An entrepreneur has the same 24-hour day as anyone else. But, within those few hours, there are millions of decisions to be made, questions to be answered and mind-boggling calculations to be made. When there is so much going on around you, staying focused can prove to be difficult. As a result, productivity will go for a toss. 

Is it possible to stay productive as an entrepreneur even if one’s plate is filled to the brim?

There are three questions that can help with that. These are three questions that every entrepreneur must ask themselves every day to maximise their productivity.

Will this bring growth to my business?

For any entrepreneur, growth should be the primary focus and purpose. As an entrepreneur, you are solely responsible for charting the future growth story of the business. There are vital decisions to be taken as to how the business can enter and establish a presence in new markets, how the existing product line can be expanded to serve customers better, and also to bring in more revenue. 

In other words, every single action of the entrepreneur should be geared towards bringing growth to the business. That calls for great decision-making skills. Taking a tough business decision is no mean task. You need a process, a framework, a structure to create great decisions. 

Also Read: How to use ergonomics to enhance your productivity while working from home

To give you an idea, here is the six-step process that Elon Musk uses to make business decisions. 

• Begin with the question
• Gather as much evidence as possible about it
• Develop axioms and assign a probability to each of them
• Draw a conclusion based on: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
• Argue for and against the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to get counter arguments
• If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you’re probably right, but you’re not certainly right.

Although this might seem overly complicated, the basic idea is to run your thought through multiple perspectives to arrive at the right decision.

Can I delegate this to someone?

Jack Welch, America’s best-known CEO, who took the company General Electric to its zenith of success writes about delegation in his biography. According to Jack’s biography, he always started with the question, “What needs to be done now?” 

He will make a list of five top priorities. Out of the five, he will pick two to three tasks that he was best suited to handle. He will delegate the rest to his subordinates or other leaders who are best suited to do it. 

To run a business successfully, you must know not only about the insides of the business but also about managing your time well. As an entrepreneur, your time cannot be dedicated to every single activity. You must find specialists who have dedicated expertise in it. They will bring about efficiency and save time in the process. 

It’s not the only specialist, but you should delegate grunt work too. I spoke with Neal Taparia, who runs word finding site Unscrambled Words, allows his team to delegate any data gathering work to outsourcing platforms like Upwork so they can focus on more important tasks.

Lastly, delegating tasks saves your time and energy for other priorities, mainly strategising the future of the business, growing the revenues, strengthening leadership, and so on.

If I don’t do this what will I lose?

Like mentioned earlier, you cannot be doing every single activity on your plate. You will have to delegate some part of your work to others, or even delete some parts of the task. Now deleting tasks comes with a cost. Probably, these are tasks that could not be delegated, either because you have no one to do it or simply it is not the time to do it. 

You have to ask yourself, what is the opportunity cost of not doing something?

Also Read: Founders of Fabelio, Gadjian, and eFishery reveal their top productivity hacks to start the day

In other words, you have to do a mental cost-benefit analysis of all the pros and cons to find the best path forward. If the gains outweigh, or if there are more pros than cons, then you know what to prioritise.

Serial entrepreneur Darshan Somashekar, who has sold two businesses to public companies and recently founded brain training company Solitaired, talks about the importance of saying no: “As an entrepreneur, there are hundreds of things you can do in your business that you’re excited about. You have to say no, even to promising opportunities, so you can focus and execute on the right ones. I could have built dozens of brain training games, but I said no to building them to focus on a few and get them right.”

Similarly, you must have come across the concept of the time value of money (TVM) in finance. It can be applied to time as well. You can assign a monetary value to the time you have. 

Peter Drucker writes in his book The Effective Executive, “The supply of time is totally inelastic.  No matter how high the demand, the supply will not go up.  There is no price for it and no marginal utility curve for it.  Moreover, time is totally perishable and cannot be stored.”

So, while deciding to do or not do a task, you can try to determine what you will possibly lose by not doing it. If you have everything to gain and nothing to lose, you should be doing it. 

The productivity of makers and doers can be measured with the number of tasks they tick off on a given day. But, for an entrepreneur, it is largely dependent on the priorities that decide upon and the tasks that they decide to do in a day. 

Needless to say, every entrepreneur will be swarmed with a long list of priorities. It is difficult to drill down and fix a few ones that really deserve their time and attention. The three questions discussed above can help get a handle on that. 

Also Read: Top contributions this week: Views from Foodpanda APAC CEO, productivity tips and more

It can help an entrepreneur to decide what tasks they must be working on, how they should go about doing it, and also decide how it will affect them if they choose not to do it.

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Desty, an Indonesia-based company that provides a single platform for individuals to sell their products in,  announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from East Ventures.

The company said that it will use the fresh capital to accelerate its product development and user acquisition, targeting 100,000 users in the first half of 2021.

Founded by ex-Alibaba executive Bill Wang and Eric Nataneal, Desty helps creators, influencers, and merchants sell their products easily through the online platform.

The company currently offers two products, Desty Page and Desty Store. Desty Page is a service that creates landing pages optimized for link in bio at social media accounts, while Desty Store allows users to easily create an e-commerce store complimentary to marketplaces.

Also Read: Social commerce startup Evermos brings Halal products into Indonesia, grabs US$8.25M Series A

“Not only sellers, there are many other types of users actively engaging their followers through Desty. We also provide our users the best tools from customisable templates to comprehensive analytics,” Wang said.

“Having an online presence is not an option anymore, now it is the only way. Desty comes as the local, simple, and free solution for independent online businesses to create landing pages and build their own branded online store in just minutes,”  he added.

Some of Desty’s clients include online brands such as Alowalo, Babycare, Notbad, content creators such as Mindblowon Studio or Tahilalat, as well as influencers from food, travel, lifestyle, and fashion industries.

With the growing popularity of social apps such as Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest more and more people are hopping on board on the social commerce trend.

This model has been widely popular in countries like China where live streaming models have been applied to e-commerce.

In a recent interview with e27, Frank Di, Director of International Corporate Affairs for Pinduoduo, stressed on the importance of creating an interactive experience in reaching out to the audience.

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Image Credit: Desty

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iMedia, a Malaysia-based integrated digital media group, announced today it has acquired a controlling stake in Moretify, a Chinese language portal in the country.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

As per a press release, iMedia would be a major shareholder of Moretify, and its social media assets will be fully integrated into iMedia’s ecosystem.

This acquisition also positions the iMedia Chinese network as one of the largest in the country for Chinese speaking millennials.

This marks the company’s fifth acquisition within 100 days as it seeks to position itself as the leading integrated digital media group in Malaysia.

iMedia has previously acquired OhMedia, Ittify, Goody25 and BeautifulNara in the recent past.

Also Read: iMedia acquires BeautifulNara to expand its digital media footprint within Malaysia

Launched in 2017, Moretify is a Chinese language social media and content website that primarily focuses on the latest news within the local entertainment and lifestyle scene. The site claims to have grown into a prominent brand and source for many visitors from Malaysia and across the region.

Also Read: Are you leveraging social media platforms to increase your sales?

Based on Google Analytics’s data from January to October, the platform recorded an average of 3.1 million page views and over 800,000 monthly users in that period.

Voon Tze Khay, CEO and Co-founder of iMedia, said: “This acquisition will further strengthen the company’s dominant position in the Chinese language content network in Malaysia and our reach to the overall Chinese urban youth speaking online community.”

“The newly combined Chinese network (with Goody25) reaches out to approximately 3.5 million monthly users with close to 14 million pageviews each month,” he added.

iMedia is a Malaysian digital media company focussing on content, technology, and social influencer marketing. It claims its network of managed websites now reaches over 15 million Malaysians monthly.

The firm claims it is looking to complete its IPO on Bursa Malaysia via its own acquisition by Rev Asia, currently listed on Bursa Malaysia for approximately MYR40 million (US$9.81 million).

Upon approval by regulators and shareholders, the Moretify acquisition will be part of iMedia’s move to Bursa Malaysia.

Recently, iMedia announced it has signed an exclusive representation agreement to take over Iluminasi’s advertising sales, with a primary focus on accelerating revenue across branded content, video and display advertising.

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Image Credit: iMedia

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Pintek, a fintech platform providing credit to students, their families and education institutions in Indonesia, has secured an undisclosed amount in a fresh financing round led by Finch Capital.

Accion Venture Lab and several unnamed angel investors also joined the round.

As per a press note, the proceeds will be used for the expansion of Pintek’s product and tech team, as well as to educate the domestic market on education loans.

Also Read: Education-targeted fintech platform Pintek secures pre-Series A funding led by GFC, diving further to education-based finance sector

The latest deal brings the total money raised by Pintek to nearly US$5 million.

Started in 2018, Pintek aims to improve the access to investments in education in the archipelago by providing financial access to all communities and educational institutions and their suppliers.

To date, it claims to have partnered with more than 190 institutions in the K-12, vocational, higher education and non-formal segments, and has distributed credit to customers across more than 26 provinces in the country.

Pintek, owned and operated by SoCap, looks to grow ventures that facilitate cooperation, exchange and innovation for social impact in the region.

“During the pandemic, Pintek has seen strong growth, with revenues increasing 12x from January through September 2020 v/s the same period last year. Our significant growth validates our value proposition to be an enabler of the entire education ecosystem, financing students, education institutions and their suppliers,” said Ioann Fainsilber, CEO of SoCap.

“We have adapted our product portfolio to the needs of the sector during the pandemic by for example helping schools to finance investments needed to digitise and run effective online learning environments. We want to be one of the key enablers for the education sector in Indonesia and support the Indonesian government mission towards education 4.0,” he shared.

Also Read: How fintech is making credit more accessible for Southeast Asian SMEs

Hans De Back, Managing Partner of Finch Capital, said: “We expect Pintek to be the end-to-end solution for educational needs due to its business model for students, education institutions and their suppliers.”

Paolo Limcaoco, Southeast Asia Investment Officer at Accion Venture Lab, said, “Inclusive financial services are critical to ensuring that schools can provide high-quality education and students can access the education they need.”

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Image Credit: Pintek

 

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N-Squared Ecommerce Group, an e-commerce distributor and solutions provider in Thailand, has received an undisclosed amount in Series A funding from a clutch of investors, including KKP Capital, Siam Alpha Equity (SAE), Chanwanich Group, AHMP and ECG-Research.

The funds will be used to strengthen its core technology and services and expand its footprint across Southeast Asia.

“According to Statista, the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia is expected to grow by more than 402 per cent from 2019 to 2025. Following this growth opportunity, we are scaling our international businesses across Southeast Asia to countries including Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam,” said Nuttapon Boonpinon, Managing Partner at N-Squared Ecommerce.

Started in 2016, N-Squared provides e-commerce services including logistics and operation management, omnichannel management, customer service, web and tech, online marketing, data analytics, and consulting.

It owns several online direct-to-consumer brands and an e-commerce distributor for over 130 brands in six countries across Southeast Asia.

The startup’s clients include Tefal, L’Oreal, Huawei, and Hewlett-Packard.

Also Read: Desty raises seed funding to help individuals build an online presence easily

In 2019, the group generated a total of 1,192 million baht (US$39 million) in revenues, with a compounded annual growth rate of 125 per cent since inception, it said in the statement.

The startup expects to more than double its revenue for 2020.

According to data acquired by N-Squared, the average spending in Thailand has increased by 23 per cent after the onset of COVID-19. The data also showed that FMCG products, which consumers had tended to purchase offline, also gained online traction and strong growth, compared to other product categories.

“2020 has been another challenging year, but also full of opportunities for online businesses. We have seen a rapid change in consumers’ online shopping behaviours. This year, our house brands, HomeHuk and XtivePro, have been sold to over one million customers via online channels only,” Boonpinon added.

“The growth of the opportunity of direct-to-customer brands is huge in this region. Therefore, we plan to continuously invest in these brands and build them into the No.1 brand in the home & living category and sports goods in Southeast Asia. Also, we look forward to building more direct-to-consumer brands across more categories and markets, while we will expand our operation across Southeast Asia,” he shared.

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Image Credit: N-Squared

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