Why IPOs – not SPACs – will run a longer course in Asia’s future; While the Southeast Asia’s unicorns are indeed signalling a shift, it won’t necessarily mean the death-knell for IPOs; One reason why IPOs won’t be going away in SEA anytime soon is that last year alone, there were 100+ IPOs conducted in the region – raising nearly US$50bn in funds and contributing to a regional capitalisation of almost US$30bn.

Gojek, Tokopedia merge to become GoTo; It has estimated combined valuation of US$18bn; Gojek’s Andre Soelistyo will become GoTo Group CEO and Tokopedia’s Patrick Cao as group President; GoTo will continue to focus on markets where Gojek already operates, including Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam; It will also form GoTo Financial, which encompasses GoPay and the group’s merchant and financial services offerings.

SEA’s VCs close US$694mn in total funding in Q1 2021; B Capital led the pack with US$415mn; Openspace Ventures followed with US$200mn third fund; Global VCs with a mandate to invest in SEA also secured capital for new funds in Q1.

Eat Just’s unit GOOD Meat secures US$170M to bring meat made from animal cells to Singapore; Investors include UBS O’Connor, Graphene Ventures and K3 Ventures; GOOD Meat will replace conventional chicken for delivery on Thursdays beginning May 20 at Madame Fan, which is run by JW Marriott Singapore.

Singapore biotherapeutics firm Hummingbird bags US$125mn Series C; Investors are Novo Holdings (led), Frazier Healthcare Partners, Octagon Capital, and EDBI; Hummingbird will use the funds to advance the clinical development of its assets, including its antibody products for fighting tumours.

B2B cross-border payments company Thunes bags US$60mn Series B; Investors include Insight Partners, GGV Capital, Helios Investment and Checkout.com; Thunes is used by global banks, money transfer operators, platforms and other businesses to make payments to bank accounts, mobile wallets and cash pick-up providers around the world; It claims to connect 260+ customers and network partners from 110 countries.

Digital ledger app BukuKas bags US$50mn in Series B to expand its services offered to merchants; Investors include Gokul Rajaram of DoorDash and Wise founder Taavet Hinrikus; By the end of 2022, it aims to onboard 20mn MSMEs on its platform; Early this year, it raised US$10mn Series A led by Sequoia India.

E-commerce enabler Great Deals closes US$30mn Series B; Investors are Fast Group (lead), CVC Capital Partners, and Navegar; Great Deals will use the money for tech development and the construction of an automated state-of-the-art fulfilment centre in Philippines; The firm caters to brands such as Abbott, L’Oréal, Unilever, Nestle, Samsonite, GSK, Bayer, and Fila.

UTEC, one of Asia’s largest deep-tech investment firms, launches new US$275mn fund; UTEC is an independent firm that works closely with universities, including Singapore’s NUS; UTEC focuses on healthcare and life sciences, IT and physical sciences and engineering; It will invest in seed/early to pre-IPO/M&A stages in Japan, SEA and worldwide.

Affable.ai raises US$2mn to expand its influencer marketing service to the US; Investors are Prime Venture Partners, Decacorn Capital, and SGInnovate; Affable.ai uses Machine Learning and Big Data analytics to help brands run high-impact influencer marketing campaigns.

Woowa Brothers injects US$1.5mn into Malaysian shopping aggregator iPrice; The capital will go into enhancing product and accelerating the rollout of partnerships; In March 2020, the products comparison startup raised Series B led by ACA Investments.

Indonesia’s B2C remittance startup Transfez raises seed funding co-led by East Ventures and Beenext; The funds will be used for product development and market penetration and extend its service in the B2B payments sector; Transfez allows users to transfer money across 50 countries in 26 currencies at a cost that is ‘up to 10x cheaper than banks’.

Esports Players League (ESPL) raises pre-Series A to grow its e-sports platform for grassroot gamers; Backers include RightBridge Ventures (led), Genting Ventures, Warner Music Asia, Datuk Wira SM Faisal, and Puncak Geliga Capital; ESPL has managed to organise 312 tournaments across 16 countries and have plans of growing the platform further;

Bukalapak buys 500 Startups-backed Itemku; The acquisition will help Itemku reach a wider audience in Indonesia through Bukalapak’s network; Itemku is a price comparison and marketplace for game credits and items in Indonesia; It has raised US$1.2mn Series A round from 500 Startups and Korean VC K-Run Ventures.

B2B farm-to-table marketplace Secai Marche raised US$1.5mn pre-Series A; Investors are Rakuten Ventures and Beyond Next Ventures; The company will use the money to expand fulfilment services, logistics, inventory, packing and picking.

Former Doctor Anywhere CEO’s new pet telehealth startup ZumVet bags seed funding; Investors are Pine Venture Partners (led), Aetius Capital and Purpose Venture Capital; Through ZumVet, pet owners can have online consultations and even schedule house visits with a vet; It also provides users with digital medical record and medicine delivery services for their pets.

5 plant-based foods trends revealed at Big Idea Venture’s tasting event; As more consumers adopt the new diet, plant-based food should offer not just the right taste, smell and price but also the right texture; Singapore was the first country in the world to give approval to the commercialisation of cell-based meat.

Unlikely mentors: What kids can teach you about entrepreneurship; Just like curious kids, you must seek out information, grow new theories, convert theories into actionable ideas, and then execute them. Asking questions and taking a game-based approach to critical thinking will make sure you remain nimble and develop potential solutions for problems your customers are facing.

Adoption of AI tools continue to grow in Singapore; AI seeks to simulate human abilities such as problem-solving, learning, planning and predicting; Widely held AI tools include virtual assistants or chatbots and data security threat detectors, as the pandemic forced more work to go remote and spurred more cyber crooks to go on their hunt.

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Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

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The global corporate landscape of today is in constant flux, expected to evolve continually in the coming years. Business leaders are now more conscious of the growing importance of innovation in their corporations. Driving innovation at pace helps established enterprises become invincible, where they constantly reinvent themselves before becoming obsolete, as suggested by a leading innovation expert and entrepreneur, Alexander Osterwalder.

Successful innovation is about driving brilliant ideas into a business with a sustainably profitable business model, which creates value for customers. Startup entrepreneurs, innovators, corporate executives, and investors have to keep themselves abreast of the latest market developments and explore opportunities for learning and growth to survive and scale.

This is especially true in the current context where in the past one and a half year, a global health pandemic has rapidly opened up the era of digital transformation across all sectors. As such, there has been a lot of emphasis on a collaborative ecosystem for success in the digital era. Studies have proven time and again that emerging players need to come together and learn from insiders and industry experts for business growth and development.

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

Helping create avenues for growth is the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), which will host the Corporate Innovation Summit and Global Matching 2021, with an aim to providing an unparalleled experience of innovation explosion and accelerating corporate innovation. With five key elements at its core focusing on change, connection, collaboration, growth, and forward, the event serves as a perfect platform for corporate executives and innovation specialists as well as regional investors to deep dive into the latest industry trends, network with potential partners, and tap into the minds of experts and insiders.

Fostering innovation and collaboration between corporate giants and deep tech startups

Considering the current global scenario under the pandemic, the Corporate Innovation Summit is organised in a hybrid format from 26th May to 2nd June 2021, allowing interested parties to join remotely and attend workshops and seminars in real-time. Participants can connect in real-time with the speakers via second screen technology and have an informative and personal experience.

While deep tech is becoming the next great wave of innovation, deep tech startups have been receiving increased attention among corporations, entrepreneurs, investors and media. Investment in deep tech startups has more than quadrupled over the past years, from approximately $15 billion in 2016 to more than $60 billion in 2020.

A new study authored by IESE Business School and supported by HKSTP will be released on the first day of the Corporate Innovation Summit, where the study explores how corporate giants can better collaborate with deep tech startups in East and Southeast Asia.

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

“Companies such as Toyota, Samsung, Alibaba and Lenovo are already innovating with startups in the deep tech field – a group of emerging technologies based on scientific discoveries or meaningful engineering innovations, offering a substantial advance over established technologies, and seeking to tackle some of the world’s fundamental challenges”, says IESE Business School coauthors, Josemaria Siota and Prof. Mª Julia Prats.

Covering Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Mainland China, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam, the study incorporates invaluable insights from 70+ interviews done with innovation leaders.

Learn about the latest trends and network with industry experts from anywhere

Keen stakeholders can join the summit from anywhere to learn about relevant issues, including global macroeconomic, sustainability, and corporate innovation trends shaped on the findings of academia. They will have access to prominent industry leaders, including the likes of Sebastian Paredes, CEO at DBS Bank (Hong Kong) Limited and Cat Rűst, Global Head, Technology at Standard Chartered Bank, among others.

From thought leadership sessions to executive roundtables and panel discussions to seminars — the event has a lot to offer. HKSTP will be co-hosting Global Matching 2021, the third biannual business and investment matching event from 26th May to 2nd June 2021. The Global Matching event serves as a launchpad for corporate buyers and regional investors to match potential startups and technology ventures worldwide for sourcing the best fit market-proven solutions and valuable portfolios.

Also read: The 5G era is here, and you can be part of the revolution

Another highlight of the summit is the online workshop, where participants can watch in real-time on 27th May. The workshop on “building invincible companies” by the leading author and in-demand speaker, Alexander Osterwalder, is specifically curated for corporate innovation specialists and decision-makers to help shape their corporate innovation strategies through real-world experiences and case studies.

While innovation takes on paramount importance than ever to business growth, Hong Kong Science & Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP), a statutory body dedicated to driving the development of innovation and technology in Hong Kong, is putting forward disruptive solutions around the globe for the corporates. Spearheaded by HKSTP, the Corporate Innovation Summit and Global Matching 2021 brings about opportunities for all key stakeholders of the corporate tech landscape worldwide to come together, learn, innovate and build a better, more resilient future.

Get a free virtual pass for the summit here: https://www.cisummit2021.com/

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

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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As the city state of Singapore settles into another lockdown, we are certain these unsung heroes who helped savage their organisation’s growth efforts in 2020 will rise up to the occasion once again. A part of the e27 Luminaries, this week we feature some of the notable names from startups in Singapore that made it to SEA’s most coveted list of fame.

To select companies in the list, e27 went through media coverage in the past year to see companies who managed to survive and thrive during the pandemic with various notable achievements, from closing a funding round to expanding to new markets. We asked these companies to nominate individuals whom they believe had done a remarkable job in spearheading these innovations.

Here are the Singapore heroes you should meet.

Lynette Seow, COO, Safe Space

Lynette started off as a Safe Space volunteer from IBM and eventually joined the mental health tech startup full-time as COO. She is bringing in her technology consulting and digital transformation experience to develop a B2B2C platform for people to reach out to the right counsellor at the right time/place and at the right price.

She’s proven integral in the scaling of Safe Space by leading both their product and research efforts.

She believes, mental health care should be accessible and affordable, convenient and confidential.

Wai Tsun Yim Wai, Data scientist Glints

With Wai at its leadership, the company has been focussing on expanding its data warehousing pipelines and capabilities, implementing data quality programme, and automating sourcing and matching of jobs with a quality candidate.

According to the Glints team, Wai’s empathy for his co-workers was very crucial during the time of COVID-19. Despite the challenges he faced in running a Data Science operation in a startup, he has taken them in his stride.

Joh Kia Boon, Senior Project Manager, Habitap

For re-organising and preparing a new, more resilient team structure.

Boon is a project manager with seven years of project management experience skilled at leading cross-functional teams. She led multiple initiatives at Habitap that includes re-organising the team structure to optimise productivity and streamline operations, mentoring team members to build effective working relationships in cross-functional teams and implementing best practices and internal standard operating procedures to increase delivery standards.

Dr Yang Guirong Gui Rong, Assistant Medical Director, Doctor Anywhere

He assumed the role of Assistant Medical Director in the midst of the pandemic in July 2020 but significantly led their efforts against COVID-19. Not only did he establish infrastructure and processes to scale up virtual consultations to serve 300,000 migrant workers, but also spearheaded their massive swab efforts in the dorms, which required close coordination with the Ministry of Health and Health Promotion Board.

He directed the overhauling hiring processes as well as standardising clinic opening times resulting in a 2-3x increase in revenue for all clinics. This strengthened service delivery at the physical clinics to launch 24/7 virtual clinic services and consequent increase in customer satisfaction.

Sheaha Ghazali, Community Manager, ZaZaZu

A natural people person, connector and events expert she secured great partnerships and went the extra mile to help ZaZaZu as a controversial business to break taboo of female sexual wellness. Although she only joined the team since Jan 2021, she has been a great brand ambassador by bringing in high brand association and spread positive conversation around sexual wellness for partners, clients and everyone else around her.

Zach Poon, Head of Credit at Funding Societies

A credit risk expert with eight years of experience across financial and insurance institutions, his leadership helped Funding Societies tighten their underwriting requirements on the financing opportunities for crowdfunding on the platform. The industries they focused on financing were those expected to thrive during the crisis like healthcare, medical supplies, and transportation. As a result, we managed to keep our platform default rate under two per cent throughout the pandemic.

Joyce Ho, Head of People Success, ELXR

Known for confidentiality and credibility, she is a skilled HR personnel. Ho was instrumental in hiring for ELXR and growing the team five times during the pandemic which contributed to the company’s 140 per cent growth YoY.

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The e27 Luminaries is an initiative by e27 to celebrate the unsung heroes of the SEA startup ecosystem. Discover these notable companies and individuals here.

Image credit: Adhitya Andanu from Pexels

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If you’re like most professionals, you’re not looking to stay in the same position for the rest of your career. Maybe you’ve already probably started brainstorming ways to move up the career ladder and land your dream job.

However, while most people think that the best way to get promoted is by learning new hard skills or working overtime, there’s another important component that will convince your boss you’re ready to move up: interpersonal skills.

Interpersonal skills—the ability to interact and get along with others—is an oft-overlooked set of skill that’s actually so important that, according to a study done by Vitalsmarts (a corporate training and leadership development firm), 92 per cent of respondents said that having poor interpersonal skills will hinder an employee’s career progression.

To help you put your best foot forward, we discuss four important interpersonal skills you should develop if you want to impress your boss and get that promotion.

Managing negative emotions

When something goes wrong or you’re having a bad day, your emotions take centre stage. Unfortunately letting your emotions get the best of you in the workplace can lead to unfortunate spats with your colleagues, a visibly poor attitude and rash decision making.

Furthermore, being led by our emotions also often causes us to prioritise feelings over facts, often leading us to make decisions based on our emotional state rather than the hard facts. This can be dangerous as emotional actions can lead to biases, oversight and costly mistakes. If your boss sees that you can manage negative emotions and stick to facts, they’ll feel confident in trusting you with difficult situations.

They’ll also see you as someone who is able to put their feelings aside to focus on what needs to be done to move the company forward—without giving in to bias.

Also Read: 7 life skills we can learn from Mark Zuckerberg

Some emotions that can be difficult to deal with in the workplace include frustration, anger, worry and insecurities, feeling down, and negative attitudes towards others. Once you recognise any of these emotions, it’s important to find out what triggered them and then focus on either removing the trigger or moving past it in appropriate ways.

If your negative feelings were triggered by a colleague, then you can take a second to relax and then calmly give them constructive feedback. However, all of this is not to say that you should suppress your emotions.

Instead, it’s important to acknowledge your negative emotions and solve them openly. It’s also important to foster positive emotions within your team, which will make for a more creative, productive and less stressed work environment.

Conflict management

Conflict in the workplace is unavoidable and encapsulates everything from small disagreements of opinion to larger issues like a problem with a client. Being able to de-escalate conflicts is another key factor that managers look at when considering your promotion. Whether you’re dealing with an unhappy client or disagreements with your team, stepping in and taking charge calmly and effectively signals to your boss that you are a dedicated problem solver.

In fact, a report by Udemy found that conflict management is the top soft skill that was trending among its users, making employees who excel at this skill to be a valuable asset to any team.

If you’ve never dealt with conflict in the workplace before, you’ll need three skills to get started: self-awareness, collaboration and promotion of a productive work environment.

Also Read: How to develop soft skills

When conflict occurs, you will need to identify the root of the issue (it could even be you, hence the self-awareness), collaborate with the third-party to find a potential solution and then promote that solution and apply it to avoid future problems.

Lastly, you’ll need to remember that conflict resolution doesn’t focus on right vs. wrong, but instead works towards coming to an agreement.

Empathy

Empathy, or the ability to share and understand the feelings of others, is one of the most important interpersonal skills you can have in the workplace. When you are feeling frustrated at a coworker or when a coworker is mad at you, the common instinct would be to get defensive and argue your point.

However, the purpose of being empathetic is to neutralise the negativity and identify the common ground by putting yourself in your colleague’s shoes. When you are actively empathising, you are seeing past the initial emotional reaction and are attempting to see what is happening behind the scenes to solve interpersonal issues.

For instance, next time a coworker makes a mistake, you can practice empathy by putting yourself in his/her shoes and having a chat about what could have caused the error. Maybe there is trouble in the family and it’s spilling over into their work, or there was a lack of communication about what needed to be done.

Once you are able to see things from the other person’s perspective, you will be able to identify and solve the problems effectively without putting down your coworker or creating additional conflicts.

Showing that you are an empathetic worker is crucial for managerial promotions and studies have shown that empathetic managers are viewed as better performers at their jobs by their bosses.

Mid-level managers who want to move upwards can show additional empathy by watching for signs of overwork, showing interest in needs and dreams, willingness to help with personal problems and showing compassion.

Open dialogue

If you want to show your boss you’re an effective leader, then you’ll need to show him that you are able to take in multiple perspectives and engage in open dialogue. An open dialogue also shows that you are not being led by your ego, but that you are willing to let others have a say and engage with their ideas.

Also Read: Why there is no better time to upskill than this COVID-19 crisis

When you engage in open dialogue, you are curious, non-judgemental, and are present and listening to the other person. There is no hidden agenda and you work towards guiding the conversation through open-ended questions.

If you are looking for a promotion that will land you in a leadership position, showing that you know how to foster an open dialogue with your colleagues and managers will be crucial in proving that you will put your team and the company’s best interests ahead of your own interests.

If you want to improve your interpersonal skills, sites like Udemy and Coursera provide a plethora of different courses for developing the soft skills mentioned above. Most courses at Udemy cost less than S$50 when they’re on sale and you are able to complete them in just a few hours’ time.

If there are courses that are too expensive, you can look for alternatives that could be on sale or that are cheaper. Some courses may even be free or are eligible for the S$500 MySkillsFuture credit.

If you feel like you already excel in these skills and want to learn others, then you can consider moving towards making use of traineeship opportunities and enhancing your technical skills to make an even stronger case for why you deserve that promotion.

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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: Charl Folscher on Unsplash

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Adam Lane Robinson is a Wall Streeter who turned to entrepreneurship after several unique experiences made him realise that it’s what he was made for.

He currently runs GetEmails, which is described as the world’s first-ever email-based retargeting software.

He’s also the Co-Founder and President of Robly, an email marketing firm.

In this fascinating talk, you’ll hear about:

• What made Adam want to become an entrepreneur
• How to validate your idea
• How to determine when to pivot
• How to come up with new ideas to test
• Three great tools for measuring user behavior
• And much more!

If you don’t see the player above, click on the link below to listen directly!

Acast

Apple

Spotify

Stitcher

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This article was first published on We Live To Build.

Image Credit: Michal Czyz on Unsplash

The post Validating, testing, and pivoting with Adam Lane Robinson appeared first on e27.