The term deep tech was coined by Swati Chaturvedi, CEO of Silicon Valley-based investment firm Propel(x), to differentiate tech startups built on commonly available technologies and tech companies that engage in long-term scientific and technological research and development (R&D) for the next level of innovations.

General tech startups built on existing technologies often provide an online solution for an offline problem, while deep tech companies tackle more significant issues and bring advanced solutions to complex challenges affecting humanity.

These startups are often conceived in research labs by PhD students or research scientists working on breakthrough technologies.

In Singapore, the majority of deep tech startups are spin-offs from university research programmes such as the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Graduate Research Innovation Programme (GRIP).

The venture creation programme enables PhDs and research staff at the university to start their own deep tech companies whilst completing their studies or working full time.

“A lot of investment from the academic side has been poured into the startup ecosystem. We are seeing a model where projects created and examined in an academic context, are given the change to be commercialised,” said Colin Miles, Chief Commercial Officer of Zilliqa, a spin-off from NUS proving blockchain platforms for enterprises, in an interview with e27.

Also Read: NextBillion.ai crowned as champion of the SLINGSHOT 2020 deep tech startup competition

An example of a similar spin-off having a larger than life impact is Breathonix. Founded in 2019, the NUS-incubated firm develops non-invasive breath tests for disease detection by detecting volatile organic compounds present in a person’s exhaled breath. They recently launched a breath test that could detect COVID-19 within a minute.

A fertile ground

Although deep tech remains a nascent sector within Singaporean startups, the government has made no secret of its desire to grow this vertical.

This shift in focus can be attributed to the city-state’s push to develop a competitive advantage in the region. Due to the lack of a sizeable domestic economy, Singapore knows it cannot afford to compete with large domestic economies such as Indonesia and Vietnam in the general tech space.

Driving home the need to establish a new competitive advantage was the 24 per cent drop in gross merchandise value (GMV) of the local internet economy in 2020, as reported in the annual e-Conomy SEA report. Regional rivals Indonesia and Vietnam reported 11 and 16 per cent growth respectively.

Deep tech represents an area where Singapore can shine due to its strong incumbent talent base and research facilities. Its education system is miles ahead of its regional counterparts and there has been an increased focus on generating talent for deep tech sectors.

One such initiative is PowerX. Launched by SGInnovate, a government arm supporting the growth of deep tech startups, the full-time traineeship programme is focused on upskilling talent with the essential skills to work in deep tech sectors such as robotics.

Apart from possessing a strong local talent pool, Singapore’s credible intellectual property (IP) laws protect deep tech startups and give scientists the confidence to work on their research without worrying about unlawful duplication.

Also Read: Due diligence meets imagination: How SGInnovate plans to further support the deep tech ecosystem

The republic was ranked second in the world and the top in Asia for IP protection in the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report 2019.

Challenges faced

However, deep tech startups do have it tougher than their general tech counterparts. The lack of funding is often cited as the main reasons why such startups fail.

Venture investors shy away from investing in deep tech startups due to the high-risk and complex nature of it. With a high probability that the technology in development might fail, it is a risky bet many investors are unwilling to take, especially when there are proven business models in other sectors to invest into instead.

Difficulties also arise in conducting the necessary due diligence for deals as public awareness remains nascent of deep tech sectors and current tools utilised by VCs lack the ability to properly evaluate the value of deep tech startups.

Furthermore, these startups often ask for a higher initial cash outlay than their general tech ones. This can be attributed to the need to conduct long-term R&D for their products and the longer cash runway they need to generate before reaching profitability.

It is not infrequent to find research with an estimated time to market of at least 10 years, which is beyond the lifespan of a typical VC fund.

Besides, founders of deep tech startups are often “entrepreneurial scientists” that lack experience managing businesses and teams. Therefore, they require more guidance than general tech startup founders and this adds an unnecessary element of risk for investors to take on.

Increased help

The dearth of private investors in deep tech startups has forced the Singapore government to take matters into its own hands and step in. In the 2020 Budget, an additional S$300 million (US$224 million) was set aside under the SG Equity Scheme to catalyse investments into deep tech startups.

Last month, Seeds Capital, the investment arm of Enterprise Singapore, announced a partnership seeking for 10 to 15 private investors to co-invest up to S$150 million (US$112 million) into early-stage deep tech startups.

Also Read: Deep tech investments: What are the opportunities and challenges?

“Through the co-investments with these private-sector partners, we hope to provide the appropriate guidance and resources that will enable deep tech startups to succeed in developing new and disruptive technologies that can help our enterprises emerge stronger,” Ted Tan, Seed’s Chairman and Enterprise Singapore’s deputy CEO, commented in a statement announcing the partnership.

Besides increased funding, accelerators focusing on deep tech startups have launched in recent years to nurture the growth of the sector.

One such example is Tribe Accelerator. Supported by the government, the accelerator focuses on helping startups utilising blockchain technologies in their go-to-market strategy.

Now into its fourth cohort, local graduates of the accelerator include Accredify, an education management technology company using blockchain to resolve the issue of fraudulent certifications across educational institutions and Xfers, a fintech startup seeking to improve financial access within Southeast Asia.

What does the future hold?

While considerable work has been done to grow the deep tech startup scene in Singapore, it remains far from the finished article. Apart from the government, the task of supporting this nascent sector has to be shared by other stakeholders within the ecosystem, from educational institutes generating talent to investors supporting these innovative startups.

Also Read: Breaking the glass ceiling: These 6 women are making their marks in the deep tech field

Deep tech startups represent the moon shots others are often afraid to take. Who would have thought detection of diseases was possible through the breath analysis test invented by Breathonix?

Therefore, we can and should do more to support deep tech startups in Singapore and empower those who dare to believe.

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Anisa Menur Maulani also contributed to this article.

Image Credit: Uriel Soberanes on Unsplash

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As of March 2020, nearly US$1.2 billion physical events got cancelled due to the COVID-19, according to data by Predict HQ –and the number keeps on rising. With this being the new normal, many companies are now shifting towards organising their events virtually.

“With remote working becoming the new normal during this pandemic, everyday professionals are being approached to become speakers, moderators, or organisers of virtual events,” says Emma Hawker, CEO at Altafy.

Started in 2018 by an ex-events director, Altafy is a platform that makes the lives of event organisers easier by helping them filter and pick out the right speakers for their events –making the process as simple as shopping from Zara. Its goal is to solve the pain points of finding the right speakers for events, which will either make or break the event.

“Soon after I left my company, I decided that I wanted to help other organisers like myself. More so because it’s just very time consuming and laborious to find the right speakers or a good mix of speakers for events. Sometimes you miss really great ones because you didn’t know they existed out there,” she says in an interview with e27.

“So it was really about helping both sides and that was the inspiration, helping organisers find the right people and helping the speakers get their message out there,” she continues.

How it works

Altafy works as a yearly subscription model where organisers are charged a one-time yearly fee of US$1,800 to use the service. It provides organisers with a holistic search platform where they can filter out speakers based on location, experience, or years of speaking.

The platform also has an integrated chat functionality –similar to LinkedIn– to help organisers message speakers to find out more about them.

Also Read: 9 virtual tech and business events to attend while social distancing in April

Hawker describes the website as not just a search tool but as a productivity tool to keep track of the entire speaker scouting process. For example, apart from keeping track of all of the events that the organiser is running, it also enables them to see which speakers were shortlisted, pending and confirmed at any point in time.

“Essentially, it keeps track of everything that’s going on with your speakers at once, because that … can be very time consuming and is usually kept as data on Excel by teams,” she explains.

While the platform charges organisers with a flat fee, the platform is free to use for speakers. But this is not to say that all speakers on the website are paid speakers; some are also opinion leaders in their industry who are happy to speak free of cost.

Both aspiring and seasoned speakers can sign up on Altafy for free, and immediately start building their profiles, which showcase their speaking topics, showreels, photos, and other relevant information.

“Unlike any other platform, it is free for speakers to sign up. The way we see it, every business professional or leader has knowledge and expertise to share, and audiences want to hear from their industry peers who are living and breathing the same challenges and opportunities as them. We warmly invite industry practitioners to join us and share their experiences with a wider audience,” Hawker adds.

Future roadmap

In its initial stages, COVID-19 affected the events industry as physical gatherings became prohibited. While some thought it wouldn’t last for long, as time passed, everyone started hopping on board on the new virtual-only trends.

“Overall, there was an obvious dip in clients who usually do face-to-face physical events. But then we had more clients who have never been organisers of events themselves. For instance, it can be any company nowadays; they don’t even necessarily have to have an events team,” Hawker asserts. “But as I mentioned, with everything being online, it’s much easier nowadays.”

This has led Altafy to cater to a much larger audience.

Having been bootstrapped, the startup is now in the process of raising its seed funding round to focus on growing its sales and marketing team, along with onboarding a new CFO.

“We plan to some regional sales representatives along with expanding our marketing team. We also aim to onboard a new CFO that can help with the operational sides of the business,” Hawker says.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Thai fintech startup Masii.com acquires events ticketing platform One Place

Altafy also plans on launching an app version for its platform to further grow its visibility.

Lessons learnt

At the end of the interview, Hawker shares one of the most important lessons that she learnt as a startup founder: Not to be afraid to look vulnerable while asking for help.

“A lot of the time we can be a little bit apprehensive of asking for help, for fear that it makes us look like we don’t know what we’re doing or look weak. But actually what it is, is really, again, getting all of those inputs and the support that we need. Because being an entrepreneur, you have to be able to lean on other people and get support where you can,” she closes.

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Image Credit: Altafy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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Today’s episode is very special because we talk about how geopolitics affects your business now and in the future

You will learn about:

• How immigrants are good for the US
• How Trump is dangerous for the health of the world
• How everything is connected and how it affects your business
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If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!

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This article was first published on We Live To Build.

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It is safe to say that COVID-19 caught the world off guard. We, as a society and a nation, were not ready for a world characterised by lockdowns and social distancing. And in cases, neither was business – so, we scrambled.

According to the latest Agents of Transformation research from AppDynamics, 88 per cent of Singaporean IT professionals agreed the pandemic had created the biggest technology pressure for their organisation that they had ever seen.

Indeed, this year marked what must be the greatest acceleration of industrial transformation ever, as companies across all sectors migrated in their droves to digital and online environments. A deployment that would typically take place over the course of months, if not years, had suddenly sprung into action in a matter of weeks.

And all in a bid to maintain business continuity and ensure organisations could cope with unprecedented digital demands – from both customers and employees.

Of course, as businesses rushed to transform to maintain their connection with their audiences, so too did that very audience. A recent study by Google, Bain and Temasek suggested that 30 per cent of digital service consumers in Singapore, for example, patrons of e-commerce or people consuming online content – were new to these services.

However, perhaps what is more important to note is that a whopping 91 per cent of these new users said that they planned to continue using at least one digital service post-pandemic. Which stands to reason: are we really all going to go back to the office full-time? Schools? How about ordering our groceries online, and spending an evening at home with our favourite streaming platforms?

Also Read: Is digital transformation now a question of survival? 

The message is clear, consumers are ready to commit to digital, whether it is in their personal life or at work. And this presents businesses with a huge opportunity to engage on a greater scale than ever before. The question is– will they stick with you?

Now that so many people have moved to the online arena, the battleground has become fiercer. There are more options, and new points of comparison to consider. So, businesses will have their work cut out to retain or even capture new audience segments when choices are abundant.

So where are we focusing our attention? Unsurprisingly, after the initial mad dash to digitise, 88 per cent of technologists now agree that the digital consumer experience has become a key priority for their organisation based on the Agents of Transformation 2020 report. For example, how sleek is my app? Does it offer real utility? Can it take the heat?

Performance underpins it all

The challenge, of course, is that performance is tricky to maintain at the best of times – let alone when it is dependent on domains beyond a company’s control. Many IT teams have turned to cloud and multi-cloud environments to enable such swift digital transformation in 2020. This brings benefits, but also challenges.

That is why I would argue that the key to ‘stickiness’ is in building an end-to-end view of the customer’s digital experience – whereby we give technologists the tools to be able to see into and get insights across the entire technology stack.

Because fundamentally, they can no longer focus only on their own existing application environments and infrastructures – they also need to look into their systems and networks in both a public and private setting.

If you do not have full control over your stack, as is increasingly the case these days, performance issues such as public cloud latency are inevitable. But if you can see the issues before they really flare-up, you can take action before it is too late. For example, by re-routing around bottlenecks or optimising workloads so that they can scale.

The pandemic has left us at a crossroads now that the initial panic has subsided, we have a choice ahead. We can continue as we are, in the hope of a return to ‘normalcy’. Or we can accept that many of the changes that have happened are here to stay and take the opportunity to really consider what is needed to future-proof business and pave the way to long-term success.

As both business and consumer reliance on technology continues to increase, being able to rapidly identify and prevent technical disruptions should form part of that plan. It will be key to maintaining customer satisfaction and ultimately driving results – whether that is sales, downloads, or user engagement.

Because let’s face it, if people start to trim away the fat and focus on a few key digital services to keep as we enter the New Year, you can bet your bottom dollar they will be quick to drop anything that fails to give them the best possible user experience.

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Image credit: Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

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CoHive, an Indonesian coworking startup, announced today that Chris Angkasa has been named as its new CEO. Angkasa will take over the position from Jason Lee, who will continue as the company’s President.

Angkasa founded Clapham Collective, one of the earliest coworking spaces in Medan. Since Clapham merged with CoHive in 2017, Angkasa has been on the company’s Board of Advisors.

“This is an unprecedented time for coworking spaces—not just for us, but also for independent spaces, our competitors and friends, and also our landlords and strategic partners. It forces us to think through how we should adapt to the changing landscape of the business we are in,” Angkasa said.

Also Read: Coworking office spaces are better investment for startups and entrepreneurs

“Coworking is not only about space. We value the community of people and our shared values. Our vision is to create a network of places where people can do their best work. By providing community, tools and infrastructure, we aid their personal growth and productivity,” he added.

“This transition is an indicator that different seasons require distinctive and fresh perspectives—this pandemic has forced us to adopt a new way of working. In a time marked by the prongs of the pandemic, we are sure that Chris will ensure that CoHive will continue to innovate, adapt and thrive as the world moves into a time of recovery,” remarked Willson Cuaca, Founding Chairman of CoHive.

CoHive is one of the first coworking businesses in Indonesia. Incubated by East Ventures in 2015 as EV Hive, the company aims to provide a community hub for entrepreneurs and startups to start and grow their businesses. The company was rebranded to CoHive in June 2019 as part of its strategy to diversify its business after raising a US$13.5 million Series B funding round.

The company is present in 30 locations across Jakarta, Tangerang, Medan, Surabaya and Yogyakarta. It has recently launched an 18-story coworking building as its offering.

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Image Credit: CoHive

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gojek buys 22% stake in Bank Jago to expand its payments services footprint in Indonesia; The deal, however, doesn’t alter the control of Jago, as Metamorfosis Ekosistem Indonesia and Wealth Track Technology (WTT) still hold a combined 51% in the tech giant; In 2019, the bank made headlines when gojek investor Patrick Walujo invested in it through WTT. More here

Singapore bank DBS starts currency and crypto exchange; Touted as the first for trading fiat money and cryptocurrencies with backing from a traditional bank in the country, the platform uses blockchain to allow traders exchange Singapore, US, and Hong Kong dollars, and the Japanese Yen for Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash and XRP. More here

foodpanda CTO: Why autonomy is important for developing agile tech teams; Benjamin Mann says that their engineering and product teams have the liberty to erase their road map and prioritise what they feel is more important; He also stresses on the importance of finding a balance between customer feedback and data. More here

Temasek injects US$50M into India’s new early-stage VC fund Info Edge Ventures; Launched in January 2020, the US$100M fund has already invested in nine startups in e-commerce, digital media, fintech, edutech, healthtech, gaming and SaaS. Temasek itself has recently invested in Bits x Bites and EV Growth. More here

TurtleTree Labs closes US$6.2M pre-Series A round to accelerate R&D of cell-based human milk; Both existing and new investors, including Green Monday Ventures, Eat Beyond Global, KBW Ventures, and Verso Capital, joined the round; The funding comes fresh off TurtleTree’s win at the Entrepreneurship World Cup, where it secured US$500K in cash prize. More here

Waresix acquires Trukita to grow its freight and trucking network in Indonesia; Waresix focuses mainly on renting out warehouses to businesses whereas Trukita helps large and small business find the best transportation services; This acquisition allows Waresix to expand its offerings into first-mile logistics (transportation of goods from the port to the warehouse) and in turn, provide clients with one-stop logistics services. More here

Thailand to roll out New Smart Visa rules for digital nomads; Allowing up to four years stay without a work permit, the new rules have already been approved by the Centre for Covid-19 Situation Administration; The next step required for the new rules to be implemented is Cabinet approval. More here

5G subscriptions in Vietnam forecasted to reach 6.3M by 2025; Vietnam and Singapore are expected to be the first SEA countries to roll out 5G in 2020-2021. While the market penetration in Vietnam in the early stage of 5G implementation will be lower than that in Indonesia and Thailand, but growth is projected to accelerate in the later stage. More here

How Singapore used design thinking for workplace mental health policy; In developing workplace mental health guidelines, the country sought the expertise of Co-Lab, an innovation unit in the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) that uses design thinking, behavioural insights and data analytics to improve labour policies. More here

PwC: Singapore startup ecosystem is poised to bounce back post-pandemic; The pandemic may have caused a decline in funding, but it has also given startups the opportunity to address the new post-COVID-19 problems that are emerging.
More here

Indonesia looks to adopt innovative methods to boost its e-government; According to Dwi Wahyu Atmaji, Secretary of the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucratic Reform, the Indonesian government is in the process of carrying out knowledge-sharing activities with South Korea in a bid to enhance its Electronic-Based Government System. More here

SOSV names former TechCrunch COO Ned Desmond as Senior Operating Partner; Desmond left TechCrunch this summer when he was soon contacted by SOSV founder Sean O’Sullivan. More here

Singapore firms trialling the use of digital health passports to verify travellers’ COVID-19 test results; Affinidi, Accredify, and ICC AOKpass are some of the tech companies that are working to develop digital health passports for both inbound travellers to Singapore and the Singapore-Hong Kong travel bubble pilot; With at least 10 digital health passports being developed by various organisations, a key problem will be interoperability. More here

New app monitoring nutrition of children launched in Indonesia; Indonesia’s Department of Nutrition and Health announced that it has spearheaded the launch of the E-Toddler Application Implementation Assistance Programme for Stunting Management; As part of an effort to infuse tech into a wider array of government operations, this new system is part of a stunting prevention initiative of the companies’ Community Development Programme. More here

SoftBank-backed Chinese warehouse solutions startup bags US$100M in series C+ round; Quicktron Intelligent Technology announced a US$100 million series C+ funding round from Saudi Aramco’s investment unit Prosperity7 Ventures and Kion Group, a German multinational manufacturer of materials handling equipment; BOCOM International (a subsidiary of the Bank of Communications), Shenwan Hongyuan, and CCB Principal Asset Management, and existing investors also participated in the funding round. More here

From India’s richest man to Amazon and 100s of startups: The great rush to win neighbourhood stores; Both Walmart and Amazon face restrictions on what they could do in India, but the companies have partnered with tens of thousands of neighbourhood stores to leverage their vast presence; These stores —kirana— also have the advantage of being in close proximity of the companies’ potential customers. More here

Singapore firm’s virtual payment card lets visitors go cashless in China; Aleta Planet, a China-centric fintech firm started by Singaporean Ryan Gwee, launched its AP-1 virtual card for QR code through UnionPay; The platform enables travellers in China to use e-payments services without the need for a local bank account. More here

How climate change can threaten food production in Singapore; Having been reliant on food imports, Singapore’s strategy of food source diversification has served it well; However, the country’s effort to increase local food production might be threatened by climate change. More here

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During the pandemic, there is a greater awareness among the public on the importance of nutrition, especially when it comes to building a proper immune system. Noticing this trend, Widya Surya Prayoga, Rudwiky Okta Putra, and Topaz Kumoro became inspired to start Tunas Farm, an Indonesian startup that integrates urban farming with technology.

Tunas Farm started off by building an indoor farming production facility in Gading Serpong, Banten province, using the hydroponic method. The startup caters the B2C segment by implementing the farm-to-table concept that enables customers to enjoy the vegetables that they just farm themselves; their operations are also supported by their in-house logistics team.

Recently, in order to launch its business, Tunas Farm raises an undisclosed pre-seed funding round from Gayo Capital. The funding is meant to develop its IoT-based hydroponic farming system.

The Tunas Farm team is currently preparing its facility in Garding Serpong to become a production facility and an indoor display of vertical farming, which is scheduled to be completed in the near future. They are also set to build a similar facility in other areas and to provide training for home-based hydroponic farming.

In future, Prayoga also stated that Tunas Farm is set to launch an IoT-based hydroponic kit that will enable customers to start their own urban farm at home.

Also Read: Startup of the Month, October: Bangkok-based agritech startup Freshket

The rise of agritech startups in Indonesia

While agritech business is often said to have great potentials in Indonesia, by far there has not been that many startups in the country that aims to significantly improve the farming process itself. There are many technologies that can be used to maximise this process, from IoT, big data, machine learning, to computer vision. This is especially relevant as there remain many challenges in the agriculture sector, from production to distribution.

One of the most popular agriculture verticals among tech startups is supply chain –the ability to enable business and individual customers to access fresh produce straight from the farmers. This approach also enables farmers to a fairer price for their works. Apart from that, there are also solutions that aim to help farmers finance their operations.

More and more startups in Indonesia have begun offering tech solutions to support production. A great number of these solutions are still in the research and development stage, as commonly found in various incubators, competition, or hackathon, but some of them have started manufacturing process. In addition to Tunas Farm, there is also Mertani, Tanibox, and Neurafarm.

Mertani provides IoT and big data solutions to help farmers monitor their farms on a much larger scale.

Meanwhile, Neurafarm builds an artificial intelligence solution called Dr Tania. It helps farmers to identify different types of plants disease based on the photo that they upload to the platform.

In an even smaller scale, Tanibox presents sensor-based equipment to help customers build a small farm at home.

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This article was written by Randi Eka Yonida in Bahasa Indonesia for DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

Image Credit: Tunas Farm

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Traveloka, the Indonesian online travel app unicorn, announced on Monday it has its eyes set on going public and was evaluating a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) as a possible listing option, as per a Reuters report.

“A SPAC is one of the options we are evaluating given we have been approached by a few,” Traveloka President Henry Hendrawan said in a statement in response to a Reuters query.

According to the report, a source with knowledge of the matter said Traveloka is still deciding between a conventional IPO or a SPAC and could be valued up to US$6 billion.

Hendrawan had previously shared with Reuters in late 2019 that the platform is considering a possible dual listing in Jakarta and another centre such as the US.

He also shared with media in October that he expected Traveloka to potentially be profitable by 2021.

Also Read: Innovate and go: How Traveloka revamps its services to comply with changing travel behaviour 

Traveloka had recently closed a US$250 million funding round in July 2020 from a host of investors including Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and East Ventures.

This news comes amidst the growing popularity of SPACs in the region as Indonesian e-commerce giant Tokopedia had announced last week it was considering SPAC as a potential option for their plans to go public.

In an interview with e27, experts commented that the SPAC model that the company is implementing can be “an alternative” way to fundraise for startups in SEA.

“Having seen the more than 100 SPACs emerge in North America earlier this year, we are not surprised to see this new SPAC coming out to focus on Southeast Asia. We welcome this initiative, which will provide an alternative path to liquidity and access to public markets for one or more rising tech, financial services or media company in the region,” said Sanjay Zimmermann, Senior Associate at White Star Capital.

More from this story as it develops.

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Image Credit: Traveloka

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The COVID-19 pandemic has left no country untouched or industry undisrupted. It has proven to be a challenge too large for any one government or sector to tackle alone. From healthcare authorities and big pharmaceuticals to tech companies, one crucial factor in the fight against this dreadful disease is the ability to adapt. But to rise to the occasion, organisations first have to understand where they need to get to, and that requires information, or data.

Across the globe, the monitoring and analysing of big data for actionable insights is being put to use, giving rise to initiatives such as contact tracing, movement control in highly-affected areas, or the distribution of financial aid to people in need. But state-sanctioned measures or corporate-led campaigns can only go so far. To make a real impact, the public and private sectors must work together, sharing information and combining resources.

In Southeast Asia, with infrastructure development and public funding so varied between nations, public-private partnerships (PPPs) are even more vital to ensure timely and beneficial solutions to socio-economic challenges.

By removing barriers and information silos between sectors, data-driven PPPs can be formed, which will effectively address some of the biggest hurdles of the crisis, such as healthcare infrastructure, and general wellbeing and mental health, and create swifter and smarter responses to the pandemic that will pave the way to a more resilient and sustainable economy. 

In the region’s more developed economies, such as Singapore, strategic and open collaboration between public and private entities has led to an effective, agile and inclusive crisis response. A strong example of this is contact tracing. In Singapore, the government collaborated with a group of private-sector technologists to build a secure and comprehensive COVID-19 contact tracing system, named TraceTogether.

Also Read: (Exclusive) Palexy picks US$1M funding to help offline stores achieve e-commerce-like success through real-time consumer data

Taking the form of  a physical token and a mobile app, the system exchanges Bluetooth signals with other TraceTogether users nearby, gathering data to aid digital contact tracing efforts. The incredibly short timeline of this project – the TraceTogether app was launched in March 2020 – can undoubtedly be attributed to the collaborative efforts between the government and the private sector.

Combining information sources, as well as knowledge and expertise in hacking, firmware development and privacy, this PPP leveraged data-driven insights to deliver an effective and secure solution that would not have been achieved without swift contributions from both sectors.

Similarly, in Danang, Vietnamese authorities worked with tech companies to effectively execute localised lockdowns to curb isolated COVID-19 outbreaks whilst managing to avoid a wide-scale economic shutdown. Having to amass far-reaching, ear-to-the-ground data on COVID-19 cases, the government identified alternative solutions from the private sector.

Leveraging Facebook’s Disease Prevention Map and Google’s Community Mobility Reports, the Vietnamese authorities were able to access and study mobility data. This collaboration led to a rapid and efficient curtailment of movement in specific areas, as opposed to a full lockdown nationwide.

As a result, Vietnam was able to limit the economic impact while containing the disease and reopening the targeted areas faster than it would from a national lockdown. Through this PPP, the government was able to monitor and evaluate the impact of its national policies almost in real-time, iterating and refining measures adaptively based on big data insights made possible by private-sector companies. 

In another example of a successful collaboration between the government and the private sector, Gojek established a data-driven initiative in Indonesia to provide financial assistance to millions of essential transport workers during the pandemic. Gojek worked with Indonesia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs to help identify ride-share drivers and provide them with over IDR1 million (US$93) in economic aid.

By leveraging insights from driver data, Gojek helped the government identify those most likely to be financially impacted by the disruption so it could distribute aid in tiers to support those most in need. 

Also Read: PropertyGuru further expands footprint in Malaysia with acquisition of MyProperty Data

The above PPPs offer valuable lessons and a blueprint for future innovation and resilience in Southeast Asia. Thanks to a surge in tech companies investing in the region, there is a growing wealth of data being generated and collected. This presents exciting potential for innovation across Southeast Asia, based on actionable insights mined from big data that go far beyond the pandemic response. 

The opportunity is twofold: first, in solving mobility problems – such as traffic congestion and pollution – in traffic-heavy countries such as Indonesia and Thailand, and second, in building smart cities in densely populated and technologically-advanced countries such as Singapore. For example, in 2019, Gojek signed a partnership with the Indonesian government to accelerate the development of Jakarta’s smart city project, with the goal to build a safe and more integrated transport system.

Under the partnership, Gojek used open data to identify the city’s most-frequented transit hubs and worked with the government to build shelters or pick-up zones at the hubs. The result was an increase in public transport ridership, with Gojek serving as the first and last mile transport provider for those journeys. Such innovations are made possible through collaboration between the public and private sector, which leads one to think: How can we foster a culture of even greater collaboration, and what other possibilities are there? 

Greater collaboration will require higher levels of trust and openness between the public and private sectors. For governments, they should view the sharing of data with private companies as integral to improving people’s lives from a more ground-up, community approach. For companies, they will need to ensure easy and secure access to data for partners, and foster an insights-driven culture.

Building such a culture is easier said than done, as it includes building a robust data architecture and infrastructure, hiring the right talent, and empowering all employees to think like data scientists. As nations across the world hunker down to get through the awful effects of COVID-19, governments and businesses must embrace the lessons, failures and achievements from this year, to work towards their targets, and build a brighter and more resilient future that is driven by data.

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