Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX), an SOSV accelerator for mobile-first markets in South and Southeast Asia, has announced the seven graduates of its tenth cohort.

Each startup has received around US$150,000 in investment, in addition to a six-month intensive accelerator programme, which includes cross-border market entry, sales, and customer development and fundraising readiness.

The selected startups from MOX operate in social commerce, live video content, and the financial structure sector.

“As an investor, we’re seeing huge opportunities in social commerce, video content, entertainment, and hyperlocal services,” William Bao Bean, General Partner at SOSV and Managing Director of Mobile Only Accelerator (MOX) said.

Also Read: Meet the 7 graduates of SOSV-backed MOX’s 9th cohort

“Companies that launched and thrived during the pandemic are the most resilient ones, and the MOX 10 cohort has been the proof of that,” he added.

Here are the seven startups graduating from MOX:

24SEVEN.pk (Pakistan)

An e-commerce platform for groceries.

Betagged (Singapore)

An influencer marketing platform with deep analytics, delivering higher ROI for brands in Indonesia.

BistroChat (Hong Kong)

A restaurant booking app where users can search and book for restaurants directly within the app.

Dastgyr (Pakistan)

A B2B marketplace that connects small-scale retailers with manufacturers and suppliers.

Kiko TV (India)

An interactive entertainment video app.

Stack Finance (India)

An app to track and manage money.

Wallet Engine (Singapore)

Embedded finance platform for cross-border apps.

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Image Credit: MOX

 

 

 

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The government has recently revealed its plans to further boost the Electric Vehicle (EV) ecosystem by installing a total of 60,000 charging points by 2030 across Singapore.

However, a few key questions still remain: Is the republic’s existing infrastructure adequate enough to support the government grant plans? Who will provide the additional power capacity required for the uninterrupted running of the charging points?

We posed this question to Geoffrey Chan, Principle Advisor at Delight Innovative Technologies, a company that is developing a ‘power system neutral EV charging (PSN-EVC), which he claims to have successfully implemented in his home city, Hong Kong.

In this interview, he discusses PSN-EVC in detail:

What are the major flaws of existing EV charging points in Singapore or elsewhere?

Existing EV charging stations have several drawbacks. Firstly, these chargers require additional power capacity. What it means is that utility companies need to increase the power capacity to the locations and premises, where the charging points are installed, to upgrade the switchboard.

Also Read: ‘Singapore isn’t ready for mass adoption of EVs yet; hybrid may be better for the present’

In most cases, EV chargers come with 100 per cent power allocation to allow them to deliver to its full capacity. However, in practice, this results in great waste in the utilisation of this added capacity. Based on some reports, the utilisation is below five percent on average and 10 per cent at best.

Hence, it is a lose-lose situation — while it ends up in a loss for the utility company by wasted investment in added capacity, the user will also incur loss as he/she will have to shoulder the cost to utility.

True, governments around the world have put in extra subsidy and efforts to build the EV charging capacity. For instance, the Hong Kong government pumped US$25 million into EV charging at home subsidy in 2020. Singapore has also initiated a nation-wide EV charging infrastructure tender in 2021 to provide around four EV charge points per carpark. However, all these are dependent on the existing network capacity.

Secondly, purpose-built charging stations or street charging points are installed to provide paid/free charging to EV owners. They need to book a time-slot and drive to the nearest station to get charged, where fast or super-fast chargers are installed to quickly charge the vehicle within an hour.

But there is a problem: fast charging shortens the battery life by about 10 per cent. However, this concern is disregarded at present as there is no alternative solution existing in the market.

Home and workplaces are the best locations to set up charging points. It is the most user-and environmentally-friendly option. However, the issue is that it will overload the existing power system, as EV charging could be occurring at a time when other electronic appliances are running.

But who can get the limited spare capacity at each location/district initially? Surely, carpark managements may be reluctant to install any charging points and utility companies are unwilling to approve the request to increase the capacity.

All these pose challenges for the governments and private sector.

How can these challenges be tackled? You claim to have developed an alternative solution, called PSN-EVC? How does it help?

PSN-EVC stands for ‘power system-neutral EV charging’, which uses our proprietary NALA system. It is a revolutionary concept based on the principle that EV charging should not require upgrade of an existing power system. This concept has been implemented successfully and put into service in Hong Kong.

The PSN-EVC uses the ‘shadow charging’ method — meaning the difference of annual maximum building load minus the actual load will be used to charge EV. The net result is that the annual maximum building load will not increase due to EV charging.

It has been proven that ‘shadow capacity’ is sufficient to replenish EVs parked in a workplace or at home.

I can explain the working model through an example.

Let’s assume, there are 12 parking spaces in a domestic building, and each space is provided with a PSN-EVC charger. Let’s say the annual maximum load of the building is 600A and the peak consumption occurs at around 10 pm.

Now, when the building is drawing 600A, all EVs that are plugged to the chargers will be put to a standby mode as no shadow power is available. When the building load drops, for instance to 400A, at 1 am, the shadow power available is 200A.

PSN-EVC will then allocate 16A each to the 12 EVs to replenish the battery. Even if every EV is charged, the total power consumption would always be less than 600A.

Now, if some of the parking spaces are empty, or a plugged-in EV is fully charged, the unused part of the shadow capacity will be distributed orderly to other EVs to charge them up faster. In the morning, most of the EV should be fully charged.

When an EV is driven to the workplace or a supermarket carpark, PSN-EVC there will recharge the EV based on the shadow power available at that premises for the period the vehicle is parked there.

How can PSN-EVC bridge the gaps in and address the issues faced by existing charging stations?

Existing charging stations are an interim but a costly and wasteful solution. Here, the driver needs to move the vehicle to a station and remove it immediately after the charging is done.

Due to this, the station must increase capacity to run the station, but it takes time and money.

Also Read: Goldbell acquires BlueSG, to invest US$52.3M in the e-car sharing firm over the next 5 years

PSN-EVC is the solution for the quick installation of EV charger (in office parking and home parking) with a minimum cost. When more chargers are installed with chargers adopting PSN-EVC, shadow charging will be available everywhere and there is no need to find charging point anymore.

The key benefits of PSN-EVC are: 1) no waiting time before commencing installation, 2) optimal usage for the utility (optimising the utility usage and reducing cost for everybody), and 3) peaceful co-ordination between normal electricity use and charging can be harmonised.

Under present power grid rules (without PSN-EVC), the requirement to increase the grid source (generators, cable and transformers) are huge and are not readily achievable.

When more parking spaces are installed with PSN-EVC, it can be more tolerant to non-EV parked at a EV charge point. The effort to allocate the usage of EV charging points can be eliminated. This way, every vehicle user, EV or non-EV, will be happy.

The lack of charger is hindered by the simple-minded policy to provide for additional power. PSN-EVC can help overcome that hurdle.

Government policy to stop selling ICE can be immediately achievable if EV itself is economic enough. Both Hong Kong and Singapore are ideal places for 100 per cent EV conversion as the vehicle mileage is lower. Both cities have sufficient capable power system engineers to apply and master PSN-EVC.

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Image Credit: PSN-EVC

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Despite counting tech giants such as Google and Microsoft among his partners, it was far from smooth sailing for Ender Jiang as the founder and CEO of Hiverlab.

The Singaporean startup, which specialises in providing immersive technologies, hit rock bottom four years ago. It was left with only US$600 in its bank account and Jiang had to sacrifice his salary to ensure he could pay the wages of his staff.

“I was transparent with the team and told them about the situation we were facing. Despite knowing that, they voluntarily worked doubly hard to secure and deliver projects,” Jiang said as he recounted his story for e27.

Determined to find alternative sources of income to support his daily needs, he took his harmonica and went busking in the local train stations in the evenings.

“While it might sound silly, this taught me an important lesson about resilience and allowed me to earn enough money for food: if you really want something, you should be prepared to do anything to achieve it,” he reflected.

Drawing inspiration from Elon Musk, who claims he only spends US$1 daily on food, Jiang was determined to persevere in his pursuit of making Hiverlab a success.

Despite cheekily admitting that busking on the streets allowed him to master the harmonica, he noted the real value lay in the fact that he learnt he was willing to humble himself and get down on the streets to achieve his dreams as a founder.

The tides turned when the company secured a project to provide an interactive installation for a major media channel in Singapore, he recalled.

The period thereafter also coincided with an increased appetite from the market for immersive technologies, leading to an uptick in business demand.

“We were also saved by the eventual rise in demand for our technology. Simply put, the time was right,” he added.

Bringing immersive technologies to the masses

Today, Hiverlab is a thriving company that offers a suite of products that leverage emerging immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR) and mixed reality (MR).

VR refers to the fully immersive digital experience, while AR overlays digital objects on physical objects (think Pokémon GO). MR combines the physical and digital world, letting users interact with both.

The company’s StoryHive platform enables users to create immersive content in a no-code environment, while its RealityCast offering allows companies to create AR-powered presentations.

Meanwhile, its TheHub is a collaborative remote workplace where users can visualise and work with data, paving way for the creation of next-generation smart cities

Realising that immersive technologies remained a nascent sector among Singaporeans, Jiang went one step further to launch Hiverlab’s Academy initiative.

“We strongly believe that technology should be made accessible and transparent to the general public. Therefore, our Academy works with local communities to cultivate young next-generation leaders with trans-disciplinary insights across technology, business, and society,” he explained.

The Academy seeks to achieve that through organising workshops with schools, businesses and government organisations. It has since launched initiatives across Southeast Asia and expanded to host workshops in the US, Australia and Japan.

Building a decentralised business

With a wide variety of products across a spectrum of use cases, Hiverlab adopts a hybrid SaaS model for monetisation.

However, fascinated by the hivemind concept (the best innovation stems from collaboration) by WIRED Executive Director Kevin Kelly, Jiang plans to build Hiverlab into a company with a decentralised structure, whereby network concepts allow for the adding of additional nodes to expand capabilities.

“My hope remains that building an organisation like a hive will release individual passions and abilities, rather than trying to control everything in a very centralised structure,” he added.

By placing an increased emphasis on digital marketing to raise awareness of its immersive technology products and acquire new customers, Jiang shared Hiverlab is on track to double its revenue growth y-o-y. The company has also doubled its team size and opened offices in India and Vietnam.

Given the highly technical nature of immersive technologies found in Hiverlab’s products, can the company meet the increased demand without overstretching its employees and resources?

Also Read: The danger of expanding too quickly and how you can keep your tech team artificially small

Jiang was quick to dispel the myth and shared Hiverlab’s engineering teams have put in place practices to ensure the scalability of its products.

“In a nutshell, we leverage highly modular development processes to ensure the re-usability of all our code. Using this product-first approach enables common features to be developed and deployed across all our clients and partners,” he explained.

Outlook on immersive technologies

With the global consumer market for immersive technologies projected to double from its current figure of US$6.3 billion by 2023, Jiang is bullish on growth prospects for VR, mobile-based AR and MR headsets.

“AR and VR have been developing slowly over decades and we expect to see more substantial pushes in the technology from some of the major global technology companies over the next few years, which will further raise awareness of the segment in both the enterprise and consumer segments,” he noted.

True to his prediction, Microsoft recently released its Mesh platform, where long-distance co-workers can collaborate as if they are in the same room, using augmented reality glasses and cloud computing power.

Also Read: How cloud computing is helping startups navigate the new normal

Besides having an impact on the tech sector, Jiang also sees immersive technologies improving workforce productivity in sectors including logistics and engineering.

“The ability for more technical industries like engineering to combine creative ways of visualising projects will bolster productivity, while also ensuring that graduates entering the workforce are able to work with the latest technologies,” he remarked.

Future plans

Having bootstrapped Hiverlab since its inception in 2014, Jiang lives by the mantra of being financially prudent and stresses the importance of balancing profitability and growth. As part of efforts to expand in the region, the company received an undisclosed amount in funding from local investor Optimal Investments in 2018.

Despite its comfortable position today, the company is not resting on its laurels. With plans to establish themselves as Asia’s leading immersive technology platform, Hiverlab is eyeing an entry into the Middle East markets, on top of the establishment of offices in India and Vietnam.

“We know that tech companies such as Apple are looking to develop AR and immersive technology products, and we want to be part of that trend or multi-year “supercycle” in this emerging category. The time now is ripe for AR, VR, and MR, given the global move to 5G,” Jiang signed off.

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Image Credit: Hiverlab

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According to the International Labour Organisation, in 2020, 8.8 per cent of global working hours were lost relative to the fourth quarter of 2019 –the equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a great number of people losing their jobs, forcing them to get creative and seek opportunities in a new field.

In Indonesia, that new field includes voice-over talents and background music creation.

“The voice-over market in Indonesia is still wide open. The trend of people involved in it has only started and was realised in 2015. The trend of becoming a voice-over talent has been enhanced by the pandemic when many people have lost their jobs,” Jatmiko Kresnatama, co-founder of Inavoice, explains to e27.

“Such rapid development leaves many holes in this industry. Uneven recording quality standards, voice-over talent quality, as well as audio output quality that must be done through professional audio mastering techniques, now seem to be neglected. Seeing that hole, the potential to make the voice-over industry in Indonesia better is quite large,” he stresses.

From its base in Jogjakarta, the startup provides a B2B service in the form of an audio marketplace and a digital voice over agency. In addition to building a platform for voice-over talents which the startup began with, it has also expanded to include background music.

“We use a system called ‘iVoice Algorithm’. This system will generate voice-over talents and music contributors’ profiles randomly where each of them will have the opportunity to appear alternately as clients come to visit the page,” Kresnatama says.

Also Read: Is voice the next revolution in FinTech?

Bracing through the storm

Inavoice is a relative newcomer in the Indonesian startup scene. In fact, the platform was launched in September 2020 –right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Inavoice was created with the idea of how a better voice over and the audio marketplace could work. In this industry, we have been working as consultants, marketers, and content producers. We frequently get asked by voice-over talents and music contributors about how they should keep on moving in this industry. Therefore, we come up with an answer –Inavoice,” Kresnatama explains.

Founding a company in the middle of a global health crisis definitely comes with its own challenges as companies are cutting budgets for voice over productions. But Kresnatama sees that there are also plenty of unique opportunities.

“We see that this pandemic is a natural selection process, where our voice over service users are more segmented. Amidst this pandemic, we serve many companies that have sufficient capital power to deal with this pandemic … We also see the potential for the market to create authentic and more valuable content,” Kresnatama begins.

“Starting from the Google algorithm update at the end of last year and the many changes to the social media algorithm that emphasised added value. With this … content creators’ awareness of using licensed music is getting higher, so we receive positive responses from both music contributors or content creators who buy music from the Inavoice Audio Marketplace platform,” he continues.

As a response to these changes, Inavoice decides to maximise its SEA strategy and run a campaign called “You Deserve Better.”

“We are very aware that building a company is like an infinite game, yes, you know, this is what Simon Sinek said. We try to improve and be responsible for the people who work at our company so that they are willing to work according to their abilities. After that, we try to educate both clients and talents through the You Deserve Better campaign,” Kresnatama says.

Also Read: 3 ways voice assistants is going to change the game for e-commerce

Standing on my own

Currently run by 20 employees, Inavoice says that it is working with clients, talents, and music contributors in more than 30 countries. Its client list includes leading brands and institutions such as Bank Indonesia, Shopee, Specs, Telkomsel, and Wismilak.

Apart from Kresnatama, the startup’s co-founders include Fajar Risna Rosedra, Indar Adhi Kusuma, and Henry Yunan Lennon.

In addition to having backgrounds in business administration and computer science, the Inavoice co-founders also have previous experiences in sound engineering and voice directing as well as running local art projects in Jogjakarta.

When e27 asks Kresnatama about the company’s fundraising plan, he states that Inavoice is not looking for any external funding.

“What we are working on is to maximise our distribution channel to increase the amount of traffic and maximise the possibility of converting through it,” he explains their decision.

But he will not deny that this is not going to be a very easy path to take.

“Given that we are a self-funded startup [and a] digital voice-over agency, the economic conditions that are currently unfavourable due to this pandemic have caused the bootstrapping process to run a little slower,” Kresntama admits. “But that’s okay, I hope all goes well soon.”

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Image Credit: Inavoice

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Green Li-ion, a greentech startup in Singapore specialising in sustainable industrial solutions for battery rejuvenation, announced today that it has raised US$3.45 million in seed funding.

US-based cleantech company LiNiCo Corporation led the round, which also saw participation from TES (IT lifecycle services ), HAX SOSV (hard tech VC), and Entrepreneur First (EF).

The news comes after the startup banked US$400,000 in a pre-seed funding round from EF’s Singapore cohort in 2020.

The newly-raised capital will be channeled towards further hardware development, including tier-1 engineering and specialist manufacturing support.

A portion of the funds will also be used as a development runaway as it works towards securing US$1 billion in sales by 2025, the company said in a press statement.

Present-day battery recycling programmes are equipped to process only certain types of lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, which results in 95 per cent of the batteries being improperly disposed into landfills.

Green Li-ion aims to combat this issue with its patented multi-cathode processor that recycles all types of Li-ion batteries into 99.9 per cent pure cathodes. This, according to the company, speeds up current recycling processes by up to 10 times and improves profits by more than four times.

Also Read: Cleantech company Sunseap raises US$4.8M Series C round, now valued over US$143M

The one-year-old company has developed an operational prototype in Singapore and inked deals with TES and LiNiCo to pre-sell five machines in Singapore and the United States.

“Having Green Li-ion’s technology in our facility enhances our battery recycling offering and enables our supply chain to access high-purity recovered commodities,” said Gary Steele, CEO of TES. “We are looking forward to a continued partnership to keep offering innovative circular outcomes to clients all over the world.”

“One of the world’s biggest challenges is how we can maintain sustainable growth while preserving natural resources. Forecasts predict that we will be using 30 per cent more energy in 2040 than we already are. With Green Li-ion, we are committed to introducing the next generation of battery rejuvenation and closing the loop,” Leon Farrant, co-founder and CEO of Green Li-ion said.

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Image Credit: Green Li-ion

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