The banking landscape within Southeast Asia is primed for change with the rise of digital banks. With a high internet penetration within the region, digital banks are offering a valuable alternative to their physical ones, especially in reaching out to the millions of underbanked individuals regionally.

Regulators within Southeast Asia have been receptive to the entry of digital banks. In December 2020, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) shortlisted four candidates for new digital banking licenses. Malaysia and the Philippines finalised their digital banking frameworks, while Thailand announced plans to follow suit.

McKinsey Asia recently released a report detailing the opportunities for both incumbents and new entrants to enter this space and their observations from the Asian digital banking landscape.

Here are the main takeaways:

• Successful digital banks in Asia often operate under a consortia business model that contrasts to the vertical approach seen in Europe and the US

Consortia do present challenges and complexity of their own, particularly in ensuring alignment between partners. However, they also offer a path to scaling relatively quickly.

The majority of applicants in Singapore’s licensing round were consortia and half of the licenses were awarded to consortiums.

Also Read: Grab, Sea and Ant Group amongst 4 selected for Singapore digital banking licenses

Grab and Singtel secured the digital full bank license while a consortium comprising China-based Greenland Financial Holdings Group, Linklogis Hong Kong, and Beijing Co-operative Equity Investment Fund Management obtained the digital wholesale bank license.

On the investment side, investors, particularly venture capital firms, have become more cautious, lending more momentum to consolidation and consortia as funding approaches for digital bank launches.

• On the regulatory front, caution related to economic uncertainty has led some regulators to delay licensing timelines

Singapore’s licensing was delayed by close to five months, while Malaysia’s was delayed for half a year. On the whole, however, the pandemic has not shifted the path for digital banking in Asia.

Virtual banks were launched in Hong Kong and Taiwan in 2020 and the MAS shortlisted four candidates for new digital banking licenses, while Malaysia and the Philippines finalised their digital banking guidelines.

• Digital bank capital requirements are not always lower than those for traditional ones

• Successful and profitable digital banks distinguish themselves well

Thriving digital banks share the following strengths: A truly differentiated customer value proposition, early revenue generation, quick scalability, cost-efficiency

The successful value proposition extends beyond a visually appealing customer interface. Digital banks need to offer seamless onboarding, fast loan approval and disbursement, round-the-clock customer support among others.

Also Read: Treat your customers like humans, not data

These benefits should stem from more granular customer data digital banks can access and the lower marginal cost of loan disbursement.

• An experienced team can go a long way to securing licensing

The report identified 10 success factors to consider during a licensing application. They can be grouped under three broad categories: an experienced team that can implement a plan; the vision and roadmap for a stable and ultimately profitable and differentiated offering; and following the licensing process and engaging with the regulator.

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Image Credit: Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash

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When it comes to notable hackathons and startup events in the Southeast Asian region, Startup Weekend would be one of the names that come out on top of mind. Major tech companies such as Carousell and Shopback have a history with the event; it has also garnered the support of organisations such as GIC, GovTech and Temasek.

In fact, the event’s latest iteration in September 2020 was graced by Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat and saw the participation of more than 450 innovators.

Its history began in 2012 when founder Durwin Ho returned from his participation in the NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) programme in Silicon Valley. Seeing an opportunity in the market, two years later, the first Startup Weekend was launched –with the help of volunteers.

Starting off from hosting Startup Weekend events, together with Joyce Tay and Raymond Doraisamy, Ho founded StartupX in 2018, as part of the effort to “drive more impactful innovation on a global scale by bridging the gap between startups and corporations.” Through various partnerships, StartupX curates innovation programmes that range from workshops, seminars and mentorship programmes.

The company also runs HyperX, a sustainability-focused hackathon in partnership with Temasek, and HDB Cool Ideas Hack, a hackathon centred on smart and sustainable living solutions in HDB estates, in collaboration with the Housing Development Board.

“Most people see us as event organisers … we are more of an innovation programme specialists. What we do is that, essentially, we help companies innovate in a variety of different ways. Sometimes, it’s a form of a hackathon. Sometimes, it’s through pre-accelerator,” Ho explains in an interview with e27.

“Events are a very large part of it. But we don’t really see ourselves as event organisers,” he stresses.

Also Read: Photographers, food loss, and mental health: Meet the winners of Startup Weekend Jakarta 2019

But with its past experiences of hosting events, StartupX has plenty of insights and advice to offer to other companies who are exploring better ways to organise their events.

In this edition of deep-dive series, we will learn about:

• Key principles of good event organising
• Why speed and quality control is essential
• Tips for troubleshooting

Let’s start with these two things

Ho begins by stating how the team’s approach in running Startup Weekend changes as time goes by. In its early days, there were more concerns about creating a great participants experience through details such as food and swag, before the team evolved to focus on bringing quality content through speakers, judges, and mentors.

There are two principles that the team learned from this experience that Ho now considers as the essence of StartupX: Managing stakeholders’ expectation and alignment of objective, and a focus on providing a high-quality product.

“Because the worst thing you can do is bring in someone that doesn’t align with your objective, and … half of the battle will be in trying to fight them, trying to convince them of what you’re trying to do,” Ho stresses. “It’s not an easy process … You really don’t want to bring in people who are not very convinced or those who are just there for the money.”

So how exactly can one implement these principles in event organising?

According to Ho, when it comes to dealing with external parties such as clients, first and foremost they have to be clear with what they want –as this is something that goes back to the first principle of aligning objectives.

Also Read: Startup Weekend Jakarta 2019 will help young entrepreneurs and businesses succeed in Indonesia

“The second thing is that you cannot be an event organiser who is just concerned about taking checkboxes. Do I have a virtual platform? Yes. Do I have my speakers ready? Yes. But you also have to consider the kind of platform that you need, and how it suits your needs,” Ho says.

The next points are strongly related to learning from others’ experience –and put the focus on participants’ experience.

“Far too often, I see a lot of event organisers get overly concerned about meeting the expectation of stakeholders, the people who are their sponsors … [that] they forgot about the participant,” he stresses.

” … You have to ensure that the objective of the event is met. If it’s fostering connection … sharing knowledge from participants, or sharing knowledge from founders or whatever, make sure that those are the things that really come up,” he continues.

Quick, let’s do this

When asked about successful events in the past, and how StartupX managed to get it right, Ho gives two examples. The first one would be the COVID-19 edition of Startup Weekend Singapore.

“It’s supposed to be a giga edition. Giga, in our own terms, is 500 people or more; we run a mega before in 2018 with about 200 people. For this year, we initially planned for 500. But then our friend COVID-19 came, so we couldn’t do much about it and we had to scrap the entire plan,” Ho begins.

As expected, the team had to adjust and transform itself into a virtual event. Their effort seems to bear fruit as they managed to score 750 attendees from the expected 150 attendees.

Another success story is related to their pre-accelerator programme with Temasek, HyperX. COVID-19 hit hard just when the programme was about to host its demo day in April, pushing them to go digital as well.

Also Read: 6 lessons learnt from Startup Weekend Singapore final pitches

“The reason why I consider that very tremendous success in our books in StartupX is because of the speed in which we reacted and how we managed to bring together big names,” Ho says.

He stresses that the works that the team is doing are strongly affected by changes and trends in the outside world, be it micro or macro trends. This puts even extra emphasis on the importance of being aware of changes, and be swift in responding to it.

But here’s some tricks of the trade

The most exciting –if not stressful– part of event organising is the adrenaline rush that comes with the flood of activities and movements. There is also the anxious anticipation of things that can possibly go wrong.

When asked about his favourite tip for troubleshooting at events, Ho says that the team always have the role of “station master” ready at their every offline event.

A station master is an individual whose role is to manage the situation on the ground by assigning the right individuals to solve the right issue.

“He will always be free from the day-to-day routine stuff, he’s not the one handling the mic … but he will be the go-to person to handle problems,” Ho explains. “A station master doesn’t solve the problem [himself]. He is there to think about the right person to solve it, then assign the job.”

As the last word, Ho expressed his optimism for the return of offline events in Southeast Asia which has been indicated by the move of top global events such as the World Economic Forum to Singapore and RISE to Malaysia.

“Despite everything, there is still a big dichotomy between the virtual and physical. And I don’t think that’s replaceable, so you have to consider a hybrid model,” he says.

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Image Credit: StartupX

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As a leading player in the global semiconductor industry, Taiwan is known for its innovation and development. Taiwan has claimed 12th place out of 141 economies in the 2019 Global Competitiveness Report released by the World Economic Forum. In recent years, the country has seen an increase in venture capital investment, government initiatives, and sectoral reforms that encourage innovation and leading to more global entrepreneurs setting up their base in the country.

In order to build a growing and resilient startup ecosystem, creating a stable venture capital market is not only necessary but also creates a strong incentive for startup founders and investors.

Examples of this are the Startup Regulatory Adjustment Platform and the Taiwan Startup Stadium established by the National Development Council (NDC). In December 2019, Taiwan’s National Development Fund announced that it is primed to make investments of at least US$180 million in the next few quarters. Coupled with incentives from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan is actively attracting international accelerators and venture capitals to open their offices in major innovation hubs.

Attracting international accelerators

International accelerators such as Rainmaking Innovation Taiwan has currently set up four offices in key parts of the country: Taipei, New Taipei City, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The latest Tainan office, Rainmaking Center of Excellence and Expertise (CEE), is located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park (STSP) in which IC, optoelectronics, precision machinery, biotechnology, computer and peripherals, and communications industries are the major industries.

Rainmaking Innovation is dedicated to boosting the potentialities of entrepreneurship and to foster and tailor it best with preeminent enterprises and startups worldwide. “We work with our clients to build a clear view of fast-evolving markets so that we can identify the opportunities they’re best positioned to own,” said Sonia Chuang, the Director of Rainmaking Innovation Taiwan.

Also read: Are cyber attacks more life-threatening than we think?

Chuang has witnessed that a good number of startups encounter constant setbacks and have experienced difficulty in breaking that cycle due to their lack of experience. The solution to the issue is to customise different approaches for anticipated encounters.

Rainmaking Innovation supports startups by offering them tremendous tools to solve problems that may emerge during the process of either scale-up or while managing one’s corporation.

Inspiring innovation across many sectors

In addition, the National Health Research Institute (NHRI), known for its excellence in medical research and databases, is accelerating healthcare innovation by working with startups and industry leaders. For instance, the genetic testing company, Taiwan Genome Industry Alliance, founded by the NHRI’s incubation centre with support from industry leaders, is cooperating with the NHRI to develop next-generation sequencing, animal cancer models and other clinical technologies.

The development of startups in Taiwan has been bursting at the seams. Based on results from the World Economic Forum, in the last two years alone, Taiwan achieved first place in the Asia Pacific region and fourth in the world. Moreover, the honour of Super Innovator also went to Taiwan.

Also read: Meet these 10 verified investors that are ready to connect with you

The Taiwan government has been pushing policies and action plans since 2018, embarking on a journey to crack down on problems with funding, human resources, market, and setting up a united system that is capable of coming up with solutions to complex problems surrounding the tech ecosystem.

The National Development Council (NDC) has already held some 10 meetings and workshops with over 100 Taiwan startup communities to build up a brand for recognition. After all the campaigns and consultations, NDC and the Taiwan startup community has come up with the brand Startup Island Taiwan.

Onward to a brighter future

Finally, in May, the Chairman of Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), Tian-Mu Huang (黃天牧), has given the go signal to start planning the new transaction board for startups, rather than the available over-the-counter market, emerging stock market, listed stocks, or even the Go Incubation Board for Startup and Acceleration Firms (GISA board).

This brand-new idea breaks through the limits of business activities. Compared to the GISA board, established in 2013, which only allows fundraising with the exclusion of insurance that seeks to protect interested parties. Furthermore, the NDC suggested that the FSC should launch a small-medium scale firm friendly project designed specifically to facilitate capital and venture security, while encouraging more potential ventures to fundraise in the capital market.

Also read: Witness Malaysia’s newest digital solutions at the MYHackathon 2020 Finale & Showcase

With almost 1800 startups operating in under five years that are recognised by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, accelerators are helping company founders to scale up their businesses and navigate their target markets.

According to the 2019 Taiwan Startup Ecosystem survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers Taiwan (PwC Taiwan), nearly one-third of respondents are serial entrepreneurs, with almost half that are targeting the Southeast Asia and North America markets. Significantly, over 60 per cent had participated in accelerators in their early phase, and most respondents determined the challenge of funding, market expansion, and talent acquisition after working with quality consultation services.

Startups in Taiwan are rising rapidly amidst past challenges, and the country’s startup ecosystem is working tirelessly to continue attracting venture capital companies while maintaining overall global interest in recent years. Despite many challenges, Taiwan is on the road to becoming a new startup hub in Asia with more government funding and support from innovation-supporting laws.

The post Why Taiwan Matters: local and international initiatives in Taiwan startup ecosystem appeared first on e27.

International Compliance Workshop (ICW), a Hong Kong-based supply chain management platform with an office in Singapore, has raised US$5.7 million in a Series A+ funding round, led by Infinity Ventures Partners.

Integrated Capital also joined the round, along with returning investors Hong Kong government-backed Innovation and Technology Venture Fund and MindWorks Capital.

This brings the total amount funding raised by ICW to US$9.8 million, according to Crunchbase data.

As per a press statement, the fresh funds will go towards improving the tech infrastructure of its compliance management system and product testing platform. Besides, ICW will look to embed new features into its B2B procurement platform iSource.

Also Read: Why it is imperative to invest in digitalising the supply chain

Launched in 2016, ICW assists retailers and manufacturers in digitalising their supply chain process — from procurement and product testing to compliance management. The startup claims it consolidates testing, inspection and certification resources onto its platform to provide “dedicated” quality control for clients.

ICW said it serves clients from over 50 countries from its offices in Singapore, the US, China and Hong Kong. Notable clients include US fashion brand Ralph Lauren and Australian retail store Kmart.

ICW noted its total number of enterprise subscribers and revenue in 2020 increased by 238 per cent and 168 per cent respectively, driven by increased demand for diversification of supply chains amid lockdowns imposed by Covid-19.

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Image Credit: Photo by Simon Zhu on Unsplash

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Eco-business, a Singapore-headquartered media company focussed on Asia’s sustainable development, has raised an undisclosed amount of investment from private equity firm Tembusu Partners.

As per a statement, Tembusu and Eco-business will partner to scale the latter’s environment, social and governance (ESG) activities across Asia Pacific.

Founded in 2009, Eco-Business is an independent media and business intelligence company that publishes news and opinions in multimedia formats on business and policy developments around the world with a sustainability and ESG-focused lens.​

Aside from this, it also acts as a platform for individuals and organisations to publish jobs, events, press release and research.

Eco-Business syndicates its content to various information providers such as Dow Jones’s Factiva, in addition to providing research, consulting and training for government and private sector organisations.

Also Read: Post-pandemic, SEA will see a sustainable leapfrog into the digital age; Cathay Innovation report

As part of this deal, Eco-business founder and managing director Jessica Cheam and executive director Junice Yeo will join the Tembusu team as ESG advisors.

“COVID-19 has highlighted that crucial relationship between humanity and our natural world. For far too long, people and ecosystems have been exploited to the detriment of the long-term resilience of our global society. ESG has moved from a fringe issue into the mainstream and governments and companies must urgently look at it,” said Cheam.

According to consulting firm Deloitte, ESG assets are estimated to grow at a 16 per cent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), totalling almost US$35 trillion by 2025.

Cheam believes that after the world recovers from the pandemic eco-businesses will largely help organisations navigate the new landscape and tie recovery policies to more positive sustainable development outcomes.

Eco-business has a presence  in Manila, Beijing, Zurich, New York, and more.

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Image Credit:  Image taken from the company’s Facebook Page

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