The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation globally and shaped our lifestyles around it.

While this disruption has adversely impacted traditional businesses like restaurants, retail stores and hotels, it has also created many new growth opportunities on similar fronts, with new innovations in food delivery, e-commerce, and even rethinking the way we deliver education to our next generations.

Against this background of ever-evolving needs and trends, there is no better time than now to harness the opportunities that have emerged.

This is what the Enhanced Startup SG Founder programme seeks to encourage: more of this entrepreneurial spirit; to be nimble, adaptable and unafraid to fail; a disposition that will help us to seize all growth opportunities available to chart a new path forward in a post-COVID-19 world.

Through the new Venture Building programmes, we hope to enable more aspiring entrepreneurs with the right tools, mentorship, and resources to help build their entrepreneurship journey and accelerate our collective transformation to an innovation-driven economy.

NTUitive recently concluded the first two cohorts of its Venture Building programme, ideasinc.veni, under the Enhanced Startup SG Founder scheme. The programme equips participants with practical life skills and soft skills that are valued by employers of the 21st century.

Being part of the programme provides them the opportunity to interact with our extensive network of investors, entrepreneurs, and corporations, helping them build their professional network and connect to people for business and job opportunities. ideasinc.veni also prepares participants for the Startup SG Founder grant, ensuring the business idea is differentiated, that there is a sizeable target market and potential, a sound business model, and a strong management team.

Also Read: NTUitive’s new programme VB18 will help Singaporeans get paid while building a business

To the mid-career professionals: it’s never too late to be an entrepreneur

The demographics of the first cohort of NTUitive’s venture building programme – ideasinc.veni – comprised a good mix of participants from various backgrounds and qualifications. More than half are individuals aged 30 and above, exploring a mid-career switch to entrepreneurship.

Chan Huiying, former investment analyst at Goldman Sachs, and a participant of NTUitive’s first Venture Building cohort, has been active in the startup scene where her idea won third place in the StartUp Weekend.

She shared that her corporate background in strategy and as an investment analyst enabled her to build strong fundamentals in structuring, presenting, and communicating her business ideas with multiple stakeholders, which are transferrable skills that give her an edge in succeeding as an entrepreneur.

Chan has since built on her experience to sell her vision to potential customers, co-founders, and angel investors, which helps to turn her business idea into reality.

Chan shared, “Being an entrepreneur is like getting a chance to work on a project that you are passionate about. You can have the freedom to choose what you want to work on, with whom you want to work, who you want to consult for advice, and how you want to realise a vision.

It is very exciting, and you will never stop learning and thinking about how to grow the business. You get to meet a lot of people in the process and learn facts about the world you never knew about.”

Dr Lua Eng Keong, another participant of NTUitive’s first cohort, received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge (UK) and was in the field of AI/ML Data Science & Analytics and Cybersecurity for Telecommunications-Media-Technology industry prior to participating in the ideasinc.veni programme.

Also Read: This app makes your SMS inbox organised and intuitive; sends you contextual offers based on the content

Dr Lua shared that working with a team of mid-career professionals of similar age, with significant experience and with deep expertise in their strides provides them with an edge in entrepreneurship, as the wealth of domain knowledge, industry insights and business development expertise they possess are built over the years from corporate experience, which their younger counterparts do not have.

“The real capacity and capability to understand deep technology application and market needs come with years of experience, especially international work experience across various regions and markets. This is something that mid-career professionals possess,” Dr Lua said.

According to Harvard Business Review, for the top 0.1 per cent of startups based on growth in their first five years, the founders of these startups had started their companies, on average, when they were 45 years old.

Mid-career professionals have the resilience and experience to weather the stress and variables arising from being an entrepreneur. Even if they do fail and wish to return to employment, the skillsets and networks built during the entrepreneurship journey will make them highly employable.

The experience of starting and running a startup will provide people with an understanding of management and the ability to have an overview of larger, wider business perspectives. Most importantly, it provides the ability to understand customers’ problems.

Experience is the best teacher

NDR Medical Technology, co-founded in 2014 by NTU alumnus Alan Goh, specialises in the development of surgical robotics driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and image processing capabilities.

Goh envisioned that robotic systems would significantly impact surgical procedures by making them less reliant on individual experience and skill, reducing mistakes from human fatigue or judgment.

Before the conception of NDR, Goh graduated with a specialisation in mechatronics and started his career developing automation systems in A*STAR, where he met his co-founder, Dr Jason Ng. The duo almost had the opportunity to spin off a company under the research institution, but the business model was not sound.

The duo caught the entrepreneurship bug and tried venturing into various industries before embarking on the development of medical robots, which best utilises their capabilities and experience.

Also Read: Personalisation is the new mantra: Snapdeal acquires TargetingMantra to help you shop in an intuitive manner

Being mid-career entrepreneurs allows the company to build on a solid foundation while maintaining prudence in development costs. “Entrepreneurship is not a chanced opportunity, but a conscious choice of perseverance,” said Goh.

Aspiring founders join us

With the conclusion of NTUitive’s first Venture Building cohort, as well as that of the other Venture Builders and Accredited Mentor Partners, top talent of promising startup teams formed through these Venture Building programmes will be pitching live at Founder Ignite, organised by Enterprise Singapore, which marks the finale of each cohort from the Enhanced Startup SG Founder’s Venture Building programme, and to promote local entrepreneurship.

Pre-selected top startup teams from each Venture Builder and Accredited Mentor Partner will be pitching their innovative business ideas to a panel of esteemed judges, who will assess the startups based on the uniqueness of business concept, feasibility of business model, strength of management team, and potential market value.

To find out more about the Startup SG Founder Venture Building programme and how you can fulfil your dreams as an aspiring entrepreneur, sign up to watch Founder Ignite.

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AppMan, a Thailand-based insurtech startup, announced today it has raised US$4.6 million in a Series A funding round.

Investors include Siam Alpha Equity (SAE), Krungsri Finnovate, Casmatt, KTBST Group, and POEMS Ventures.

The startup will use the capital to expand its services across Asia Pacific and further develop its technology. 

AppMan was born in 2011 after Thanapoom Chareonsiri gathered co-founders Amarit Franssen, Pak Ratthidham and Nuttapon Kongkitimanon to build a software solution that would help digitise the insurance sector. 

Since all the co-founders were already working in the insurance sector, the opportunity to serve the market became even greater.

AppMan’s aim is to enable insurers to mobilise their sales agents digitally and shift from paper-based work to an automated process. Its flagship product is AgentMate, which seeks to provide seamless sales process solutions for insurance companies wanting to digitise their sale process.

Also Read: Singapore’s insurtech startup Axinan rebrands to Igloo; closes Series A-plus funding

The company has raised a total of US$5 million since its inception from undisclosed founders which went into creating new products.

Additionally, AppMan has also expanded its reach and established offices outside of Thailand in markets such as Vietnam and Indonesia. 

“AppMan has strong expertise in several technologies such as OCR (a technology to read words from documents) or chatbot, which allows seamless experience insurance transactions for clients. We believe that strategic investment in AppMan will not only grow our invested capital but also would raise digital adoption readiness and awareness to KTBST Group as well,” Kitiwat Akrangsi, a representative from KTBST Group said.

“The insurance space is ripe for digital disruption. As an insurtech SaaS solutions business that targets the B2B2C space, AppMan is well-positioned to capture this market. It has achieved strong traction and buy-in with the existing market players, and has a strong pipeline of new products which we expect will drive further traction,” said Luke Lim, a representative of PhillipCapital Group. 

As per a study, the insurance penetration rate in the ASEAN region remains low at approximately 3.6 per cent. According to Chareonsiri, there is a real opportunity for insurtech companies in SEA Markets as Thailand alone marks a market worth US$26 billion. 

Some notable startups in the insurtech sector in Southeast Asia are Igloo, PasarPolis, Sunday, and PolicyStreet.

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Image Credit: AppMan

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Transcelestial Technologies, a last-mile internet connectivity startup based out of Singapore, has announced its entry into the Philippines by raising a strategic funding of US$2 million from Kickstart Ventures.

This is the first publicly-announced investment by Kickstart Ventures from its recently-announced US$180-million ACTIVE Fund, which is backed by Ayala Corporation.

Several of Ayala’s subsidiaries — namely AC Energy, AC Industrials, AC Ventures, BPI, and Kickstart’s parent company Globe Telecom — also participated in the latest round.

“The team at Kickstart have been fully aligned with our goals of solving the last-mile and global bottlenecks in internet distribution. We could not have asked for a better partner to help us not only work with Globe in Philippines but also advise us on bringing our current and future products to solve some of the challenges in the archipelago nation,” said Rohit Jha, CEO of Transcelestial.

Also Read: Kickstart Ventures to manage Ayala’s US$150M Corporate VC fund in Philippines

“As more Filipinos become reliant on internet access for their livelihood and social connections, we’re hopeful that Transcelestial will help increase internet penetration and provide telcos and ISPs with an affordable option for 5G deployment,” said Minette Navarrete, President of Kickstart Ventures.

Founded in December 2016, Transcelestial is building what it claims to be a space laser network to “deliver a step-change in internet connectivity globally”.

The startup has developed Centauri, a mass-produced network device that leverages its proprietary Wireless Laser Communication Technology to create a wireless distribution network between buildings, traditional cell towers, street-level poles and other physical infrastructure.

It is the size of a shoe-box weighing less than 3kg and is capable of delivering fibre-like speeds to customers. It is a rapidly-deployable, low-cost and high-speed solution, which can be used in dense residential areas that require bandwidth upgrades.

Two versions of the device are available — 1 Gbps Full Duplex (4G & Enterprise ready) and 10 Gbps Full Duplex (5G-ready). Higher bandwidth capabilities will be unlocked and available for order shortly.

Centauri is aimed at providing a “rapidly deployable, affordable and high-speed last-mile connectivity solution”, especially for dense residential areas during COVID-19 period which require urgent bandwidth upgrades.

The Philippines is the top country in the world in terms of the number of hours spent on the internet with 67 per cent penetration. It is also the top country in the world for mobile use and in the top 3 for laptop, desktop and tablet use.

Also Read: How 5G will empower startups and SMEs in the new normal

Nearly 69 per cent of Philippines watches streaming TV content, 2 points higher than the worldwide average (beating Sweden, India and the UK).

The country is also amongst the top 2 countries in terms of time spent on game consoles (beating countries like China and India). It is the top country in the world using social media.

The archipelago is ahead of the world average on using digital banking and financial services (beating the US) and has the highest ownership of cryptocurrency. It had more new mobile connections activated last year than the next 10 countries combined.

“But the Philippines’s average download speed is only 50 per cent of the world average on mobile and only 34 per cent of world average on fixed connections to homes and offices. This is a major result of bottlenecks created by difficulty in bringing high speed internet backbone to dense population clusters. The sheer number of islands adds to the problem,” Jha pointed out.

“During COVID-19, it is absolutely critical that the people of Philippines continue to work remotely from their homes, continuing to make a livelihood. Transcelestial is here to help telecoms, ISPs, Enterprises and the Government help bridge this shortfall,” he shared.

As for telcos, the Centuari technology unlocks fibre-equivalent high bandwidth between 4G/5G cell towers and the telecom core network which connects back to their data centres. With the device in place, there are no delays caused by right of way issues and the built in automatic alignment technology makes the deployment happen within minutes, claimed Jha.

Also Read: Transcelestial aims to help telcos roll out 5G rapidly and cost effectively in SEA

In addition, there are no spectrum charges and no extra digging costs for laying fibre cables. As a result, one can get to 5G revenues faster by rolling out a transmission network with a reduced total cost and time of ownership as compared to fibre.

On the other hand, Centauri technology allows internet service providers to  bypass the expensive fibre optics costs to customer buildings and premises. They can create their wireless laser rings and mesh between their customers’ buildings and infrastructure to deliver low-latency and high-speed distribution to homes and offices.

As for enterprise, the Centauri technology when used in conjunction with their selected telecom or ISP partner will deliver the best experience to their business use case at a significantly more affordable cost to their business in the difficult COVID-19 period.

For government, its technology helps it bring low-cost ultra high-speed audiovisual and data capabilities to schools, hospitals, government offices and population centres far away from Tier 1 cities.

In July, Transcelestial secured a US$9.6 million in Series A round of investment, co-led by EDBI and Wavemaker Partners. The firm’s other investors are Airbus Ventures, Cap Vista, SEEDS Capital (Enterprise SG), Entrepreneur First, Partech Ventures, 500 Startups, AirTree Ventures, Tekton Ventures, SGInnovate, SparkLabs Global Ventures, Michael Seibel (CEO of Y-Combinator, Founder of Twitch.tv), and Charles Songhurst (Microsoft’s former Head of Corporate Strategy).

In 2018, Transcelestial raised US$1.8 million in seed funding.

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Image Credit: Transcelestial Technologies.

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2020 was a year that will forever live in infamy. The COVID-19 pandemic put a hold on many aspects of life and business, but it also became a wake up call for digital innovators to improve and speed up their work.

This is especially true in the world of financial technology or fintech.

A 2020 study reported that fintech firms in digital asset exchanges, payments, savings, and wealth management saw a 13 per cent growth in transaction numbers and 11 per cent increase in transaction volumes in the previous year.

Around 831 of the 1,385 fintech companies surveyed launched new products and services in response to the pandemic. 

With many people opting to conduct their financial transactions online amidst the global crisis, it came to no surprise that demand for fintech offerings has grown as well.

There’s no doubt that new and existing fintech innovations will continue to rise in popularity in 2021 as technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain continuously mature and the pandemic slows down due to the rollout of vaccines worldwide.

Below are some of the top fintech trends that we’ll see happening in 2021.

Digital-only banking

While digital banking has been around long before the pandemic, it spiked in usage amidst the pandemic. Research shows that about 50 per cent of consumers are using digital banking products more since the pandemic, with 87 per cent of them planning to continue this increased usage after the pandemic.

This shows that digital banking has evolved from a “nice-to-have” to a “must-have” solution for consumers and businesses.

Also Read: Empowering fintech and e-commerce through digital identity verification

However, despite the convenience in use that digital banking offers, many consumers are still weary of the dangers that digital banking solutions bring.

For example, risks associated with cyber-attacks are expected to hinder the digital banking market growth in the coming future. So it’s critical for consumers to continuously practice caution and for financial institutions to improve their security measures.

Autonomous finance

Just as self-service solutions have become rampant during the pandemic to avoid possible infection, autonomous finance is expected to rise in 2021 as well.

Several fintech solutions today make it possible for people to manage their money, open accounts, apply for loans, and more with just a click of a button.

Thanks to AI and machine learning, these solutions are now more accessible than lining up in traditional banks and going through tedious processes. 

Not only will autonomous finance provide the flexibility that consumers want, but it can also repair the customer experience in finance and unlock new sources of value.

Crypto and blockchain

2020 became a banner year for blockchain and crypto. The price of Bitcoin, in particular, surpassed its first all-time high value of US$19,783 in 2017 and pushed to US$23,421 in December 2020. It even entered 2021 with a new record of US$33,000, its highest value in history.

Bitcoin’s rising price is due to various reasons, some of which include growing institutional interest, usage as a hedge against inflation, and PayPal’s official entrance in the crypto scene. 

With crypto entering the mainstream more and more, there’s no doubt that demand for blockchain and digital asset solutions will rise as well. Fortunately, several companies worldwide have already mobilised their distribution of such solutions.

Also Read: Philippine fintech startup Ayannah seeks Series B funding to fuel its expansion into Vietnam, India

Pundi X, for example, is continuously rolling out its XPOS point-of-sale system, which allows merchants and consumers alike to transact in digital assets as they would with fiat money.

Biometric security

As fintech solutions become more accessible to the common man, there is now a need for financial companies to boost their cybersecurity.

With this in mind, biometric security systems are beginning to gain a spotlight in the fintech industry. Biometric security assures fintech solution users that only they can access their accounts and data.

Facial recognition and fingerprint authentication systems are the most common iterations of biometric security. The pandemic has especially prompted people to shift towards the use of biometric smartcards to reduce the use of cash.

Once the global crisis dies down, fingerprint sensors are expected to continuously grow as they are also commonly present in many consumer devices today.

Regulatory technology (Regtech)

As fintech adoption grows, regulators are also continuously creating and amending rules to standardise the fintech industry.

Thus, more financial institutions are expected to adopt regtech solutions to comply with risk and compliance management, identity management, regulatory reporting, fraud management, and regulatory intelligence, among other things. They also expected to work more closely with regulators to improve the overall finance industry.

The infamous events that occurred in 2020 have become a learning point for everyone in the fintech space to make the ecosystem safer and more convenient.

Of course, with the advancements in technology, there’s no doubt that fintech will only get better from here on out.

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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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Meet Pieter VanIperen, who teaches companies how to FOCUS on what makes them profitable.

Today, he shares with you how to do it too!

We discuss:

• How to identify what is the most important part(s) of your business
• How to cut everything else out
• How to communicate these changes to customers
• How to identify new opportunities and cut them if they aren’t working
• 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

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