In today’s world, there’s no question that digital platforms play an extremely influential role when it comes to inspiring creativity, enabling freedom of expression and building a strong community. While the internet provides us with many opportunities to freely exchange ideas and connect with others, the principle of freedom of expression is under intense scrutiny as platforms look to ensure they remain an inclusive and safe space for their users.

This industry faces an increasing responsibility to ensure the right voices and content is being spread and heard, and it’s not one that should fall on content platforms alone.

Leading digital platforms have begun creating third-party councils to develop forward-looking policies that not only address the challenges of today but also help plan ahead for the next set of issues the industry will face.

TikTok, for instance, has created an APAC Safety and Advisory Council which I sit on, alongside other leading legal, regulatory, and academic experts to provide advice on content moderation policies and trust and safety issues specific to the APAC region. The Council will provide subject matter expertise and advise on TikTok’s content moderation policies and practices to help shape regional and global guidelines.

Policies related to free speech and censorship

While today’s leading digital platforms all take a different approach to democratising content, allowing it to be developed, shared and consumed more easily, not all online content is appropriate or safe. For this reason, platforms must establish clear community guidelines and create forward-looking policies that will mitigate the spread of harmful content.

Most platforms agree that dangerous individuals and organisations should not be allowed to spread hateful ideologies or illegal activities, as well as violent and graphic content, content related to self-harm and dangerous acts, hate speech, harassment, sexually explicit, or misleading content. However, addressing these existing and emerging issues can be difficult as platforms are scrutinised for their moderation guidelines.

Also Read: Cybersecurity threats on the rise as companies shift to the WFH model

To provide more transparency into how platforms are keeping users safe through moderation practices, platforms such as TikTok have begun to develop Transparency Reports providing insight into how it responsibly responds to data requests and protects intellectual property. The Council’s mission moving forward is to help outline TikTok’s approach to policies to protect the safety of its community members across the APAC region, while maintaining full transparency to its users.

As a diverse group of legal, regulatory, and academic experts, we believe one of the best ways a platform can keep its users safe is by empowering the community with tools and education.

Policies related to online safety

The most important commitment the industry faces is to keep its community members safe. This is a challenging but critically important area for the industry to get right, and platforms should look to approach the protection and safety of their users through policies, product, people, and partners.

From a policy perspective, platforms should be steadfast in their commitment to immediately remove content, terminate accounts, and report harmful cases to law enforcement as appropriate. They should also build strong safety controls, and invest heavily in human and machine-based moderation tools, as well as work with third parties to identify and remove hateful content accordingly.

As external Council members, our primary focus is to identify and solve challenges related to children/underage kids, digital literacy, mental health and human rights. We are a diverse group of experts comprising of backgrounds in IT, digital safety and literacy, intellectual property and internet law, and advocates of child safety, women and other marginalised groups, who are committed to addressing these challenges.

Community effort to make digital platforms a safe space for all

If we exclusively put the onus on platforms to keep communities safe, we will fail. Policymakers, regulators, the platform and its users all have a stake in making digital platforms a safe space for all. Though we all come from different cultural and professional backgrounds and may provide differing opinions on how to keep the community safe, we will work together to spot gaps in content moderation policies and provide advice on the best path forward.

Also Read: VNG sues TikTok over alleged copyright infringement in Vietnam: Reuters

The road ahead isn’t going to be an easy one, per se, but it will be worthwhile as we collectively work together to tackle industry-wide issues. Our Council has long been committed to serving the online community in our own individual capacities.

Now, we’re looking forward to uniting in this endeavour to make the internet safer for users all across the APAC region, taking diverse cultural, religious, and other social nuances into account.

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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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Soon after being announced as the winner of Singapore’s waste-tech startup competition WASTE 20/20, organised by StartupX in partnership with Enterprise Singapore and The Incubation Network, e27 decided to interview Magorium co-founder Chu Xian to find out more about its vision.

The startup recently received prize money of approximately US$19,000 and managed to outshine over 100 waste-tech startups that had applied for the competition from over 32 countries globally.

The issues of plastic waste have been prevalent throughout the world but have mostly been a major social issue in Southeast Asia, excluding Singapore. Without a viable recycling solution, plastic waste is indiscriminately burned releasing cancerous and pollutive emissions.

While many companies are striving to solve this issue, the lack of strict protocols on plastic production and consumption, coupled with lack of public awareness has led to an increased level of pollution.

Founded last year by Xian and Adriel Ng, Magorium aims to solve the converts plastic into polymers, which are then used to produce high-quality bitumen used for road construction.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

How did you come up with the idea of Magorium?

Having experience in the construction industry, the technology was initially an attempt to create more sustainable construction material.

Through years of R&D, we found ourselves not only a better performing alternative material but also an effective plastic waste recycling solution.

Also Read: How Maeko aims to reduce communal food waste through composting

What makes Magorium different from others who are already in the business?

Our technology can recycle a wider range of plastic types and incorporate a higher percentage of it into the roads. Hence, we believe that ours is a more effective recycling solution.

Can you share with us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your startup? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

When we first started, we approached different stakeholders essential to the success of our technology – the waste management companies, construction companies and the relevant authorities regarding commercialisation and adoption of our technology. There were substantial pushbacks from all the stakeholders as everyone was waiting for the first party to come onboard before following.

It was really frustrating trying to navigate the whole chicken and egg situation. We did not consider giving up, but it did feel quite helpless and we considered commercialising this technology outside Singapore instead. The drive to not give up stemmed from my team’s belief that our technology is one of the most viable and effective plastic waste solutions to date. If we held that belief and still gave up, I suppose you could say that we would truly feel to some degree responsible for the worsening plastic waste crisis.

What are the industry challenges you have observed that concerned you to jump into this space?

The largest challenge is the underlying problem: lack of market/ demand for recycled plastic. The common perception is attributing the plastic recycling problem to “people do not recycle properly or don’t want to recycle”. But the truth is that even if people were recycling properly, there is no technology to convert all these recycled plastic into a product which has a market. The properly recycled plastics would have nowhere to go.

Upon identifying the true problem, we realised that our technology could potentially be the solution to this problem as road infrastructure is a necessity worldwide. In converting it into a material to build roads, we are giving plastic waste a new lease of life as valuable feedstock with stable demand.

What is the roadmap for your company going forward?

We want to be able to further our R&D to increase the efficacy of our technology as a recycling solution and continue forming more partnerships with relevant stakeholders.

Also Read: Getting smarter with tech: How will smart cities look like 10 years from now? 

We are also planning on scaling into the Southeast Asia market where plastic waste is one of the largest problems.

How has COVID-19 affected your startup?

Our startup is reliant on the demand for road infrastructure materials. In Singapore, there were a few months where the majority of construction works stopped. This significantly slowed down our progress.

During the circuit breaker, an additional 1,334 tonnes of plastic waste was generated from takeaways or online shopping. These habits which developed during circuit breaker emphasises our reliance on plastic and the urgency to find a viable solution.

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Image Credit: Magorium

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Smart technology promises greater peace of mind and autonomy for users. Not only will it provide greater convenience, it also facilitates better connectivity and control of their home and office environments and through automation allows people to spend more time and energy on the things that matter to them.

When I started Habitap in 2016, I built it on the premise of bringing technology seamlessly into our homes to empower our vision of a smart nation. We created a seamless user experience around three key pillars: Smart controls, smart community and as a lifestyle gateway, into an integrated mobile app.

We aim to make it easy for users using various brands of smart devices to control their devices on one convenient platform in a bid to introduce the use of smart home devices to the masses. We focused on pre-integrating them seamlessly into one single mobile application, with a consistent and therefore familiar user experience.

We recognised that we also live in communities and access common areas functions such as booking of meeting rooms, simple functions such as opening of mailboxes, or accessing e-commerce parcel stations and we linked them to the Habitap app.

I like to think that we are revolutionising the way people can interact with common spaces. We have transformed old school visitor management into the digital age. Today, visitors will be issued with a QR code so they could scan and enter condominiums. Homeowners could also receive a video call from the visitor on their mobile phones without the need to do so from the typical wall-mounted intercom screen in our home.

We also understood the growing trend of accessing lifestyle services from online platforms, and have made Habitap a convenient and seamless gateway to major platforms from transportation to food delivery and even home cleaning services.

Also Read: Fasal’s IoT device increases yield, reduces wastage by helping horticulture farmers make smart decisions on crops

In 2017, we pioneered this same smart living concept in office buildings and workplaces. And over the last three years, we saw a rapid surge in commercial developments adopting smart building platforms to provide convenient digital access for both tenants and visitors.

Habitap alone manages 15 commercial buildings. As you can see, smart technology for managing buildings is fast becoming the norm in Singapore. All of the above sought to bring connectivity and control to people, with the idea of offering a convenient way to manage their homes. Through this, we hope to help them improve their lives.

By 2020, the market has come to accept a new norm: a connected world from the home to office where most services could be accessed using an app. What is exciting is how we could now use this connectivity in a more predictive way.

Using A.I and data, your home would be able to learn your preferences and offer insights into creating greater convenience in your life.  For example, if you always used the water heater or the air conditioner at a specific time of the week, the A.I component could prompt you to turn it into a preset.

The pandemic has changed the way we all live and work

In the near term, the immediate challenges are how we perform contact tracing and distribute real-time news and alerts. Habitap has been pivotal in becoming a readily available and suitable platform. At short notice, we were able to send alerts to all office tenants and condominium residents in the form of push notifications and measure readership of those alerts.

Within four weeks of the circuit breaker Singapore, we integrated safe entry and temperature taking into building access control systems and present data reports to ensure safe measures were in place.

In the long term, the real estate industry recognises the inevitable changes to how we live and work. Contactless functionality is now a requirement in real estate designs. For example, electronic parcel stations create a buffer for deliveries of all office parcels.

Also Read: Smarter Cities will help, but not solve, global pollution crisis

In upcoming condominiums, food delivery stations and gym pods are being integrated into the design. The concept of using our mobile devices as digital access is now further developed into elevator call panels where users can call for elevators using a mobile app.

Moving forward from 2020, Habitap aims to be that app that connects people together through physical and virtual spaces. Secure and intelligent, Habitap manages facilities and offers services where every individual can enjoy the benefits of belonging to the community.

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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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As we look back on decades of economic growth in Asia, we see a region that has emerged as a global powerhouse, with a rapidly rising share of global trade and manufacturing output. For this success story to continue, financial inclusion is a critical area that needs to be addressed.

The World Bank estimates that over a billion people in the region have no access to formal financial services – in other words, without formal employment, bank accounts, or the ability to participate in both offline and online commerce. In Asia’s developing economies, large segments of society are in danger of falling further behind without access to basic services like low-cost remittance and loans.

The good news is that technology has been a driving force behind significant changes in the financial services industry. One instance of such change is in how banks and fintech startups are now empowered to service these previously excluded groups of people, while maintaining industry-leading standards of security and regulatory compliance.

With large investments being made in the region, a figure KPMG estimates at US$8.1 billion in the first half of 2020 alone, there are more opportunities and possibilities than ever before to ensure financial inclusion. All this bodes well for the region: empowering wider swathes of the population to participate in greater levels of economic activity will bring about long-term benefits for economies.

Overcoming geographic limitations

One of the greatest factors causing financial exclusion is the distance between rural areas and bank branches, which often makes it impossible, or at least extremely time-consuming and inconvenient, for people living in these areas to access banking and financial services.

The advent of smartphones and digital financial apps have been a game-changer, making the need for physical proximity less relevant. Currently, 66 per cent of the population in Asia Pacific is subscribed to mobile services, and with this figure expected to increase to 70 per cent by 2025, we can expect to see more of the unbanked overcoming the rural divide.

Also read: Banking the unbanked: Have cryptocurrency project achieved the most claimed utility of the blockchain?

On the flip side, rural banks are also embarking on digital transformation initiatives to scale their presence. These efforts were accelerated this year by the outbreak of COVID-19, which drove higher demand for digital services. Some fintech help rural banks bridge the digital gap. In the Philippines, for instance, born-in-the-cloud fintech startup Pearlpay has empowered 450 rural banks in the country to reduce their data centre footprints through its cloud-based core banking solutions.

Opening up economics opportunities

An important element of financial inclusion is ensuring small businesses and citizens in rural areas have access to funding, which they can then use to improve their livelihoods, and their daily lives. Traditionally, this has been an issue because individuals lack credit history or collateral; the high costs of processing loans pose obstacles to the viability of offering such loans.

India’s CreditVidya is tackling this exact issue by using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to analyse payment data, financial behavioural data, and smartphone device data to score loan applicants’ creditworthiness. This is opening up loans to millions of Indian citizens that were previously financially excluded, with CreditVidya now processing 100,000 loan applications daily.

CreditVidya’s technology significantly reduces the cost of processing loans, making it financially viable to offer such loans. In Indonesia, Amartha Mikro Fintek is helping to connect entrepreneurs in rural areas with investors, allowing them to seek funding more easily. The company is also using analytics and open source business intelligence tools to analyse loan default data and keep non-performing loans below three percent, well under the global industry average.

Simplifying financial matters

Technology is also bringing about equity by enabling easier access by a broad cross-section of customers to financial opportunities that were previously regarded as overly complicated. This is opening doors, and levelling the playing field even for those who might be averse to financial mechanisms due to a lack of understanding.

For example, Singapore-based StashAway is a virtual wealth management platform that allows people of any level of net worth to invest in capital markets. It also personalises portfolios for individuals based on their existing assets and risk preferences. Using cloud technology, StashAway not only cut infrastructure costs for development by 90 per cent, but also built a robust platform that could quickly scale up to serve thousands of customers while also ensuring compliance with multiple country-specific financial regulations.

These are inspiring examples of how innovation and digital disruption are positively improving lives across developing and developed economies, while simultaneously driving economic growth. The fact that private and public sectors are working together, and paying more attention than ever before to drive such initiatives, lays a foundation for a brighter future, giving cause for optimism for the region’s 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

Image credit: Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

The post Don’t break the bank: Enabling financial inclusion and equity through tech appeared first on e27.

If you don’t see the Spotify podcast player above, click on a link below to listen directly!

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Today’s Guest – Mony Gueorguiev

Our guest today is Mony Geuorguiev, a Bulgarian who grew up in the US, and the founder of Maidily, a software that helps cleaning companies manage their clients and schedules.

We met a few weeks ago when he responded to my request for entrepreneurs to answer the question “What stopped me from starting my first company?” If you haven’t seen the post yet, his response was a fear of failure, which I found to be a very common answer among those I received responses from. Eventually, he got tired of being in the “rat race”, and he decided to start his own e-commerce business. After building it into seven products across three brands, he sold the business. After that, he started a turnkey, fully automated, cleaning business!

While running the new business, he realised that cleaning business owners needed to use specific scheduling/CRM software to operate, and his current company Maidily was born. I normally do introduction calls with all my guests, and the typical call goes for 30 to 45 minutes, but Mony and I struggled to get off the phone after two hours of talking because we found we had so much in common. For example, we’re non-technical founders running technical companies in the B2B SaaS space and have completely remote teams, and he lives in Atlanta where my brother is, and he was trying to move to Singapore (where my company is) before the virus made it impossible. So today we honour his drive to find and exploit opportunities, and let’s give Mony a warm welcome!

Let’s give a warm welcome to Mony Gueorguiev

LinkedIn: Mony Gueorguiev
Website: Maidily

Also Read: How Cooklab seizes new opportunities during the pandemic to become Indonesia’s answer to Blue Apron

You’ll learn about

• Being an immigrant in the US
• Fitting into life in the US
• Being multi-lingual and how it’s beneficial for solving problems
• Discovering the American dream isn’t what they said it was
• Figuring out how to take advantage of a situation and turn it into a business
• Why e-commerce businesses are hard
• How to approach any new business

Resources

And remember, Entrepreneurship is a Marathon, not a Sprint, so take care of yourself every day, so that you can live and love, and have the energy and the passion to run your business, and to invest in your team, and to find a way to appreciate those moments of happiness.

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This article was first published on We Live To Build.

Image Credit: Michal Czyz on Unsplash

The post Advice on exploiting business opportunities with Mony Gueorguiev appeared first on e27.