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.

–

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: Executium on Unsplash

The post What does the future of CBDCs actually look like and why does it matter? appeared first on e27.

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.

–

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: Nghia Nguyen on Unsplash

The post Advertising with privacy: How SoMin employs AI to build brands and preserve anonymity online appeared first on e27.

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.

—

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

Image Credit: ProSpark

The post Singapore’s ProSpark secures seed funding for its corporate e-learning and training solution appeared first on e27.

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.

—

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

Image Credit: Lapasar

The post Malaysian B2B e-wholesaler Lapasar lands US$1.8M funding appeared first on e27.

Bonza, an Indonesian Big Data analytics startup, has secured US$2 million in a funding round led by early-stage VC firm East Ventures.

Elev8.vc, a B2B-focused VC fund based in Singapore, also participated.

The round comes almost a year after it raised an undisclosed seed funding.

Bonza intends to inject the newly raised capital to accelerate its vision to become a leading data platform company in Southeast Asia and to further develop its platform offerings.

Founded in 2020, the idea of Bonza hit co-founders Elsa Chandra and Philip Thomas when they witnessed how Big Data models accelerated the speed and quality of insights to make data-driven decisions in Traveloka, a company where both worked before.

During their time in Traveloka, they saw an opportunity to help other companies in Southeast Asia to tackle their data challenges and use data more effectively for decision making.

Also Read: Mosaic Solutions raises US$1.5M to provide data analytics, inventory management solutions to SEA’s industry

Bonza’s no-code approach for data analytics and AI deployment helps technical and non-technical teams to build and deploy data-driven solutions at scale.

With its platform, organisations can integrate disparate data sources in the organisation into a single source, build and deploy Machine Learning models — all within its user interface.

One of its use cases includes when its fintech consumer client created a real-time fraud detection engine and monitoring tool to reduce fraud rates within the platform.

The company claims to have achieved profitability within just a year of operations.

“Getting value from their data is a global problem that organisations face, and Bonza is on the mission to enable organizations to go beyond static dashboards and operationalize analytics and AI solutions at scale. When speaking to customers, we found many data teams spent more than 50 per cent of their time preparing data for reporting. With our platform, they are able to automate these data workflows and focus on building and deploying data solutions easily to drive impact,” Thomas said.

“Every business today, regardless of size, has access to enormous amounts of business-related data. The companies that will thrive are the ones that can nimbly harness these data – from disparate structured and unstructured sources — to provide real-time, evolving, and mission-critical insights,” added Aditya Mathur, Managing Director, Elev8.vc.

–

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

Image Credit: Bonza

The post Bonza raises US$2M to help non-tech teams at enterprises to deploy data-driven solutions appeared first on e27.

Indonesian beauty-tech company Social Bella snags US$56mn; Investors are L Catterton, Indies Capital, East Ventures and Jungle; The company will use the capital for product innovation and continued expansion across SEA; Social Bella runs 21 omnichannel stores in nine cities in Indonesia and one in Vietnam.

Ex-CEO of Rocket Internet Asia launches new e-commerce venture Una Brands with a US$40mn seed round; Una Brands provides a “fast and fair way” for e-commerce biz owners to sell their firms that have annual revenue between US$300K and US$20mn; It is platform-agnostic and acquires businesses across leading e-commerce platforms, including Amazon, Lazada, Shopee and Shopify.

SCI Ecommerce raises US$38mn led by Asia Partners; The e-commerce enabler plans to set up local teams in Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines, and hire at least 100 people across SEA and China; SCI is planning to pursue an IPO in the US at the end of the year with a target market valuation of US$1bn.

E-commerce brand aggregator Rainforest launches with US$36mn funding; Investors include Nordstar (lead) and Insignia Ventures; Formed by former execs from Carousell and Fave, Rainforest is a serial acquirer of profitable Amazon businesses for a typical purchase price of US$1mn+; The company looks to acquire at least a few more Amazon-native brands from brand owners globally.

Vietnam’s digital entertainment company POPS Worldwide aims to close US$50mn Series D by Q3 2021; The funds to be raised will be used for expansion to Philippines and deepening footprint in Indonesia; It has earlier raised US$30mn in 2019; POPS helps global brands localise their content for Southeast Asian viewers; To date, it claims to have bagged 400mn+ fans and 50bn+ views.

Indonesian P2P lending firm focused on women micro-entrepreneurs Amartha secures US$28mn; Investors are Women’s World Banking Capital Partners II, MDI Ventures, Mandiri Capital and UOB Venture; It is a P2P lending platform; This comes fresh off Amartha’s US$50mn debt financing round from US-based Lendable in February this year.

Hangry swallows US$13mn Series A to scale its cloud kitchen and multi-brand concept in Indonesia; It plans to open 120+ outlets in total, with the aim to launch 20+ dine-in restaurants across Indonesia in 2021; Hangry follows an asset-light business model wherein it produces “quality food at affordable prices” to cater to the urban, mobile-first consumers in the archipelago.

FPT acquires majority stake in SaaS platform Base.vn; Base.vn has developed a job application tracking system, a task and project management platform, and internal request management platform; Base.vn has previously raised US$1.3mn in a pre-Series A funding round, co-led by Alpha JWC Ventures and Beenext.

Indonesian Big Data company Bonza secures US$2mn funding; Investors are East Ventures (lead) and Elev8.vc; Bonza is developing its platform offerings to better support the enterprises in deploying data and AI solutions through a no-code platform.

P2P lending platform Modal Rakyat secures OJK licence, funding from Fazz Financial; Modal Rakyat is a working capital enabler for startups and SMEs; Through its B2B2C platform, it unlocks ‘productive pay-later’ feature for various use cases of tech-startups ecosystem, ranging from logistic marketplace, POS, to payment point online banks; It claims to have 12K active lenders.

Joseph Phua’s Turn Capital acquires Dapp Pocket to create SEA-focused retail crypto exchange; The crypto exchange OMO is aimed at being the gateway for SEA new and mainstream adopters to the world of crypto; Dapp Pocket, a blockchain company in Taiwan.

Singapore’s fintech startup Few¢ents lands US$1.6mn seed; Investors include M Venture Partners, Hustle Fund and angels; Few¢ents helps digital publishers monetise premium content such as articles, video, and podcasts, through a pay-per-content service that sits on the publishers’ sites; It accepts 50 currencies from around the world.

EDB New Ventures launches new Corporate Venture Launchpad programme; It aims to support large and established Singaporean companies in building new ventures in new areas of growth beyond their existing core businesses; Set to run as a one-year pilot, the programme is investing US$7.4mn to undertake 20 concept validation sprints.

Temasek-backed Big Idea Ventures closes US$50mn debut alternative fund; LPs include Le Groupe, AAK, Meiji Co., Buhler, Enterprise Singapore; Fund 1 has backed companies like Shiok Meats; The fund also backs an accelerator programme in NY and Singapore, which identifies and nurtures top talent in the foodtech space in the US and Asia.

Meet the 4 Luminaries startups that made a pivot to tide over COVID-19 crisis; How RewardNation, Greenhouse, Travelhorse and Sqreem Technologies used the pandemic to its advantage and to explore different options.

UN’s WeEmpowerAsia launches accelerator for female entrepreneurs in the care sector; UN Women Care Accelerator will run for 6 months and will provide training, mentorship and funding support to five selected startups; Seedstars and Bopinc will co-lead the training, exchange and mentorship.

500 Startups, Enterprise Singapore launch programme for emerging entrepreneurs to build startups from scratch; 500 Ignition Singapore will help emerging entrepreneurs with product research, MVP development and business plan ideation; Key mentors joining the programme include Leesa Soulodre (General Partner, R31Ventures), Jin Tanaka (co-founder and Managing Partner, Shogun Capital), Jaspreet S Dua (EIR, 500 Startups).

Indonesia’s Cermati Fintech Group raises funding; Investors include MDI Ventures (lead) and Djarum Group; It operates Cermati.com (a financial marketplace in Indonesia), Cermati Protect (a digital insurance brokerage), and Indodana (a digital fintech lending company).

How Singapore’s tech community is helping India in its battle against COVID-19; Several Singaporean investors are running crowdfunding campaigns in partnership with Temasek and Giving.SG to raise money towards this cause.

Facebook launches 2nd edition of Community Accelerator in Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand; It also announces expansion into 3 new markets Singapore, Malaysia, India; An 8-month programme, it will connect community leaders to experts, coaches, and a customised curriculum to create a plan to strengthen their community and meet their goals; Up to US$7.5mn will be distributed to participants through a series of grants up to US$50K per participant.

How to create SaaS content for increased acquisition and retention; In this article, you’ll learn how to identify and better understand your potential audience’s needs; You’ll find tips for creating marketing content throughout the SaaS sales cycle and engaging the public and potential investors.

How to retain local talent as global demand for remote tech workers surges; Embracing a strong workplace culture is the key strategic plan for local companies; Companies should follow lean structure, be low in the hierarchy, be open to experimentation, be highly geared to learning, low regulations and roadblocks, and provide healthy and positive collegial environment.

10 surprising things that rely on AI; AI has transformed many aspects of our lives for the better; It even played a role in developing vaccines against COVID-19; But you may be surprised just how many things we take for granted that rely on AI.

—

Image Credit: Rainforest

The post Ecosystem Roundup: SEA gets 2 new e-commerce brand aggregators + it’s raining startup funding in Indonesia appeared first on e27.

Rainforest, an e-commerce brand aggregator, has officially announced its launch with a seed financing round of US$36 million.

The funding round consisted of US$6.5 million in equity financing, led by Nordstar, with participation from Insignia Venture Partners, and a US$30 million debt facility from an undisclosed US-based debt fund.

Rainforest will use the funds to acquire promising Amazon FBA (Fulfilment by Amazon) brands, invest in technology, and hire top talent to join their Singapore-headquartered and globally distributed team.

Also Read: Ex-CEO of Rocket Internet Asia launches new e-commerce venture Una Brands with a US$40M seed round

Rainforest was founded in 2020 by experienced startup operators in commerce, marketplaces, and SaaS. JJ Chai (Rainforest CEO) formerly led growth and strategy for Carousell and was Airbnb’s former Southeast Asia Managing Director. Jason Tan (CFO) was former CFO at OVO and Fave. Per-Ola Röst (CTO) is an Amazon SaaS software entrepreneur and also a 7-figure Amazon FBA seller.

As an e-commerce brand aggregator, Rainforest acquires consumer e-commerce brands, providing entrepreneurs a healthy exit. It also invests into the acquired brands to grow them globally.

The company will be initially acquiring Amazon-native brands from brand owners globally, focusing on Asia-based Amazon FBA sellers. Its mission is to fulfil the potential of microbrands, growing brands with great products to delight customers worldwide.

Amazon’s third-party GMV was US$300 billion in 2020, growing at 50 per cent year on year. With over 30 per cent of the top third-party sellers based out of Asia, Rainforest is well-positioned to acquire these brands and scale them faster while providing sellers with an attractive exit opportunity.

Operational since January 2021, Rainforest has acquired three brands to date in the home and personal care categories. “It’s a great pleasure to provide these entrepreneurs a cash exit. We’ll be working hard to take their brands to the next level and hope to do the same for many more e-commerce entrepreneurs,” said CEO Chai.

Also Read: Why brands fail on e-commerce and what they can do about it

Coincidentally, Singapore also witnessed the rollout of another e-commerce brand aggregator today. Una Brands, started by former CEO of Rocket Internet Asia and founder of foodpanda and ZEN Rooms Kiren Tanna, has also raised US$40 million in seed funding.

—

Image Credit: Rainforest

The post Former Carousell, OVO execs launch e-commerce brand aggregator Rainforest with US$36M seed funding appeared first on e27.

Facebook has launched the second edition of its Community Accelerator program in Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.

Besides, it has announced the expansion into three new markets — Singapore, Malaysia and India.

The accelerator is part of Facebook’s community leadership programme, a global initiative that is focused on investing in leaders that drive change in the world through community building, empowerment, and encouragement.

Slated to run for eight months, the programme promises to provide each participant with US$50,000 in funding, along with US$1 million in additional funding for a subset of communities.

Non-financial support in the form of training, mentorship and connections with experts and coaches will also be provided.

Also Read: Meet the 14 startups presenting at Facebook accelerator’s pitch day

Last date to apply for the programme is May 31, 2021.

Only the communities that have had a presence in Facebook Groups for over a year with a minimum size of 1,000 members can participate.

Grace Clapham, Director at APAC Community Partnerships and Programmes at Facebook, said: “Online communities have been around since the beginning of the internet, but we’ve seen them grow tremendously in the last year, as a result of COVID-19. There are now more than 70 million admins and moderators running active Facebook Groups.”

“Often, it is everyday people who start and run these groups as a labor of love – with no training or support. Through the Community Accelerator programme, we have helped community leaders from around the world and in APAC to build, grow and scale their communities. With the launch of this year’s Community Accelerator programme, we look forward to discovering the next cohort of community leaders in Asia, and help them to unlock their full potential and create meaningful impact,” she added.

Since announcing the first edition in March 2020, 77 communities from 13 countries have participated in the Facebook Community Accelerator programme.

–

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

The post Facebook launches second edition of SEA-focused Community Accelerator programme appeared first on e27.

Have you ever wondered where did your lunch come from?

No, the answer is not as simple as “the hawker centre near the office”. There is an entire system involved to bring that bowl of chicken rice to our table. This complex system begins in the production process of the food itself: growing the livestock, planting the rice in the field. After that, there is the matter of bringing in the agricultural products in the city, making it accessible for the uncle who sells the chicken rice.

Even after you are done eating, there is still another process of managing the waste from your meal.

This complex process –in addition to affecting our survival for the day– can also affect how our future look like. History has proven many times that progress in human civilisation is strongly related to how humans produce their food.

As detailed by National Geographic,  12,000 years ago, changes in the agriculture sector “triggered” a massive change in society that its development has been dubbed the Neolithic Revolution.

“Traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyles … were swept aside in favour of permanent settlements and a reliable food supply. Out of agriculture, cities and civilizations grew, and because crops and animals could now be farmed to meet demand, the global population rocketed — from some five million people 10,000 years ago, to more than seven billion today.”

This is why, especially after the changes brought by the pandemic, we believe that we are now standing at the crossroad that will take us into our future –starting from what we put on our plate. The tech innovation that we are using in producing, distributing, and managing our food supply will determine the quality of our life today, and beyond.

This matter has become more urgent if we are putting the local context into it. For example, in Singapore, the government has been making effort to push for stronger local food production in order to curb dependency on imported food. This effort has also included the works of startups such as ACE for fishery and Sustenir Agriculture for fresh produces.

In Indonesia, startups such as TaniHub Group and JalaTech are working to improve the livelihood of farmers while making food more accessible for the customers.

Certainly, the investors do not want to be left behind as we begin to see more and more funding being announced in the foodtech vertical.

This is certainly an opportunity that innovators do not want to miss.

Also Read: Foodtech startup Next Gen Foods shares the secret behind their successful expansion, fundraising

What is on the menu for e27

As part of our mission to empower entrepreneurs with tools and resources to build and grow their company, e27 aims to provide content that helps startup founders, investors, and other professionals in the ecosystem make an informed decision for their businesses.

To achieve that, we have prepared a series of articles that will focus on the different branches of foodtech ecosystem.

There are different definition to what constitute the branches of the foodtech industry. But Forward Fooding, a US-based foodtech innovation hub, conveniently divided the industry into eight macro-categories:

• Agritech
• Consumer apps and services
• Food delivery
• Food processing
• Food safety and traceability
• Kitchen and restaurant tech
• Next-gen food and drinks
• Surplus and waste management

We are preparing eight articles that will look into the challenges and opportunities available in each category, and the startups that are working in the sector.

In addition to content produced by our team of in-house writers, we have also published written pieces by our contributors –and are looking forward to publishing more. If you are working in the foodtech vertical and would like to share insights and knowledge to the SEA startup ecosystem, feel free to check out our Contributor Programme feature.

Apart from all of the above, we are also opening up opportunities to collaborate with organisation and individuals who have the mission to build the foodtech ecosystem in the region. If you have great ideas that you would like to discuss with our team, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

We are looking forward to seeing the innovation that you are bringing to the (dinner) table.

—

Image Credit: Cristiano Pinto on Unsplash

The post The spotlight on foodtech: Why we believe that what we put on our plate will determine the future appeared first on e27.

Releasing a product or service into the market is considered the penultimate milestone for startups. However, it is merely the first of multiple checkpoints along the startup growth journey. Once products reach the hands of users or customers, startups will find that customers require technical support and feedback resolution. Failure to do so will lead to customers abandoning the product. At this stage, providing customer service becomes an imperative and determinant for a startup’s perseveration.

On the matter of customer experience, the Zendesk Startups CX Benchmark Report 2020 points out that startups surpassing performance benchmarks are those that have invested promptly and heavily in customer service. The research, based on the analysis of the timing, tools, and results of customer metrics among 4,414 startups, found that fast growers have doubled customer support agent numbers within 18 months or less between publicly disclosed funding rounds.

Also read: Future-proof your startup and Fast Forward with Hewlett Packard Enterprise

However, less than a third of startups have plotted a customer strategy, which is a disservice to future growth. Meanwhile, startups who have nimby deployed resources, tools, and communication channels to build a seamless customer experience since the early days are already reaping the rewards of fast growth.

The correlation between solid customer experience and fast growth is undeniable. Constant engagement with customers enables startups to collect feedback critical for product improvement. Moreover, establishing a solid relationship with customers is a sure way to win their trust and loyalty.

Time is of the essence

With time being a determining factor, startups looking to achieve fast-growth status preferably set up customer support within 10 months of funding, then cascading that into adding messaging within 14 months and live channels within 17 months. Once established, help centres should have the capacity to process 30 articles within six months as startups expand the number of apps within that time period. The longer, two-year goal is to decrease first response time (FRTs) between 3 to 8 hours.

Other benchmarks involve efficacy, a lesson gleaned from fast-growing startups. In two years, the response teams of fast-growing startups have cut the initial wait time of 14 hours by half when resolving tickets and responding to customer questions. To further optimise customer service, these fast-growing startups escalate the efficiency of their response teams, whereby the volume of tickets per agent is on average 42% higher for fast-growing startups compared to others.

Achieving the above calls for startups to build the necessary groundwork. Fast-growing startups adopt customisations and setting protocols, in the form of APIs, apps, and automation tools, to collect higher volumes of customer data via ticket forms, prioritisation of incoming requests, and goal-setting. Additionally, this group of startups utilise additional public apps that give agents fast and easy access to data.

Also read: Future-proofing Singaporean SMEs for a stronger digital future

This customer-focused approach pays big dividends, as evident among leading startups. Michael Wystrach, CEO and Co-Founder of Freshly, a meal-delivery service startup, shares that “CX has been a top priority for Freshly from day one. As soon as we shipped our first meal, we knew the questions, comments, and concerns from our customers would immediately follow. How we dealt with those touchpoints would define our reputation as a customer-first brand.”

Similarly, Rich Waldron, CEO and co-founder of Tray.io, a general automation platform pioneer, notes that “We’ve seen startups, as well as successful firms such as Outreach and Tucows, grow quickly by using automated workflows to close internal process gaps across their tech stack. The key to startup growth isn’t just automating time-consuming manual work, but also scaling out processes across the entire organisation to convert more leads, win more deals, respond more quickly to customer requests, and do more, faster.”

Fast-growing startups such as Freshly and Tray.io do not only focus on deploying customer service rapidly, they also carefully consider what customer service channels they should employ. Omnichannel and live channels are the primary options among fast-growing startups. The Zendesk report shows that within the first two years, one out of four fast-growing startups implemented omnichannel and 20% appended live chat.

Superior omnichannel and live channel options

Omnichannel involves arranging a wide option of touchpoints – phone, email, chat, SMS, social messaging – to connect with customers. Combined with a robust backend integration, the omnichannel affords startups with a consistent support experience because agents are uniformly informed about accounts and issues, enabling these agents to respond to customers speedily and accurately.

Live communication features such as chat and phone support, all part of the self-service approach, yield good results as well. Chat support, alongside omnichannel, have been proven to decrease wait times and enhance agent efficiency, enabling fast-moving startups to double resolution times by their second year. Taking further cues from market leaders, unicorns have been 61% faster in picking up self-service features compared to non-unicorns.

Also read: Residency and acceleration programme to bring global startups to South Korea

Plus, fast-growing startups layer their omnichannel and live channel features with other tools that boost effectiveness. Fast-growing startups amp up email support by choosing solutions that allow customisation, are highly extensible, and integrate smoothly with other platforms and data sources. They are also equipping agents with the tools, from apps and integrations that streamline workflow to macros that send consistent responses, to ease work. Also, fast-growing startups deploy solutions to divert low-complexity customer requests towards self-service and live channels, therefore easing the load of agents while quickly tackling customer needs.

Dig deep to learn more

Overall, startups need to build up a customer service experience that corresponds with long-term business objectives, rolling out new features in a timely manner while consistently emphasising on service speed and efficiency.

If you’re interested in learning more key insights on the startup ecosystem, you can access the comprehensive CX Startups Benchmark Report 2020 here.

– –

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

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.

– –

Photo by Olha Ruskykh from Pexels

The post Want to fast-track your growth? Fast-track your way to improved customer experience appeared first on e27.