Southeast Asia’s relationship with e-commerce over the last few years has been one of acceleration, and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first quarter of 2020 seems to have further fuelled the industry’s rapid expansion. The segments benefitting the most have been groceries, electronics and home goods as people prioritised the stay-home essentials.

The entire fashion retail ecosystem, on the other hand, took a major hit at the global level with many brands and retailers forced to dramatically reduce or sell off their operations.

That said, for those remaining, this has been a wakeup call to be swift in adapting to consumer needs and building an online presence, or risk being left behind.

Digital is no longer a choice

Throughout Southeast Asia, digital penetration continued to grow at a significant rate, with over 40 million new internet users in 2020 alone. Regional lockdown curbs only served to catalyse this growth, having accelerated the adoption of e-commerce and digital payments as more people began to embrace online shopping within the comforts of their own home.

In fact, a whopping three out of four consumers in Singapore had indicated their preference to maintain their newfound e-commerce shopping levels even after the pandemic subsides.

To help brand partners transition, ZALORA has been working with industry bodies and governments to support training and on-boarding to digital platforms. For existing brand partners looking to accelerate digital, the biggest roadblock has been logistics and fulfilment in a complex landscape like Southeast Asia.

Zalora’s 1SS (One Stock Solution) service supports this need. 1SS is a “Fulfilment as a Service” solution, offered to brand partners to help them reach a wider customer audience more effectively. By leveraging Zalora’s operations and fulfilment capabilities, it gives brands an opportunity to have a connected retail between their offline and online business.

Furthermore, consumers in Southeast Asia will be the winners from us co-creating exciting innovative solutions with our partners.

Also Read: E-commerce wars in Vietnam intensify. Here is all you need to know

Realtime data as guiding light amid flux

Another pressing challenge faced by industry players today is making sense of the changes in consumer trends and demands. As the lifestyles of many transitioned to being home-based, purchasing patterns and fashion preferences similarly followed suit.

Categories such as sports and activewear, loungewear, beauty surged at the height of the pandemic, despite consumers’ initial concerns about the financial impact the virus had brought about. Sustainability, too, rose in its pertinence, with over 60 per cent of consumers affirming that they would be willing to spend more on sustainable and ethical fashion items.

Counterintuitively, Luxury and premium also accelerated in select markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong. It is clear that the virus has caused a complete overhaul of consumer priorities, prompting a total recalibration of perspectives and strategies for e-retailers.

On this, Zalora’s data insights platform Trender, served as a north star for brands to sift through the noise and identify key trends that would assist them in maximising valuable opportunities amidst such a fluid environment.

The future is fast and female 

While companies deal with challenges, there are also new and unique opportunities lying in wait for businesses to seize in 2021 and beyond.

This is especially so in Southeast Asia, where the future of fashion is indisputably female. In line with statistics from Zalora’s customer base, women contribute to 80 per cent of household expenditure, and female shoppers outnumber their male counterparts by four to one.

Demographics are also shifting towards younger generations, with the region’s 200 million millennials and GenZ-ers expecting to comprise Southeast Asia’s largest consumer base in the years to come.  

As these tech-savvy millennials and GenZ-ers bring new demands and expectations, businesses will have to continue finding ways to appeal to this whole new generation of shoppers.

As brands actively seek to engage their customers and build affinity amidst an increasingly saturated playing field, the growing demand for localised assets has led to an increase of more than 120 per cent in terms of value invested across the industry.

Content has long been king, and brands should thus look to deliver fresh and appealing content to engage with this rising consumer pool – whether through influencer marketing (Nike’s Modestwear Campaign with Abby Asma), Instagram live video sessions (ZALORA Singapore’s #SaturdaySweat workouts), or even editorial productions (ZALORA Philippines’ /covers).

Similarly, in response to the increasing awareness amongst millennial and GenZ consumers around environmental sustainability and the rise in demand for circular fashion, brands must take it upon themselves to lead the charge in developing sustainability strategies that pivot towards greener and more innovative long-term solutions for the fashion industry as a whole – highlighting their commitment not just to the environment, but to their customers as well. 

Also Read: How COVID-19 is changing traditional retail and e-commerce in SEA

Technology innovations will blur the lines of offline-online

Further, given the rapid adoption of simple services such as digital payments and e-wallets, and more complex features like augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) product previews, the typical offerings of a brick-and-mortar store will have to be reinvented for a virtual space.

For example, we anticipate more shopping apps to offer mixed reality features, from try-on experiences of clothing and accessories to virtual visualisations of products, such as placing virtual sofas in your living room before you order, thus bridging the gap between offline and online experiences.

If there is anything COVID-19 has made clear in no uncertain terms, it is that the industry will continue to change and evolve beyond a stable climate. With this forced introspection, businesses must realise that in order to thrive in a post-pandemic world, they cannot rest on their laurels, but must remain agile and innovative in order to quickly and effectively adapt to the changing times.

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It’s been one heck of a year, for blockchain especially. The industry hasn’t seen this much excitement since the ICO fervor of 2017. In March 2020, crypto prices saw a significant crash as the global economy entered into lockdown due to COVID-19.

Fast forward to the year-end, BTC has reached an all-time high of US$33,000 on the back of increasing interest from major institutional investors. Meanwhile, decentralised finance (DeFi) has very quickly captured everyone’s mindshare, now with over $18 billion of total value locked into an ever expanding list of decentralised platforms such as Compound and Uniswap.

They say heroes are often born in a crisis. Well, despite the pandemic, this past half year saw 14 new companies added to Taiwan’s blockchain ecosystem map, indicative of three primary trends currently driving the industry forward.

Also Read: How ASEAN is shaping up to be a blockchain frontrunner

Proliferation of DeFi

The concept of DeFi may be relatively unknown to outsiders prior to 2020, in the same way that BTC was prior to 2017. That’s because it was really only this year that DeFi was thrusted into the limelight. Decentralised lending protocol Compound was arguably the frontrunner of the DeFi craze.

Launched in 2018, the platform enables users to collateralise cryptocurrencies and earn interest, while also allowing them to borrow other crypto assets against the collateral. Algorithms are used to automatically adjust interest rates based on supply and demand, while smart contracts eliminate the traditional need for an intermediary such as a bank. 

Compound was certainly novel in and of itself, but what really helped jumpstart adoption was in June 2020 when it started distributing its native governance token Comp to all lenders and borrowers on the platform.

Similar to shareholders of a publicly listed company, token holders are entitled to vote on any changes to the protocol, or sell their tokens on the secondary market for extra returns on top of the interest earned from lending.

The free reward was enough to attract hordes of early users eager to park their crypto in hopes of maximising yield, otherwise known as “liquidity mining,” allowing Compound to briefly overtake Maker as the leading DeFi project in terms of total value locked-in (TVL). It wasn’t long before the rest of the industry started rolling out liquidity incentives of their own.

Decentralised exchanges Balancer and Uniswap each announced distribution of their respective governance tokens to users within months of each other. Both serve as automated market makers that create liquidity pools for users to seamlessly buy and sell tokens, albeit in slightly different fashions.

Similarly, in Taiwan, we saw the launch of Black Hole Swap, developed by Hakka Finance, and C.R.E.A.M Finance, started by the founder of both Mithril and M17 (AppWorks is an investor) Jeffrey Huang. C.R.E.A.M repackages the best functionalities of Compound, Uniswap, and Balancer all into one platform, and is now among the top five decentralised lending platforms in terms of TVL according to DeFi Pulse.

Also Read: Taiwan’s blockchain future is bullish, with favourable regulation, environment, talent, and community

The DeFi space is relentless. Hacks, forks, “vampire attacks”—it seems like the moment any one project finds some modicum of success, there will be a handful others lurking in the shadows, ready to replicate, iterate, or outright steal the idea right out from under.

But it’s still early days for DeFi, and one can argue that this type of competition is natural for such a nascent industry. The hackers, arbitrageurs, speculators, and bad actors will stress test the technology and incentive schemes and fully push them to the limits.

Ultimately, only the fittest, the most resilient and practical will be left standing, collectively strengthening the ecosystem as a whole. 

NFTs on the rise

Following DeFi, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have continued rising in popularity globally. Gaming and artwork collectibles serve as the primary use cases so far, no doubt perpetuated by decentralised marketplaces such as Rarible, SuperRare, and Async.

There are now fully virtual worlds like Decentraland dedicated to showcasing NFTs. In the offline world, famed auction house Christies recently sold their very first NFT artwork for over US$130,000 back in October 2020. 

The jetsetters of digital collectibles, Dapper Labs officially launched NBA Top Shot in mid-2020, with revenues reaching US$2 million by year end. The NFT-powered marketplace allows users to buy and sell “digital moments” captured from NBA games. These moments are then stored on the Flow blockchain, an entertainment-focused protocol developed by Dapper Labs which recently raised US$18 million in a token sale.

In Taiwan, Lootex has been a long-time believer of NFTs, creating a decentralised auction house for people to create, buy, or sell crypto items. They just recently partnered with startup Eternalink and Spanish winery Nekeas to create NFTs every time a bottle of the limited edition Eternalove red wine is sold.

Meanwhile, Alex Liu, the founder and CEO of Taiwan’s largest crypto exchange MAX mentioned in a recent interview that NFT serves as a critical bridge between the virtual and physical worlds and will be the focus of their development efforts in the coming years.

Riding off the excitement of DeFi, NFTs are clearly growing in prominence, with weekly trading volume nearing US$2.5 million in December, up severalfold from a couple months prior. While collectibles and entertainment have occupied the spotlight, NFTs and their verifiable proof of authenticity have the potential to extend into many other areas including real estate, supply chain, identity verification, and copyright management, and yes, even crossovers into DeFi.

Also Read: [Updated] Meet the 3 Singaporean blockchain startups showcasing at Algorand Asia Accelerator’s demo day

Compared to DeFi, however, where Taiwanese startups have gained global recognition, NFTs have received much less interest in Taiwan; but, certainly there’s much more room to play and momentum is already visibly picking up.

Crypto goes mainstream

Although beginning with a rather sluggish start, 2020 was most certainly a win for crypto bulls. 

Increasing interest and support from major institutions like Square, MicroStrategy, MassMutual, Visa, and PayPal collectively served as a monumental endorsement, helping to push the price of BTC far past its 2017 levels and into a record high of US$33,000 at the time of writing.

Evidently, COVID-19 was a large driver in accelerating digital adoption, boosting confidence in cryptocurrencies like BTC as a safe and reliable store of value. Many countries from China to the US are now exploring the creation of their own central bank digital currencies (CBDC), perhaps in direct response to Facebook’s Libra project, which has since been renamed to Diem to signal its independence and distance itself from the social media giant. 

When it comes to crypto investment, although much work has been done under the hood to reduce friction and improve the overall user experience, widespread skepticism and caution is still common among the average retail investor due to the volatility and complexity of the market.

In the second half of the year, we saw several Taiwanese startups working on innovative ways to reduce the entry barriers for new investors. Targeting newcomers with zero crypto investing experience, Cappuu is an easy-to-use crypto wallet that allows users to purchase stablecoins with credit cards and invest in high-yield DeFi products without any gas fees.

Recently closing a US$1 million seed round, Steaker is a crypto asset management platform that presents several different predetermined investment strategies based on users’ risk appetite and return profile. Fuly.AI helps investors automate their portfolio allocation and interest collection on crypto exchanges like Bitfinex to maximise returns. 

Also Read: How Taiwan’s blockchain industry is powering through the downturn

The pace at which blockchain has been evolving is truly astounding, and the pandemic has likely only turbocharged the development. Given its more conservative nature, Taiwan has traditionally lagged behind the latest and greatest in software innovations.

But if its success with DeFi this past year is any indication, Taiwan punches well above its weight when it comes to blockchain, so far matching industry trends stride for stride.

If Taiwanese entrepreneurs can continue evolving and iterating alongside the speed of crypto, they will be well positioned to define the next wave of blockchain projects moving into 2021, whether that’s in DeFi, NFT, or otherwise.

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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, FB community or like the e27 Facebook page

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Speaking from his own experience as a traveller in the UK, Crisman Wise understood the struggle to find an international remittance platform that is simple to use and inexpensive. With the initial goal of helping a friend, in July 2018, Wise built a solution to ease the process of international remittance in other currencies without the need for an extra cost.

The solution was later called Transfree (an acronym of transfer free). In the next two years, after a long and winding road to secure a remittance license from Bank Indonesia, the service finally managed to secure the license from the central bank in July 2020.

“We see international remittance as a major issue that many people are facing. With the initial goal of helping a friend, we found that this is something that could develop into something else. That was how we came up with Transfree,” said Wise, who is the Founder & CEO of the company.

Wise acknowledged that as a traveller, he had to deal with an international cash transfer to and from Indonesia which can be quite costly when done on leading remittance platforms.

In terms of business model, the service that Transfree offers does not differ significantly from competitors such as Transfez, Zendmoney, or Transferwise. They enable customers to transfer money to a bank account abroad in different currencies. The difference is that Transfree does not charge customers for this service; the startup monetises through the exchange rate gap.

Also Read: BRI, Visa join remittance firm Nium’s Series C round to facilitate tuck-in acquisitions

2021 targets

At the beginning, Transfree was meant to help international students in the UK in sending and receiving money from back home. But as time goes by, the team realised that there is a greater potential in the migrant workers’ segment, who might be burdened by the high cost of sending money back home.

According to data by Bank Indonesia, throughout 2018, Indonesian migrant workers abroad sent up to IDR153 trillion (US$10.9 billion) home, providing a massive business opportunity.

In just two years, the startup managed to serve transaction between Indonesia, Europe, and Australia. Most of the leads that Transfree received came from close relations and recommendations. This number was later used by the startup to validate demands.

Transfree is set to launch its service in Indonesia in Q2 2021. Other targets for the quarter is related to their fundraising effort as the company is currently run through bootstrapping. The Transfree team aims to realise its vision of making international remittance as easy as a local remittance.

“We are focussing on our launch in Q2 this year. The focus of our service will be Southeast Asia. We are still unable to disclose transaction volume targets, but we can say that the traction has been really good. We are trying our best to seize momentum,” Wise closed.

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The article Dapat Lisensi BI, Startup Remitansi Transfree Segera Resmikan Kehadiran di Q2 2021 was first published in Bahasa Indonesia by Kristin Siagian for DailySocial. English translation and editing by e27.

Image Credit: Crisman Wise

The post Having secured central bank license, Transfree confirms Q2 2021 launch of remittance platform in Indonesia appeared first on e27.

The tech industry does not stand in a silo. In fact, it is integrating seamlessly with various other industries such as art and design, creating a harmonious dance between technology and the human sense of beauty.

The Artling, a Singapore-based art and design consultancy firm, is an example of such a company which business offer the integration between the art and tech world.

Founded in 2013, the company connects buyers with sellers worldwide, assisting users in their art and design needs by enabling their listed creatives to build their own “storefronts” and “shoppable portfolios”.

It highlights the best of contemporary art and design from both emerging and established studios and galleries, offering end-to-end art consultancy services for both private and corporate clients. Its notable clients including Google, Twitter, JLL, the Four Seasons, the Ritz Carlton, and Swarovski.

The inventory value listed on their platform reached over US$210 million with over 3,000 artists and designers on board, including 300 local Singaporeans.

In addition to its offline services, The Artling also offers their expertise through online platforms. Their use of tech is apparent in their mobile app, where The Artling implements the use of AR to help clients visualise how an art piece would look like in their homes or offices.

Recently, The Artling introduced its latest innovation Artling Projects, a B2B art sourcing concierge for industry professionals, developed in-house by the company.

In this interview with e27, The Artling CTO Martin Brochhaus explains the vision behind Artling Projects, the work process behind the platform, and their ambition for the future.

Also Read: Why the future of AI needs more of diversity and the arts

Making arts happen

The Artling Projects is described as a workflow management system that aims to become the go-to platform for art and design sourcing needs. It includes features such as art sourcing, budgeting, and timeline management that will also enable users to manage various projects simultaneously in one platform. Think Asana, but for art and design projects.

“The Artling now has two key components; the offline advisory business, as well as the online platforms. The offline component developed organically and came after the e-commerce platform gained momentum, thus the demand for advisory services came naturally,” Brochhaus begins.

The CTO continues by explaining that despite their focus in the art and design verticals, The Artling has always been a tech-centred firm. In addition to building its own entire software stack in-house for years, the company also has two e-commerce platforms, two mobile apps, and other tools and dashboards.

“Technology has been prevalent in our day-to-day workflow and has, in turn, created a company culture where the team constantly looks to our developers to use technology to solve any pain-points we experience in our daily work,” Brochhaus elaborates.

“When issues arise, the developers are consulted and we will brainstorm together with the team. We then gauge a feature’s urgency based on current priorities, to see how we can come up with solutions and new tools together. Artling Projects is a direct result of this iterative process, collaboration and company culture,” he continues.

As the number of consultancy projects increased in 2018 and 2019, The Artling began to figure out how to streamline the entire process, leading to the creation of an early version of Artling Projects in late 2019.

Also Read: Lim Jui named CEO of SGInnovate as Steve Leonard departs in May

When asked about the most challenging part of development, Brochhaus says that it is having a full overview of what everyone else in the company is working on.

“For example, if someone in the team creates documents for an advisory project, the development team needs to be aware of it as these documents contain crucial data that could be handled and dissected by our tool, Artling Projects … Given that many of us come from different backgrounds (e.g art history, architecture and technology backgrounds), these sharing sessions provide fresh perspectives on issues and pain points faced by the team,” he points out.

“This creates an amazing feedback loop, and opens a channel where everyone can contribute by giving feedback and suggestions to improve our software development capabilities and automate processes,” the CTO adds.

The future of the arts

When asked about the future potential of Artlings Project and the global art scene, Brochhaus shares some promising statistics.

In Singapore alone, there are over 1,500 interior design firms and more than 700 architecture firms. Globally, in 2019, the global interior design market size was US$135 billion –this number is expected to grow to US$270 billion by the end of 2026.

In the Artlings Project platform itself, the community of artists and designers is said to have grown by 42 per cent with a 62 per cent increase in listings since January 2020.

Artlings Project aims to continue on tapping this opportunity by improving its platform.

“Our machine-learning pipeline is another aspect that we will continue to build upon; we currently have a great model that has a powerful similarity search feature, but we will also use ML for a variety of other tasks, especially for our approval processes and for a recommendation engine that suggests works simultaneously while our users are uploading more project-related information,” Brochhaus elaborates.

He also noted upcoming trends enabled by consumer electronics.

“Lastly, with new iPhones now having Lidar sensors, the influence of AR and VR will only grow in the web-development industry, so we intend to constantly improve graphical tools that Artling Projects already has and make use of the better hardware that will soon be in the hands of millions of users,” Brochhaus notes.

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Images Credit: The Artlings

 

 

The post How art consultant The Artling uses AI to help interior designers pick the best sculpture for the hotel lobby appeared first on e27.

Feeling burned out is something no one should ever have to experience, so in today’s episode, KC and I talk about:

• What experiencing burnout feels like
• Understanding when you have burnout
• How to start developing a self-care routine
• Meditation, nutrition, exercise
• And more!

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

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This article was first published on We Live To Build.

Image Credit: Michal Czyz on Unsplash

The post Preventing burnout for entrepreneurs with KC Rossi appeared first on e27.