EDB New Ventures, the corporate venture building arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), has officially launched its new Corporate Venture Launchpad programme in a virtual media event today.

The Corporate Venture Launchpad aims to support large and established Singapore-based companies in building new ventures in new areas of growth beyond their existing core businesses. Under this programme, eligible companies will work closely with appointed venture studios, to incubate new businesses in an agile and phased approach.

The venture studios that are involved in the programme are BCG Digital Ventures (BCGDV), FutureLabs Ventures (FLV), Leap by McKinsey, and Rainmaking.

Set to run as a one-year pilot, the programme is investing S$10 million (US$7.4 million) to undertake 20 concept validation sprints. Venture studios that are involved in the programme will work together with the companies to incubate business ideas a phased approach within six months.

In a press statement, EDB New Ventures said that it will support up to 50 per cent of the cost of each concept validation sprint. It may also provide further risk-sharing capital and value creation support to high-potential ventures in the programme.

Also Read: Video-on-demand startup iflix raises US$133M from Jungle Ventures, Catcha Group, EDBI, others

“While companies have the innovation capacity, much of their focus is often on optimising core business operations. Building ventures with an agile and autonomous entrepreneurial team will allow them to effectively search and build new growth areas. Concept validation sprints with the support of venture studios allow companies to take a customer and market-first approach to determine what new business to build and is often the first step in their corporate venturing journey,” said Choo Heng Tong, Executive Vice President, New Ventures and Innovation, EDB.

In the media conference, Choo also stated that The Corporate Venture Launchpad will work on key sectors that EDB has always been responsible for, such as healthcare, aviation, and maritime.

According to CB Insights in The 2020 Global CVC Report, despite the global situation, CVC-backed funding hit a new high in 2020 at a global level.

Despite a two per cent year-on-year decline, Asia continued to lead in CVC investment with 1,360 deals. As a comparison, North America scored 1,275 deal with a three per cent year-on-year decline.

Application for The CV Launchpad programme is now open.

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As the pandemic accelerates digitalisation, issuing digital forms of fiat currencies is at the forefront of many central banks’ plans. Termed central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), APAC is leading the charge in this space with active pilots and research on the technology by regulators here. But what would the future of CBDCs actually look like – and why does it matter?

To understand this, it helps to zoom out on how the economy has changed in the past year. The pandemic pushed a record number of businesses online, and widespread disruptions created a profound shift in payments, accelerating the adoption of digital wallets in e-commerce while hastening the decline of cash at the point of sale.

According to our 2021 Global Payments Report, digital wallets exceeded 60 per cent of online payment methods in APAC in 2020 and by 2024 will make up 65 per cent of online transactions. Cash is projected to represent only slightly over 10 per cent of transactions in APAC by 2024, and the decline of cash will be near total in some markets, falling to 5.9 per cent in China, 2.1 per cent in Australia and just 1.6 per cent in Hong Kong.

While today most digital payment methods connect back to a traditional credit or debit card, that’s changing. The last 12 months have also seen a rise in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, which rose to a new record high of more than US$50,000 in February.

COVID-19 accelerates the use of digital currencies

The uncertainty created by the ongoing pandemic has led to cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin becoming mainstream. Both Apple Pay and PayPal recently started supporting bitcoin payments in the US. In Asia, Singapore’s DBS bank launched a digital currency exchange last December – this is the world’s first cryptocurrency exchange backed by a traditional bank.

As consumer demand for digital currency payment options rises, merchants in Asia are now beginning to accept such payment options across various channels. For example, in Japan bitcoin is accepted by over 260,000 stores and Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten had just launched a crypto wallet this month that allows users to shop both online and in-store using crypto.

Also Read: The compelling case for crypto payments in Asia

Merchants across Asia now accept crypto payments as well, such as Singapore’s food court operator Kopitiam, Hong Kong’s furniture chain Pricerite, Malaysia’s online pharmacy Gootbat.care and South Korea’s convenience store chain CU, to name a few.

While cryptocurrencies are rising in popularity, they are decentralised and operate independently of established banking or money transfer systems. This means they lack the legal tender status declared by governments and if a country’s citizens all start using another currency the government cannot control monetary policy.

CBDCs on the other hand brings together the convenience and security of cryptocurrencies and the regulated, reserve-backed money circulation of the traditional banking system. They act as the digital form of fiat money effectively replaces notes and coins.

More than 8 in 10 central banks are now actively engaged in CBDC projects, according to a survey by the Bank of International Settlement. One of the most advanced is China’s digital yuan, which has already undergone trials in a number of cities locally.

CBDCs are the future

The growing popularity of cryptocurrencies, coupled with the rapidly declining use of cash, is putting pressure on central banks to accelerate their digital currencies efforts. In the coming years CBDCs will play a key role in the financial services ecosystem and could eventually bring about the demise of cash all together.

A centrally-backed digital currency provides better security, while reducing fraud and lowering costs. It allows for better monitoring of financial activity making crimes such as tax evasion much more difficult and offers a higher level of control and traceability in comparison to private cryptocurrencies and cash, with better tracking for tax collection.

There are also social motivations. They could make the transfer of money across borders easier and this will have many positive implications like enabling foreign workers, for example, to transfer money back to their home countries. They can broaden financial inclusion, allowing access cash and funds to more people around the world, particularly in emerging economies.

Digital currencies could also help businesses with cash flow, especially in the hard-hit retail and hospitality sector. We also may see the rise of programmable money, which could allow key workers discounted goods and service tax rates, among many other features.

Also Read: Few¢ents lands US$1.6M to help digital publishers monetise digital content globally

Challenges facing CDBC

However, questions remain around how CBDC will be regulated and how they will interact with existing forms of currencies, and there are also concerns that CBDCs could draw money out of private banks.

The creation of CBDCs raises privacy concerns as well. With a large amount of data stored in a central system, this means that an individual’s financial information could be easily surveilled by the government or worse exposed to criminals. Ultimately, there will need to be a marriage of trust and opportunity for digital currencies to see mass acceptance.

Once it goes mainstream, CBDCs will be a game-changer, bringing about a rapid shift to the banking and payments ecosystem that has never been seen before, and with more and more countries now beginning to implement their own CBDCs, 2021 could be the year when CBDCs have the chance of becoming a reality.

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Ads are everywhere. From expensive billboards to car door stickers, ads occupy every visible surface wherever we go. At the turn of the century, advertisers began to shift their focus online.

In the span of twenty years, we established a thriving ecosystem where brands can reach their targeted consumers in increasingly creative ways across the web.

Whether it is Facebook ads, Spotify banners, or pop-up notifications, consumers today are bombarded by ads nearly every second of every day.

Whilst receiving relevant ads may value-add to our busy lives, it does get a little annoying when you see that same pair of sneakers you searched for just once start appearing across all the web applications that you use.

In the end, cheap advertising that simply shoves products and services in consumers’ faces stand a higher chance of backfiring on their advertisers instead.

The rise of advanced adtech

Riding on our good intentions to deliver relevant ads to consumers across the online space, privacy issues have been sidestepped and sacrificed by more and more advertisers. Cross-site tracking, made possible by the sharing of individual user data across global companies, have led to an erosion of trust in consumers.

According to a study by Pew Research Center, 72 per cent of people feel that almost all of what they do online is being tracked by advertisers, technology firms or other companies, and 81 per cent say that the potential risks they face because of data collection outweigh the benefits.

Also Read: Adtech in Southeast Asia: 5 trends that will rule this industry in 2020

This means that digital advertising will continue to lose its value if advertisers do not address the growing concerns that people have about their lack of privacy online.

Thankfully, the advent of sophisticated adtech tools has made it significantly better for both advertisers and consumers. Advertisers no longer have to rely only on hard-sell tactics online that have been seeing declining ROI (return of investment) per marketing dollar.

Consumers will also benefit from the increased privacy and absence of in-your-face advertisements that clog up news feeds. All in all, sophisticated adtech tools create a win-win situation for both businesses and consumers alike.

However, building sophisticated performance tools requires skill and a wealth of industry knowledge. Fortunately, a team of experts at BLOCK71 Singapore have been working to build the future of ad optimisation since 2017.

This month, I sat down with Hendrik Schwartz and Aleks Farseev, good friends and co-founders of adtech startup SoMin, to dissect the intricate workings behind their AI-driven marketing performance system.

Read on to discover the game-changing powers of ad optimisation for both businesses and consumers.

In a nutshell, what does SoMin do?

The goal of SoMin is to help businesses innovate their marketing approaches through AI and automation. Our main product is a marketing performance tool that uses machine learning to help brands increase their ad cost-efficiency. Through different models, it aims to define and understand audiences through public data while preserving their anonymity.

From there it figures out different ways of approaching generalised audience clusters then uses that knowledge to automate the deployment of campaigns.

Adtech solutions that provide customer insights for businesses are a dime in a dozen. How does AI make it better?

There are many ad tech solutions out there, but the problem with many of them is that they take an isolated approach to solve industry challenges.

Also read: Making offline marketing cool again: How this AI startup is changing the future of B2C advertising

Ad performance solutions are a good example of this. What most of them do is take the data found within the bidding ecosystems and use this to try and improve performance. Whilst there is a wealth of data involved in this, there are also a lot of other important elements that are not taken into consideration.

Factors such as initial audience definition, competitor movement, creative evaluations, and more are all important to the success of a campaign but their definitions are usually outside the realm of the bidding platforms themselves.

This is where the power of AI helps. Through a machine’s capability of understanding unstructured data, factors outside of a bidding ecosystem can be quantified and plugged into the entire process of ad deployment.

And when it does this it opens up different strategies that were not previously possible. Coupled with automation, we are able to come up with a much more holistic solution to what would make a successful marketing campaign.

Marketing strategies differ across industries. Are there any industries that SoMin’s solution may not work as well in? Why is that?

With the current product, the strength of the SoMin.ai solution caters to B2C (business-to-consumer) mass audience targeting. Our system works well with many of those industries.  That being said we do not provide personalised advertising so for strategies that require those we have yet to make the decision to venture into that space.

This is mainly because personal advertising touches more into privacy concerns and we believe as a company that the wealth of public data is already enough to create effective marketing.  The trick is being able to use what we have effectively which is why we build machine learning modules just to do that.

Influencer marketing has started trending amongst many B2C firms in recent years. How can SoMin lead the change to revolutionise advertising in this new space?

We are also venturing into the influencer space. At current, our solution allows for brands to apply machine learning in their search for suitable brand influencers.

One of the biggest problems in influencer marketing is the curation of applicable influencers. The work is very tedious and drains many man hours, which then hinders the scalability of the activations. Through machine learning, we’re able to profile influencers better and match it to brands so that we can find better fits and ease this process.

We’re also further developing this feature and we now have a platform called Sopop that directly ties with the SoMin feature. This solution is catered towards influencers and addresses their most pressing needs.

Our plans involve helping them with data knowledge, financial tracking and engagements, brand matching, and collaboration tools. Put these in conjunction with the brand side solution, we believe we can really help scale the industry overall.

Also Read: Is AI the key to adtech’s data-driven future?

What do you see as the future of performance marketing?

If you ask me, the biggest hurdle in performance marketing is how brands – with their human-generated marketing campaigns – interact with platforms that are primarily driven by artificial intelligence. So much could be done, but our ability to harness the data that is available to us is so small that it becomes an area of missed opportunities.

This is also tied with the data issues we face today.  Because we lack the ability to harness all the data that we already have, we crave for more data to the point where we step on the grey line of privacy.  But so much data is already available and we just have to digest it properly so that we don’t have to come close to stepping on people’s rights.

Now the trend with AI is democratisation and I believe this would truly help performance marketing. In the future, by making AI systems more interactive, understandable, and available, it would allow brands to make full use of the data that’s available to them. This would in turn create different kinds of strategies or ways of working that will improve communication between brands and customers.

With SoMin’s expertise and forward thinking, we believe we are well placed to harness the full potential of performance marketing.

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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.

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ProSpark, a Singaporean-based edutech company that helps upskill employees in organisations, has secured an undisclosed sum in seed investment round led by AC Ventures.

Other backers include 500 Startups, Azure Ventures, Assembly Ventures, Prasetia Dwidharma, and several undisclosed angels. 

The company intends to use the funds to continue expanding its commercial footprint across Southeast Asia, boost its technology infrastructure and solidify its position in the market. 

In a digitally fast-paced world, companies of different sizes can sometimes find it difficult to keep up pace with the changing environment. In this case, upskilling employees can create a more well-rounded and cross-trained workforce.

ProSpark is one such company that helps companies achieve this through its B2B learning management system. 

Launched in 2018, the edutech startup helps employers onboard, train and certify its employees. With the use of gamified systems like leadership boards, badges, and a points system, the company also motivates its users to learn better.

Also Read: Edutech in SEA is ripe for acceleration. This is why they can help build a more inclusive society

Some of ProSpark’s prominent clients include Gojek, Bank Sampoerna, Kopi Kenangan, Northern Star Energy, PasarPolis, and RD Pawnshop. 

The company has its strongest footprint in Indonesia but has recently expanded into the Philippines, one of the most digital-savvy countries in the region.

Alfa Bumhira, CEO and co-founder of ProSpark, said: “Companies have been trying to find the best learning approach due to the pandemic. Now that e-learning is growing, offline learning has become relatively more costly, inefficient, and less scalable.”

“Their existing solutions are not flexible and expensive to maintain. ProSpark comes with a solution that is personalised and measurable: learning that is adaptive with perceptible outcomes. The funding should help us expand the end-to-end user experience by providing expanded content solutions, better competencies’ gaps mapping capabilities, and strengthen our focus on user learning outcomes,” he added. 

“The offline workforce is at risk of being left behind in the new digital economy and this problem has been accelerated by the global pandemic. Training this workforce on the skills they need to survive and thrive is of great necessity. We believe ProSpark’s e-learning solution can scale across the SEA region and address this upskilling problem in various sectors,” added Binh Tran, General Partner at 500 Startups.

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Image Credit: ProSpark

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Lapasar, an online B2B wholesale procurement startup in Malaysia, has announced that it has raised RM7.5 million (US$1.8 million) in a funding round led by startup accelerator-cum-investment firm NEXEA and shopper360 limited.

Malaysian equity crowdfunding platform pitchIN, besides other undisclosed individuals, also participated.

According to Lapasar founder and CEO Thinesh Kumar, “The funding will be used to accelerate growth for our wholesale business. We are targeting to serve 10,000 grocery stores, restaurants and hawker stalls over the next 24 months with extensive distribution capabilities by rolling out our mobile app Lapasar-Borong.”

“We aim to be the go-to mobile app for retailers to source and buy their FMCG goods at consistently low prices, delivered within 48 hours for free,” he added.

The startup was founded in 2017 by Kumar (CEO), Lakshman Das (COO) and Dannis Raj (Chief Process Officer), who wanted to provide vendors with an equal opportunity to sell their products.

Also Read: Lapasar offers a B2C-like e-commerce experience to corporate procurement in Malaysia

Building on that idea, the trio then created Lapasar, an online platform that connects corporates to FMGC (fast-moving consumer goods) suppliers across Malaysia.

Besides being a marketplace, Lapasar also has features like request-for-quotation management, vendor management, reports, document management system, e-bidding and benchmarking.

Lapasar started entering the FMCG wholesale market only in June 2020. This has helped it grow 172 per cent y-o-y and above 100x since its first funding round, it said.

“Lapasar is also beginning to explore lines of credits with partners for the shops as a source of income which has shown early promise and will continue to expand on that as well,” Kumar shared.

In early 2018, Lapasar raised a pre-seed round of funding from NEXEA. The startup also managed to receive a grant from Cradle that year.

Lapasar has also participated in Project Alpha, SeedPlus’s pre-seed startup program, which was conducted in partnership with Amazon Web Services.

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