Mosaic Solutions, a Philippines-based tech startup offering cloud-based management software for F&B and hospitality companies, announced today it has raised an additional US$1 million in a pre-Series A preferred equity offering.

The fresh funds were provided by Gentree, a VC fund launched by a prominent Filipino family to support new digital economy startups in the Southeast Asian region. Mosaic shared the fresh additional funds will go towards fuelling its regional expansion across Southeast Asia.

Mosaic had recently announced a US$1.5 million pre-Series A round in September 2020 from a slew of investors including Australian early-stage VC firm Investible, IdeaSpace (a non-profit which recently launched Opportunity Fund out of Manila), KMC Founders Fund, and JC Capital.

Launched in 2016, Mosaic provides “cloud-based profit optimisation” solutions for F&B, retail and hospitality industries across the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam, with a primary focus on the Philippines. The firm noted its cloud-based product suite includes data analytics, inventory management, point of sale and purchasing.

Also Read: Mosaic Solutions raises US$1.5M to provide data analytics, inventory management solutions to SEA’s F&B industry

Mosaic shared its clients include multi-unit restaurant and bar groups, hotels and retailers including supermarkets and convenience stores, and its subscription-based platform helps companies digitalise their daily operations, driving improvement in profit margin.

“While the global pandemic has been a catalyst for digital transformation in the Philippines and across ASEAN countries, there are still strides to be made for our industry to be truly digitized and more efficient,” commented Brett Doyle, Founder & CEO of Mosaic.

“Mosaic has remained resilient over the pandemic, a testament to the strong relationships they have developed with their customers,” says Mark Sng, Vice-President of investments and portfolio management at Gentree.

The startup sees a great opportunity in the F&B sector across Southeast Asia, with on-premise F&B spending projected to double to US$5 billion by 2022, and the total F&B market projected to grow to over US$125 billion by 2023.

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Image Credit: Mosaic

 

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Developers are the lifeblood of tech companies! They help bring your idea into existence, breathe life into your product, and power up the whole system. Sadly, hiring a good offshore developer is so difficult these days, especially for a young startup. 

But do not fool yourself into thinking that you can’t hire them because of their rising salaries across the world. There are always good developers who are willing to stick with startups for values beyond the money. 

Instead, the one major challenge that young companies face when hiring quality offshore talent is the painstaking process of searching, evaluating, and convincing candidates within a stipulated time period.

What makes hiring offshore developers hard?

‘Good’ developers refer to those who are technically proficient and have a fundamental understanding of computer science, including their chosen programming language.

Other crucial requirements that also need to be assessed during the recruitment process include: 

• Ability to write good, clean code
• Understand the software development process
• Can communicate effectively and with clarity
• A team player who can adapt and solve problems as they arise
• They must fit in with your startup culture

You’d need an elaborate screening and hiring process to ensure you’re in the best position to hire the tech team you need.

However, the average length of the interview process is around 25.4 days in Singapore, with IT roles often taking double that amount of time, due to additional complexities and the competitive labour market.

It is also worth noting that the interview process can only start when you are already done with the necessary background checks. Unfortunately, screening often takes three to four days to complete. All in all, it can take as much as two months to complete the full cycle! 

Also Read: How young and women developers are nurturing the tech ecosystem for a stronger post-COVID-19 world

It can’t be this bad right? Well! Let do some simple math, with a few very idealistic assumptions:

There are 10 candidates who all applied to your company for the same role.

1. The Screening process only takes 30 minutes 
2. The Testing process takes another 30 minutes
3. The Interviewing process takes another 30 minutes
4. You also take another 30 minutes to sort out information and communicate with all parties

That means you have to commit two hours of your time per candidate.

Let’s say you are lucky and all the candidates are suitable. Meaning you spend 20 hours with them before being able to make an offer, or around five days (four hours/day) if you try to fit other tasks in.

Now let’s scale this process up with multiple hires for different roles. According to a recent job survey, slow response and long hiring processes are the two main reasons for candidates to turn down interview opportunities. 

For startups that want to offshore their tech operations to Vietnam or other “low cost” countries, recruiting good tech talent is even more difficult due to communication, culture, and legal challenges.  As a result, the execution of such a complex process could take months. 

How to hire a good offshore developer, faster

Time is the essence of every business. After all, your team has goals to hit and they need more talents to push through the product roadmap. So, how can we improve the hiring process and hire top-notch offshore developers more quickly?

Implement an effective communication system

From reaching out to the candidate to scheduling interviews with all parties, you need a dedicated process to sort out and update all the data throughout the hiring process. This is critical to facilitate timely correspondence and improving the chances of snatching a good developer ahead of your competitors.

Flexible interview arrangement

With the COVID-19 pandemic still affecting our daily lives, online interviews through video conferencing have become the new default in recruitment. Candidates now prefer to video conferencing remotely instead of having to travel to the office physically to be interviewed. 

Unfortunately, such an elaborate screening and hiring process can be daunting for startups as they lack sufficient resources to do both product development and recruitment simultaneously. 

That’s why many businesses are relying on third-party HR services to keep their hiring processes lean and reduce downtime in recruitment while acting as a bridge to connect them with the offshore tech team. 

Also Read: Salary guide to hiring web designers and developers in Asia-Pacific

For example, startups will be free from the burden of these recruiting steps below:

Sourcing and screening

Based on the hiring JD and other given requirements, a trusted third-party HR service provider will help proceed to source suitable profiles through an assessment for their technical proficiency, as well as soft skills. It consists of several different stages:

• Pre-screening to eliminate candidates who do not meet the basic requirements of the position
• Preliminary assessment to screen out those who lack the desired level of skills and competencies for the job
• In-depth assessment through a phone call and/or 1-to-1 meeting to select candidates with the highest potential for a successful application
• Verifying candidate CVs, include stated employment record and qualifications

So clients only have to spend their time interviewing curated candidates who are best suited for the job. 

Technical test and interview

Depending on each particular position, tests can be arranged through different methods and timelines with professional meeting rooms for online testing or interviewing. 

Through the HR service provider, candidates’ status and progress is monitored daily and will be informed directly to the startups by an internal communication system. 

Offer and onboard

For remote hiring, using a 3rd party HR service means you do not have to worry about collecting all necessary personal documents and keeping in contact with candidates for on boarding. 

They also handle all ancillary tasks related to hiring, like drawing up contracts, facilitate proper communication, and also ensure best practices are followed throughout the engagement. Thus, increase the success rate of recruiting the best offshore tech talents for startups.

There is a global war for talent, and developers will continue to be a challenging area to recruit for. But do not go into it blindly. Instead, if you can optimise the hiring process and rely on professional help to carry the tedious parts, this will position you ahead of the competition.

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Debt has always been a dirty word in the lexicon of Asian households, where frugality is a virtue and extravagance is frowned upon. However, the recent emergence of Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) feature in e-commerce platforms seeks to redefine age-old adages. By allowing payment in installments with little or minimal interest, BNPL has fuelled a change in consumer purchasing behaviour, largely thanks to what is known as  ‘present bias’.

By splitting up payment, consumers feel less ‘pain’ and view purchases as more affordable than if they had to pay the full amount all at once, and are therefore more willing to make purchases. 

BNPL has since taken off in various parts of the world, with pioneer firms such as AfterPay and Klarna achieving unprecedented successes. In fact, BNPL pioneer firm Klarna from Sweden has become the highest valued fintech firm in Europe, with a valuation of over US$10.6 billion as of November 2020. However, in some parts of the world like Southeast Asia, BNPL is still in its infancy. Thus arises the multi-million dollar question: is Southeast Asia ready for BNPL payments?

The answer is a resoundingly positive one.

The first indicator of the market potential of BNPL in Southeast Asia is its age group demographics. In Australia, the National Retail Association found that the BNPL market is dominated by customers under 35 years, accounting for more than half of total BNPL users while being less than 20 per cent of the population.

This is attributed to young users being early adopters of innovative solutions and typically having limited finances, resulting in the preference to pay in installments. Based on this, Southeast Asia’s population seems to hold outsized potential for BNPL, given that the median age for all Southeast Asian countries (save Singapore and Thailand) are below 35 according to Statista. 

Also Read: Why the Buy Now Pay Later concept makes sense for the Southeast Asian market

A second indicator is the underbanked population of Southeast Asia. BNPL in itself is not a completely novel concept. Traditionally, flexible installment plans have been commonplace as part of credit card plans. However, the ability to tap on this installment payment method requires the consumer to have both a bank account and a credit card plan (which has a credit rating as a requisite).

This makes the method inaccessible for the unbanked and underbanked – a huge group in Southeast Asia. According to a 2019 brief by Bain & Company, more than 70 per cent of adults in Southeast Asia (roughly 450 million) are either “underbanked”, have no access to credit cards or have no long-term savings product, or “unbanked,” without access to a basic bank account.

BNPL seeks to eradicate this barrier by making it hassle free to apply for installment plans, without the need for a credit card. With a market size of nearly half a billion potential users, Southeast Asia’s underbanked population is ripe for BNPL’s capture.

Finally, the growth of e-commerce in Southeast Asia highlights the viability of BNPL in the region. The two go hand in hand, as the usage of BNPL payment services are derived from e-commerce transactions. BNPL platforms are already on the rise in the e-commerce scene in Southeast Asia, with BNPL service providers such as Singaporean based Hoolah seeing unprecedented growth.

The company experienced a  700 per cent increase in transaction volumes over six months between April and October 2020, and a 280 per cent increase in the number of e-commerce retail stores partners (totally 1,000) from October 2019 to October 2020. If Hoolah’s success is still in doubt, it raised a whopping eight-figure sum in its Series A funding round.

Starting from humble beginnings, Southeast Asian eCommerce revenue will grow from a mere USD$17.2 million in 2017, to an expected US$100 million by 2025. With e-commerce revenue in Southeast Asia expected to show an annual growth rate of 10.3 per cent between 2021 and 2025, the ground is fertile for BNPL to take hold.

This opportunity is underlined by the increasing number of BNPL providers available to consumers. In the Philippines, BNPL platforms such as BillEase, Jungle and TendoPay are seeing growing traction, while regionally a slew of new entrants have emerged and incumbent businesses are adding BNPL options to their repertoire.

Also Read: Buy now, pay later: The changing face of finance for a mobile generation

Since the end of 2020, Razer, a Singapore-based company, has enabled a BNPL option for merchants that utilise their payment gateway, Razer Pay. Pine Labs, an India-based provider of retail point of sale (POS) solutions, has even collaborated with Mastercard, to form a Pay-Later solution to be rolled out in five Southeast Asian markets, namely Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and Singapore. Even established Australian BNPL player, Afterpay, has taken note of Southeast Asia’s potential and made their move by acquiring EmpatKali, a BNPL provider focused on Indonesia. 

Moreover, just this year, Pace Enterprise, a fintech solutions provider with a buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) solution, was launched by former managing director of WeWork, Turochas Fuad. Pace has since already obtained a seven-figure funding in the seed round, and will serve the markets of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

These new entries herald greater things to come for BNPL in Southeast Asia and provide a clear answer: Southeast Asia has never been more ready for BNPL.

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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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Image credit: Avery Evans on Unsplash

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Temasek-backed Reefknot Investments announced today it has made a strategic investment into Silicon Valley-based Roambee, an on-demand supply chain startup. This follows the latter’s Series B1 fundraise led by Swiss-based Anchor Group, which totalled in excess of US$18 million.

The fresh funds will go towards furthering Roambee’s technological capabilities and global expansion into new markets, including Asia. It seeks to open its Southeast Asian headquarters in Singapore by Q1 2021. Besides, the supply chain startup disclosed it is talking to key strategic investors as part of their plan to close Series C funding by Q2 2021.

Launched in 2018, Reefknot Investments is a Singapore-based VC firm seeking to invest in logistics and supply chain startups. Roambee will be the firm’s third major investment, joining Previse, an AI B2B financing platform and Secondmind, a platform that uses Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to aid humans in making complex business decisions.

Also Read: Teleoperation: It’s here to revolutionise the logistics and supply chain industry

Co-founded by Sanjay Sharma and Vidya Subramanian in 2014, Roambee claims it provides “enterprise-grade” Internet of Things (IoT) with on-demand, worldwide real-time location and condition monitoring for shipments and in-field assets. Its sensor technology and AI-based platform allow clients to integrate and manage data from multiple sources to produce “actionable” insights, down to the item level.

It is currently present in the US, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Germany, UAE, India, and Indonesia.

Roambee shared it experienced both new and existing customer growth in 2020, with sales orders doubling from 2019. It also entered into contracts with new customers. Notable clients include Lenovo, Mondelez and the United Nations World Food Programme.

“The pandemic has changed the dynamics of supply drastically, lengthening any recovery period. Our goal is to expand our platform’s capabilities to include more sensor and non-sensor data sources to eliminate disruptions and reduce risks in the supply chain,” shared Sharma, who is also the CEO.

“Roambee’s platform is uniquely positioned to support its clients as well as the industry’s push towards on-demand multi-modal Supply Chain Visibility and insights. This aligns with our mandate to invest in transformative technologies that drive supply chain and logistics evolution,” said Marc Dragon, Managing Director of Reefknot Investments.

Based on a research report by Markets and Markets, the IoT cloud platform market is expected to grow from US$6.4 billion in 2020 to US$11.5 billion by 2025. Companies, especially manufacturers from the pharmaceutical sector, are looking for AI-based demand sensing algorithms to simulate multiple scenarios and plan their distribution well in advance as they witness supply-side disruptions and demand contraction.

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Image Credit: Reefknot

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Meet Yuri Cataldo, who grew and lost a multi-million dollar bottled water company. Today, he bravely explains how!

We discuss:

• How he became an entrepreneur
• How he realised what his business should do
• How he used PR to grow faster than he knew how to handle
• How he lost it all overnight
• And much 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

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