If you are about to start or are already running a technology company, I suggest you consider focusing on the real estate industry. Real estate is one of the world’s largest economic sectors, both in asset size and transaction volume.

Yet, it remains fragmented and ripe for innovation.

Consider the amount of money involved. Around the world, real assets have a total value greater than US$217 trillion. That is nearly three times the US$82 trillion total global GDP. 

If you are reading this, you are probably in Asia, which is good news because this region alone accounts for about half of the global total property value.

Now, let’s put the asset values aside for a moment and look at transaction volume. If you estimate that each property turns over every 20 years on average, real estate worth about US$11 trillion is bought and sold on an annual basis.

If you make a very conservative two per cent estimate of advertising and commission costs on those transactions, you arrive at US$200 to US$400 billion a year. 

Is the barrier to entry in the real estate industry too high?

We have established that the real estate market is large enough. Still, perhaps you worry that other innovative companies are already in place and represent an insurmountable obstacle to new startups. 

In a perfect world, ruled entirely by logic and reason, this would be true. In our world today, it is not.

When ranked by assets or volume of transactions, many leading industry players have found they can do perfectly well in the current environment without investing much in technology or innovation. 

Look at real estate agents. A good agent can make decent money with the most basic of tools. In the past two decades of disruption, other industries with larger margins were targeted first, with real estate largely overlooked. But this state of affairs will not last forever. 

Also Read: Ex-Zalo executives’ proptech startup Rever snags US$10.2M from Mekong Capital

Innovation and disruption are coming to the real estate industry. Why shouldn’t you be the one to bring them?

Worldwide, there are only 1,724 proptech companies, according to the PropTech Global Trends 2021 Barometer. Fewer than 10 per cent of these are in Asia, and most Asian proptechs are in China and India. They are not distributed evenly across the region. 

The relatively small number of proptech companies and their concentration in the US, which accounts for 59 per cent, leaves the field wide open for innovators in Asia.

How to decide where to focus

The real estate industry is multifaceted and immense, meaning there is a surplus of opportunity for the clever entrepreneur. To help you decide where to focus your attention, it can help to divide the world of proptech into these four conceptual categories: 

• investing
• building
• managing
• living

An “investing” startup might provide tools to enable real estate investors to evaluate opportunities more effectively. 

In the “building” category, you might offer technologies to facilitate construction management. 

In the “managing” space, your startup might focus on providing tools to real estate agents, property search for buyers and renters, or the management of investment properties.

And companies in the “living” category might focus on facility management or home IoT solutions such as security or energy management.

There are uncountable other opportunities besides those mentioned above. Yes, there are some excellent proptech businesses already operating in each of these categories, but much territory remains open to your claiming a stake. 

In fact, real estate search (“managing”), according to the Barometer, accounts for 56 per cent of all global proptech investment since 2000. 

With so much investment concentrated in a single sub-sector of proptech, there is a tremendous need for investment and innovation across nearly every other area.

Also Read: The world of proptech and its fate in a post-pandemic world

Choose where to focus based on your capabilities, technology and knowledge. In general, seek to enable market participants to increase their scale efficiently or to make better decisions, two use cases that rely on data and technology to implement.

But remember, one of the most common reasons that Asian startups fail is that they do not solve a real problem for their target users or customers.

Don’t put technology first. Don’t put a buzzword first. And don’t put what you wish were true ahead of the real problem that industry participants may be willing to pay you to solve. In this way, founding a company is the ultimate act of humility. You must put aside your own desires and instead provide what your users and customers want.

Hey there, big spender

Let’s look at real estate developers as an example. 

Most money spent on property marketing and advertising in Asia has come straight out of the pockets of developers. They run a highly capital intensive business, and their decisions can bind their company’s resources for years at a time. Sales is a volume game for them, and their advertising and sales budgets can run as high as 15 per cent of total development value. 

For all of these reasons, developers are among the most forward-looking adopters of innovations and technologies and excellent potential customers for any proptech that can improve their decision making or development and sales process.

Before agents were making wide use of virtual reality, 3-D walk-throughs and international marketing platforms, developers were employing these techniques in their sales centres.

Juwai IQI is not alone in focusing on the segment. Our super-app Atlas has given our agents a 41 per cent productivity gain. With time, we will further facilitate the transaction by integrating finance and title transfer.

That is just our path. The opportunities in proptech are practically endless. I encourage you to find your own.

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Lazada rebrands its logistics units to Lazada Logistics

The story: Southeast Asian e-commerce giant Lazada announced that it has rebranded its logistics units Lazada eLogistics (LEL) and Lazada Express (LEX) to Lazada Logistics. According to the company, the new blue colour palette of Lazada Logistics reflects efficiency and reliability.

Lazada Logistics also introduced multi-channel logistics (MCL) services, which provide a single stock fulfilment solution to help e-commerce enablers and brands fulfil across all e-commerce channels seamlessly. This will apply to customers ordering on the Lazada platform and other e-commerce channels.

About the business units: LEL managed the fulfilment and logistics with third-party logistics (3PL) providers, whereas LEX handled the parcel delivery to customers.

About the company: Founded in 2012, Lazada Group operates in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It aims to serve 300 million shoppers by 2030. Since 2016, Lazada is the Southeast Asia flagship platform of the Alibaba Group.

Digital wealth management platform Syfe announces key hires in Singapore

The people:

Samantha Horton has been appointed as the Vice President, Head of Business Development. Horton started her career in Morgan Stanley doing equity research, covering the ASEAN financial sector. She joined Syfe after 11 years at a multi-billion dollar sovereign wealth backed hedge fund, Broad Peak Investment Advisers, where she was Managing Director and co-head of data analytics.

Jack Prickett joined Syfe as Head of New Business. Prickett was previously regional head of securities operations at UBS in Asia. During his 15 years at the bank working in London, Hong Kong and Singapore, Jack built a 150 people team from ground-up.

Brice Derouet was appointed as Head of Finance. Derouet oversees all financial operations, including planning, reporting and compliance. Before joining Syfe, he led the finance team at the co-living operator Hmlet.

Laurens Koppelaar has taken up the role of Head of Partnerships at Syfe. Koppelaar is also responsible for the strategic development of the “Syfe for Work” offering, which comprises holistic financial well-being solutions for corporates. Before joining Syfe earlier this year, he led the international growth across Southeast Asia as CEO of the insurtech company Symbo.

Also Read: RaRa Delivery rakes in US$3.25M to provide instant delivery for e-commerce in Indonesia

Prosperna raises US$555,000 in seed funding round

Investors: Led by Foxmont Capital Partners, other key investors in the funding round included Johnsen Global Business Ventures.

Plans: Part of the US$555,000 funding will be invested in expanding their range of features and growing and supporting their customer base.

About the company: Prosperna is a Philippine-based online store builder with a mission to empower 100,000 MSMEs with simple and affordable e-commerce software.

Tooliqa Innovations raises US$1.5 million in pre-seed funding

Investors: Aditya Raj (co-founder of MarketCube), Dipak Singh (co-founder of MarketCube), and Deepak Bansal. It also included angel investors such as Dilip Singh, Raj Gupta, Sooraj Malik, and Anant Jain.

Plans: The Gurgaon-based company will use the funds to expand research & development, create systems for product development, and build infrastructure for manufacturing.

About the company: Founded in 2021, Tooli.qa focusses on deep learning, computer vision, and 3D. It aims to make 3D and computer vision accessible to all industries and as many domains as possible.

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Image Credit: Lazada

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Medici, a Vietnamese health-tech company, has secured an undisclosed amount in seed funding led by early-stage investor Insignia Ventures.

With the new investment, the startup aims to foray into the insurance industry. It allows the startup to act as a middleman between insurance firms and the general public, which will receive suggestions and guidance from the broker to make the right financial decisions. 

In July, Medici received a 50-year insurance broker license from the government. Under this license, it intends to distribute a broad range of health and life insurance products. 

Besides, it also supports customers with claims management and co-develops insurance products, leveraging the data and insights collected through existing services.

Medici has partnered with companies such as FWD, Bao Viet Insurance, PTI, PVI, VBI, and Bao Minh Insurance to co-launch insurance products.

“The introduction of insurance products and services brings us a step closer to becoming a full-stack platform that serves the healthcare needs of Vietnamese people through their families, neighbourhood communities, and even companies,” said Duc Anh Ngo, CEO and founder of Medici.

Also read: Bolstering healthtech: Thailand’s bid to become Asia’s medical hub

Medici was founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneur Ngo, a Fulbright MBA alumnus and former Grab executive, as a telemedicine service for mobile consultation with doctors in their network. 

In the current form, it acts as an online marketplace that enables access and promotes transparency around drug and supplement purchases. Medici’s healthcare services ecosystem includes telemedicine, health screenings, and a marketplace for drugs and supplements. Its network also includes in-house doctor influencers in Vietnam. 

Medici has also partnered with over 50 hospitals and clinics across the country, enabling it to provide health screenings for its users. The company has also expanded operations to 30+ provinces and cities in Vietnam, with 100,000 e-health profiles on its platform. 

This medical network will be critical in the rollout of the startup’s insurance products and services as doctors, clinics, and hospitals can then assist customers in policy consulting and claims management.

It has also rolled out its services through more than 100 corporate partners, such as Shopee, Garena, and delivery company Giaohangtietkiem.

“Healthtech in an emerging market like Vietnam is a tough challenge,” said Yinglan Tan, founding managing partner of Insignia Ventures. “We believe Medici is in the right position to become the go-to digital platform for insurance and healthcare services in Vietnam.”

The firm claims to have 100 per cent quarter-on-quarter topline growth and 20 per cent monthly user growth.

According to World Bank, the Vietnam insurance market has low insurance penetration rates (premiums/GDP) at 2.4 per cent in 2018. Meanwhile, the insurance penetration rate in the Asia Pacific region is 5.9 per cent, as per a report from Ernst & Young.

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Image credit: Medici

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Omnilytics, Singapore-based fashion analytics and insights provider, has agreed to acquire Malaysian data labelling platform Supahands for US$20 million. 

This deal is part of the Singaporean firm’s ongoing strategic acquisition drive to expand its product offerings and enhance its retail tech stack capabilities.

Under this agreement, Supahands CEO will join Omnilytics’s board as chief strategy officer to accelerate Omnilytics’s growth plan for 2022.

“The Supahands deal will help us fill a critical gap in our existing tech capabilities as we take one step closer to becoming retail’s most important data stack,” said Kendrick Wong, CEO and co-founder of Omnilytics.

Founded in 2014, Omnilytics’s proprietary solution, Product Match, enables brands and retailers to compare the same or similar stock-keeping units (SKUs) across multiple platforms and competitors. It improves fashion retailers’ agility through real-time data and competitor analysis by assortment, price, discount, category, colour, size, options, and strategy.

Omnilytics’s clientele includes Zalora, Australia’s fashion and sportswear online retailer The ICONIC, Uniqlo parent company Fast Retailing, and Adidas. 

Also read: Slow fashion is back: How environmental sustainability becomes the hottest trend this season

Supahands was started in 2014 to label images, text, speech, and video accurately, enabling clients to launch and scale high-performing Artificial Intelligence applications for their business. 

“Accelerating the adoption of AI is at the heart of our business at Supahands. We have witnessed the tangible benefits that AI and Machine Learning can bring to our clients as they strengthen the different pillars of their business from analytics to deployment,” said Mark Koh, CEO and co-founder of Supahands.

Supahands counts online consumer marketplace Carousell, SaaS customer experience management platform Sprinklr, and retail solutions provider Badger Technologies among its global clients. 

The startup is backed by Patamar Capital, Cradle Seed Ventures, Axiata Digital Innovation Fund, and 500 Startups. It received an undisclosed sum of the Series A funding in 2019. 

AI adoption has become a global trend in the fashion market. Brands such as Alibaba, Nike, Dior and Tommy Hilfiger have developed different AI-powered services to leverage their customer experience. 

According to a study by Juniper Research, the global spending on AI technologies by the fashion and retail industry is expected to reach US$7.3 billion each year by 2022. The Southeast Asia fashion market has also jumped the bandwagon, with well-known brands such as Pomelo employing AI to offer this June’s demand forecasting service. 

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Image credit: Omnilytics

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Is Akulaku the next unicorn of Southeast Asia?

For Akulaku, a digital consumer finance platform in Indonesia, COVID-19 was a boon. Thanks to the pandemic, the ‘buy now, pay later’ (BNPL) company’s revenue and userbase witnessed massive growth.

Revenue for H1 2021 jumped 153 per cent to US$274 million from the same period last year, while the userbase rose 111 per cent to 23 million. Total GMV for the 6-month period grew 86 per cent to US$1.9 billion, and Akulaku expects this number to reach US$5.1 billion by the year-end.

Akulaku has is also a heavily-funded company. To date, it has amassed US$218 million over four equity rounds from investors such as Ant Group, Sequoia India, Qiming Venture Partners, and Arbor Ventures. As per a DealStreetAsia report, the fintech venture is currently in talks to raise US$100 million afresh in a pre-IPO round. It could value the company at over US$1 billion, turning it into a unicorn.

In March, Akulaku’s Bank Neo Commerce (BNC) launched its digital banking app, Neo+. At the end of June, Neo+ claims to have acquired over 2.2 million new customer accounts. In addition, the number of downloads grew 2.5 million in the first three months of launch; monthly active users increased to around 2 million from less than 1,000 at the beginning of April.

Also Read: Debunking BNPL myths: Is it going to be the primary mode of payment?

In this email interview, CEO William Li speaks about Akulaku’s growth amidst the ongoing global crisis, valuation and public listing plans. 

In 2019, Akulaku raised US$100M at a US$450M valuation. What is the company’s current valuation? Are you already a unicorn?

At this stage, we cannot comment on our current valuation. We are more focused on operational numbers, ensuring payments are made on time and building a stellar global team.

We have seen strong demand for our financial products since 2019, mainly through COVID-19. So we consider our valuation to have grown substantially in the past few years.

As per a news report, you are in talks for US$250M pre-IPO funding. Can you share the details with us? Also, when do you look to close this round?

We don’t share information on potential capital market deals until we sign them. We are constantly exploring funding opportunities given our explosive growth. We’ll share details once they become available.

How is your IPO plan coming along? How close are you to launch an IPO? Given the SPAC frenzy in the region, do you rethink launching a public listing via the SPAC merger?

We are not currently undertaking an IPO, as we hope to expand both our geographic reach and scope of services before considering that step. It is certainty planned down the line, but we are more focused on operational priorities right now.

We’ll consider both options once we are ready to launch a public listing.

In April last year, Akulaku was suspended from Mintos, a global online marketplace for loans. Can you tell us what led to the situation?

The COVID-19 pandemic came as a shock and brought uncertainty around its economic impact on Southeast Asia. Therefore we delayed repayment and reached a series of restructuring agreements with Mintos.

Given the robust recovery of businesses in Akulaku’s core markets and a solid operating performance in the last several quarters, Akulaku accelerated the repayment schedule in 2021 and has repaid all obligations six months before the scheduled repayments.

In the H1 financial results, the revenue for the period grew 153 per cent to US$600M from the previous year. The user base also rose 111 per cent. What triggered this growth?

This tremendous growth illustrates Akulaku’s resiliency and ingenuity and signals the increased demand for digital banking solutions.

Akulaku brings together the key strengths of fintech from more established markets, traditional financial institutions, and high-growth internet companies to our position as a regional platform with enormous potential markets in multiple countries.

Our high user engagement, full licenses, and extensive risk management capabilities make us the unique solution to the financial needs of people in the region.

How has been the overall BNPL sector in Indonesia growing? How do you compare the pre-covid and post-covid periods?

COVID-19 hit the entire region hard. Alongside many other companies, we had to readjust and evaluate in that initial period of uncertainty.

We are emerging out of the pandemic in a solid position to build for the future. We’re now committed to helping the entire region rebuild stronger in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Because of customers’ uncertain income flows during COVID-19, we found customers increasingly becoming aware of and interested in BNPL offerings, which provided them more financial flexibility in uncertain times. This acted as a natural marketing tool for us. The more customers became aware, the more demand increased.

Also Read: Turochas Fuad’s BNPL startup Pace receives debt financing, inks partnership with Valiram

The BNPL sector market size and penetration in Asia will be US$134 billion in 2023, which is only 4 per cent of the total e-commerce sales; it has excellent potential vs 35 per cent of e-commerce sales in Europe. Post-COVID-10, more people are shopping online and adopting BNPL services naturally.

Indonesia has a massive unbanked and underbanked population. How do you tap into this segment with your products?

Akulaku exists to help meet the daily financial needs of underserved customers in emerging markets through consumer financing, digital investment, digital banking, and insurance brokerage services. We are a pioneer in this industry, which means we educate our customers and build the industry as we grow.

Banks and financial institutions tend to focus on serving middle to upper-class individuals, leaving a large market segment underserved. We serve the large, fast-growing, underpenetrated Southeast Asia market. We believe that our success can be enhanced by educating first-time consumers on financial literacy topics such as banking, wealth management, and insurance, making them informed and knowledgeable customers.

Can you talk about your digital banking app?

Our technology ecosystem is laying the foundation to leapfrog previous generations’ traditional brick-and-mortar banking services straight to digital finance, which will fuel the region’s economic recovery. The momentous results from Neo+ in its first quarter is just the next step as we seek to make financial services accessible to all people in Southeast Asia.

Combining Akulaku’s innovative technology and risk underwriting capabilities with Bank Neo Commerce’s solid financial and regulatory foundation has positioned the company to lead the digital banking market in Indonesia and the region.

As the transition from cash currency to digital banking accelerates globally, Akulaku remains focused on providing inclusive financial services that are accessible and beneficial to everyone. This commitment is made manifest to Neo+ customers with easy access to the app and a customer experience that is continuously improved by artificial intelligence and machine learning.

It is the #1 daily most downloaded digital bank app in Indonesia and bagged 5.2 million total customers within four months of operation.

Given the massive growth in the fintech sector in Indonesia in recent years, do you plan to acquire new companies?

We are a fully licensed fintech company in Southeast Asian markets in banking, digital credit, and insurance. Our most active M&As were back in 2018 and 2019 when Akulaku was the first fintech company to acquire traditional banks and insurance companies.

As we build out additional financial products and services, we look at niche companies to invest in or acquire. We also have plans to expand into different countries and regions with our cutting edge financial technologies, which may result in us looking at local acquisition targets.

There are over 60M MSMEs in Indonesia. How do you plan to leverage this massive market? Do you have plans to foray into this fast-growing sector with new products and services?

Akulaku, our virtual credit card and e-commerce platform, combines direct sales and marketplace sales models, which plays a strategic role in providing use cases for credit consumption and offers short term loans and cash instalments.

BNC will also play a significant role in giving MSMEs access to banking services such as online accounts, digital payments, pay role services, cash management, etc.

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Image Credit: Akulaku

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