It used to be that edutech was considered futuristic, but now with its real-world impact becoming more apparent, the industry has reached a pivotal point. One study published by America’s National Bureau of Economic Research found that edutech initiatives offer “evidence of positive effects in developing countries”.

Other studies have similarly found that edutech solutions resolve many other issues, including reducing the burden on teachers and helping career counsellors guide students to informed university and career decisions.

Of all the milestones achieved at Cialfo—the most meaningful ones relate to our role in improving access to quality education.

Whether it is the work we’ve done with the Windle Trust or the launch of a free plan during the pandemic to help schools get started with distance counselling, the results are all very real and impactful for anyone to overlook. 

Put simply, technology can make big improvements to education– as it has for many countries in Asia Pacific where edutech is promoting educational inclusion for those in need.

As national lockdowns and stay-at-home orders emerged, the region saw a threefold increase in downloads of virtual learning apps from six million to 20 million.

But equitable distribution remains a challenge, with one study from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) finding that learning losses in the region range from eight per cent in the Pacific to 55 per cent in South Asia. 

We cannot talk about equitable distribution of education without discussing the elephant in the room: internet access or the lack thereof. The same ADB study found that in lower-middle income economies, only 18 per cent of households on average have a computer and 41 per cent have internet access at home.

Also Read: How edutech startups can accelerate active learning

Because of this, online learning is predominantly conducted using mobile phones, which are more readily available in lower-income countries. In support of this, governments have begun implementing programs to make remote learning accessible through mobile phones and via the subsidised distribution of connectivity and devices. 

Beyond government and public sector intervention in bridging the digital divide—for edutech to be truly transformational—the industry needs to urgently address a couple of things, including:

Problems to solve

We at Cialfo recognise that in many parts of the world, people don’t have a choice over their circumstances. We do what we do because we want to enable a direct transition from school to university and allow students to decide what their future looks like.

I can tell you first-hand that even if one kid from a disadvantaged background decides to go to a college—it creates a multi-generational impact.

To other edutech players that want to contribute to improving access to information and student outcomes, I’d recommend focusing on one or two issues to solve.

An emerging area that’s seeing some success is teacher and parent support and training on the use of remote learning technologies.

Nearly two years into the pandemic, we know that simply making content available is no longer enough. Parents and teachers must be equally engaged in the learning process to ensure students’ learning and outcomes significantly increase. 

Keep it simple

Businesses are often tempted to go big, or go home. When it comes to using edutech solutions, we’ve found the simpler the offering—the better.

Do you remember when the interactive whiteboards launched, and flopped? This was essentially an internet-connected computer screen that was meant to replace classroom boards, but it simply failed to work and was often ignored by teachers. 

The need of the hour is easy-to-use and engaging solutions, such as the radio station approach used by the NGO Pratham to enable learning in poorly connected tribal villages in India’s Thane District Council.

These lessons are also recorded on mobile applications and can be accessed by students when a smartphone becomes available. The program also fields two calls per session, during which students and parents are guided through activities by the host.

Some other countries are finding success trialing Whatsapp and WeChat to assign students with specific chapters to read and questions to respond to, while students are required to send their answers back to the teachers to assess. Even as other approaches emerge, more needs to be done. 

Barclays estimates our industry will grow between 14.5 and 16.4 per cent, to a total value of US$368bn-406bn by 2025. It’s a big opportunity for edutech, but for it to be truly significant, the benefits must reach underserved communities.

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A unicorn is a privately owned tech startup that surpasses the valuation of US$1 billion. India has been churning out unicorns at a crazy rate lately. Let’s find out why.

The Indian tech industry has reached a new peak. For years, Indian has been the world’s outsourcing capital, but finally, the time for Indian startups has come. 2021 has been remarkable for some of India’s tech startups so far, despite the pandemic.

In fact, when most businesses were shutting down because of the virus, lockdowns accelerated economic digitisation worldwide and more so in India, which had already been on the path towards digitisation prior to the pandemic. 

As a result, some of the big tech startups in India have seen massive growth in their user bases as well as in interest from investors. Just in the first seven months of 2021, India has produced 16 unicorns: namely, Digit Insurance, InnovAccer, Meesho, Five Star Business Finance, Infra.

Market, Pharmeasy, CRED, Groww, Gupshup, Chargebee, Urban Company, Mohalla Tech, Moglix, Zeta, BrowserStack, and the most recent one being BlackBuck.

That’s beyond what was expected from the country this year, even more than 2020’s count, which was already the best year for India unicorns so far. Interestingly, these Unicorns span across various industries from fintech to healthcare and from social platforms to B2B e-commerce. That’s a good indicator that this isn’t just an industry-specific bubble but rather a sign of true economic digitisation. 

But with billions of dollars being poured in as investments, it might be worth asking what makes Indian tech startups so investable? What is the reason behind India’s unicorn boom, and is it even sustainable? Here are some reasons why India has grown to be the world’s unicorn hub.

Untapped audience

India is an enormous market with a population of around 1.3 Billion. But despite an evergreen and growing tech sector, ridiculously affordable mobile devices and internet plans, and various government programs aimed at encouraging digitisation, only around half of India’s population has access to the internet.

Also Read: How these four India-based startups are impacting the earth

Don’t get me wrong that is still a lot of users; in fact, India ranks second in terms of internet users worldwide. But what’s interesting here is that India isn’t just one of the biggest markets out there; it is also, for the most part, untapped.

Unlike other countries that represent far more mature and saturated markets, India presents itself as an opportunity for companies to expand and grow big. 

This is one of the biggest reasons behind India’s tech boom; it is the world’s largest market which is bound to almost double in size in the coming decades.

With young markets like these, companies have the opportunity to establish themselves early on as strong players for the long run. Open markets incentivise rapid expansion, which requires startups to look for large capitals right off the gates.

Native startups have an inherent advantage

Part of the reason tech startups are turning into giants almost overnight in India is that many of them have managed to solve some of India’s traditional problems with technology. Take India’s growing fintech unicorns, for example.

Groww and Zerodha are India’s most popular investment platforms that let the average consumer invest in various assets. Traditionally Indian has never had an investment culture; thus, these companies are using technology to overcome a cultural barrier, and needless to say, it’s working. 

Beyond just solving problems, these companies have mastered the art of selling to the Indian consumer. Consider CRED, another fintech unicorn that rewards its users for paying their credit card bills on time.

By offering the right mix of lucrative reward programs and celebrity-focused marketing campaigns, two things that India loves the most, Cred has managed to acquire around 5.2 million users that account for almost 20 per cent of India’s credit card bill payments. 

The point here is that the coming generation of Indian startups has cracked the code for customer acquisition. By addressing deep-rooted, previously unresolved problems with cutting-edge technology and banking on India’s rapid digitisation for marketing and publicity, young startups are growing faster than anyone could expect.

It’s also worth noting that most of these unicorns are mobile apps, which means that if this billion-dollar app bonanza continues, then app developers and mobile app development in India are likely to get significantly more expensive. 

Foreign investment

When talking about India’s growing unicorns, it’s impossible not to talk about the growing number of international investors they attract. India being the second-largest and fastest-growing tech market in the world is attracting a ton of foreign investment.

So far in 2021 alone, around US$11 billion have been invested in Indian startups, and a big chunk of this is from foreign investors. Tiger Global, a US-based investment firm, led the recent investing round in India, overtaking Sequoia Capital as the top investor. 

Also Read: How Singapore’s tech community is helping India in its battle against COVID-19

Another primary reason why investors are drawn to India could be their losing interest in China. China being the largest tech market globally, has always been a big attraction for international investors; however, being a relatively mature market, its investment opportunities are somewhat limited.

Contrast that with India, where users are simply dipping their toes in the world of tech and the markets are relatively unregulated, and it should be obvious where most investors will be willing to bet.

India is a young nation with a raging entrepreneurial spirit. The right combination of a hungry and growing market, generous investors, bold entrepreneurs, and the technology to tie it all together has led to a time where it’s raining unicorns in India. 

Some experts believe that the trend is likely to continue, that India will continue to churn out more unicorns over the coming months and years. Others criticise some of these unicorns as a ‘cash-burning disaster’ that will eventually end up bursting the unicorn bubble in India.

Either way, it’s hard to disagree that the time for Indian tech startups is here; and India’s journey towards becoming a global technology leader has only just begun.

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India ranks 63 in the World Bank Ease of Doing Business 2020 rankings. While the government has made rapid strides in improving access to credit for businesses, to scale up operations or for young entrepreneurs willing to start, many innovative minds have thought through this problem and have offered some financial and technological solutions.

India has the third-largest fintech ecosystem in the world. With the rapid increase in internet penetration along with favourable demography, India has the highest fintech adoption rate globally. Of the 2,100 FinTech companies present in India, over 67 per cent have been set up in the last 5 years. The fintech industry is expected to grow to $84 billion at a CAGR of 22 per cent.  

Let us look at some tech companies which have revolutionised the fintech space:

Klub

As many businesses cannot get access to funding due to traditional investment structures that have set high growth and various obligations as their parameters, Klub came out with a patron model that enables brands to get ready finance. It functions with the help of a community-focused revenue-based model.

Founded by Anurakt Jain and Ishita Verma in 2019, Klub makes use of financial innovation, community engagement and data-driven analytics to provide capital to many brands across sectors. In the last year, Klub has been able to fulfil the capital needs of more than 80 brands across India with a patron base of 2500.

Inai

In the modern digital space where data protection forms the bedrock of every company. When businesses expand to new markets they are constrained by the lack of developer resources and payment skills. This constrains growth and offers a setback to small businesses willing to expand.

Also read: Going Global: Malaysia’s homegrown fintechs take on the world

Founded by Anta Pattabiraman and Karthik Narayanan, Inai enables merchants to set up their payment stack with a single integration. This would enable merchants to add new methods, optimise their methods and future proof their stack. It allows merchants to connect with multiple payment service providers, wallets, BNPL platforms, open banking providers, fraud, BI and accounting in a single integration.

Numadic

The logistic sector of India is deeply fragmented leading to an increase in logistical costs and delays in transportation. Logistics contributes to about 5% of Indian GDP but costs more than 14%. Despite most of the transportation done on the road, most truck owners have shunned from adopting technological solutions to make their work easy, systematic, and transparent. 

Founded by Luke Sequeira in 2016, Numadic is aimed to revolutionise India’s fleet management system. 

In the world of in-time deliveries and changing government regulations because of the pandemic relying on GPS alone is not enough. Numadic uses analytical data to suggest the best routes, fuel consumptions with the help of smart sensors which provides real-time information for the fleet manager.  

Castler

According to TransUnion, a global credit reporting agency reported that the percentage of suspected financial services digital fraud attempts increased 149 per cent in the first four months of 2021 as compared to the last four months of 2020. 

This has raised the demand for a safe digital ecosystem. Castler, which was founded by Vineet Singh, Dinesh Kumar and Ritesh Tiwari seeks to make use of technology and innovation by digitising the escrow accounts making them accessible for businesses. 

Digital transactions are expected to grow to 71.7 per cent of all payment transactions by 2025. This has provided companies like Castler which was launched in January this year sufficient scope to expand their operations.

Homeville

We face many hiccups when we are about to pay our down payment towards buying our house. Homeville, founded by Hari Krishnan Kannappan, Lalit Menghani, Madhusudan Sharma, Shalin Sanjay Shah and Anjli Zutshi is a financial technology company in the housing space that aims to build a technology-driven housing credit enablement network through its multiple platforms and has adopted a hybrid capital approach to drive business growth.

Also read: How these four India-based startups are impacting the earth

It works on three platforms: Home Capital, Bharat Housing Network and HomeNxt. This would give a boost to accelerate the demand for real estate and give a boost to this sector which is presently in the doldrums owing to the pandemic.

Homeville is built on Open banking principles and creates significant operating leverage with an in-house built technology stack.

EnsuredIT

The Indian insurance industry is expected to grow at 14% CAGR from USD 110 Billion in 2020 to USD 400 Billion by 2030. However, the insurance sector is highly unorganised having high fixed costs of operations, small & expensive distribution and low adaption to technology. 

EnsuredIT, founded by Amit Boni emerged as a partner to brokers, corporate agencies and other sales networks to maximise their operations. This would not only help in increasing affordability but also enable better product-market fit and financial inclusion to empower end customers and Insurance Intermediaries with AI-based product platforms for transformational customer experience.

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More than 3.25 million new cars and 20 million new two-wheelers are sold out in India of which more than 60 per cent are financed. With the increasing demand for personal transport in this pandemic, the two-wheeler industry is set to boom, especially among millennials.

Also read: Angel Investors: leading the charge for startup growth in Thailand

Founded by Harsh Saruparia and Sumit Chhazed, OTO offers customers a convenient option to finance their vehicle by introducing the option of two-wheeler leasing in India. Customers can get their vehicles in less than 30 minutes with no paperwork and have to pay 30 per cent less EMI. Customers may also choose to upgrade to a new vehicle or retain it by paying an amount.  

Need for financing options

India has got the potential to emerge as one of the major business destinations for the world. We are making considerable progress in various fields like investing in infrastructure and removing the need for multiple licenses. However, the private sector can also take considerable steps especially in fintech or even in logistics so that it frees up more wealth to be invested for gainful returns and improve the business environment in the country.

These startups will be pitching at the 9Unicorns Venture Catalysts demo day with other up-and-coming startups offering their own unique products and services. Join them on August 11 and 12 to connect with some of the most promising young startups in a virtual networking session. To learn more, visit their official page here.

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Photo by Pixabay from Pexels

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by 9Unicorns

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Data is the sixth sense of organisations, and it is a phenomenal tool that helps them make the right decisions, according to Gojek’s Group CTO Severan Rault. Companies need to rely on the data generated to determine whether they are doing a good job and providing the value they aspire.

“I would say data is the sixth sense of Gojek. It is crucial to understanding everything — from the behaviour of our staff to measuring the satisfaction of the customer and understanding the gaps and detecting fraudulent activity on our platform. If you consider the company as an organism, data is the sensor. Everything starts with sensory input,” he said in an interview with e27.

Also Read: Gojek taught me the importance of making data-driven decisions’: outgoing CTO Ajey Gore

Rault, who was appointed as the CTO in July 2020 following Ajey Gore’s quitting a month earlier, also concurred with the modern saying that data is the new oil. “At the end of the day, if you think about the global competitive landscape, successful companies are the ones that have managed to do things at a lower cost than their competitors and peers. This cost reduction comes from automation, which, in turn, is fuelled by data.”

According to Rault, who previously held key roles at Amazon and Microsoft, the role of CTOs has changed over the past decade. Previously, this role was to find a technical path for the product while the rest of the company was engaged in their works. In the new era, the CTO’s responsibility is to bring technology into every function of the organisation.

“Now, the role of the CTO is to also look at the areas of the company that can benefit from cutting-edge technologies like Machine Learning and automation or technologies that make processes more efficient. His role is now to evangelise technology, which is critical in every department — be it HR, finance, or marketing,” he added.

Want to become an on-demand company

Gojek is a Southeast Asian super app for ordering food, commuting, digital payments, shopping, hyper-local delivery, getting a massage and two dozen services. In May this year, Gojek and Indonesian e-commerce giant Tokopedia announced a merger to form GoTo Group.

Last month, airasia Digital (previously known as RedBeat Ventures), the digital arm of the Malaysia-based airline operator, acquired the Thailand operations of Gojek.

Rault said that Gojek wants to move from the idea of a super app to an on-demand company, meaning it wants to become a platform that gives its users everything they need very quickly. “Our merger with Tokopedia is part of this grant vision. Our long-term vision is that we want to make our customers’ lives easier by providing them what they exactly need when they need them, shortening the latency everywhere.”

Elaborating further, he said there are many things Gojek can do in areas such as sustainability and transportation. Asked whether Gojek has plans to foray into the passenger drones and delivery drones spaces, he said: “We are successful as a company because we make it easier for people to move inside Jakarta. We have the infrastructure. So when these technologies become viable and safe, we will be at the forefront of providing such services.”

Also Read: airasia acquires Gojek’s Thai operations as SEA’s supper app battle intensifies

In the interview, Rault also spoke about Gojek’s tight competition with Grab: “We respect our competitors but we’re not obsessed with them. We don’t compete with our rivals to draw people’s attention. We believe that we will win this competition by putting people at the centre of our product,” he noted. “What it means is that Gojek wants to understand its customers/users better, give them what they need when they need, and become a better tool to simplify our user’ lives.”

He also maintained that Gojek thinks of its users as a uniform set. But thanks to technology, the unicorn can start to consider each person’s individual needs and make its application better suited to that need.

“The flip side is that we also power the livelihood of many people in Southeast Asia, and we want to continue to be a great source of income,” Rault noted.

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Image Credit: Gojek

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Leading a product team in a startup is very different from leading one at a well-established enterprise. Having joined Mixpanel in the early years and growing with it for close to a decade, I’ve learned that priorities change as you move from startup to scale up and then mature into an enterprise.

Startups: Prioritise ruthlessly

Startup companies are at a stage of their business where they are constantly experimenting to find product-market fit. The importance of product-market fit isn’t something to brush off — a 2019 CB Insights study found that “no market need” was the top reason why startups don’t succeed.

This is crucial for product teams and you need to be ruthless in prioritising product differentiators that allow you to solve user problems that your competitors can’t (or in a way that they don’t).

When you deliver a product that does that, your early customers become your biggest fans. They’ll value your product and that will make up for areas where you may be a bit rough around the edges.

This happened in the early days at Mixpanel.

There was a time when if you forgot your password, you’d actually have to write to someone in Support to manually reset it for you. At that time, we (rightly) concluded that our success wouldn’t hinge on the availability of a self-service Forgot Password flow and focused our resources on other, more impactful product features.

Scaling up: Listen to your customer

Once your business starts to scale, the focus switches to matching innovation with follow-through. This is the time when you’ll need to start ironing out the little kinks.

At Mixpanel, we were so far ahead of everyone else by this time. The mistake we made was that we branched out into more things when we should have been focused on building more depth in our product and fixing existing problems. Innovate on doing what you already do better; not on doing more things.

Also Read: Monk’s Hill Ventures head of talent’s guide to startup jobs search in Singapore

As you grow, your customers become your most valuable asset. Their complaints, feedback, input, and feature requests are all invaluable sources of information that inform your product strategy. Take time to listen to them and understand how they’re using your product and what they’re using it for.

Enterprise: Stay nimble and think like a startup

So what happens when you’re an established player? You’ll find yourself on the other side of the fence. Where you were once the hot, innovative startup that’s disrupting the market, some startup is now disrupting your business.

That’s why it’s important to stay nimble and innovative even as you grow. One way to do this is to keep decomposing your teams into units that can function efficiently, almost as if they were little startups within your company.

For example, Amazon tries to break their engineering teams into “two-pizza” teams  — essentially you’ll only need two pizzas to feed the entire team.

In my own experience, when it comes to software development, a unit consisting of a product manager, a designer, and a few engineers functions really well. This unit can make its own decisions without a ton of authoritative coordination with other people.

You’ll certainly need to balance this autonomy with the broader corporate vision. An example of this is how Netflix aims for “context, not control” (you can take a look at their culture deck here). This balance is built by instilling a sense of purpose.

If your teams know why they’re doing what they do and how that feeds into the business’s success, they’ll make decisions on their own, yet stay aligned to the company’s goals. The key is to make sure that you don’t fall into the trap of endless meetings, check-ins, and red tape that make your company slow and bureaucratic.

There’s nothing quite like watching your product team and business grow from startup, to scale up and progressing on the path to becoming an established enterprise. My experience at Mixpanel has been a rewarding journey that’s both inspiring and creatively satisfying.

The trick is for us, as product leaders, to keep as much of that agile one-team atmosphere and focus that helped to drive our growth while learning to cede responsibilities to our teams as they continue to build on what we created.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast or infographic

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Thai accounting SaaS firm FlowAccount has raised US$4 million in a Series A round led by Sequoia Capital India, Tech In Asia reports.

US-based Money Forward and Japan’s SBI Investment also participated.

The new funds will be used to expand the platform’s functionality while also increasing its small-business offerings. Anticipating to become a pandemic winner, the firm also plans to grow beyond accounting into fields of payments, e-commerce, and fintech.

“Our vision is to become the go-to, seamless solution for anyone starting a new business in Thailand and beyond,” Kridsada Chutinaton, CEO and co-founder of FlowAccount, said told the publication.

Launched in 2014, FlowAccount is an online accounting firm using the cloud SaaS to help freelancers, small business owners, and accountants in Thailand handle their accounting, payroll, and expense tasks on a single platform. The startup claims its services are used by 50,000 clients and are connected with banks and e-commerce platforms.

Also read: Sequoia Surge’s new cohort comprises a vegan makeup startup, an innovative email marketing platform and more

Earlier this year, Thai 70-year-old bank KBank offered its 1,000 SME customers the FlowAccount solution to help them run more efficiently by keeping them updated on their financial status timely, controlling costs more adequately, and obtaining better access to funding sources.

In 2017, FlowAccount had raised US$1.15 million in a pre-Series A round led by Beacon VC, Kasikornbank’s venture capital arm, with participation from SBI Investments, Singapore’s Golden Gate Ventures, and Thailand’s 500 Tuk Tuks.

Global tech research firm Gartner predicted that Thai enterprise software spending would grow 13.6 per cent to 45.9 billion baht (US$1.4 billion) in 2020. In another report, Gartner indicated that cloud spending in Thailand could grow 28.2 per cent to 34.4 billion baht (US$1.1 billion) in 2022.

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Image credit: FlowAccount

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Whether we are consciously aware of it or not, with the ups and downs, challenges and changes that we are all experiencing in recent times, the way of working and organisational decision making have entered a new era. Enterprises must reassess their digital transformation strategies and core competitiveness in a timely manner.

Through advancing enterprise agility, it accelerates the speed of digital transformation, innovation and other new processes. Hence, it is essential to adopt the right enterprise agility strategy for your organisation.

Impact on business

While enterprise agility is very different from agile software development, many parallels and principles can be drawn from the Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles beyond the context of IT.

Applying the spirit of elaboration, harmonisation and user-first approach from software to enterprise agility in providing services, is one of the centre themes of  current Agile thinking. In other words, agility must be manifested within the enterprise DNA to generate value.

Imagine a traditional enterprise, burdened with legacy processes, systems and policies that are decades old that no one questions, “Why?”; intertwined with politics, silos and a culture of fear, where people do not feel free to voice out their feedback and ideas.

What if we can transform that organisation into one that is highly collaborative and interactive; focused on products and services that customers want; quick to respond to change and feedback, thus having a competitive advantage in stability and flexibility.

All the while keeping pace with an era of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Sounds too good to be true? In that case, enterprise agility is crucial more than ever for such transformation.

As part of the global agile research, McKinsey analysed the impact of enterprise-wide agile transformation, and their preliminary results identified three main outcomes of agile transformation: improved customer satisfaction, employee engagement and operational performance.

Also Read: A sneak-peek at the 28 startups joining NUS Enterprise’s SEA Booster Programme

The benefits are complementary to each other leading up to the fourth result: improved financial performance.

It starts with connected teams

You may be well aware of the numerous disrupters you face every day. It is not just the unpredictability of what is to come, it is also the velocity and pace of change that is creating silos and inefficiencies with your biggest asset– your people.

Can we get real-time visibility, can we align every team with the company strategy; can we optimise the internal workflow to enhance customer value?

All that has led to a fundamental question, how do we harness the power of digital transformation and enable new ways of working? Today’s market demands a higher level of cross-team collaboration and movement in order to successfully compete.

• Dev and IT need to work closely together to ship delightful customer experiences.
• Marketing and support teams may need to prepare for weekly or daily launches as product changes roll out faster.
• Finance and sales teams may need to be aligned to adapt to new pricing and packaging models.
• Executive teams need to make sure that shifting priorities gets reflected in the work that gets done.

These are just some examples of the cross-collaboration that modern companies need to adopt, but the bottom line is – it cannot just be your software teams that operate in an agile fashion.

The best innovation emerges when teams across your organisation are able to work better together.  As the leader in your organisation, you have the opportunity to lead your teams into this agile way of working.

How to scale with enterprise agility

As your business grows and objectives evolve,  your teams have to navigate even more complexity– across departments, business units, regions and timezones. The demands on modern teams increases the complexity of teamwork.

• Can you adjust your budgets and resources monthly or even weekly?
• How do you identify and resolve bottlenecks?
• Are you able to make tradeoffs decisions or pivots without having all the information?
• How do you account for changes in work allocation across teams, products and platforms, and are you able to properly staff the most important initiatives?
• What are all the dependencies between your teams and do you have visibility to them before they become a problem?
• How do you set objectives and ensure the entire company is aligned to the same goals?

Our experience shows that there are two things you need to master at scale. You need to be able to build the capability for your business and technical teams to rapidly deliver solutions while at the same time linking the work your teams are doing with clear outcomes and objectives.

How do we do this? One way is to provide a connected platform that takes into consideration your business’s strategic direction; identifies the outcomes that are important for your business; and connects them from epics to features to stories and tasks at the working level, in order to achieve clear alignment for management, business and technical teams.

Again, why do organisations take on this change to enterprise agility at scale？

Also Read: Why it is time to reinvent The Agile Manifesto to answer challenges of a remote team

Here are a few examples of how we have seen companies winning customers as they have pursued their transformation goals.

• Decreasing time to market – in helping one customer tackle predictable delivery, we helped them to reduce their time to market by 40-50 per cent
• Improving quality – uncovering duplicative work, a major cost savings to the customer, which never would have happened if their work was not visible and connected across the organisation
• And finally, the opportunity to reduce the variance in team tooling and need for manual reporting. A single solution powered by real-time team tool data solves complexity and creates savings along the way.

Here is just a sample of the companies that have embraced enterprise agility. Ready to unlock the potential of your enterprise?

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast or infographic

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

Image credit: Orla

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Apps are taking over the world. Grab, Robinhood, DoNotPay, Snapchat, mobile apps are expected to generate over a trillion in revenue by 2024. On the other hand, third-world countries are considered now the new breeding ground for app innovations and next-gen app entrepreneurs.

Why?

There’s no doubt that developing nations have more real-world problems than first-world countries. Areas such as community, logistics, education, legal, and environment are only some of the spaces to which there’s a ton of potential for innovation.

As we all saw, there’s an increasing trend of investors pouring funding into startups in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam.

This is because first, there are a lot of problems yet to be solved in Southeast Asia, which means there’s a lot of market potential and a lower barrier for entry.

To address the opportunity and problem statement, we founded Hikre School with one concept in mind, to create an all-in-one program for aspiring app entrepreneurs. Students get to learn from scratch how to design and build apps from their computers while working on finding a solution for a real-world problem.

To make our vision possible, we leverage a learning and teaching framework called challenge-based learning, which is similar to project-based learning, however, challenge-based learning incorporates technology into the process. The goal is to have students come up with possible real-world solutions to problems.

A bit of history, challenged-based learning first appeared from the “Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow — Today”, a project initiated in 2008 by Apple to identify the essential design principles of a 21st-century learning environment.

In this model, students are instructed to simulate problem-solving solutions through collaboration, hands-on learning, and app challenges. For instance, before they go to design or code apps, they first have to go through brainstorming their big ideas, essential questions, and challenges.

Also Read: Gojek wants to move from the idea of a super app to an on-demand company for everything: Group CTO

Within the first three months of launch, we’ve gathered 200+ feedbacks from social media and nearly 200 student applications. This shows an increasing interest in app development among college students, freelancers, and business owners.

Take a look at one of the student projects.

Source: Youtube/Hikre School

The team designed a healthcare app to help transition physical health services to online services.

According to Philippine Statistics Authority, in 2020, suicide in the Philippines went up 26 per cent. When the pandemic started, unemployment rose, stress levels skyrocketed, reports of domestic abuse are up.

In times like these, we need to use technology to fill in the gaps. One way to we can do that is through mobile apps.

The app also features an AI called Moxie that guides you through your medical needs. It asks you questions for instance regarding the pain level of your headache to which it provides you the right consultation and advice. Plus, you can connect and consult with doctors directly from the app.

It’s your medical care within your reach.

Another team applied to Impact Hub Manila’s hackathon, which is one of the biggest organisers in the Philippines. The event was a three-day-long where students from all over the Philippines came together to brainstorm an idea, build a demo prototype, and propose a solution to the big idea of Climate Change.

The team designed and developed a beautiful solution for managing the issue of plastic waste. It’s a combination of education and gamification in one platform designed to encourage a call to action among high school and college students show below.

Also Read: A new approach to hybrid working: Let the employees decide when, how and where to work

As a result of the students’ creation, they walked away as grand champions along with $20,000 worth of incubation support from Impact Hub Manila and a 35,000 PHP cash prize.

These are just some case studies and projects proposed by the students on how to tackle problems not only in the Philippines but for entire Southeast Asia. Just like how the Western is ruled by apps, soon Southeast Asia will follow its path.

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Lucy, a neobank focused on women entrepreneurs, has secured an undisclosed amount in seed financing from Hong Kong-based global investment firm EmergeVest at a US$10 million valuation.

As per a statement, this deal will help Lucy refine its tech platform, round out the team in Singapore, and pilot in the local market before expanding regionally through strategic partnerships.

Before this round, Lucy secured US$450,000 in a women-only round of 21 diverse women, including Sephora Asia MD Hanh Nguyen and a number of other high-profile women from the region and the world.

Also Read: Why neobanks are better than digital banks

The initial funding came from Lucy’s co-founders Debbie Watkins (former MD of Fern Software APMEA), Hal Bosher (former CEO of Yoma Bank and Chairman of Wave Money), and Luke Janssen (former CEO and Chairman of Tigerspike), besides the Savearth fund.

Through her over 20 years working with underserved communities, Debbie saw first-hand that women were a financially excluded group. However, Hal’s experience with his customers at Yoma proved that women were great customers. So the duo decided to set up Lucy, a neobank and community focused on women entrepreneurs.

The app helps women entrepreneurs set up, run and grow their businesses, with affordable financial services including fee-free accounts with Mastercard, no-interest salary advances, savings accounts, loan management, and low-cost remittances.

Lucy also offers a community-based platform for women to connect with their peers and mentors for inspiration, support, e-training modules, and a networking marketplace.

The startup will focus on two underserved groups of women entrepreneurs for its pilot launch in Singapore. They are 1) home-based entrepreneurs or women with a ‘side hustle’, and 2) domestic helpers, many of whom run small businesses in their home countries.

The second category will help it drive expansion to nearby markets of Indonesia, the Philippines and Myanmar (Lucy has recently won a UNCDF grant to help support low-cost remittances to these countries). A recent study noted that the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam have the highest prospects in Asia for neobank.

Also Read: Neobanks: the future of banking?

Formed in 2013, EmergeVest is an investment firm with US$500 million in assets under management. It invests across the capital structure at the intersection of the supply chain, technology and financial services.

A pre-pandemic analysis conducted by Boston Consulting Group showed that if women and men worldwide participated equally as entrepreneurs, the global economy would get a boost of US$2.5-5 trillion. Post-COVID, the need to support women entrepreneurs is even greater.

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Image Credit: Lucy

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