from APAC because, number one, we do not have the talent density here … Number two is if you’re selling to the US market, this means a lot of 2 AM and late night costs,” Lim continued.

3. Just because you do something, doesn’t mean you should do it

To give context, Lim explained about the one-time Saleswhale overgrew its team. Labour in APAC is relatively cheaper, and whenever problems arise, the company found itself hiring more people as an immediate solution. This ended up with the company having a massive but ineffective team structure.

“If I could turn back time, I would become more thoughtful before I grew the headcount too quickly,” Lim said.

4. Be shameless about learning

As he continued to stress on the importance of looking towards the US market, Lim said that it is crucial for founders of global SaaS platform in SEA to reach out to those in the US. This means doing cold calls and email to their US counterparts to ask questions about building a team and many more.

“In Singapore and APAC, there are just not too many SaaS veterans to learn from. Even the investors may not have that deep of a knowledge,” Lim opined.

Doing outreach can help shorten the learning process for startups.

“If you don’t do this, you’re taking a lot of execution risks,” he stressed.

Also Read: Y Combinator startup Saleswhale raises US$1.2M to automate sales processes

5. Another one related to talent: Hiring the right people

Hiring a capable person is not enough; a global SaaS platform should also hire ones with the right kind of capability. Lim dubbed this as “an expensive mistake that can take back your growth by one year.”

For example, Saleswhale used to hire executives from major SaaS companies with regional HQ in Singapore, but this turned out to be a mistake. Why? Having worked in the regional HQ, these executives are accustomed to operating based on the directions they received from the main HQ.

“This does not transfer well to a startup where you really have to reinvent your playbook from scratch,” Lim said.

Related to the previous points, Lim suggested hiring talents directly from the US, something that remains feasible even during the COVID-19 pandemic due to remote working. But what if a startup does not have the resource to do this?

“It is better to promote someone internally and push them to learn as fast as they can,” he closed.

 

The post 5 things Saleswhale learned about building a global SaaS platform from Southeast Asia appeared first on e27.

Developing a corporate innovation strategy is no easy feat. Akin to cooking a good dish, aside from ensuring that you put in place the best ingredients and chef, adopting the appropriate cooking methods and processes is critical to delivering that dish that you so desire. 

Likewise, aside from taking into consideration factors such as innovation culture, resources, and the executing team, adopting the appropriate innovation approach is key to determining the outcome of your corporate innovation efforts. 

With that, this article highlights an innovation approach that has been gaining traction that could serve to enhance your corporate innovation strategy: the Pre-accelerator. 

Uncovering the pre-accelerator

Most corporates that have been early in the game are familiar with innovation approaches such as hackathons, accelerators, startup scouting, innovation challenges, and even venture to build. But what are pre-accelerators? 

Pre-accelerators have only been rising in prominence in the past couple of years, and mainly in US and Europe. Such programmes have been gaining momentum across startup communities, with the increased awareness of the effort and resources required to enable ideas to take flight.

Given so, pre-accelerator programmes focus on equipping entrepreneurs with skill sets and resources to develop their first minimum viable product and establish a strong product-market fit. The foundation required for any good business venture. 

Also Read: How to get into a pre-accelerator programme

Pre-accelerator programmes can be structured from anywhere between eight to 12 weeks, focused on equipping participants in the areas of customer and market validation, prototype and business model development, fundraising, and development of branding and marketing strategies.

Given that resources are highly limited for entrepreneurs at such a phase of development, the ability to gain access to a consolidated platform of high-quality mentorship, resources, and tools is critical to spurring the rise of new innovative solutions. 

Evidently, the sell for such programmes to entrepreneurs is strong, but why has such an innovation approach also increasingly appealed to corporates? 

How pre-accelerators enhance your corporate innovation model

The answer to this is simple – corporates that are keen to collaborate with startups face the same problem as startup ecosystem players that have been early adopters of this approach, the need to enable ideas to take flight.

This applies regardless of whether you are looking at it from a return of investment perspective in the long-term for your corporate innovation initiatives, or just by the very fact that you need these ideas to mature in order for pilots to be plausible.

It applies whether you are looking at an internal or an external innovation programme, in which both would face the challenge of providing the necessary support to further develop ideas generated by staff or entrepreneurs. 

Given so, corporates have been increasingly drawn to adopting such an innovation approach to enhance and complement their existing corporate innovation initiatives.  

Here are a few ways that pre-accelerators can be brought in to enhance your corporate innovation model: 

Increase the return on investment for hackathons

It is undeniable that hackathons are a good way for corporates to crowdsource new ideas and solutions from the broader ecosystem, in which this is especially so if the industry is nascent and mature solutions are far and few. Fostering the rise of new ideas is as such a key innovation strategy in the long-term, to enable corporates to have viable solution providers to work within the years to come. 

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Anchanto raises US$12M; MAS earmarks US$182M more to boost fintech innovation; How Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy

While recognising the merits of hackathons, corporates that have engaged in them often struggle with the long term feasibility of such an innovation programme given the low success rates of ideas that have emerged. This comes with the realisation of the need for post-hackathon support to enable entrepreneurs to further develop their ideas, validate it in the market before the idea is able to take flight in the form of engaging in pilots or raise further funding support. 

Given so, to enhance the return on investment poured into hackathons, pre-accelerators have been increasingly paired with hackathon programmes. This serves to provide structured support for ideas generated from hackathons, enabling ideas to be further developed to produce pilot-ready solutions. 

Serve as the ideal funnel for corporate venture building

Pre-accelerator programmes are unique in that they work with ideas and solutions that are still in very early stages of development (pre-MVP). As the products and solutions are still in the early stages of development, this presents more opportunities for corporates that are looking to collaborate with startups to jointly shape and develop them.

This serves as an ideal pipeline for corporates that are looking to explore new solutions to bring in as new business units and/or to source for new solutions to engage in further development jointly with their venture building teams. 

The ability to jointly shape and develop these solutions through the pre-accelerator programme, also serves to align solutions more closely to internal processes and constraints increasing the likelihood for the solutions to be adopted. Such a pairing capitalises on the merits of open innovation approaches in the ability to source ideas from the broader ecosystem, to strengthen venture building efforts. 

Serve as curated pipelines for corporate investments 

Given that corporate venture arms often focus on solutions that enhance existing business lines, the investment focus of each corporate is a unique one. While startup scouting is often relied upon to bring in investment leads, corporate venture arms find themselves competing with other corporate venture arms and venture capital firms for this deal flow.

These solutions also often do not meet internal requirements, to which corporate ventures find themselves in tricky situations having to exit investments when business units are not able to work with their portfolio company.

Also Read: Meet 6 of our corporate partners who will FORGE their corporate-startup innovation at Echelon

Investing in a pre-accelerator programme to build up a curated pipeline of early-stage ventures has as such been a model that is increasingly attractive to corporate venture arms. Through customising the scope, scale, and theme for these pre-accelerator programmes, corporate ventures are able to foster the development of ideas that are more closely aligned to their business needs.

Through engaging the startups through the pre-accelerator programme, corporates would also have the opportunity to work with the startup for a certain period of time prior to investment. This increases the likelihood of these solutions being adopted internally and enables investments to be made with more certainty on the potential of the startup. 

Perfecting your corporate innovation model

It is of hope that the above has helped to uncover the beauty of pre-accelerators and how they can serve to boost your corporate innovation model. For those engaged in hackathons, pre-accelerators could be that structured post-hackathon support you have been looking for.

For those engaged in venture building, a pre-accelerator programme could provide that steady pipeline of solutions in a sweet spot of development to collaborate with. For those involved in corporate ventures, pre-accelerators could be that curated deal flow pipeline that you have been looking for. 

So if you are a corporate developing your innovation model and/or reviewing your existing innovation strategy, why not consider the pre-accelerator and see how it can complete the dish for you?

–

Register for Meet the VC: Genesis 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

Image credit: Alex Kotliarskyi on Unsplash

The post The secret is out: The missing piece that will boost your corporate innovation strategy appeared first on e27.

Matthew Tippetts started his professional career as a tech banker about 20 years ago, before moving out to manage portfolios at US-based hedge fund Citadel. This enabled him to come to Asia where he soon discovered the massive gap in terms of the user experience.

“There wasn’t a lot happening in online space. There were a lot of things that could be done to help merchants and get them to really leverage data properly to grow that business. So that’s basically how the idea started,” Tippets recalls.

The first thing that Tippets and his co-founders did was to do a market study. “We wanted to understand how people do payments. So we interviewed 1,800 businesses, about a thousand people, to really understand what people are ready to do and how they do it,” Tippets says.

Tippets wanted to see what the people were using at that time and what the trust factors were out there.

This initiative eventually led to the founding of Cambodia-based fintech startup Clik.

“We wanted to see their interest in some of the services that I was envisioning at the time, and the result of the study was positive. And so we decided to start building up the team, Skye (Skye Cornell, Chief Marketing Officer) and I. We then met the third co-founder, Darren Jensen, along with other co-founders who are all either serial entrepreneurs or tech professionals, fintech professionals,” Tippets continues.

Why Cambodia

In its platform, Clik shares its vision to “create a digital community across Southeast Asia by providing a 100 per cent safe and seamless payment method, suitable for everyone” by building an advanced mobile payment system for enterprises, merchants, and consumers.

In doing so, the question arises on why Cambodia was chosen to achieve this.

“I was at the time in Cambodia, so that was a natural reason. But also it’s mostly because Cambodia, in our view, is the best place for piloting a new technology infrastructure. Here, we have close to more than 80 per cent of internet coverage for the population, where you can get 10 gigabytes for US$7-8. Ninety-five per cent of people here have smartphones, so they have the tools to do mobile payments,” Tippets elaborates.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: Intuit acquires TradeGecko; Synagie proposes US$45M sale of e-commerce arm; Ayoconnect, Wahyoo, Clik, Vesta secure investment

“When we did our feasibility studies and asked questions to people paying in Cambodia, close to 60 per cent of them were already using apps to make payments. One of the payment companies was in 30 per cent of people’s smartphones, which showcased how big the level of penetration is,” Tippets says.

In contrast to what most people believe, Cambodia has a pretty dynamic fintech sector. There are already quite a few players such as Pi Pay, a youth-targeted cashless mobile payment platform.

Phone-to-phone tapping payment

To understand the kind of ecosystem Clik is building, imagine the not-so-distant future where no hardware is required to do a cashless payment.

“We’re looking to enable banks to link bank accounts to the app, so that when you tap with your phone to make a payment, it comes straight out of your bank account, making it practical because it’s completely seamless,” Tippets announces.

Tippets adds that what can be seen now of the company is a little bit like the tip of the iceberg.

“The visible part of the platform is that we help merchants do different things related to data insight. From creating loyalty plans to microtargeting, messaging and so on, all available in the app for the consumer. But beyond that, we have web applications developed for internal purposes, such as building our own customer relationship management and sales force automation system to automate and assist the activation team in reaching out to merchants and converting them,” says Tippets.

“We’ve also built an electronic KYC product that could allow these merchants’ customers to link their bank accounts and onboard customers in 90 seconds when it comes to consumers,” Tippets adds, saying that the e-KYC is where they really hit it off when they first showed it to the target merchants.

“We decided to prioritise the e-KYC and it’s a critical part to the customer journey, whether it’s a merchant or the customers. A merchant can just download the app and look through the application to fulfil all the necessary Know-Your-Client, which is similar to what a bank would require, but in an automated way,” he continues.

Also Read: Cambodian fintech startup Clik raises US$3.7M in seed funding, announces key hirings

In Cambodia, however, to do the standard KYC, it is required to have a face-to-face check-in.

“To address this, we have an activation team queued up with this sales force automation tool, which can really make it easy for the activation team to target merchants and act on converting these merchants onto our platform. So they would go to a merchant, help them download the app, help them collect all the information they need, and within five minutes, a merchant can be fully KYC,” Tippets breaks it down.

The capability to onboard merchants in five minutes is powerful because it opens up a completely new market, which is where the micro SMEs can really thrive with the elimination of needing a Visa account or hardware tool, as everything is done via smartphone only.

The investment and partnerships preceding the launch

“We were unorthodox in terms of our late commercial launch, as we’re looking to really establish our footing in this space. But we have signed agreements with the equivalent of over 2,500 merchants, and we also have agreements with financial institutions for testing and partnering with our services,” Tippets said.

Even before it was officially launched, Clik manages to secure several investments and international partnerships. The company is also raising for its Series A.

Clik’s leading investor is Openway Group, one of the leading investors in mobile payment and cloud payment systems.

“When we explained it to the founder, Andrew Vereninov, he immediately understood what we were doing and volunteered to help us. And within a call, we got nearly US$700,000 in funding, and we’d been working with them for nearly four years now.”

The company then got another investment from Phillip Capital’s POEMS.

It is also securing a guaranteed license by the National Bank of Cambodia. “We expect to get a license by October earliest. So there’s no longer any regulatory risk before our official launch,” Tippets adds.

Also Read: MYPINPAD and Clik aim to unify the digital point-of-sale industry

In addition to the investments, Clik also utilises MYPINPAD’s enhanced Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant payment security, as well as facilities that allow integration with existing payment infrastructures.

Being data-driven as the main focus

The recent and on-going funding will be used for a product roadmap.

“Let’s assume that we’re on track with the launch at the end of 2020, by the first half of 2021, we expect to have quite a few more payment capabilities. So we’re hoping to start with Visa, but we’ll add on MasterCard, and most likely UPI and Alipay. We’ve also already been in discussions with a few other financial institutions to be able to link up with their accounts,” Tippets details.

“We also plan on having additional functionalities launched shortly after the commercial launch, with international remittance being one of them. And in the second half of 2021, we will have further data-driven tools around data analytics and artificial intelligence and machine learning to help our customers predict their revenues and also optimise loyalty plans and the micro-campaigns,” Tippets further adds.

“On top of that, we also expect to expand by the end of the year as we’re already well in the process of applying for a patent license in a neighbouring country, which most likely will be Myanmar,” he ends.

The data-payment gap

Right now, according to Tippets, 85-90 per cent of transactions are still in cash in Cambodia, and that is with around 25 mobile payment players existing in the market.

Tippets says that the potential for market growth is huge as there is enough space for quite a few players. He specifically points out the brick-and-mortar businesses, in which there’s a massive fragmentation of payments and of data.

“In Southeast Asia, for retail payment, 97 per cent are in brick-and-mortar businesses, but nobody’s really catering to these brick and mortar merchants to help them gain some of the data-driven tools that the online space has to really better understand that customer base to better cater to them, get them to be more loyal, and repeat purchase and basically drive more value,” Tippets says.

Tippets believes that moving forward, payments aggregators are going to be key in bringing that interoperability between all these different players to be able to grow the business.

Also Read: Without privacy, Asia’s cashless society will only benefit governments

“That’s why … we’re all about building an ecosystem where we can bring a lot of value to our partners, to the merchants and to the consumers, so that they have a good enough reason to use the service six times a day all the time. Because it’s seamless, practical, ultra-safe, and because it’s everywhere,” Tippets closes.

–

Image Credit: Clik

The post Why Clik believes that Cambodia is the best place to pilot a new fintech infrastructure appeared first on e27.

M17’s Japan chief promoted as new global CEO

The story: Taiwan’s M17 Entertainment has appointed Hirofumi Ono as the new global CEO, replacing the incumbent Joseph Phua, who has stepped down from the top post to assume the role of non-executive Chairman.

Ono until recently led M17 Entertainment in Japan.

Under Ono’s leadership, M17 will aim to continue growing into a global live streaming platform.

Who is Ono?

Born in Sapporo in 1974, Ono completed his Bachelor’s Degree in biological sciences, and his master’s degree in science from The University of Tokyo.

After graduation, he participated in several mobile and media startups.

In 2000, he was the founding member and the first employee of CyberAgent Mobile Co., of which he retired in 2008 as Senior Managing Director.

In 2008, Ono co-founded Infinity Ventures, from which he acted as an investor and veteran entrepreneur, to found Rekoo Japan under Sunshine Ranch, Jimoty, Groupon Japan and Farfetch Japan. In addition, he started the “Infinity Ventures Summit”, the largest conference for entrepreneurs in Japan.

In 2017, Hiro started 17 Media Japan.

Ono retired from Infinity Ventures in July, 2020.

Impact investor SEAF Invests in CloudCfo

The story: Global impact investment fund manager SEAF has announced that its Women’s Opportunity Fund, SWOF, has invested in CloudCfo.

This is the second investment made by SWOF in the Philippines.

What is CloudCfo?: Established in 2016, CloudCfo offers the full range of outsourced finance services, including accounting, bookkeeping, tax compliance, financial reporting, payroll, budgeting, financial forecasts, catch-up accounting, strategic financial advisory and virtual CFO services.

Plans with the money: The startup will use the investment to grow faster across three key business areas — investment in technology, further development of its in-house expertise and people, and for the expansion of its services within the market.

India’s Captain Fresh raises US$2.3M

The story: Freshwater fish and seafood supply chain platform Captain Fresh has raised US$2.3 million in pre-series A round of funding.

Investors: Ankur Capital (lead), Incubate Fund India and Silicon Valley based angel investors.

Plans with the money: The fundraise will be used to invest in technologies like computer vision, IoT, bots, data analytics to digitise and drive efficiencies across the supply chain. Additionally, it will expand to new cities and add key hires to build a mission driven world-class team.

What is Captain Fresh?: It is building a trusted seafood supply chain by bringing in intelligence for superior demand-supply matching, enabling e-auctions for sourcing, standardising supplies and maintaining digital traceability systems.

Captain Fresh works with leading brands in the modern trade channel as well as the pioneers in the online meat and seafood space.

—

The post In brief: Joseph Phua steps down as group CEO of M17 Entertainment appeared first on e27.

Not a lot of people may realise this but when it comes to navigating various job opportunities, the one fundamental factor that’s often overlooked is company culture. We can discuss work-to-home proximity and debate about the ethics of comparing pay grades as much as we want, but at the end of the day, culture fit is what tips the scale when it comes to a person’s employment journey.

And haven’t we all been there? While paychecks and other concrete factors define the backbone of our decision-making, how long we last in a company and how happy we are during our time there are determined by how well we mesh with the values of the organisation.

According to a 2019 report, culture fit is the most important aspect when it comes to staff retention. Because we spend so much of our time at the workplace, it is necessary that employees feel connected in the environment they work in. This is integral not only with regard to how long employees last but also with regard to their sense of presence as well as their overall performance.

Company culture is known to have a direct impact when it comes to boosting a company’s profile and ultimately creating a brand out of its identity. Fostering this sense of identity through company culture can yield tangible results in terms of investor expectations and compensation costs.

As such, Manila-headquartered Workbean launched their culture-search platform that helps companies showcase who they are and what they value in employees to attract talents that mesh well with the company’s values and culture.

Empowering the workplace

In a nutshell, Workbean focuses on helping talents find meaningful careers in companies where they belong by helping employers showcase their most authentic stories about their people, workplace, and culture.

Launching in January 2020 with 8 pilot companies, they have now grown to working with 15 partner companies. Workbean has had over 25,000 unique views of the “culture page” of their portfolio companies, while their job-click rate (job-clicks per culture page views) rose from averaging 5-7% between February to March, and 16% in July. Starting from 1,000 monthly active users in February, they have now grown to 13,000 in July.

“We are seeing that companies are adding employer branding initiatives to their people strategies and not a lot of tools exist to assist HR leaders in this space,” said Neil Rojas, Workbean Co-founder, CFO, and Chief Strategist.

Also read: PouchNATION is changing the game in crowd management tech

Rojas added, “When I lived in Malaysia and Singapore, I noticed that the career perspectives of job-seekers are wider and more informed. This is not the case for Filipinos; the dream of the majority of fresh graduates is to work for the well-known conglomerates and FMCGs—product brands that are well-known.”

In the Philippine context, he argued that not a lot of people apply to tech and software companies despite the high growth potential. Filipinos are still more likely to go for areas often considered “safe” and “traditional”, whereas elsewhere in the world, there is a draw to technology companies and high-growth startups that are changing the world.

Workbean seeks to help widen the Filipino perspective and the best way Rojas believes one can achieve that is to provide a platform that offers authentic company information.

The importance of work culture in the digital age

With COVID-19 disrupting virtually every aspect of human interaction, and by extension, workplace dynamics where employees engage their coworkers through computer screens, it is especially important for companies to craft and nurture their values as an organisation.

Moreover, companies must build their teams according to those values and constantly engage their employees in ways that yield the best results both for the organisation and the individual satisfaction of team members.

Rojas believes that in this isolation economy, innovation will skew towards culture-building and engagement because these are the things that we need to preserve and improve on right now.

“In our interviews with users, we got the sentiment that employees need to feel that their management and their leadership care about them and see their human sides. This is a side of work culture that you don’t see in company websites and job ads—these are the things that we want to shine a spotlight on,” explained Rojas.

“Workbean is positioned to be the platform that showcases the human element of work.”

The future of Workbean

With the momentum that the company currently enjoys and one that they experience despite the setbacks created by the global health crisis, Workbean seeks to onboard at least 100 companies in the next 12 months and have partner companies in major cities in the Philippines.

“We want to be able to spread our mission to other parts of the country because we know that if we can widen the perspectives of a conservative nation such as the Philippines, we can also do so in other countries in Southeast Asia,” said Rojas, underscoring Workbean’s larger plan of scaling regionally in the future.

Also read: VCs get behind Disaster Tech in search for innovative life-saving technologies

He added, “scaling the product and having more companies in the platform [is the goal]. We want to elevate the way people search for jobs and we want to spread this culture of transparency not just in the Philippines but in Southeast Asia.”

The company is also gearing to release a self-service platform where HR teams can self-manage their culture pages. Coupled with plans to offer modified services that come in free and premium versions, Workbean hopes that companies will be able to start building their brands with Workbean for free and eventually upgrade to a premium version once operations finally stabilise.

Addressing challenges

The modified services model currently in development is a part of the company’s plan to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 to businesses everywhere. Because companies are understandably in crisis mode where some have been forced to freeze their hiring processes, Workbean hopes to be able to offer their services without burdening the precarious financial situation of different businesses today.

Moreover, with Workbean having signed up for an e27 Pro membership, the company no longer has to rely on offline incubators and accelerators to access investors and explore funding opportunities.

“e27 Pro makes it easy to identify which investors to reach out to because data is presented in a way where we can easily filter things such as funding stage, markets, and funding amount,” said Rojas, highlighting the important role of transparency and staying informed in the context of fundraising. “The ease of reaching out just to start a conversation is very valuable for us,” he added.

Workbean’s solid run despite having been thrust into a pandemic-riddled status quo says a lot about the company’s formidable team and business model. With their plans already underway and their access to e27 Pro tools and insights, we can only expect great things from Workbean and their vision to inspire a healthier and happier life at work using authentic information for people to reach their full potential.

The post Workbean: Empowering the workplace in the time of COVID appeared first on e27.

Anchanto raises US$12M from MDI Ventures, European shipping firm Asendia, claims profitability; Ascendia is the 4th customer to turn into Singapore-based Anchanto’s shareholder; As of 2019, the B2B SaaS firm claims to have served 12K+ business and sellers consisting of over 300 global enterprises. e27

Singapore’s tech firms put up lists of retrenched workers to help them find new jobs; A local initiative called FreshlyBaked.io, which is collating these lists, said that there are more than 550 professionals, managers, executives and technicians in the nation on these lists; Skyscanner is one of the latest firms to start its own directory which it is promoting on multiple channels. Malay Mail

How Vietnam’s e-commerce firm Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy; Chief People Officer Sakshi Jawa discusses the various HR challenges faced by Tiki, which employs nearly 3,000 people across Vietnam. e27

How bad is the retrenchment situation in Singapore, and how much worse it will get?; Unemployment and retrenchments on the island continued to rise in Q2, especially in the aviation, hospitality, F&B sectors; Retrenchments rose by 108% to 6,700 between April and June, compared with 3,220 in the first 3 months of the year. Malay Mail

Asia bets on blockchain to battle online theft during pandemic; The global blockchain market is expected to hit US$15.88B in 2023 despite retreating 7.27% to US$2.27B in 2020; Blockchain has emerged as a solution for fighting digital counterfeits, pushing businesses to adopt the technology. Nikkei Asia Review

New Singapore live-stream technology aims to recreate theatre experience at home; On their screens, audiences can hang out in the theatre foyer reading virtual information about the play, chat with the front-of-house manager and even sneak a peek at the actors getting ready in their dressing rooms. SGSME

MAS earmarks additional US$182M to boost fintech innovation; The Singapore’s central bank will commit the amount over the next 3 yrs under the enhanced Financial Sector Technology and Innovation Scheme (FSTI 2.0); The budget is 11% higher than the US$164M spread over 5 years that was injected under the first FTSI scheme, which was launched in 2015. DealStreetAsia

Startups urged to unlock value of Malaysia Digital Hubs with launch of special deal; The hubs are an extension of the MSC Malaysia Cybercentre that was created for startups and digitally-powered businesses; It’s designed as hotbeds for innovation, digital co-working spaces and incubators using digital tech in their respective fields of specialisation. Digital News Asia

APAC SMEs responding well to pandemic, but face challenges in digital transformation, says poll; Among the APAC SMEs that responded to the section on COVID-19 impact, 77% said they had adjusted remote work arrangements for employees; The areas that S’pore SMEs cited the most often as significantly impacted by the pandemic were the abilities to meet customer demand, win new business, operate at full capacity. SGSME

Why the Avengers would make a bad startup team; A set of highly talented people coming together to attain a mission could often end up failing if they don’t get a time-travel redo; Talent does facilitate performance, but only up to a point, after which it becomes detrimental as intra-team coordination suffers. e27

Temasek, Mirae Asset return to invest in Impossible Foods’s US$200M Series G round; Impossible Foods has so far raised close to US$1.5B in total funding since launch in 2011; COVID-19 appears to have had a positive impact, at least in part, on the burgeoning alt-protein industry. AgFunderNews

Launching a whole-plant ‘pork’ made from jackfruit in Singapore is next for Karana, say co-founders; In the future, it also plans to launch products using other regional ingredients that will enable us to expand beyond pork; Karana recently closed US$1.7M seed funding for its jackfruit alternative meat. AgriFoodInnovation

How working from anywhere (WFA) is defining the next normal; WFH is not going to be the silver bullet that rebuilds the world’s economies; Instead, a hybrid workforce that incorporates the ability to WFA is what will define this Next Normal. e27

MDEC urges SMEs to register with Digital Xccelerator (DX) platform; The DX platform is designed to help SMEs gain access to available programmes, incentives and tech solutions that best match their specific digitalisation needs; It’s a free-of-charge initiative launched during the MDEC inaugural SME Digital Summit. Malay Mail

Korea’s US$2B Unicorn Toss Join forces with CIMB Bank Vietnam for in-app banking solution; Since launching in Feb 2015, Toss garnered over 48M app downloads and processed over US$10B in P2P payment in Korea, and started to expand its biz to Vietnam since 2019; In an emerging market like Vietnam, the unicorn had a different strategy to win over the young generation. Fintech News

China to expand testing of digital currency; The digital currency pilot programme will cover much of the country’s most prosperous regions; China’s central bank has said that the digital currency shares features with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and Facebook’s Libra, but it will be designed to handle transactions more quickly, making it feasible for wider adoption in China.WSJ

Robots in, buffets out: Asia hotels try socially distant hospitality; Establishments that pride themselves on “personal service” with a “human touch” are now forced to keep employees away from customers as much as possible, while also rethinking a host of other amenities guests used to take for granted. Nikkei Asia Review

Developing an IoT system for Thailand; Experts propose an IoT ecosystem that requires a combination of key players such as tech service providers and the government to jointly facilitate factories connecting their machines, making them “speak” to one another and having them work automatically with a minimal amount of human involvement. Open Gov

Championing the spirit of entrepreneurial resilience; Businesses in the F&B industry have taken to offering food delivery services, while those in education have switched to online classes; In this difficult period, it has become more important to rally businesses to champion the values of resilience, tenacity and importantly, innovation in their daily operations. SGSME

Telecom speakers advise digital readiness; Thailand is first in ASEAN to embark on 5G frequency allocation as it aims to become a digital hub; The nation needs to embrace new digital tech such as robotics, AI, drones, autonomous vehicles, blockchain, AR/VR, and 3D printing, which are all seen as a tech disruptors. Bangkok Post

Amid contactless boom, S. Korea steps into cashless society; Concerned about COVID-19, people are increasingly using mobile services to order food and other necessities online instead of dining out or buying their clothes at physical stores; People in their 40s and 50s have become a crucial customer base. The Inquirer

eBay rolls out an e-commerce export programme for Filipino SMEs; ‘Global 24/7’ is specifically designed to help local SMEs leverage eBay’s platform for global export; Aside from Philippines, the programme is extended to Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam. NewsBytes

—

Image Credit: 123rf.com

The post Ecosystem Roundup: Anchanto raises US$12M; MAS earmarks US$182M more to boost fintech innovation; How Tiki manages to keep employee churn rate healthy appeared first on e27.

With the ever-changing business climate across the globe, companies now find it increasingly important to innovate and grow in order to remain relevant and gain a competitive advantage over their peers. XNode, a leading private accelerator from China, starts from entrepreneurs, connects the resources of large enterprises and synergises the power of investment institutions, academia, government agencies, and accelerators or incubators to build a diverse entrepreneurial innovation ecosystem progressively.

The China-Singapore Innovation Launchpad is one of the many acceleration programs organised by XNode to help participants gain in-depth market knowledge through workshops and meet leading partners and customers to find the product-market fit. More importantly, participants can tap into the XNode’s community and alumni network to receive ongoing support on knowledge, partnerships and financing.

In September last year, XNode leveraged e27’s ecosystem platform and network of startups to promote the Launchpad. The programme called for Singapore startups keen to enter China to submit their applications.

e27 recently had the chance to sit down with Luuk Eliens, XNode’s Chief Commercial Officer, and Clara Chen, XNode’s Innovation Lead, to get their thoughts on the importance of bridging global innovation, the potential for startups in Singapore and the ecosystem in China to mutually advance together as a whole, and how e27’s community and expertise have helped XNode to achieve their desired outcomes.

Also read: ‘Asia Pacific is rich in innovation’: Airbus Ventures Partner Lewis Pinault

How e27’s community supported XNode in its China-Singapore Innovation Launchpad and helped achieve its objective

On working with e27, Chen shared that “e27’s coverage about our Launchpad helped us reach far more people than we might realise; it is a nice complement to our own community-building efforts and collectively, the continued visibility keeps our brand in the innovation ecosystem’s eye and reinforces the message that we are here to support the Singapore ecosystem for the long haul.”  Apart from capitalising on XNode’s existing community members, the Launchpad also tapped onto e27’s ecosystem of startups, investors and partners to attract relevant stakeholders to participate in the inaugural accelerator program in 2019.

Chen further added that the campaign with e27 “gave the XNode brand a personality and helped to tell our story to the right audience. After close to a year, our content is still being discovered by audiences new to the e27 community and continues to earn organic traffic.”

The importance of bridging global innovation and how accelerators like XNode are navigating the new business landscape in fulfilling their mission

Even amidst these times of crisis, XNode’s mission to build the world’s leading engine for innovation and to bridge China to the rest of the world remains the same.

Eliens pointed out, however, that there are definitely several firms including early-stage technology companies that are now more cautious in executing their global expansion plans. “In particular, a few companies with whom we already reached an agreement to help expand their business into China decided to hold back and wait for the right timing to do so,” he revealed.

Nonetheless, Eliens firmly believes that the marriage of business and innovation is a global necessity and startups and innovation ecosystems will naturally gravitate towards the geographies where opportunities are the most significant.

On future opportunities in the space of innovation in China and the rest of the world

There are growing trends both in China and in other parts of the world where we start to see governments stepping up to revive economic growth through innovation. 

Eliens posits, “from that angle, we see a plethora of opportunities in areas such as Smart City, Smart Manufacturing, and Sustainable Development Trends including climate change adaptation and mitigation measures.”

“But this will depend on the ability of companies to take advantage of the new industrial revolution and to overcome growing economic nationalism, as sustainable development depends on a global policy climate that remains conducive to cross-border investment.”

Key advice for founders who are planning to internationalise their business into markets like China

“I certainly believe there is great potential for startups in Singapore and the ecosystem in China to mutually advance in the long-term”, Eliens begins. 

China remains as one of the largest growth engines globally during the pandemic and the country is extremely hungry to spur innovation by fostering collaborations externally. In this regard, since startups from Singapore are global natives and easily adapt and localise from the get-go, they are perfectly positioned to play an important role.

In order to become successful in a vast ultra-competitive market like China, Eliens advises startups and companies not to underestimate the amount of localisation that is required across all angles including product, business model and communication style. He also advises startups to have a long-term vision and mission and be willing to invest in their business expansion for an extended period before they can even draw any meaningful conclusions from their expansion strategies. 

For Eliens, some of the critical characteristics of these companies include “having a very differentiated value proposition, some experience in the China market and the humility and willingness to listen and change”. With that, founders would have a better chance of flourishing in this competitive market.

Carrying such a positive outlook on their bold initiative in the region, XNode has tapped the right partners to complement their objectives. “The campaign with e27,” Chen shares, “was the catalyst to our community-building efforts in Singapore. It connected XNode with hundreds of startups and scale-ups, and was the bridge to future partners and talents within the ecosystem.”

— 

XNode recently worked with e27 for a campaign to tap into e27’s network of startups and reach out to a wider targeted audience. We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

Apart from the above, e27 also has the expertise on co-organising accelerator programs. Some of our recent notable projects include the Facebook Community Accelerator Program, Vision Program with Science & Technology Policy Research and Information Center (STPI) and Smart Zholy Program with the Kazakhstan Government. Find out more by contacting our open innovation team at dustin@e27.co or bocheng@e27.co and let us help you to achieve your desired goals.

The post How leveraging e27’s ecosystem platform complemented XNode’s community-building efforts in Singapore appeared first on e27.

In 2019, around 52.6 per cent of event professionals reported having invested more in event tech than the previous year; this year, those numbers might skyrocket. To say that COVID-19 has thrown the events industry into disarray would be an understatement.

This enforced physical isolation has led to an en masse shift towards digital solutions: from virtual birthday parties to virtual music festivals, to large-scale trade conferences such as Facebook’s Oculus Connect 7, that took its annual San Jose conference online — events are going virtual.

But is this digital migration just a fad, brought about by necessity, gone by the time the pandemic ends?

On one hand, it is true that this new age of virtual events won’t be the death knell for traditional, analogue events: Long-term quarantines have only made clearer that we are social creatures who go stir-crazy if left alone for too long; and, the serendipity of meeting and networking face-to-face is something that virtual alternatives cannot yet capture.

On the other hand, while we need to meet other people — as the pandemic keeps event venues shuttered and people more than an arms-length apart, it has become imperative for us to rethink what meeting requires.

Hybrid will be the new normal

Physical events may be impossible for now, but they will still be a part of the post-pandemic world — though they won’t be the same. For one, concerns about health and safety will persist — according to a survey conducted by SACEOS in May 2020, only five per cent of respondents said that they would be comfortable attending events in October without safety measures in place — thinning out crowds as fewer people flock to physical event spaces and mandating stricter hygiene standards.

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

As event venues operate under capacity, events will require a digital component to keep participant numbers high.

And, the current pandemic has forced even the most resistant of the old guard to adopt and adapt to digital solutions. Almost 60 per cent of the respondents to a survey conducted during our digital event on how to run digital conferences reported that they believe digital conferences will be a part of physical conferences in the future, despite only less than 10 per cent of them having organised digital conferences before.

From live streaming events to remote viewers outside conference venues, to chat rooms that facilitate interaction between online viewers and participants on-site, digital elements currently being tried-and-tested will see greater implementation in physical events as they prove their worth — bringing into being hybrid events that marry the best of both worlds.

Hybrid events will be the next normal. The digital side of events of our near future will leverage features we already know well, stretching the limits of familiar technologies to provide new ways for participants to experience the event and engage with its offerings.

So, what will the future hold?

Device-agnostic, portable events

According to Cisco’s 2020 Global Networking Trends Report, the video will come to represent approximately 82 per cent of all business internet traffic by 2022. In addition, over 70 per cent of the global population will have mobile connectivity by 2023, with smartphones representing the second-fastest growing mobile device in the period between 2018 to 2023.

More people are watching videos online, and an increasing number of them are doing so on mobile devices — and embracing this digital transition will reshape how and where we participate in events. With modern streaming technology, it is now entirely possible to have an entire event in the palm of your hand, to take with you on-the-go.

Also Read: We revamped e27 Events and here are the new things you can do

Of course, to make these borderless events possible, you need technical literacy to ensure the cross-compatibility of their event on different operating systems and devices:

Does your video streaming platform of choice work the same on both Android and Apple phones? How does your live stream landing page look on different screen resolutions? These are issues you must tackle to ensure an optimal experience for all your participants.

New opportunities for generating revenue

In our survey, when asked how much they would be willing to pay for a digital conference in place of the physical edition, which used to be US$1,000 per ticket, 89.2 per cent of the participants were willing to pay for the online conference.

However, 82 per cent expected the price of a digital conference to being around 10-40 per cent of the price of the physical equivalent — owing, perhaps, to the lower set-up costs, the lack of face-to-face networking opportunities, and in some cases, even shorter duration.

If you want people to be willing to come to and pay for your digital event (or the digital offshoot of your physical event), you need to add value to their experience — and going digital creates new opportunities for you to do so.

Think about “freemium” events, for example: With the main session helmed by well-known keynote speakers, available for all participants to view and learn from — and paid breakout rooms, for participants who want more in-depth knowledge or networking opportunities with the speakers. “Freemium” models aren’t new — they’ve been used extensively in SaaS software — but it is significantly harder to implement in physical events, short of stationing a ticketing booth outside of every breakout room.

Also Read: Time to pivot, not panic: The startup advantage to dealing with a pandemic

Looking beyond the event industry

Digital and hybrid events have been around before COVID-19. What the pandemic has done is force the event industry to adopt them at an unprecedented scale and speed, pushing many experienced event managers into unfamiliar territory and creating a new breed dedicated to navigating the new virtual terrain — the digital event managers.

As we build the skills needed to make the most use of digital spaces, we’ll see more digital event managers take a page out of the playbook of digital veterans in other industries — such as e-commerce, or gaming.

When developing features for online exhibitions on GEVME Live, we had to think about how we would digitalize exhibitions. Would it have made the most use of our digital tools to have simply mapped out the physical event verbatim into the online world — or could we go further?

The benefit of a digital exhibition is that it is not constrained by space or time: Participants and exhibitors can come from anywhere, at any time. To make the most of this, we took inspiration from e-commerce, creating an online marketplace where exhibitors can have year-long exhibitions, and engage participants with live streams, networking sessions, and other features like showcases and seminars.

Digital event managers also have a lot to learn from the gaming industry. Gamers know how to work online engagement via video streaming: Two out of the top five most-subscribed Youtube channels feature gaming-related content; on the live-streaming platform Twitch, the average user spends 95 minutes per day watching live gaming.

How do effective game streamers maintain this high rate of engagement, curate their communities, and generate social media buzz on their streams? Events tech is constantly evolving in response to global needs, industry trends, and the wider world of technological developments.

Also Read: #SaveEvents: 4 event-focussed startups to support to keep the sector afloat

Still, the most impactful changes are likely to come from close by — things that are tried-and-tested and have proven themselves to work, even if they haven’t been applied to the event industry yet.

If you are interested in finding out more about what the future of events will hold, and how to navigate the emerging field of digital and hybrid events, why not join us at our Digital Events Academy?

–

Register for upcoming webinar: From zero to 100: How to grow your startup workforce

Register for Meet the VC: Genesis 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

Image Credit: MD Duran on Unsplash

The post The future is hybrid: What will events look like post-COVID-19? appeared first on e27.