If one has been keeping abreast of the news agenda, one would have seen organisations being plagued with numerous data breaches. Almost every industry has been hit with an incident of some sort from aviation, telecoms companies to furniture retailers – no one has been spared.

As a result, the question facing many startups and companies today is: Will I be next?

As companies big and small pivoted digitally in 2020, work from home has become the norm. While this practice afforded workers with the flexibility of remote working and maintain business continuity, it has also introduced a new set of cybersecurity challenges.

For example, Kaspersky’s telemetry revealed that the total number of remote desktop protocol attacks jumped from 93.1 million worldwide in February 2020 to 277.4 million in March 2020, a 197 per cent increase as countries around the region began to implement lockdown procedures.

This is just the tip of the iceberg – the shift to remote working, as well as other trends as to how five in 10 organisations in the region are reportedly still using outdated and unpatched software – all paint a picture of the vulnerabilities companies and startups face in today’s digital age.

To remedy this, a shift from a reactive “will it happen” to a proactive “when will it happen” approach is crucial, with hybrid work environments and home offices here to stay. Businesses, particularly startups and their preference for nomadic life, need to be on alert as data breaches will become more commonplace.

The challenging climate of data breaches

While every startup or company is frantically pushing to be the next big thing in tech, so too, should they accelerate their efforts at enhancing their cybersecurity posture.

Also Read: How can privacy-focussed apps step up amid a world of data breaches?

In most cases, a data breach exposes confidential, sensitive, or protected information to an unauthorised person. It can occur in various forms, with the most common ones include phishing, brute force attacks and malware.

In our view, these are just some of the trends we have observed when it comes to the challenges businesses and start-ups face when it comes to guarding against data breaches in the region:

• Lack of knowledge on personal data storage and processing laws: Many governments try to safeguard the security of their citizens, whilst Asia is still playing catch up with their Western counterparts on this front, all these laws still apply regardless of whether one has read them.
• Unpreparedness in the face of DDoS attacks: Distributed Denial of Service is an efficient way to down an internet resource. On the darknet, this service goes for cheap and therefore is quite affordable for competitors and cybercriminals who need them as cover for more sophisticated attempts.
• Poor employee awareness: Humans are usually the weak link in businesses. Attackers know full well to exploit this link and often use social engineering tricks to penetrate the corporate network or fish out confidential info.

How then, should businesses and start-ups go about developing a sensible cybersecurity posture and more importantly, how can a data breach affect them?

Why should businesses care about cybersecurity?

In today’s highly digitised societies, a business’s digital reputation counts for everything. According to our Digital Economy Reputation report, 49 per cent of social media users in the region have admitted that they will check the social media accounts of a brand before purchasing their goods and services. An additional 38 per cent also stopped using a company’s or brand’s products once they were embroiled in a crisis.

Clearly, an organisation’s reputation matters to consumers and the damage caused by a data breach goes beyond the depletion of public goodwill, but also financial as well. As of 2020, a breach costs an enterprise US$1.09m and a small to medium-sized business (SMB) US$101k, compared to US$1.41 million and US$108k respectively in 2019.

However, the risk can be managed by taking proactive action. Acting now will allow your organisation to be in a stronger position to recover should a breach happen.

Planning a tailor-made cybersecurity approach for your business

Today, one of the most important ingredients for any business looking to grow is flexibility. One can always opt for the most comprehensive cybersecurity solution, but this could lead to overkill and waste whatever precious resources one could have dedicated to powering business growth.

Also Read: 5 cybersecurity strategies every startup must know

On the other hand, not investing in a cybersecurity solution is a big no-no if you’re genuinely interested in growing your business sustainably. As a starting point, it is worth establishing a few good habits that are easy and free:

• Update software regularly, including router and other network device firmware;
• Keep an eye on the expiration date of security certificates and security software licenses;
• Make backup copies of data, and if your company automates the process, periodically check that it is being done correctly;
• Revoke access permissions from employees as soon as they are no longer required;
• Use security solutions to help monitor the health and status of your corporate infrastructure.

Having established your foundation, a business should look at which areas to prioritise by adopting a cybersecurity service model that can flex and accommodate the increased needs and capacity of the business.

It may be tempting in the short term to enjoy small cost savings in buying your own infrastructure. However, don’t forget to factor in maintenance cost, replacement, scalability and fault tolerance requirements.

Finally, when the business has entered a phase of aggressive expansion, one can consider implementing threat intelligence detection (proactive threat hunting) to their cybersecurity arsenal. Driven by continuous machine learning, it can save IT security teams resources for threat analysis, investigation and response.

An example would be Kaspersky’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) which contains an outsourced security operations centre that does not require specialised threat hunting and incident analysis skills from internal teams.

Cyber security now part and parcel of a business’s growth strategy however, it doesn’t have to be daunting – one should not face it alone. The cybersecurity community is here to help and offer advice and assistance whenever you are ready.

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The recent Earth Day celebration in late April helped to focus minds in financial services by providing business leaders with an opportunity to communicate to shareholders, and the market at large, their vision for sustainability over the coming decade. 

At around the same time, I was participating as a speaker on a panel in Singapore alongside the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Tribe Accelerator, and the Singapore Fintech Association (SFA).

As we shared our thoughts on macro trends in green finance and fintech, it became apparent that one of the questions coming up time and again was the need to balance and bridge sustainability alongside profitability (after all, corporations are for-profit enterprises and not charities).

The Financial Times, in an article this week, highlighted the challenge this poses for much of the market and global economy as we chart a path to net zero.

Finance is laser focused on green

While all stakeholders in the sector have their part to play in pushing the convergence of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles in financial services, the approach taken varies depending on where you are sitting: as the technology provider, financial institution or bank, government/regulator, or something else entirely.

In the last few years, there’s no doubt we’ve seen a macro trend towards green fintech as a partnership between technology companies and financial institutions.

Also Read: The evolution from open banking to open finance

Banks are realising they have a responsibility to be able to help in tracking the greenness of a given project, investment or transaction as climate change is recognised as fact, not fiction. 

With more key players acting towards green and sustainability, a new norm is observed where sustainable companies are profitable — and to be profitable, companies have to be sustainable.

It is in this space that I think technology has a key role to play, including delivering on greater democratisation of finance and improving access for all. 

But here’s a key point: the greatest impact is only possible through technology platforms partnering with the existing financial institutions, which already have millions of users.

Fintech has arguably been at the forefront of reducing costs, improving efficiencies, and enabling greater access to markets — whether that’s through trade clearing and settlement, ESG tracking, or digital bond issuance.

But regulators, too, must do their part.

Regulators are stepping up

In Singapore, banks have to report to MAS so that it can conduct overall assessments of financial stability with regards to environmental or climate risks. 

I know from my conversations with them that MAS is focused on how to attract green finance to Singapore, and how to position themselves as leading green finance centres.

Encouraging the industry to collaborate or pilot technology solutions to solve some of the major challenges in finance remains an important mandate for any central bank. Bridging private sector sustainability with profitability is an area where regulators have a unique role to play.

This is because regulators are unique in their ability to provide grants and co-funding projects, whether it’s proof of concepts (POCs) or actual implementations, that help private businesses working towards ESG solutions to succeed.

Adopting new technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) to better monitor and track the performance of a green project, bond or loan is an area many private firms will need to look at implementing to better monitor their supply chains. 

Also Read: How can fintech help agriculture

Currently, less than 0.3 per cent of all bond financing is green, with insufficient efforts leading to a US$2.6 trillion annual funding deficit towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement.

This gap stems from the absence of an efficient common data infrastructure as a nexus between the financial industry and ESG efforts, with often-fragmented data exacerbated by the lack of transparency in impact reporting and usage of proceeds.

Enter the nimble fintech

In the same way fintech companies contributed to addressing problems of financial inclusion for SMEs and underserved communities in the past decade, they have now set their sights on helping financial institutions transition to more sustainable operations.

Even something like the funding of solar panels on a small factory can be made more affordable and accessible through new technology that today’s fintech are building.

Whether it’s on the data side, blockchain, or IoT that measures and verifies said data, fintech is figuring out how to apply it to commercial green use cases.

Today, when we talk about sustainability, the stakeholders are very wide — it’s not just the banks, it’s also the investment companies, the sovereign wealth funds, every foundation, family office, and next generation wealth manager. 

Even the most profitable companies in the world, who don’t need to do any of this in order to become more profitable, are still looking at their environmental commitments and responsibilities.

Also Read: Sustainability: the new business reality

Based on the response I’m seeing from all stakeholders today, I believe there are many reasons to be optimistic about the future of green fintech.

We’re seeing increased interest from the private sector coming in, driven by the leadership of our various sovereign wealth funds like Temasek, who just declared that they’re going to be 100 per cent green.

My hope is that regulators, investors, and institutions continue to support the next generation of financial infrastructure that is being built by risk-taking fintech entrepreneurs. 

By future-proofing our financial market infrastructure for a greener decade, financial incentives or penalties can be more easily programmed towards achieving sustainable performance targets applicable to different ESG financing instruments across bonds, loans, and renewable energy certificates. 

If we get it right as an industry that comes together, I’m convinced the ESG financing gap will be bridged by 2030 — and I look forward to contributing to this green fintech revolution in my own small way.

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(This article has been updated with more details about the trends in the industry and the impact of COVID-19 on Eezee)

Eezee, a Singapore-based online B2B marketplace for industrial hardware and supplies, has received an undisclosed amount in pre-Series A round led by Wavemaker Partners.

Other investors in the round include January Capital, the Pags Group, the family office of Bain Capital’s Stephen Pagliuca, and existing investor Insignia Ventures.

Along with this equity round, Eezee also secured an undisclosed debt facility from Polaris, the strategic partnerships arm of Goldbell Financial Services.

Also Read: Infightings, quitting of key people didn’t deter this entrepreneur from realising his dream

Co-founder and CEO Logan Tan told e27 that Eezee will use the fresh capital to double down the business development effort to get wider market adoption especially within Singapore.

“We’re also looking for our first business development hire on the ground within Philippines and Indonesia,” he added.

Established in 2017 by Logan Tan, Terence Goh, and Jasper Yap, Eezee enables businesses to make small value purchases on industrial supplies such as safety gloves and helmets without the hassle of bureaucratic procurement processes and paperwork.

For buyers, Eezee acts as an online marketplace that consolidates a range of brands and products, so they can compare the prices of goods and suppliers. Its catalogue includes safety shoes, safety glasses, safety goggles, safety harness, personal protective equipment, power tools and hardware.

As for sellers, the platform helps them to manage sales orders and categorise their stock, as well as source other items from other suppliers when requested to by their customers.

“Our platform elevates business processes by integrating with ERPs such as SAP Ariba, Oracle and Coupa, thus enabling businesses remain compliant with governance objectives in an accelerated manner. In 2020, our partnership with Shell to digitalise procurement delivered 20per cent cost savings from integration, thus drastically reducing man hours while offering a wide range of competitively priced products on their marketplace,” he said in a press statement.

Logan said that the firm also delivers products outside of Singapore. “Some of our top countries are Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia. We have some business dealings regionally (majority of our exports goes to regional with the top three countries dominating 60 per cent of our exports). We also ship our products beyond regional but currently very fragmented.”

The startup recently partnered with the Singapore government to enable its 150,000 civil servants to procure items directly from the platform.

Also Read: Singapore’s B2B marketplace Eezee raises funding from Insignia for Asia expansion

Eezee’s Chief Commercial Officer Shawn Seet shared: “Eezee is not just a marketplace — we’re an ecosystem. International business buyers use us as we provide an unparalleled procurement experience. Suppliers partner with us as they renew their lifespan by integrating with us to reach customers they could never serve. The potential of this connectivity is limitless.”

Over the past four years, Eezee has developed an effective template for driving digitalisation of the procurement process that they aim to bring to the rest of the region.

In September 2019, Eezee had bagged an undisclosed sum in seed funding from Insignia Ventures for business expansion.

Impact of COVID-19

According to Logan, COVID-19 has had a positive impact on the business. When the pandemic first hit, Eezee’s order volume jumped due to the rise of demand for PPE (personal protective equipment) kits and masks, etc.

“We then started to see significant interest from our clients to utilise the platform and they are more receptive to digital solutions. The panic purchases and spike in volume eventually fades away with more stable growth MoM. Overall, there’s positive impact on our business,” he remarked.

Trends

Logan is seeing a seeing a shift in behaviours towards B2B digital commerce, not just for industrial supplies but across various categories such as F&B, FMCG and many more.

“Although the shift is still in a very early phase, there’s positive signs that we have secured major clients that are very supportive of our journey. The world gets more and more connected, businesses will follow suit as well,” he said.

“My personal belief is that as the consumer world gets digitalised, businesses will follow suit. Due to the ever-growing digital gaps between the consumer and business world, it’s inevitable that the digital technology will gain a significant footing into the business world,” he concluded.
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Image Credit: Eezee

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Fortuna Cools, a Philippine startup seeking to find an alternative to plastics, has secured a seed investment round led by ADB Ventures, the impact investment arm of Asian Development Bank, and Katapult Ocean Fund.

Pasudeco Development Corporation, the Manila Angel Investors Network, she1k, and Nardo Holdings, also joined the round.

The financial terms were not disclosed.

Fortuna Cools will use the capital to grow its sales and engineering teams, as well as finance its higher production volumes to reduce unit costs and benefit more farmers, co-founder and CEO David Cutler told e27.

Also Read: This Indian startup makes cutlery using sugarcane waste

Started in 2018 by Cutler and Tamara Mekler, Fortuna Cools began working on “up-cycled, high-performance” coolers in the archipelago, alongside small-scale agricultural communities and the NGO ‘Rare‘. These coolers were designed to help fishermen preserve their catch without relying on fragile Styrofoam boxes.

According to Cutler, Fortuna Cools was soon inundated with requests for sustainable, long-lasting coolers from different sectors and locations.

“We are commercialising coolers. Our first product, the Fortuna Coconut Cooler, is available today in the Philippines as a B2B product for fresh food packaging and the transport of perishable goods,” he shared. “It is marketed to major food distributors, farmer cooperatives, and grocery stores in Southeast Asia.

Cutler said the prices are already competitive with many existing insulated packaging options, with significant discounts available at higher volumes.

The startup will soon launch its second product, the Nutshell Cooler, as an eco-conscious consumer product in key international markets. It seeks to fill a glaring gap in an eco-conscious market without any eco-friendly options.

“The Nutshell Cooler is built with our same natural fibre insulation that we’ve developed over the past few years. But there are various differences in the design to make it suitable for outdoor recreation and casual use (e.g. trip to the beach, weekend getaway, even grocery shopping),” he explained.

A portion of the capital just raised will be go into the launching of Nutshell Cooler, he said.

“Material innovation is key to solving the plastic waste problem in our oceans,” said Ross Brooks, Investment Manager at Katapult Ocean. “Fortuna’s nature-based insulation solution not only aims to replace plastic foam, but in doing so will provide communities with a more robust and lower cost cold storage solution. Fortuna’s solution has the potential to create a positive impact in both environmental and social domains.”

Also Read: Impact-tech investor ADB Ventures in talks to raise US$100M debt fund

“We hear the demand for less plastic waste among everyone from fish traders to sunbathers, while small-scale coconut farmers have no choice today but to burn their piles of leftover husks. We are proud that positive impact is built into every fibre we use,” Cutler said.

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Image Credit: Fortuna Cools

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According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), more than half of the world’s population today is below 30. Despite that, there is a growing divide between banks and the younger generation.

More than 45 per cent of respondents to WEF’s Global Shapers survey disagreed with the statement that they trusted banks to be fair and honest.

Amidst this distrust, how can banks regain the trust of the next generation of consumers? The answer lies in how they approach storing the financial data of their customers. Hampered by the need to adhere to strict regulations regarding the exchange of such data, banks previously chose to store them in silos.

However, times have changed.

Powered by an open ecosystem where APIs facilitated the exchange of digital financial data across platforms, new-age fintech companies are now able to offer better financial products for their customers.

Users duly responded to a more convenient and personalised experience by switching to the services of these disruptors.

Change in perception

Having witnessed the success these companies derived from an open API platform, banks in Europe and North America soon took a page out of their playbook and decided to embrace it.

The move saw banks unlock their vaults of consumer financial data. With an open ecosystem where banks could freely exchange information such as transaction and income history with one another, they began to see the advantages – they were understanding their customers better.

With the relative success of open banking in the West, regulators within Southeast Asia started to follow suit. 

Also Read: Banking on a green future of finance: How to bridge sustainability and profitability

The Indonesian financial services authority (Otoritas Jasa Keuangan, OJK) released an open API framework detailing the rollout of a common API gateway for banks and other financial institutions to exchange financial data.

Collaborate to win

Amidst the talk about open APIs and the open banking ecosystem, what tangible benefits does it bring for banks? Firstly, a more engaging experience to satisfy the notoriously short attention span of younger consumers.

With APIs instantly aggregating consumer data from different financial platforms, banks can verify the identity and financial history of their potential customer within seconds.

This allows for the pre-filling of registration forms, slashing the time needed to onboard a customer. Besides, banks can streamline their loan approval process and offer loans faster, without compromising on default rates.

This is a result of APIs being able to aggregate financial data from different platforms. With these data, banks are able to generate a comprehensive credit score for individual borrowers, allowing them to accurately determine their ability to repay.

Also Read: Open Banking: why this risky pursuit is the key to accelerating Fintech innovation

Increased revenue

Apart from offering a better experience for customers and lowering the default rates on loans, open APIs also pave the way for the creation of new products. Banks can leverage the increased knowledge of their customers to offer specific services as part of upselling or cross-selling efforts. 

For example, a customer who took out a property mortgage could be offered a property insurance plan at a competitive premium specific to his income and credit history.

This was possible because open APIs allowed the bank to verify their income and credit history across different platforms before generating a risk-adjusted premium.

On average, it takes several weeks for a personal loan to be fully processed by banks. In the same period of time, one can easily get approval for a loan at an alternative lending platform. This has forced banks to rethink how they approach the approval of loans.

Previously, they wasted valuable time and resources retrieving physical financial documents (such as past income statements) from customers and searching the web for their credit report.

However, with an open banking ecosystem, banks can easily access the necessary information through a shared API gateway, allowing them to approve loans within minutes. Amidst the numerous benefits open banking can provide for banks, what effect does it have on the bottom line?

A report by Accenture has found that banks that embrace open banking will profit from a potential revenue uplift of 20 per cent, whereas those failing to do so risk losing 30 per cent to disruptive industry players such as fintech companies by 2020.

Winners innovate

It is no secret fintech companies are revolutionising the future of financial services, providing easy-to-use and personalised products at a fraction of those offered by incumbents such as banks.

The enabler of their success? Open APIs built by open banking platforms such as Finantier, which work with the leading banks in Indonesia to provide custom-built APIs for them. By connecting them to the open banking ecosystem, we enable them to gain an edge over their competitors who still operate in silos.

Also Read: How startups can aid Southeast Asia’s Open Banking landscape

Banks and innovation do not typically complement each other. For these century-old institutions, the choice to adopt new technologies at the expense of legacy ones can be difficult due to the complexity of these decades-old infrastructures and the inertia they create.

However, it is no longer a choice. The mantra of “innovate or die” represents the harsh reality of the financial services sector today. Banks, like everyone else, will be forced to innovate.

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This post was originally published on Finantier’s blog.

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The fairly young population of Southeast Asian countries and their good level of education make them excellent members of the regional workforce. Add to this their reputation of hard work and adaptability.

Despite the perceived inherent advantages, employees are not going to magically appear at a company and start working just like everyone else does. They also need to undergo training, and the process is unlikely to proceed without some challenges along the way.

Discussed below are some of the leading concerns businesses that operate in Southeast Asia are likely to face when it comes to hiring and training employees. They may not be critical factors that will immediately drive away employers, but it pays to know them and the corresponding solutions to avoid problems.

Digital transformation

The challenge of bringing employees aboard the digital transformation ship is not exclusive to ASEAN economies. However, it may surprise some to know that most ASEAN firms admit to not being adaptable enough.

An SAP-commissioned Oxford Economics survey of 600 senior executives in key economies across ASEAN suggests that Southeast Asian companies know the ways towards digital transformation, but they are not as capable of adapting as they would have preferred.

The survey respondents were asked what hindered them from taking advantage of technology, digitalisation, and automation, in particular, to improve their operations and business outcomes.

Also Read: The right framework and training methods can minimise attrition rates among startup employees

Some of their top responses were as follows: lack of technology for analytics (43 per cent), lack of capable and motivated workforce (40 per cent), lack of adequate data (38 per cent), and difficulty scaling for growth (33 per cent).

These responses show how many organisations still struggle with the goal of becoming fully digital to become more agile and adaptable to market changes. These also infer how many still hesitate to invest in digital transformation and exert enough effort to expedite digitalisation.

Digital transformation is not as easy as it seems even for Southeast Asia’s relatively young working population. However, with the right employee training programs, adapting to the increasingly digitised modern economy is not too tall an order to take.

A thoughtfully designed training plan, together with tech-driven tools and systems, can easily address the challenges of training employees to work well with the ongoing digital transformation efforts of ASEAN companies.

Job-skill mismatch

One of the notable challenges in training employees is the apparent mismatch between jobs and skills. There are many potential employees across Southeast Asia, but their set of skills may not be best suited for the vacancies.

An International Labor Organization (ILO) report shows the extent of job mismatch in several Southeast Asian countries. In Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, the qualification mismatch average at around 0.4.

Some 40 per cent of job applicants in these countries are reportedly underqualified or overqualified for the available job positions.

This job-skill mismatch is an employee training problem as it makes employees less enthusiastic about training. Consequently, they become less productive and less engaged in the workplace. As the ILO describes the impact of mismatches, “skills mismatch has negative consequences for productivity and competitiveness.”

It would be extremely challenging to motivate employees who consider themselves detached from their functions and incompatible with the positions they are occupying. To address skill mismatch and raise employee motivation, it may be necessary to do reassignments or provide more training to make it easier for employees to adjust to their functions.

Also Read: The right framework and training methods can minimise attrition rates among startup employees

Moreover, there’s difficulty in dealing with overqualified employees. They may not find the training useful, or they may regard it as cumbersome given that they are doing a job that they deem to be beneath their qualification and expected pay grade.

Hectic schedules

Working hours in many ASEAN countries are relatively long. According to numbers from Statista, Thailand has a 42.3-hour workweek. Employees in the Philippines work 41.7 hours per week on average.

Vietnam, on the other hand, has a 41.2-hour workweek. Indonesia’s 38.2 hours may be low compared to its ASEAN peers, but it is still higher than the global average for OECD countries at 33.5 hours.

With these long working hours, it would be difficult to squeeze training sessions in. It is challenging to encourage employees to learn more skills or prepare to advance their position within the company when they are already spending a lot of their time at work and are expected to complete a long list of tasks.

One way to deal with this challenge is to consider remote training whenever possible. The pandemic has shown that remote work works. There are no compelling reasons to deliberately avoid virtual training sessions. It can save time and the use of resources, plus the sessions can be recorded so anyone can go back to them if ever they forget something or they need clarifications.

Dispersed workforce

Many ASEAN businesses operate in multiple locations. As a result, training sessions can be quite a hassle. It does not only raise the challenge of distance or lack of physical interaction. It also creates opportunities for culture clashes,

Southeast Asian employees are as diverse as they can get when it comes to work attitude. From the sociable to the stubborn lone wolves, they vary greatly and form a colourful spectrum too vibrant to be tamed or put in a single category.

Also Read: In your journey to attain great CX, how much are you prioritising a great employee experience (EX)?

To address issues that may stem from diversity and geographical barriers, it helps to clearly lay down the training goals from the get-go. Doing this makes it easy for everyone to establish expectations and adjust themselves to the training and the instructor.

Additionally, it is advisable to use live online platforms or spaces to build a community where employees can interact and engage with other employees. Also, take advantage of social media.

Learning consultant Dan Steer shared how social media can be useful in employee training during a session at the Association for Talent Development International Conference & Exposition. Steer says that social media should be used before, during, and after the training sessions to achieve its best impact.

Nothing too hard to overcome

The Southeast Asian economy is still at its younger stages and was experiencing enviable healthy growth before the pandemic struck. However, COVID-19 disruption has made it amply clear that ASEAN countries have a lot of room for improvement.

They can become more resilient and adaptable particularly when it comes to the labour market by addressing the jobs-skills mismatch, giving the digital transformation a harder push, and addressing the effects of long working hours and workforce dispersion on employee training.

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The dynamics of what’s essential and what’s not has shifted dramatically in the past two years with a global health pandemic unleashing instabilities and uncertainties across the globe. While many parts of the world still continue to fight this health crisis and businesses navigate through the new normal to survive and sustain, one thing is certain—digitalisation and innovation are not a choice anymore; tech-enabled solutions and systems are the future for every sector.

In the past few decades, Japan’s tech startup scene has been making some strides but there is still a lot of scope for growth and development. Japan has only managed to produce three unicorns so far while the US boasts 239 and China 121. For the nation to realise its full potential in the new normal, strategic planning is needed.

Along with Tokyo and Osaka, Aichi prefecture is one of the three major metropolitan areas in the country, a bustling manufacturing centre and has the potential to be a startup hub. However, for the startup scene in Aichi to mature, key stakeholders need to come together and innovate.

As such, the government of Aichi has developed “Aichi Vision 2030” to help set directions for the prefecture to focus on in the crucial post-pandemic years of the coming decade.

Building Aichi into the next global startup festival hub

Large corporations in Japan are supporting the burgeoning startup scene, with 25 of the 44 companies ranked in Forbes Top 500 engaging with tech startups in one way or another. This engagement is increasingly characterised by corporate venture capital invested into new enterprises, and to keep the momentum going, the Aichi government plans to foster collaborations and partnerships.

Also read: KoinWorks hits profitability, securing 100k SMEs as early adopters for its NEO product

The Aichi government envisions the realisation of a smart city with keen collaborations from all main stakeholders, such as entrepreneurs, startup founders, governments, corporates and citizens. Under the “Aichi Vision 2030” program, the government is keen on inviting collaborations from Japan, APAC and other parts of the world by leveraging digital connectivity.

Furthermore, the Aichi Prefectural Government in partnership with ICMG (Intellectual Capital Management Group), NUS Enterprise and e27, recently concluded the ‘Aichi Startup Festival 2021 with e27’ where startups and accelerators from across the region and beyond participated. Popular V-tuber “Kiminomiya” also participated in this three-day festival.

A one-of-its-kind startup festival to foster innovation

The ‘Aichi Startup Festival 2021 with e27’ is one-of-its-kind in that this is the only startup event that brings together the government, startup accelerators and digital content creators to co-create and collaborate for a more resilient and sustainable future.

This year’s festival had a team of experienced panelists, including the likes of Masaaki Shibayama, Director for Startup Promotion, Aichi Prefecture Department of Economy, Trade and Industry, NG Weiyi, Assistant Professor, Department of Strategy and Policy: NUS Business School: National University of Singapore, Thaddeus Jit Siong Koh, e27 Co-Founder & COO & CFO and Veerappan Swaminathan, Sustainable Living Lab Pte Ltd Founder & Director.

Also read: How can corporate executives, startups, and VCs stay ahead of the innovation curve?

Sessions exploring the latest technologies like AI as well as discussions on topics like innovation and sustainability were held over a period of three days. The festival saw pitch submissions from 26 startups from Japan, Asia and other parts of the world. The festival provided all participating startups with a platform to connect with potential target consumers, venture capitalists and other interested parties.

The pitches were based on five core themes, including the following:

• Resilience and sustainability
• Creating a community where everyone can play an active role
• Strengthening industries through new innovations
• Creating an attractive region gathering from the world
• Education for global leaders who will lead the future and be active in the world and local communities

Based on the submissions, participating startups were evaluated by a panel of judges and winners were announced. The Aichi award winner list consisted of Arm, GINKAN, Qlue, Hishab and WFrontier whereas the startups that bagged the e27 award were Axelr8, AgreeBit, ELXR, Qlue and RevComm.

Sustainability as a central feature

With the right support from the government and keen participation of entrepreneurs, VCs and other stakeholders, Aichi has the potential to take Japan’s startup ecosystem to an altogether different level.

As businesses try to survive and sustain in what seems like a long-prevailing normal now, digital transformation and innovation for a sustainable future is not only mindful and good business but also what the future of the world depends on.

The Aichi Prefecture understands this at their heart and thus, hand-in-hand with their key partners, are working towards enabling tech startups in the region to come forward and collaborate to help create a sustainable future.

Learn more at https://e27.co/aichiglobalap/en/ or email ICMG JP at adachi@icmg.co.jp

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by 
ICMG

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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What started as a social enterprise focused on providing specialty coffee called IMPCT Coffee, Taiwan-based startup IMPCT has transformed itself into an impact investing platform where consumers get to choose which causes they would like to invest in through their purchases. By allowing small and large brands the opportunity to allocate a specific margin to be invested for a cause, and then letting consumers choose exactly which cause they would like to advocate, IMPCT is encouraging its stakeholders to be mindful about how they vote with their dollar.

IMPCT’s story began in 2014 when it was founded by five MBA classmates from Taiwan’s National Chengchi University as an entry into the prestigious Hult Prize Challenge. The initial award-winning idea formed by co-founders Jessi Fu, An-Nung Chen, Taylor Scobbie, Juan Diego Prudot, and Andres Escobar was to reinvest funds from impact trade coffee sales to develop a series of IMPCT Playcares; early childhood education centers located in urban slums across Latin America and Africa. They have since built ten Playcares in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and South Africa using profits that they reinvested into microloans for female entrepreneurs living in the slums.

While this old model has achieved success in the Americas, relying solely on B2B coffee sales during the pandemic put severe constraints on the company’s ability to scale. “I do feel like the old company of Impct Coffee has been extended to its [fullest] potential,” stated Jessi Fu, Head of Brand Management, during an interview with e27.

“We’re still running [the old business] in Taiwan. Taiwan has one store and then we are also doing a lot of B2B sales and events because currently, Taiwan is the only place you can do all of that.”

Adding purpose to your every purchase

With the success of IMPCT and as a result of the recent global health crisis that has exposed so many societal problems and deficiencies, co-founders Jessi Fu and Taylor Scobbie realised there is so much more work to be done. As such, the duo founded +Purpose, an impact investing platform where consumers get to decide what causes they can support with the simple act of purchasing products from e-commerce platforms like Shopify. +Purpose was founded with the idea that we should be able to add our purpose to everything we buy.

Also read: How fintech startups can fast forward their growth

With the recent pandemic and all the pressing social issues that were exacerbated because of it, they created +Purpose, enabling a larger scale approach to the impact investing framework of IMPCT’s original coffee idea.

With this new project, consumers can decide to add purpose to their purchase not only in buying coffee but when it comes to the multitudes of e-commerce products as well.

Freedom of choice as a feature of the future

During her interview with e27, Fu lamented the general lack of concern East Asian consumers have for the social impact of a brand, commenting that IMPCT was comparatively performing better in the Americas before the pandemic.

“The customers here don’t really care about how you have a cause. [They think that] ‘Yes, it’s good for you to have a cause, to think that the product should do good, but what’s that relative to my life?’ I feel that deeply and I’m kind of disappointed through my experiences here in Taiwan and also in Korea.”

Research supports Fu’s observations of relative apathy among East Asian buyers regarding the ethics of a given brand compared to consumers in the Americas. Findings from a 2019 study by two researchers at Sichuan University indicated that corporate-level ethical identification was a trivial matter to the 328 participants involved in the study.

Also read: Sendbird reaches unicorn status amidst growing need for mobile communications

However, freedom of choice may be the key to rousing sentiment, as the level of care each consumer holds for a given ethical issue is relative to both the individual and the cause. Consumer A could be willing to donate to support marine conservation, whereas Consumer B could care more about women’s reproductive rights. This variability is precisely why the freedom of choice built into +Purpose’s new business model is crucial to encourage mindful consumer behaviour.

In her interview with e27, Fu compared the impact trade model against the way certain brands use charity as an advertising strategy, pointing out the inherent ineffectuality in companies that give out free shoes to hungry children in developing nations as if it affects any meaningful change.

“Why would you care if you buy shoes and [the seller donates] another pair, but you don’t know where it goes? Maybe you care about another cause.”

“We want consumers to decide for themselves and not have the brands decide where their impact will go.”

Everyone can be an impact investor through +Purpose

While impact investing and ethical consumerism are not new concepts, the +Purpose trade model allows consumers and small brands to put their money where their values lie by allowing their purchases to speak for them. 5% of each purchase on the +Purpose e-commerce platform earns a buyer “impact credits” in a similar way to a cashback reward program, which they can then reinvest in causes like education, environmental conservation, or social movements. Brands get to decide how much to invest in a given cause, while consumers get to decide to which cause they would like to advocate.

Also read: KoinWorks hits profitability, securing 100k SMEs as early adopters for its NEO product

Compared to traditional CSR methods like reducing carbon footprint, volunteerism, and philanthropy, many of which are only accessible to larger corporations, +Purpose provides an e-commerce platform where even small businesses can make direct financial contributions to the advancement of a cause.

“Nowadays all of the big companies have to do CSR — but the issue is that they are big brands, so they actually have room to do those kinds of things,” noted Fu. “But what about small brands? Small brands also want to do good.”

Future plans

IMPCT currently has several team members spread across the Americas and Asia, and their e-commerce platform is slated to launch within the second quarter of 2021. While the platform’s main target market remains the United States, it will be accepting orders worldwide. In addition to winning the $1,000,000 Hult Prize Challenge in 2014, IMPCT has also previously participated in the UC Berkeley Skydeck Accelerator and Pear VC Summer Program in 2019 and onboarded Uber, Salesforce, Adobe, and Cisco as enterprise clients.

Meanwhile, +Purpose is looking to expand their operations by exploring potential partnerships with more e-commerce platforms.

For more information, contact +Purpose through this link. You can also check out IMPCT’s website here.

– –

This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by 
+Purpose

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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These are unprecedented times – you have seen this on almost every industry bulletin paper and internal memo. Indeed, this pandemic has upended the lives and livelihoods of many. It has even shuttered companies we thought were mainstays in our economy.

A year on and industry leaders are still asking: how long till things go back to business (and bottom-line) as usual?

We do not yet know the answer and it could be years before we see a return to normal, if ever. Without a finish line in sight, companies are running in short, even dramatic, sprints to sidestep business hurdles as they come.

The more uncertain the situation, the more drastic the company’s actions are – sustained over a course of time, this knee-jerk ‘intensity’ can lead to poor business outcomes. However, building consistency around your organisation can see you through the recession and into recovery.

As Ted Talk sensation Simon Sinek says: While intensity is good for quick results, working consistently yields long-term results. And a good balance of both will set you up for greater success.

Intensity: To sprint or not to sprint?

Running a business is challenging under the best of circumstances. When faced with a crisis of uncertainty, it gets much harder. It is a widely held assumption that the only way to counteract a slump is by taking the ‘intensity’ approach. It is an unspoken axiom in business, but power move it is not. It refers to any type of corporate action that involves concentrated effort over a short period of time, much like sprints.

At the first sign of cashflow trouble on the 60th-floor boardroom, the CEO puts into effect a string of undertakings: Below-cost pricing, retrenchment, branch closures and organisational restructure. The law is laid down faster than you can say ‘new normal’. The emphasis is often on the fiscal outcome of the decision and less on the impact it has on others. 

Also Read: Road from crisis to recovery: What is fuelling the resurgence of startups post-COVID-19

Though excessively dire, the short-term gains are looked upon as somehow superior. Why? Intensity is measurable, controllable, and there is a sense of relief in having come to a resolution.

Besides, it sounds good on paper. Under financial duress, these measures can be a positive course of action. But it is a short-term path with poor long-term results including weak employee relations and bad customer experiences, by extension.

Consistency: Business is like a marathon

The consistency approach is not that much different from a marathon. You put one foot in front of the other, keep a constant pace, take controlled breaths, and finish strong. Consistency means replicating positive behaviour day after day till you see desired results. Picture the CEO again, now think consistency.

Did you envision a tedious pattern of a usual day’s work: meetings, conference calls and endless emails? Right, you are. Contrary to what you may believe, it is the daily grind we are all too familiar with that will have the largest payoffs.

Granted, it will not make headlines but in totality, these actions account for much of a company’s success. Instead of whittling down your headcount, consider work reassignments in their place.

Instead of retaliatory discounts, consider value-adding to keep customers buying. It is far from instantaneous and takes a lot more effort than reflexive first measures, but you will see the outcomes you want.

The long and short of it

Now that you have weighed the merits of both approaches, here is the takeaway: It is not always black and white. From multinational corporations to small and medium-sized businesses, enterprises can benefit from the greys. After all, most companies are already forward-thinking but under pressure to see immediate results.

Also Read: Future of workspaces: What will the post-pandemic office look like?

One sustainable way to bridge this gap is to balance intensity and consistency, the long and short term. This means utilising intensity spikes at intervals and integrating corporate strategies for the long-haul. But to truly ensure these methods coalesce, you need compassion. As leaders we have a responsibility to balance costs and care. Take it from us at The Little Black Book, surviving this economic fallout does not have to lead to layoffs or paycuts.

In our case, a hiring freeze was instituted at the onset, notwithstanding the plans we had for company expansion, and we took stock of our resources and reserves. What we did not immediately need, we let go. Unnecessary subscriptions? Out. Subcontracted crew? Out. Non-essential benefits? Out. Even though the initial decision to downsize our workspace was met with a collective gasp, it meant that we were able to keep staff on payroll. All while leveraging on government-driven financial aid, employee attrition and staff reassignments.

On the consistency-front, we have worked day-in day-out to grow our sphere of contacts, reconnect with leads and diversify income streams. In the grand scheme of things, we have fared reasonably well. 

Instead of holding cards tight to our chests, good leaders acknowledge when a situation is bad, and that it may get worse before it gets better. By acting decisively in the absence of certainty, for the long and short term, your company will stand a greater chance of seeing itself through to precedented times.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion 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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Things are starting to look up for global trade in 2021. After supply chain disruptions caused world merchandise trade volumes to fall to 5.3 per cent in 2020, the World Trade Organisation expects volumes to grow by 8.0 per cent in 2021 — a promising sign of rapid recovery in global trade.

In Asia-Pacific, China’s growth has spurred exports from Southeast Asia, with the non-oil domestic exports of Singapore growing 12.1 per cent in March 2021 and total exports of Indonesia growing 30.5 per cent y-o-y in March. 

While this recovery means many businesses can look forward to things returning to normal, this perspective begs the question — should “returning to normal” really be desired? 

Out with the old habits, in with the new norms

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many have realised that the new norms of work-from-home arrangements, food deliveries, and virtual yoga are more practical ways of living than our old routines.

Similarly, businesses and industries recognise that in a post-COVID-19 world, there are outdated industry practices that need to end—as organisations must reimagine their backend systems and architecture to fit within the new world.

Instead of reverting to old processes, businesses can treat the disruption from COVID-19 as the perfect springboard to acquiring competitive advantage, and create a permanent new normal of how business is done leveraging technology. Nowhere is this opportunity riper than in the trade finance industry. 

In trade finance, importers and exporters struggle to navigate the opaque and fragmented nature of an ecosystem heavily dominated by paper processing and slow transactions involving multiple parties. These outdated systems are proving a challenge for all who are involved—banks, importers and exporters, insurers, export credit agencies, and various service providers.

Also Read: Sprint or marathon? How to determine the balance in consistency vs intensity during COVID-19

According to the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the trade finance gap has never been bigger and is expected to expand, especially in emerging markets.

As a result, players within the trade finance sector have been scouring for ways to simplify how trade is managed. The answer? Blockchain technology.

Post-COVID-19 recovery: A golden opportunity for blockchain in trade finance

Blockchain technology is fast being adopted across the trade finance ecosystems. For example, Contour, a digital trade network of the world’s leading trade banks, including HSBC, BNP Paribas, ING, Standard Chartered, and Singapore’s DBS Bank, is harnessing Corda Enterprise to bring more efficiency to documentary trade.

The platform unites buyers, suppliers, and banks on a decentralised digital trade finance platform to simplify management of the Letter of Credit (LC) process, drastically cutting the cost and time needed to issue LCs by up to 90 per cent.

A similar instance is in the case of Bangkok Bank in Thailand, which recently announced that it is deepening its integration of blockchain technology into its trade, payments, and supply-chain business.

This comes after it facilitated an LC transaction between a subsidiary of Thailand-based PTT Group and a Vietnam-based trading partner in September 2020, reducing LC issuance time by over 95 per cent.

While these examples demonstrate immense progress of blockchain innovation in the sector, the speed at which these technologies are being adopted in trade finance creates a new problem — interoperability. 

Keep calm and stay interoperable

With the introduction of any new technology, organisations face preliminary hurdles when it comes to stacking solutions and enabling integration with existing systems and standards.

However, in the case of trade finance, many players have already started implementing blockchain solutions, each wooed by different networks, consortia, and platforms that offer ways to integrate into their legacy back-office systems.

Also Read: Blockchain will eliminate frauds and malpractices in trade finance

Each is rightfully chosen for specific strengths and areas of focus, but this inevitably creates multiple blockchain ecosystems which are siloed from each other.

As the technology improves, the challenge for these enterprises becomes finding ways to build bridges between different blockchain systems to ensure data can be shared between one ledger and another. This is especially critical as the pandemic has made it clear that supply chain infrastructures need to communicate with each other, or risk running into the same inefficiencies that traditional processes already present. 

For example, a surgical mask manufacturer whose bank runs on Hyperledger Fabric must be able to provide a letter of credit to a fabric supplier’s bank operating on Corda implementation. There needs to be an interoperable way to facilitate such transactions, information sharing, and execution of smart contracts across different supply chain networks for blockchain to bring real value.

An example of this is the collaboration between MineHub, a mining and metals trading platform on Hyperledger Fabric, and Contour which runs on Corda – allowing mining corporates to have access to financing via this interoperability.

A critical way to build interoperability is by creating shared industry standards that cut across trade tools and allow fragmented supply chain management platforms to link up and operate together. This is a challenge that the Bankers Association for Finance and Trade (BAFT), a leading international transaction banking association, solved as members came together to develop a framework for a digital ledger payment commitment (DLPC). 

The BAFT DLPC standardises the payment commitment—an instrument that functions as a legally enforceable obligation to pay a sum of money, and the most critical aspect of a trade finance transaction. The BAFT DLPC gave birth to DLPC CorDapp, a Skuchain application that enables interoperability in permissioned blockchain networks, so for instance, transactions between enterprises on Hyperledger Fabric and their bank partners on the Corda Network can take place without any party having to onboard onto another platform. 

In the new world order, the hallmark of successful business will be efficiency, expediency, and flexibility. In this world, the implementation of blockchain will no longer be an option for the trade industry.

With more frameworks and technological collaboration in the trade finance sector, players in the ecosystem have an enormous opportunity to define the new normal for the industry with blockchain, and ensure economic recovery stays within reach.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. This season we are seeking op-eds, analysis and articles on food tech and sustainability. Share your opinion and earn a byline by submitting a post.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community or like the e27 Facebook page

Image credit: Clint Adair on Unsplash

The post How to create a new normal for trade finance with blockchain appeared first on e27.