Payfazz, an Indonesia-based fintech platform providing financial and payment services, announced today it has made a strategic investment of US$30 million in Xfers, a Singapore-based payments infrastructure company. Following this agreement, both firms will be part of a newly-formed financial entity Fazz Financial Group (FFG).

Both companies will continue retaining their respective names whilst operating under the new financial entity.

FFG has appointed Hendra Kwik, Co-founder and CEO of Payfazz as Group CEO. Joining him as the Group’s Deputy CEO is Tianwei Liu, Co-founder and CEO of Xfers. The two will continue as CEOs of their respective companies. The group has also appointed Robert Polana, former-CFO of Tiket.com, as CFO.

With this investment, Xfers will serve as the B2B arm of FFG – focussed on connecting external merchants to the payment infrastructure and user network amassed by the group. In Indonesia, Xfers currently connects businesses to a range of payment methods that include bank transfer, e-wallet and offline channels such as agent banking networks and convenience stores.

Also Read: How blockchain-powered fintech services can improve financial inclusion

As per a press note, FFG will focus on strengthening its infrastructure and product offerings from Q2 2021. The group will also look to launch a “zero-integration” payment solution targeted at Singaporean merchants and a “single-integration” service to connect brands and fintechs looking to enter Southeast Asia with the local payment methods of the region.

Hendra Kwik, Group CEO of Fazz Financial Group, said, “Leveraging Payfazz’s local Indonesia network and Xfers’ payments infrastructure in the region, it was a natural next step for both firms to band together and work towards a common goal. With the newly-formed FFG group, our team will be broadening the combined capabilities to accelerate inclusion through financial services in Southeast Asia.”

“We are thrilled to further deepen our partnership with PAYFAZZ, and for Xfers’ new role as the B2B and regional arm of Fazz Financial Group. With more resources on hand, we are also looking forward to helping more brands enter Southeast Asia. Especially for businesses looking to access the underserved consumer segment in Indonesia,” commented Tianwei Liu, Deputy CEO of Fazz Financial Group

Established in 2016, Payfazz claims it operates the largest branchless banking agent network in Indonesia, distributing banking services to the 180 million unbanked within the country. The company noted it has more than 250,000 registered agents spread across rural areas in 514 districts in Indonesia, serving more than 10 million monthly active users in 2020.

Also Read: How fintech can help reach the unbanked and underbanked in Southeast Asia

Payfazz announced in July 2020 it had raised US$53 million in a Series B fundraise co-led by B Capital and Insignia Ventures Partners, with participation from Tiger Global, Y Combinator, ACE & Company and BRI Ventures.

Xfers, through agent banking networks (commonly known as warung networks in Indonesia), allows small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) to accept payments and send money. By partnering with Payfazz and other agent banking networks as its clients, the company noted it has access to over 10 million underbanked consumers in Indonesia.

In spite of Southeast Asia’s recent growth in financial inclusion, a high percentage of the population in the region still do not have access to basic financial services. According to Fitch Ratings, Southeast Asia is home to an unbanked population of about 290 million.

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Image Credit: Fazz Financial Group

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As we move into 2021 and a new decade unfolds before us there are several key digital transformation trends that will come to the fore and transform the way business is conducted.

We are increasingly living in a world where a digital-first strategy, or at the very least integration of the digital strategy as a core feature of business operations, is a necessity not a luxury –only those that digitise operations and themselves deliver digital offerings can hope to succeed.

These are critical and challenging transformations that the world’s leading companies must embrace and implement. The mantra then is ‘innovate or die’.

The past 12 months, where COVID-19 has severely impacted businesses across the globe, have demonstrated that those corporations with a mature digital strategy and capabilities fared much better than those who perhaps failed to invest sufficiently in the preceding years before the pandemic struck.

To those organisations that have suffered from the major disruptions to commerce, digital transformation is imperative.

In the industrial context then, what are the key drivers of this transformation? What can we expect in the coming decade? We can broadly classify them into four categories.

Data revolution

The industry 4.0 movement is defined by data and an organisation’s capabilities to collect, store, analyse and harness the data at their disposal. Harvesting of data through IoT devices, stored in the cloud (AWS, Azure) with flexible accessibility, will be an integral part of this revolution.

The aviation industry must embrace new technologies and move to ensure Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), facilities and production lines are data-rich so they can effectively compete with well-funded and fast moving ‘digital-native’ competitors.

Also Read: How this Tokyo-based IoT startup seeks to revolutionise healthcare

Success is dependent on access to real-time data combined with intelligence software platforms that translate raw information to meaningful insights, which are then actionable.

Critical infrastructure such as 5G will unlock new possibilities with vastly improved data transfer speeds– Asia is leading the way here with Korea and Japan already launching their 5G networks and Singapore recently announcing multi-million dollar grants to develop, test and adopt 5G solutions.

Automation

This is another key driver where the implementation of digital-capable hardware and integration with software platforms that support business requirements will form the basis of vastly superior industrial processes. The use of next-gen robotics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), machine learning and Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) technology will drive this automation revolution.

These data rich environments in turn will ensure production sites, facilities, warehouses are far more efficient and will provide real-time insights into the health of operations and critically will offer the ability to predict potential issues ahead of time.

Over the past decade we have seen an exponential rise in the quantum of data available, but for many companies, it remains dormant, its secrets hidden – designing automated, intelligent systems that analyse and extract relevant information is the first step towards autonomous systems which will be able to predict and make business-critical decisions.

Data-driven predictions will be a game-changer for aviation companies that are asset-heavy by ensuring minimal to no down-time of assets.

Even front-line workers will be able to enjoy the benefits to this momentous shift by the use of smart devices (smart glasses, tablets etc enhanced by the aforementioned capabilities) in the field – their daily tasks will no longer be manual, error-prone and paper-based, with technology eliminating repetitive and mundane tasks, freeing them to focus more on the problem-solving aspect of their jobs, and thus transforming them into ‘super engineers’.

Collaboration and communitie

Collaboration with external providers to speed up and enhance innovation efforts. The traditional R&D model and corporate strategy to build solutions in-house will fall by the wayside (inward facing investment into innovation projects are more often than not too narrow in scope and siloed).

Also Read: Digital transformation is now real: How COVID-19 has sparked innovation in tech companies

They will increasingly be replaced by a hybrid collaborative model where ‘Outside-In’ innovation programmes that engage with the technology and research communities across the globe will become the norm. Partnerships with startups of all stages will form an integral part of this new model.

In addition, industry communities have had a digital presence for a while now, however, the exchange of ideas and knowledge has predominantly existed at conferences and other physical encounters among each industry’s domain experts and professionals.

Now is more important than ever that these interactions are digitised and harnessed to drive growth and innovation. The winning platforms that will emerge will be the ones that enable digital interactions with secure information sharing amongst its users, and providing a wealth of digital solutions that help companies solve their biggest problems.

No code platforms

Although part of the wider data and automation drivers mentioned earlier, these software platforms should be highlighted by the new capabilities they offer industrials to take ownership of their digital transformation strategy and projects. These platforms are game-changers because they have the power to disrupt the very process of digital transformation – they empower industrials to take control of the implementation of their digital strategy ‘freeing them from the dependency on traditional consultancies and system integrators.

Low/no code platforms can help deliver transformation projects at a velocity and cost that was previously unthinkable. Need to improve operations on the factory floor? Just use these platforms to create a digital process/application and deploy it to a digital device – individually or to teams – within a few weeks and without coding (thus replacing expensive developers with internal ‘assemblers’).

Think of it this way – you want to construct a building with toy bricks – you can use the Lego brick platform and have it assembled in moments – or you can spend the time, money and effort to research the bricks, design them, produce them (takes several attempts to do it properly!), quality check and then build. The former is eminently easier than the latter – it is critical to business success and is becoming a necessity, not just due to competitive pressures but more importantly due to customer expectations!

The following chart encapsulates the new digital operating model where customer life cycle is measured in terms of solution and platform based development with recurring long term relationships rather than discrete and transactional interactions found in traditional business models:

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Xendit, a Jakarta-based digital payment infrastructure company, has secured US$64.6 million in a Series B funding round led by Accel, TechCrunch has reported.

Y Combinator also participated in the round, which brings the fintech firm’s total amount raised to date to US$88 million.

Xendit intends to use the fresh funds to expand its digital payments infrastructure service to small and medium-sized businesses within the region.

The company is currently operational in Indonesia and the Philippines.

Originally launched in 2014 as a P2P lending platform, Xendit evolved into a payments infrastructure company that enables businesses to accept digital payments without the need to implement integrations with individual providers. It has since expanded its services to include services such as fraud detection, lending, and tax management.

Xendit claims it processes more than 65 million transactions, amounting to US$6.5 billion in payment value annually. The company counts companies such as Grab and Traveloka among its clients.

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While both are necessary for business growth, most companies focus on paid advertising instead of building communities within their apps.

Why not leverage both tools together? In this piece, we’ll explore how you can turn users attracted by your ad campaigns into loyal users who can deliver lasting results for your app.

Paid advertising has been a go-to solution for marketers to capture and target their intended customers. According to Hubpsot, Google ad spending can go between US$9,000 to US$10,000 per month — and that’s only the median spending.

But with the staggering cost, why do businesses still prefer paid advertising?

For one, online ads such as paid-per-click ads get you immediate visibility against your competitors. Second, paid advertising also enables companies to control their spending based on the types of ads and how much visibility they want vis-a-vis the costs.

All costs, all promises?

However, if you want quality ad space, of course, you have to pay more. With over 3.5 billion searches per day just on Google alone, competing and capturing the attention of your intended customers can be a challenge.

Add that users often reject or ignore online advertising as it affects their overall online experience. Aside from skipping ads, users also use ad blockers, which caused an estimated US$2.12 billion loss for businesses in 2020. That’s quite a lot of money down the drain.

Staying on top of users’ minds

But let’s say you managed to get the right audience and bring them to use your product. How do you then engage and retain your users to support your brand? How do you make sure that your well-spent ad money does not go to waste after all?

Also Read: The Unicroach approach: 10 tips on community building

Let’s take a look at mobile applications, for example.

While marketers can pool thousands of dollars to bring their product to top search results and promote it on app stores, they still need to compete with tons of applications on both Google and Apple app markets. As of June 2020, there are about 2.96 million apps published in the Google Play Store, while there are nearly 4.4 million apps available in the Apple App Store, according to Statista.

But then, aside from the competition, apps still have to make sure that those who downloaded their products will continue using them. The sad truth is, only 32 per cent of users will return to an app 11 times or more after downloading it, while 25 per cent of the users abandon an app after one use.

Using online advertising is indeed beneficial in that it brings attention to your product to eventually convert, engage, and retain users. However, with the high costs and unpredictability of results, businesses and developers should learn to take advantage of their existing users and their communities to ensure their apps’ success.

Building communities is the best marketing strategy

More than the catchy copies and stunning visuals, what makes users stick to a brand or an app is the experience they get from patronising it. People today crave authentic experiences, they believe in companies that support their causes, and they rally behind brands that foster human connections in a world where everything seems disconnected.

That’s why social media applications remain at the top of the app world hierarchy. In 2020, the short-form video platform TikTok was the most downloaded app worldwide. Among the top 10 top app downloads, seven are social media applications.

It’s no surprise that social media applications are the most downloaded, especially last year. With social distancing measures in place due to COVID-19, a lot of people turned to their social apps to stay connected with their community.

So, how can you translate this into your app?

Bringing the in-app community together

Apps should then start taking advantage of their customers and the in-app communities they build and incorporate them into their marketing strategies. It is possible that apps already have marketing strategies that include spending on advertising. However, an in-app community could offer the missing link between acquisition and retention.

Community building can help fill the gap between one-time use and long-term adoption. Think of your current in-app community as your brand ambassadors, bringing in more people to use your app and incentivising them to stay because of the meaningful relationships they’ve built with other users. According to Facebook, 2.7 more users are more likely to stay in-app for a sense of community and belonging. It only shows that in-app communities play a vital role in retaining app users.

In a survey conducted by the influencer marketing platform Aspire IQ, 92.3 per cent of brand respondents said that the community has positively impacted their brand.

In the same survey, the company also found that 81 per cent of the user respondents agreed that others could affect their brand preference. To them, friends influence them the most, followed by influencers, employees, and experts.

That is why it is crucial to engage your users and their community actively. “Customers [also] provide significant impact beyond purchases, with word-of-mouth referrals to their networks,” the survey revealed.

Making the experience more social

Communities can take shape offline and online. As more customers want to engage with their favourite brands and influence their community, it is necessary to create a meaningful social experience in your application.

In-app communities allow you to forge strong connections by bringing users into one place,  letting them interact, and influence others. A social feature like chat and groups can help foster communities in your app, as it creates an outlet for users to talk about the things they love.

And by finding people who value the same things as them, they will feel a sense of belongingness and acceptance among their online peers. Once they feel like they created their virtual community, they will find themselves coming back to your app to connect and share their thoughts among their group.

Mobile performance company Applift says that adding an in-app messaging feature can increase app retention by as much as 3.5 times.

Further, social tools such as likes and comments can generate a positive effect on your app. They can be an excellent and real-time measurement for user engagement and bring people who share the same interests together through their interactions on posts featured on profiles and feeds.

Moreover, social media takes the process of mutual acquaintance to a whole new level by allowing the user to find, connect with and share information with a much broader online audience — even those outside of the user’s circle.

The role of UGC

On the other hand, user-generated content (UGC), such as product reviews, as well as discussion threads in in-app group chats and feeds, can be beneficial for your app, too, as customers view them as more impactful and authentic.

According to Forbes, 97 per cent of online buyers read reviews before they make a purchase. Further, 79 per cent of people say that UGC positively impacts their purchasing decisions.

Also Read: How to continue community building online amid the pandemic

In fact, Stackla reports that 90 per cent of consumers value authenticity in deciding which brands to support. Most especially to younger consumers — the Millennials and GenZs — they look for authentic and community-driven brands.

So aside from product quality and customer service, positive ratings and reviews are among the top three characteristics that younger consumers look for in a brand for them to support it.

Relying on your loyal customer base

Having a solid community believing in your brand or app can organically help you bring your company to new heights. It can also create a loyal customer base that can get more people to utilise your product.

And aside from bringing in more users, a positive app experience and brand association can increase app retention by bringing in returning users who simply cannot resist using your app.

Beauty brand Glossier is an excellent example of a brand succeeding through brand loyalty. According to the company, they believe that 90 per cent of its revenue is due to repeat customers who regularly engage with them.

That is because brands stand a chance to make 60 to 70 per cent profits with returning customers. On the other hand, the probability of making a sale with a new customer is only 5-20 per cent.

It’s what inside that counts

Communications firm Edelman found that fewer people trust advertising, with three out of four saying that they avoid it altogether. With that, we see that paid ads are often ignored, despite the constant visibility and strategic online placements.

The most important thing is creating authentic, communal relationships among your users— and your app can definitely make these experiences happen. Provide them with the space to reach out to people who value the same things as them. Give them the platform to influence their peers. And ultimately, create social experiences for your users to ensure app engagement and retention.

People say it’s what’s outside that lures us in — just as how paid advertising can attract users. However, always remember that what makes us stay is often what’s inside.

While targeting the users via paid advertising can be an excellent step to bring in customers to use your application, it’s not always that the consumers will take a bite. What ultimately matters is the user experience you provide and the connections they build through social interactions that happened in your application.

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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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SiCepat Ekspres, an Indonesian last-mile delivery company, has received US$170 million in a Series B funding round from a slew of investors including Temasek subsidiary Pavilion Capital, Falcon House Partners and MDI Ventures. DEG (the German Development Finance Institution), Indies Capital, Trihill Capital and Daiwa Securities also participated.

“This financing round is designed to further fortify SiCepat’s position as the leading end-to-end logistics service provider in the Indonesian market and to potentially explore expansion to other markets in Southeast Asia,” shared The Kim Hai, Founder and CEO of the parent company Onstar Express.

SiCepat claims its new funding round is the largest Series B raised in Southeast Asia. While the company did not explicitly disclose its valuation, it termed itself as a “soonicorn” – a term used for companies approaching unicorn status (US$1 billion in valuation).

Also Read: COVID-19 triggers supply chain and logistics transformation, but there are gaps to fill: Marc Dragon of Reefknot Investments

SiCepat was bootstrapped in 2014 as a last-mile delivery services company for social commerce merchants in Indonesia. Since then, it has expanded its last-mile delivery to cater for e-commerce platforms in Indonesia. Recently, the company consolidated its key logistics assets across warehousing, fulfilment and e-distribution to provide an integrated suite of logistics services.

The company claims it is profitable and fulfilled more than 1.4 million packages daily in 2020.

“Indonesian e-commerce market stood at US$32 billion in 2020 with a projected five-year CAGR of 21 per cent to become US$82 billion industry by 2025. We believe that SiCepat is ideally positioned to serve customers from e-commerce giants to uprising social commerce players which contribute an estimated 25 per cent to the total digital commerce economy,” said Sebastian Togelang, Managing Partner of Kejora Capital.

SiCepat’s funding comes amidst an uptick in investments for logistics companies in Indonesia. This week, Dropezy, an Indonesian startup focusing on next-day delivery services for daily essentials such as groceries, announced it received an undisclosed amount in pre-seed funding from investors such as Taurus Ventures and Kopi Kenangan Fund.

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Image Credit: SiCepat

 

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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

The post Meet Inavoice, your new go-to platform for voice-over talents and background musicians appeared first on e27.

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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