It is without a doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused businesses across all sectors to struggle to stay afloat. To make matters worse, Singapore is currently heading towards the worst recession since its independence with the Department of Statistics reporting a total of 18,786 business closures from January until May 2020.

With significant uncertainty of how the pandemic situation will evolve as we approach the end of the year, many are worried that the worst is yet to come.

For startups and SMEs, the matter becomes more serious as they are fighting tooth and nail to maintain positive cash flow by shifting to online platforms, pivoting to other business models, or temporarily shutting down operations to conserve resources. However, with no end to the economic uncertainty in sight, startup and SME owners continue to face a daunting question: How do I make the best decision to ensure business continuity?

Very often, startup and SME owners envision goals and make decisions to ensure the long-term survivability of their businesses, leading to eventual exponential and sustainable growth. However, within the startup and SME ecosystem, a business owner often holds multiple leadership roles, including that of a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and overseeing the company’s financial infrastructure.

Between envisioning the company’s long-term strategy, ensuring smooth day-to-day operations and struggling to maintain positive cash flow, CEOs tend to find themselves feeling increasingly stretched. For instance, two of my clients -Zhi Zhong, CEO of Geniebook and Janan, CEO of Gobbler- have reported finding their attention divided and unable to find enough time within the workday for matters that truly needed their attention.

A CFO will help to relieve some of their duties and the insight provided is valuable in ensuring the accuracy of the business’ financials and accounts. Most investors are still looking to back promising enterprises despite a cost-cutting period. Therefore, the support and guidance of a virtual CFO will be able to maximise a company’s value and establish a sound reporting system that is crucial when communicating and pitching to investors.

Also Read: Funding Societies appoints GoBear co-founder Frank Stevenaar as CFO, promotes Ishan Agrawal to CTO

The role of a CFO during fundraising

Before embarking on a fundraising journey, it is important for business owners to first determine the most sustainable funding avenue necessary to ensure long-term business continuity. To achieve this, business owners must stress test the key operational drivers of their respective enterprises, thus enabling them to plan for various scenarios.

The next step involves drawing up a roadmap specific to the business and determining the funding requirements needed to implement the plan. When it is finally time to decide on a funding method, business owners should keep an open mind while exploring all avenues of financing while not losing sight of the purpose of the fundraising.

With the leadership of a CFO, these processes become faster, easier and less daunting, enabling business owners to focus their attention and efforts on other aspects of their business like day-to-day operations or product development.

More than that, a CFO is able to strategically dive deep into a company’s processes, understand what drives value for the organisation and use this information to develop a strategic direction for the company. This makes them much more than a finance admin or bookkeepers.

With this in mind, tapping into the experience of a CFO during the pre-funding stage will allow business owners to gain long-term insight into their business needs and priorities. This will result in a more accurate understanding of funding requirements and business valuation in order for companies to experience only the most successful fundraising.

After funding is secured

Once funding is secured, business owners must look to implement proper finance management to ensure that the resources obtained are utilised wisely and effectively. The role of a CFO at this stage is to develop a scalable finance function to ensure that the company’s economic engine continues to run smoothly and efficiently with the newly acquired funds.

After leading a company through a successful fundraising round, an experienced CFO can also create robust financial models unique to the needs of the business while managing the organisation’s finance talent pool. Financial models serve as perfect budgeting tools.

Also Read: When should your startup get a CFO?

More than that, business owners should look to the guidance and experience of a virtual CFO in leading their finance teams while striving to implement best practices like annual budget planning within the company’s processes. Eventually, with financial models to drive sustainable budgeting year on year, I am confident that business owners will be able to experience long-term growth.

Growing trend for virtual CFO

However, not every organisation requires a full-time CFO. Even if you can afford one, the workload is not sufficient to justify one. To illustrate this, one of my clients -Eric of iVideoSmart- felt that employing a full-time CFO for a startup of their size was overkill.

At the same time, however, the accurate tracking of key financial metrics is a must. That’s where the services of a virtual CFO fits this need like a glove and companies such as Paloe, which provide this service have been instrumental in creating robust and effective financial models while maintaining active involvement in all financial matters.

Ultimately, while modern-day CFOs retain the traditional responsibilities of accounting, number-crunching and budgeting, I believe that the ever-changing world has resulted in CFOs evolving to meet dynamic business needs.

In turn, while many businesses are concerned with getting through this economic storm, it is a good time for business owners to hire an experienced CFO when it comes to making the right fundraising decisions or managing the firm’s cash flow.

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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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Listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX), Achiko AG is known as a fintech company that provides user registration and payment services accessible for app developers. But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rage on, the company decides to take part in making a difference.

“We’re out to save the world. Like, really,” Achiko AG CEO & Director Steven Goh writes in a press statement.

In an interview with e27, Goh gives a further explanation about their move to the healthtech space, starting with the products and services that they are working on.

The first arm is Teman Sehat, an ecosystem platform that aims to assist governments and businesses in dealing with the COVID-19 impact through contact tracing services, combined with couponing and advertising. Goh likens the app to Swarm, which allows users to get rewards for checking in to places.

The second arm is a COVID-19 test kit code-named Gumnuts, the result of its collaboration with biotech company Regenacellx.sl. This solution is particularly suitable for developing economies, according to Achiko AG.

“Up until recently, testing has typically been delivered through two methodologies –the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and the Antigen/Antibody– and two sampling methodologies –through nasal swab or blood sample … All rely on technologies that are 30 to 50 years old and suffer from either process limitations … or design issues,” the company says in a press statement.

Also Read: Accredify, SG Innovate partner to launch Digital Health Passport that will accelerate travel post-COVID-19

But using the DNA Aptamers as developed by Regenacellx.sl, Gumnuts is able to provide patients with a testing process that is “less intrusive than brushing teeth” and costs under US$0.25 per test.

“We are fast-tracking clinical trials and looking forward to having a commercially available product later this year,” says Goh.

The projects are currently being tested in the Indonesian city of Pekanbaru. The city was chosen due to its “nice statistical representation” of the Indonesian population profile.

“I am being reminded about the story of MPesa and Safaricom in Kenya. We hope that Pekanbaru in Indonesia becomes the MPesa of COVID-19,” he explains.

Finding a way back into Old Normal

As the world rushes to develop and introduce COVID-19 vaccine to the public, Achiko AG decides to focus on developing and providing test kits as a solution to tackle the pandemic.

“We are excited about vaccines coming, but a vaccine is not a cure and not everyone will get one immediately. As Bill Gates said, it would be the end of 2021 where first world countries will be beyond the pandemic, and 2022 before many developing countries are,” Goh points out.

There is also the concern that vaccines will only be 40 to 60 per cent effective.

“If the theoretical herd immunity level is around 70 per cent and 30 per cent will not take a vaccine, and the effectiveness rate is, say, 50 per cent, then a vaccine may not get us there on its own,” Goh continues.

Also Read: What Myanmar’s proptech industry is doing to stay afloat despite COVID-19

“We believe that it is going to be a rough few years. It is going to take many solutions working at the same time. But together, we can get back to our Old Normal,” he stresses.

There is also another challenge: Finding that delicate balance between rigorous tracking and privacy protection, both for individuals and businesses. Places that have been labelled as a COVID-19 cluster may experience damage to their reputation as the public would be scared to visit them; a situation that can further worsen the economy.

Teman Sehat aims to do it differently by putting the focus on the individuals in performing contact tracing. It enables users to check-in to the places that they visit in exchange for coupons or even a small fee. Some places might require users to have a certificate that declares themselves as having been tested for COVID-19; this part ensures that only people who have been tested can enter the facility. The platform will also privately message users if they have been exposed to a COVID-19 case.

Apart from that, users that have been flagged for COVID-19 exposure or expired certificate will be required to undergo self-quarantine, being unable to check-in to places that require certification.

Empowering healthcare

With the upcoming launch of these healthtech products and services, what will happen to Achiko’s fintech services? Goh says that the company will continue to run its fintech projects. In fact, they are looking forward to launching new products such as savings and payday advance platforms.

“The company has used its fintech infrastructure to power the Teman Sehat platform, and we think that is the best driver of value to our shareholders at this time,” Goh explains.

Also Read: How to train a diverse and dispersed workforce during COVID-19 and beyond

Goh himself is already a familiar name in the Southeast Asian tech startup ecosystem. He was previously known as the co-founder of social entertainment platform Migme. In 2017, e27 published a report about Migme struggling to find new investors.

“Migme was an important part of my life. At its peak, I fell down a flight of steps and broke my back. It is my fault that I did not build a resilient organisation that would deliver results in my limitations. I tried to save it but could not,” Goh explains.

“It is still being settled and done professionally with PwC in Australia. I have moved on. Professionally, I am sure that book will close later this year,” he continues.

For Gumnuts, Achiko is looking forward to implementing the technology for a different kind of testing.

“DNA Aptamers, because of their design, might be stable in different environments and have a universe of new forms of testing. We are really excited about this,” Goh closes.

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Image Credit: Achiko AG

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COVID-19 has hit us hard. From transforming your home into a make-shift office, balancing personal and work lives, to mask-wearing and safe distancing measures in the workplace, everything about the way we work has changed.

After months of working from home, some organisations have announced permanent work from home policies for the rest of the year, while others begin to think about transitioning back to the office.

Despite the growing demand for and adoption of remote work, our research suggests the office is here to stay. We spoke to 25 business leaders and surveyed over 500 respondents across the Asia Pacific (APAC) and the ability of their company to continue to support flexible working arrangements, alongside a return to the office, was ranked by 99 per cent of respondents as ‘fairly important’.

Other top concerns include safety of the workspace and managerial support.

In balancing the return to the office with remote working, it is important to recognise and identify new work patterns and behaviours that your employees have already formed. This may mean that the office and its fundamental purpose will likely look radically different both in the short and long term.

So, how do employers tap into these insights to create future thinking workspaces that will stand the test of time?

Create dynamic and purposeful workspaces

This pandemic has served as a harsh reminder of the importance of building resilience into an organisation, which would allow companies to quickly adapt in periods of crisis and change. The idea of resilience also applies to the physical workspace.

Also Read: Office 2.0: designing data-driven workspaces

Now, more than ever, businesses need to consider their real estate differently, think beyond space, and plan for workplace strategies enabling flexibility to make the work environment as productive as possible as circumstances evolve.

Through our leadership interviews and employee surveys across APAC, we’ve found that while the majority of people and organisations have adapted well to remote work in the short term, a deeper appreciation for, and varied expectations of, working in the office has developed.

Time working remotely has highlighted how unplanned, organic social interactions in the office can be fundamental drivers for collaboration, creativity and culture. Our research shows this is something we deeply miss. In designing the workplaces of the future, organisations must create workspaces to facilitate these types of interactions that are not achieved remotely.

At a high level, this should involve a fundamental shift in the ratio of workspaces for most organisations to reduce the number of individual fixed desks in favour of more shared spaces for collaboration and high-activity social areas such as on-site cafes.

Design elements like open spaces, atriums, shared workspaces in common areas, staircases with seating, and outdoor workspaces can help create an environment that encourages people to work together by locating desirable amenities in diverse locations, and facilitating “casual collisions” throughout the workday to promote teamwork and increased collaboration.

By building resiliency into physical workspaces, organisations can create an agile workplace strategy that allows us to continuously learn, prepare, and adapt for the future.

Also Read: Workbean: Empowering the workplace in the time of COVID-19

Put people first

To put it simply: people are the heart of any organisation and the end-users of the spaces we design and work in. As organisations approach new ideas about workplace strategy it is imperative to keep employees’ needs at the heart.

Design with empathy

It was no surprise to learn through our research the foremost concern shared by both employees and leaders about returning to the office is ensuring health and safety. Beyond immediate and mandated measures to create a safe environment, ensuring that the office is a comfortable and stress-managed environment, is crucial.

Organisations should consider communicating these new ways of working in a way that reduces negative impact on the employee experience. For example, safe circulation through and around shared spaces can be addressed through playful graphics that reinforce social distancing guidelines with a sense of humour that help to create a positive and pleasant work environment.

Taking it one step further, colour psychology can be applied in the workplace to help designate behaviours to specific zones in the office without having to directly tell or remind.

Organisations may choose to implement a coloured wristband system where the use of colour and material choice can inform people of their personal safety space and communicate, in an intuitive manner, the norms of behaviour in different areas.

Focusing on employee well-being for workforce resilience

Given the uncertain environment we work in currently, employees face a mountain of concerns every day. Outlining and executing clear expectations in returning to the New Normal for their working lives is a crucial first step in easing these professional anxieties.

To help employees navigate changes to office layouts, workplace practices, and ways of working, organisations need to clearly communicate, train, and regularly remind staff on clear plans that address the who, what, when, where and how of their return to work strategies.

Also Read: What your workplace will look like in a post-COVID-19 world

Regular check-ins between managers and their team members will help organisations stay up to date on the concerns of employees in order to quickly address problem areas and ensure a smooth transition to new ways of work.

To further support employee well-being, organisations should look to provide access to mental health support and wellbeing programmes to help alleviate both personal and professional challenges.

Foster a culture of experimentation

With many companies globally undertaking a journey of workplace transformation at the same time, it may be tempting for organisations to plan their transformation around what other successful companies have done.

However, every company is unique, from the type of work they do, to the real estate they have to work with, and so there will be no one-size-fits-all solution to the future of the workplace.

To inform workplace strategy, thorough research to gather reliable data about what employees need and how they work best is required.

Based on the findings, companies should then pilot their workplace solutions in stages, for example, allocating one or two floors of a building to experiment with the changes before implementing them organisation-wide.

This creates agile workspaces to fulfil short to mid-term organisation goals and use each stage to learn and inform the next transformation.

Organisations will need to work diligently to quickly identify opportunities for change, test solutions, evaluate the results, and reiterate as needed to find the best strategy that brings out the best results for their business and people.

Also Read: 5 startups reveal their thoughts on why shared workspaces are a godsend

Although we have figured out how to work apart after months of remote working, the office is certainly not going to be a thing of the past. Our research and experience have shown there are elements of working together in an office that remote working simply cannot replicate.

Despite varying cultures, behaviours and government mandates, we strongly recommend working through a three-pronged approach: putting people before space, building nimble, purposeful workspaces and testing solutions prior to implementation.

By embracing this approach and developing solutions with greater care, organisations would be able to implement innovations that best suit their unique needs, building workspace resilience amidst an uncertain future.

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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.

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

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Despite, or thanks to, COVID-19, William Bao Bean, Managing director at SOSV’s Chinaccelerator and MOX (Mobile Only Accelerator) said their portfolio saw a 61 per cent increase in revenue from January to April.

Notable companies include the edutech rocketship Snapask, which recently closed a US$35 million Series B and is seeing tremendous growth during the past few months; and TravelFlan (which has raised US$7 million in Series A), which adapted their core AI products to lifestyle products to achieve US$1.2 million in revenue in July.

An advocate of lean teams and conserving cash, Bao Bean believe in “Cockroach profitability”. In our latest webinar, he shared his know-how on cash conservation and strive for profitability even amidst a pandemic.

Getting to know SOSV

• Although they are a global VC, they have focussed verticals such as biotech, food, agritech, cross-border internet, and SaaS.
• There are many  many VCs who are always looking for startups.
• SOSV is a VC-cum-accelerator with investments in over 1,000 startups. They annually invest in about 150 companies.
• They are all about traction first, fundraising second.
• Its important for any startup to have a “superpower” i.e. something they do better than everyone else. SOSV has MOX (Mobile only accelerator) which is an extension of their mobile app with 60 million active users monthly. MOX helps them offer easy and free consumer acquisition to their startups

Managing your cashflows

• As a startup the only cash you have control over is the one in your bank. Revenue and investor money are variable and you really can never guarantee when and how much will come in.
• Bao Bean advocates lean operations and stated that founders, co-founders should actually be in for the adrenaline and the equity and not the lure of monthly monetary compensations.
• Experiments or trying our new ideas is good but keep them light and fast-moving (watch the full video to learn about Bao Bean’s failures in the cartoon world).
• Try multiple things without spending too much time, money and resources. Once you identify what works, then build on it with greater resources.
• The only time one should raise funds, says Bao Bean, is when you can take a dollar and turn it into more than a dollar. Until then just stick to money from friends and family or cough it up yourself.
• If you are into something such as deep tech that needs higher development time, work to gain some traction first.
• Your aim should be to get to a point with your product that proves it can solve a real-world problem
• Startups should always be wary of getting into debt, especially in a world that is running high on burning-cash-for-growth trend.

Also Read: It is all about survival of the most adaptable, says PatSnap’s Jeffrey Tiong

• Carve time to regularly take stock of where you are, where you need to be, and what you are doing right/wrong. Bao Bean recommends twice a month.
• Focus is key at all times. Do not get lured by everything that is happening around you (such as others raising a lot of money). Stay centred!
• Unlike the big players, you have just one bullet and you have to shoot right as a startup. Make sure you are putting your best foot forward backed by data, customer success metrics, and the viability of the product
• Pandemic is, in fact, easy on startups. Most early stage companies didn’t have to deal with layoffs and it was also easier to pivot for those that could. Watch the full video to hear how SOSV’s portfolio company pivot from travel to make-up and actually becoming more profitable.

Resources

• Bao Bean highly recommends reading Measures of Success by Mark Graban
• Watch the full video recording to know how to avoid the mistake Jack Ma made

The post Why SOSV’s William Bao Bean thinks the pandemic is good for early stage startups appeared first on e27.

More and more businesses are waking up to the grim, post-COVID-19 economic reality. The current downturn is a black swan event, but it’s most certainly not unprecedented. Economies of almost all countries have declined; India’s shrunk by about 23.9 per cent, the UK by 21.7 per cent, and the US by 9.1 per cent.

Economies globally have seen downturns earlier too, but how does history remember them, the Great Depression in the US, India’s 1990 balance of payment crisis, or the 1997 Asian financial crisis?

During the Great Depression, the US economy shrank by 50 per cent between 1929 and 1933, the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis setback economic growth in a number of ASEAN countries by nearly a decade. What are the lessons we can learn from the past are how can we mitigate the long-term economic impact of the current downturn?

It is evidently clear and well-documented that all financial crises result in large-scale human suffering, affecting both the rich and poor. Unemployment rate shoots up, businesses shutter, while vital sectors such as construction, retail, and agriculture suffer adversely.

Eventually, almost all economies recover,  major sectors get back on their feet. However, this doesn’t mean all companies within those sectors make it. Some organisations survive, some rediscover themselves, and a few new ones spring up to capture a big share of their sector or create a niche.

Whatever the future is, organisations reach there not merely by luck but through perseverance and in-depth planning. But one thing that precedes both is the mindset of its leaders which in turn decides the fate of the organisation. The two common paths during this crisis are survival or revival.

Also Read: Accredify, SGInnovate partner to launch Digital Health Passport that will accelerate travel post-COVID-19

Let’s take a look at these two options and explore why the current downturn could foster structural changes in the way businesses work. Great leaders often have a knack of reviving their organisation from the worst possible crisis, let’s look at their mindset and unique decision-making process.

Restructure or re-engineer? Adapting processes for efficiency

Businesses that merely try to survive see the economic downturn as an additional cost imposition. When work volumes come down, the easy, survival-oriented option is to restructure: cut the workforce, reduce hours, or to drop output levels. While this can help to offset the cost of the downturn in the short-term, the loss of capability profoundly impacts long-term business sustainability.

Process re-engineering provides businesses with an alternative approach that transforms the downturn into an opportunity. Rather than cutting output to keep costs down, businesses need to find more efficient and cost-effective ways to create products or to deliver services. Existing supply chains, especially those originating in East Asia, might be broken at present.

This creates an opportunity to tap into domestic lines of supply. Service-oriented businesses need to look at video and audio calling solutions to deliver value to customers in a cheaper and more flexible way than before.

Implementing a work-from-home policy will also enable continuity, particularly for businesses in the digital sector.

Vision and culture: where do you see these changes going?

COVID-19 and the economic downturn are also key inflexion points forcing businesses to do some serious thinking about who they are, in terms of business culture and vision. In the longterm, survival-oriented strategies only serve to highlight systematic issues with culture and vision.

Braver organisations willing to grapple with these questions will be able to align their continuity plans with a broader vision of who they are and what they’re doing. This can mean embracing digital solutions, not as stopgaps, but as core aspects of processes to follow post-COVID-19.

Also Read: Fintech company Achiko wants to help tackle COVID-19 with its new healthtech projects

It can also mean committing to social responsibility, taking care of the workforce and the local community at a time when help is needed.

Survival or revival? The choice is yours

All businesses have been substantially impacted by the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. When it comes to long-term resilience and sustainability, the question of survival versus revival becomes key. Businesses that focus just on short-term survival might get through the initial situation.

However, they’ll be in a far worse position to compete when things settle down than those businesses that see the pandemic as an opportunity for revival and reinvention. The entire Asian economy, on the whole, has been facing headwinds well before the pandemic started.

This could well be a key inflexion point dependent on how businesses across the country choose to respond.

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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.

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

Image Credit: Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

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