We are putting the spotlight on NEXEA, which comprises of a venture capital, startup growth accelerator, and angel investor network. They operate in Southeast Asia, with particular focus in Malaysia, focussing on startups in Seed to Series A stages (connect with NEXEA).

Ben Lim, Managing Director of NEXEA, answered a few of our questions about the startups they’re looking for, what makes them stand out, and what makes Southeast Asia startup ecosystem both challenging and exciting.

On how NEXEA was born
We established NEXEA about six years ago. At that time, a few of us exited. So partly, it’s fresh capital and we wanted to invest it somewhere. But partly also, at the time, I was looking for something to start, and one of the ideas that I wrote down was actually angel investment work. Then we added on our accelerator and our other programmes as well. It sort of grew from there.

On being more than just funding
We came from entrepreneurial backgrounds. That’s one of the key differences. We kind of intuitively understood startup entrepreneurs from the start and that’s why we have programmes like the Entrepreneurs Programme. That’s why our accelerator focus so much on adding value to the startups.

On NEXEA’s edge vs others
Definitely our mentors. They are ex-entrepreneurs, people who have exited already. They are on the board of listed companies and have grown companies from nothing into regional market leaders. So, they really understand building startups and, at the same time, how to guide the newer entrepreneurs because they’ve actually been through the journey. It’s like learning from an Olympic champion; it’s different from a lot of the other coaches and mentors out there that have not been successful themselves.

Also read: Antler partners with e27 to assist startups with cross-border investment opportunities in a restricted travel environment

On being sector agnostic
It’s just not possible to look at one specific industry or sector in this region. So far, I think you will find too few companies to invest in if you just looked into, let’s say, purely fintech. It doesn’t make enough sense. So we look at all sectors.

And what we really do is we try to find the best in every sector – every pocket of sectors- because we also have an advantage there versus other VCs that, let’s say, only have a fintech background: we have many mentors, many investors that are from various backgrounds and they are all experts in their own industries. So, we sort of have that advantage over a lot of other funds. And because of that, we are able to focus in many sectors and we do varying degrees of investments as well.

On the kind of startups NEXEA is looking for
We are looking for ideas that could really change the way certain industries work. If your startup is, for example, using an underlying technology that can change a certain industry or sector, we are really interested in opportunities like that. If you’re able to leverage a new form of technology that will disrupt a certain industry, that’s the kind of growth potential we’re looking for.

On what they’re really looking at
We find that the main factors of success will be the team, the market, and maybe even the business model. Specifically, we look for great potential in the team itself and hope they can go really far and bring the company really far, because it’s not easy finding people to replace them as well.

On the huge impact of a founder’s attitude
When we are asking all kinds of questions about the business, we are actually watching the attitude of the founders. How do they answer it? Do they think deep enough? Are they actually humble or can they be humble? It’s okay to be a little bit cocky, right? If you’re good, you tend to be. But if you don’t know how to stay humble, that’s gonna be a big issue.

Because not being able to stay humble, basically means that you’re not able to learn. You’re not able to take in some of life’s greatest lessons, and into a person that the company needs over time. And we believe so because the level of a company heavily depends on the on the level of the founder itself. If the founder stops growing at a certain point, so does the company.

Also read: How smart technologies help an essential but dirty industry clean up impact

On why being in Southeast Asia is both a challenge and a huge opportunity
A lot of the region is still developing. And in that sense, the ecosystems themselves are developing to various degrees in each country. One of the key differences between Southeast Asia and Europe, for example, is that Europe has a slightly more unified system. For example, they have a single currency and alone that enables a lot of things even if each country may have its own culture and nuances.

In Southeast Asia, it’s all different currencies. Every country in Southeast Asia has its own different challenges so every government has its role to play in growing on its own. Southeast Asia is a much more challenging market to break into; it’s as if you’re breaking into six different countries rather than one unified market. And it’s a natural barrier for entrance from China, US, and even Europe. They would love to come here, but they know how challenging it is to go into a single country – forget about six. It’s usually the Southeast Asian guys that can build companies in Southeast Asia. So, a lot of times these companies from outside the region will look at acquisition instead. And that’s a good thing for us and that’s going to be a key driver in the success of this ecosystem, so we just got to play our strengths there.

Speaking of strengths, on NEXEA’s
I feel that we are better able to support B2B startups, naturally, because we also work with quite a number of corporates. A lot of these corporates are looking for companies that can that help them digitise or help them be more efficient. They’re also looking for B2B startups that they could potentially invest in or acquire in the long term. Because of that, we somehow naturally have better capabilities in supporting B2B startups and helping them to grow much faster than normal.

On what could make them say to startups “yes, let’s talk some more.”
Very simple: it’s the pitch deck. On our site, we even have a template for that. And it’s as simple as that. What we need is already in the pitch, so as long as startups can show that and show it clearly and concisely, that will really get a message across to us and we will try and reply to every single one.

On why startups should connect with NEXEA
If they’re looking for investors that can add value to the startup through mentoring – and again, these people have very deep entrepreneurial and even C-level backgrounds – then this is the perfect place to look for investment with mentoring on how to really grow their businesses.

NEXEA is verified investor on the e27 platform. Startups with e27 Pro memberships can connect directly with NEXEA by visiting their profile and clicking Connect.

The post More than just funding: NEXEA play to their strengths in helping startups grow appeared first on e27.

Over the past decade, the online food delivery space has been growing steadily in Asia owing to ever-increasing smartphone penetration and ease of ordering food using mobile apps. This trend has been expedited in the past two years with online food delivery becoming an essential service amidst movement restrictions due to the pandemic. 

Globally, the online food delivery market is worth more than US$35 billion annually and is forecasted to reach US$365 billion by 2030. A Google-Temasek report forecasts that the food delivery market in Southeast Asia alone is expected to grow from US$2 billion in 2018 to an estimated US$8 billion in 2025. With a drastic shift in consumer behaviour towards online food delivery platforms amidst the pandemic and given increasing demand, there is a pressing need to fill this gap.

As such, global, regional, as well as local players are making strides across different markets in the region. The largest player in the online food and grocery delivery landscape in Asia is foodpanda which operates in more than 400 cities across 12 markets. Regionally, the foodpanda platform reaches more than 10 million people in Asia, building an ecosystem connecting riders, merchant-partners, and everyday customers using the platform.

foodpanda: Capturing appetites in Asia

Jakob Angele, CEO of foodpanda who comes with a background in management strategy, has been spearheading foodpanda’s expansion and growth across the region for more than six years. “When I first joined foodpanda, it was a small, independent company that looked very different. There was not much excitement among investors about food delivery platforms; we had to start with very little funding and faced many challenges. Since those early days, many things have changed and business has grown extremely fast, even before the pandemic” said Jakob.

Back in 2012 when foodpanda was first launched in Singapore with just 51 restaurants, and a focus on the CBD area, the online food delivery scene in Asia was quite young. foodpanda began its venture in the region with operations in five markets, including Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia. This year, foodpanda commemorates its ninth year of operations in Asia.

At a time when there were no other food delivery aggregator services, foodpanda quickly established itself as the pioneer and go-to online food delivery platform. However, convincing partners was not an easy feat. “We would knock on doors and get rejected multiple times. Interestingly, in Singapore, the first brand that agreed to try us out was Burger King and then other brands started becoming curious. There was no secret recipe though — we had to be very consistent in our efforts and eventually, things turned around,” shared Jakob.

As a pioneer in this industry, Jakob shared that the biggest switch in the business model came around in 2015 when foodpanda was growing quite well. “At that time some restaurants had their riders and that was an easy model for us that was working well for everyone. But eventually, we identified two big problems: the restaurants weren’t able to keep pace with our scale of growth in that we were getting too many orders and restaurants just did not have enough riders, and the second issue was that the subsequent customer experience was getting affected. There was a long wait time, around 60 minutes!” That’s when foodpanda decided to get riders to solve both problems. “This was a stepping stone that helped us scale — we went from 60 minutes to delivering orders within 25 minutes or in 10-15 minutes in some markets through pandamart. We have come a long way,” he added.

In 2016, foodpanda was acquired by Germany-based Delivery Hero, a global leader in the food delivery industry. Today, the online food delivery platform operates in more than 400 cities across 12 markets in the Asia Pacific, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Pakistan, Taiwan, Philippines, Bangladesh, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Japan. For foodpanda, a major part of Delivery Hero’s Asia business saw significant growth in the region with orders increasing by 194% as compared to 2019 and GMV growing more than double. In the first half of 2021, the food delivery platform completed more than 747 million orders — almost three times the number of orders from just one year ago.

Since then, foodpanda has been aggressively expanding in the region over the past five years. From 2019 to 2020, foodpanda started operations in Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. In September last year, the company launched operations in Japan, its 12th market in the region, hoping to grow a “still largely untapped” market and further strengthen its position as the leading food delivery player in the region. 

Navigating the challenges of food delivery in diverse Asia

Asia is an extremely diverse market with a wide range of demographics, and there is no one-size-fits-all business model or market condition for the region. Jakob explained that one of the main challenges in Asia is that significant groundwork is necessary. This includes educating consumers on what food delivery means and how it can make their lives easy; From a marketing point of view, creating educational videos, and tapping into local channels of social media have become an integral part of their core business strategy. foodpanda operates not just in developed and urban markets like Singapore and Hong Kong but also in developing markets, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan where user demographics are completely different.

Also read: Making construction cleaner, greener, and more climate-friendly

Jakob shared that localisation has become extremely important and relevant in a region like Asia. “Internal organisation and strategic decision-making are key to success in Asia. We have empowered local operations in terms of commercial and operational strategy, from how to run logistics, picking cities, identifying restaurants, to how we spend our money,” he said.

As the regional CEO, while Jakob is involved in those decisions, the country teams play a vital role. “We understand that no matter how smart the headquarters are, even if I travel to each country three times a month, a local understanding comes only if you live there,” he added. “One of the main reasons behind foodpanda’s success in a diverse region like Asia is the fact that a lot of tech and operational innovations are created by our local teams that understand the nuances of their markets. This is very unique to foodpanda,” he said.

Adapting to the new normal: quick commerce

Amidst the pandemic, like most businesses, foodpanda was also faced with multiple challenges. Many countries went into lockdown, and many restaurants couldn’t open. “COVID-19 was hectic. The world around us changed as we knew it, but the team did an amazing job to respond and react to this,” said Jakob. The foodpanda team worked closely with their restaurant partners to come up with the best way to cope. Suddenly, they were also faced with a huge influx of restaurants reaching out to be onboarded as partners needed to digitalise.

“Previously, we had around 14 days to help restaurants go live, but during COVID-19, they needed to go live the next day. We had to reinvent our whole onboarding process to be more responsive. For restaurants in financial trouble, we tried to support them by allowing them to defer their payments in some cases,” shared Jakob. To ensure safety for the riders and consumers while providing accessibility, variety, and convenience, the food delivery platform was also the first to launch contactless deliveries as a default option.

Also read: How businesses can maximise their growth using the right financial tools

They have also added the delivery of groceries and daily essentials to their service repertoire. foodpanda is spearheading the growth of quick-commerce (q-commerce), where groceries and daily essentials are delivered on-demand, within 25 minutes. Across the region, foodpanda partners tens of thousands of retail and SME partners as part of its foodpanda shops vertical, including supermarkets like Tesco, convenience stores like 7-Eleven and Family Mart, plus health and beauty stores like Watsons and Guardian. This is in addition to the thousands of SMEs, mom-and-pop stores, and neighbourhood bakeries or speciality foods on the platform. 

In 2019, foodpanda launched its first pandamart cloud stores in Singapore and Taiwan, offering customers a wide selection of over 5,000 groceries and daily essentials at the touch of a button. foodpanda today operates Asia’s largest network of cloud grocery stores, with more than 200 pandamarts across 40 cities in 10 markets — a number that foodpanda is looking to double within the year as it expands its grocery delivery offerings.

What’s next?

foodpanda’s main focus is to use even smarter technology to power q-commerce. Be it food or groceries, they want to deliver anything customers need in 25 minutes to their doorstep. With COVID-19, consumer behaviour has evolved and appetites for safety and convenience have grown exponentially. Previously hesitant consumers are also going online for daily needs. This is why the q-commerce model works, and it will become even more integral to everyday lives. 

Also read: Antler partners with e27 to assist startups with cross-border investment opportunities in a restricted travel environment

“There is now a higher level of interest in our offerings. There were many new downloads, including different demographics like older customers aged 55 and above who are now using our technology. We see these customers using us even after the pandemic, and this gives us a lot of confidence that we are on the right track,” shared Jakob. However, he added that COVID-19 has been a challenging time in that they’ve had to adapt to highly localised government rules and regulations that are dynamic and sometimes very complex. So, a critical focus is how to continue helping riders and merchants sustain their businesses and earnings during the crisis and beyond.

The food delivery sector in Asia may be competitive, but platforms like foodpanda have proven to offer restaurants and F&B establishments, SMEs, and even delivery riders a valuable lifeline in the midst of the pandemic. Businesses that contribute to uplifting communities and promoting digital inclusion and empowerment will play a key role in the overall economic recovery of the region.

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

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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Employees are the heart of any and every organisation and as organisations grow and evolve, so must their employees.

More than anything, the pandemic has highlighted a glaring shortfall. As much as businesses focus on tangible assets such as inventory and machinery, or intangible assets such as IP and brand, we often overlook the single asset that makes it all possible– our employees.

As the world is changing and competition among businesses is increasing, business leaders need to invest in rapid and flexible workforce transformation and skills development to help their employees grow and evolve with the organisation.

We often talk about talent development and retention, but what do skills have to do with it, and why is identifying and closing skill gaps and upskilling so important?

Challenges faced by employers in a volatile business climate

The pandemic has disrupted business operations and accelerated the need for workplace transformation, affecting businesses across varied industries. This uncertainty has forced many businesses to pivot, such as by embracing e-commerce, online channels or simply to innovate their business processes.

And as businesses pivot, businesses struggle to understand their current workforce’s capabilities, to identify the skills their workforce needs to pivot and to understand and close emerging skill gaps by ensuring the necessary training is done.

More often than not, these businesses fail to properly engage the right upskilling or development training to smoothly transition their employees.

This is true both for SMEs and startups, who have limited resources and experience in workforce development and also for large companies and MNCs, who have a huge workforce to manage and lack data or automated processes to facilitate the transformation.

In a survey from PWC, 74 per cent of CEOs said that a lack of availability of the right skills would constrain growth and hamper companies’ ability to tackle the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Also Read: The “shmart” entrepreneur: Skills entrepreneurs need to become future-ready

Only 18 per cent of CEOs said they had made significant progress in “establishing an upskilling programme that develops a mix of soft, technical and digital skills” and only 24 per cent of CEOs said they had significant progress in “Defining skills needed to drive future growth”.

Ten per cent of companies in the survey said they had made no progress at all. CEOs are struggling to put their intentions into practice.

Importance of skills management in a workforce

There is an ongoing revolution in how companies are addressing their organisational structure and workforce development. Historically companies have organised their company into mainly job role clusters, with development pathways based on job role seniority.

Companies would then provide training based on the job role, where every staff member at certain job levels will be required to attend standardised training.

However, as industries continue to be rapidly disrupted, and new job roles are required with new and complex skills requirements, companies are struggling to keep up with the pace of change, and employees are subsequently affected in their ability to keep up with the changes in their skills requirements.

Businesses have started to become more granular in their approach, developing competency models and frameworks, and further detailing jobs into skills and skills proficiency levels.

This change has created more complexity for businesses and has driven the need to start understanding skills more, such as to develop a unique skills language for the company, to define the skills required within the company, as well as identify and validate the skills that their workforce possesses.

An effective skills management system in a workforce will not only help in retaining employees but will also create an agile workforce that can seamlessly pivot along with their organisations in case of an industry or market-wide disruption.

A characteristic of the current labour market is the limited availability of in-demand skill sets, which naturally pushes companies to spend on workforce development. It is cheaper for employers to build than buy talent. Developing key skill sets internally can be less costly than hiring new talent, which can cost as much as six times more.

An agile workforce translates into an organisation that is future-ready – ready to meet the needs of the organisation tomorrow, today. An agile workforce also supports the values of productivity, innovation and creativity – creating employees who are active stewards of the organisation’s vision and mission.

If the benefits of skills management are so extensive, why isn’t everyone doing it?

Creating a holistic skills management system in the workforce is no easy feat. It takes a large pool of resources, commitment and organisation to be properly executed. Coupled with the heavy workload from day-to-day operations, it’s near impossible to find the time to establish and execute this process.

Currently, it’s challenging for companies to have an understanding of their workforce’s current skills and capabilities. Typical data sources such as CVs and resumes are unstructured data that is difficult to consolidate, digitise and make sense of, and tend to be outdated data points without relevant skills information in the first place.

Also Read: How Endowus co-founder Samuel Rhee attracts, builds, and maintains a world-class team

Secondly, every company is unique and thus finds it challenging to come up with a customised framework or “language of skills” for their own company. The reliability of the data is also questionable– companies prefer to have a validated assessment of the skills of their workforce.

Finally, companies struggle to implement any change as current systems and processes for skills mapping are manual and unconsolidated, resulting in painful implementation and pushback from the workforce in supporting the change process.

Creating an effective skills management system: Where to begin?

To start off, it’s important to state that every organisation is different, and so is every team member. As a result, skills management practices are highly varied between each organisation. But fundamentally, the capabilities that are required share similar characteristics.

To bridge skills gaps, the organisation needs to have a deep understanding of the skills and capabilities of its workforce before taking remedial action.

As part of this ‘Skills Intelligence’, it is important for any organisation to have the knowledge or understanding of their employees’ skills and proficiency, and to have the ability to assess and access the type of skills needed for their business operations.

A key factor of success here is in the ability to build a unique library of skills personalised to the company’s context – a unique skills language. Skills databases will need to be continuously upgraded as the market evolves and the need for different skillsets changes.

This process will have to be rooted in truth and facts, which is where the importance of utilising current labour market information to understand the latest market skills characteristics is required.

Secondly, a system and process for identifying, collecting, validating, consolidating and analysing internal skills data based on the company’s unique skills language need to be set in place.

Buy-in and support from the employees of the organisation are essential for any change initiative to take place, thus relying on manual methods which are painful, tedious and slow would ultimately lead to resistance and failure.

A structured and systematic system, preferably utilising technology for ease of use in collecting and managing the data, would accelerate the process and reduce friction as well as costs in time and effort to collect skills data.

A detailed skills library will serve an organisation in many ways – such as providing a database for managers to identify missing skills from their team members, supporting deployment and identification of talent for various roles based on skills fit, ensuring that fresh trainees or employees are given the right training to diligently perform their tasks, or simply having a data-driven real-time dashboard to truly understand the company’s skills assets and make better decisions.

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

AI and big data in human resource practices

Digital technologies are great enablers of change, across the many facets of business and processes. With the help of AI, businesses can derive the benefits of accessing skills data insights at their fingertips, reduce labour-intensive processes, and enable new approaches such as the ability to build their own unique Skills Bank and Skills Intelligence databases.

AI can allow us to develop, aggregate, and apply, both internal and external data, to plan and create a holistic talent strategy plan.

This removes the labour-intensive processes that typically bogs down the HR departments, saving both time and financial resources by up to 90 per cent.

This concept is not just a sci-fi dream, it’s quickly becoming a reality. AI-powered transformation platforms are already here, complete with the ability to reference external labour market information, collect internal skills data, and create a unique library of skills for any workforce.

These platforms are able to facilitate access to a wealth of market data to identify future-ready skills and create development roadmaps to guide employees’ personal development while empowering them with self-directed career and skills development.

When I founded JobKred, this was the exact market gap that I was determined to solve, using data science technology to accelerate human capital development.

Especially in Southeast Asia, there is a lot of untapped talent that has the right capabilities but not the right skill sets that the market needs, and help provide clarity and direction to both enterprises and individuals in their skills development has been a key mission for us.

As an AI-powered skills intelligence and competency management platform, JobKred was created to ultimately reduce employee attrition rates, identify and develop missing skills, and transform organisations to be future-ready through effective and data-driven skills development.

Working with clients from Fortune 500 enterprises, top-ranked universities, government agencies and international aid agencies like the World Bank, JobKred has gained immeasurable experience, expertise and data in the whole life-cycle of skills intelligence and workforce development.

The future of HR practices

Employers need to be nimble and embrace new ideas to transform their business, traits that are key to rethinking and reshaping the future of work in the current economic climate.

This includes taking the leap forward in job redesigning, adopting digital technologies, and taking on new ways to work as well to rapidly adjust their business’s competencies, to reduce employee attrition, increase business agility and extend their business life cycles.

The significance of an agile workforce will continue to increase, and HR will play an increasingly important role in making better and more informed decisions by utilising skills intelligence.

Also Read: Want to work at a leading tech company? Here’s how

Skills are the currency of the future in the business world. Just like a currency, it’s more than just about accumulating it in a war chest for future use – it’s about finding and gathering the appropriate resources, growing the assets in the right way, and utilising them at the right time to further develop your businesses.

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Image Credit: Elnur

The post Why are skills the currency of the future business world? appeared first on e27.

Accelerating Asia, a Singapore-headquartered accelerator-cum-VC-fund, today announced the launch of its second fund worth US$20 million.

As per an official statement, Fund II has already secured about 50 per cent in soft commitments from existing investors and partners.

The new vehicles will focus on seed to pre-Series A investments into high-potential startups across South and Southeast Asia. It will start deploying capital in 2021.

Also Read: Accelerating Asia to launch Fund II in H2, ups investment size to US$250K

In an interview with e27 last year, Accelerating Asia’s co-founder and general partner Craig Dixon said it was planning to launch a new fund in the range of US$20 million to US$50 million Fund II.

Upon the capital disbursement in 2021, Accelerating Asia will raise its ticket size from US$150,000 to US$250,000 and looks to invest in a broader number of high potential early-stage startups. It aims to bridge the gap between seed and pre-Series A investments across Southeast Asia and South Asia.

Accelerating Asia employs the VC accelerator model to lower the risk of their investment. It claims that its 3-month accelerator programme receives over 1,000 applications each year, with the top two per cent are selected for funding.

The fund’s latest cohort has closed the application round this June, and the startups are slated to raise Series A within six to 12 months of graduating and receiving investment. It boasts that 80 per cent of portfolio startups receive follow-on funding from the region’s leading VCs, including D4V, Chiba Dojo Fund, Headline Asia, Impact Collective, SOSV, MDI Ventures, Falcon Network, and Anchorless.

“We believe they are well-placed to grow and scale and perhaps even be part of the dozens of unicorns expected to rise in the region by 2025,” said Amra Naidoo, co-founder and general partner of Accelerating Asia.

Most of the startups invested are addressing at least one or more of the Sustainable Development Goals, and 65 per cent are considered Gender Lens Investments.

Also read: Investing with gender lens: Proven strategy to achieve 2x+ in returns

According to the press statement, Accelerating Asia has also committed to donating one per cent of the fund’s carry and profit to more initiatives that support early-stage entrepreneurs.

The pledge sees participation from 10,000 members in 100 countries, including the likes of Salesforce, Twilio, Canva to ignite half a billion dollars in new philanthropy.

Accelerating Asia’s first fund has invested in 36 startups across ten markets and 20 verticals. The fund I portfolio companies have collectively raised US$30 million to date, with around 70 per cent of capital raised through Accelerating Asia’s network.

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Image credit: Accelerating Asia

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In 2014, Komatsu, the world’s second-largest construction company based in Japan, took about two weeks to collect high-precision data on an average project site. Back then, drones utilising manual mission planners were still inefficient.

A group of entrepreneurs embarked on a journey to find a solution to this pressing problem, which is elaborated on in the Climatic talk show’s first episode.  

“We needed to be able to deploy over 10,000 sites in a matter of months, and it was nearly impossible to do it with drones. So we set ourselves to solve this problem,” Christian Sanz, CEO of US-based Skycatch, a provider of drone data solutions for the construction and mining industry. 

In 2014, Skycatch announced a partnership with Komatsu. Thanks to its technology, surveying Komatsu construction sites has become easier and it takes only 20 minutes. 

Pain points of a conservative industry

The construction industry’s efficiency has been on the decline for the past several decades. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, the efficiency has fallen by half since the late 1960s for various reasons, the biggest being the skilled labour shortage.

“Construction sites are very complicated,” said Thomas Abell, chief of digital technology for the development unit at Asian Development Bank, which deploys a multitude of construction projects across the Asia Pacific. 

“They have a lot of material. They also have high requirements to manage the design tolerances,” he added. “So you need to send people who understand what’s happening with the materials and equipment to the project sites.” 

Also read: How smart technologies help an essential but dirty industry clean up impact

Even before the emergence of the pandemic, builders couldn’t keep up with the rapid urbanisation in every corner of the world. And COVID-19 has changed things for the worse. As construction picks up pace after a tumultuous year, workers struggle to return to work and meet the growing demand.

“Normally, you send consultants or project officers to the sites to monitor the projects. But the pandemic has made it impossible,” explained Abell.

According to new research of the Associated Builders and Contractors of America (ABC), the US alone needs to hire 430,000 more workers to meet the increasing demand for construction services in 2021. This quarter, 88 per cent of contractors say they’re having a hard time recruiting skilled labour. Newly designed machines and robots are urgently required to fill this gap.

According to Skycatch CEO, the construction industry faces a shortage of skilled labour and lacks automation machinery. Besides, fragmented processes in construction and constant human errors are also posing challenges.

“One single error could cost a half a million-dollar repair. Plus, it takes two weeks of redesign, causing more material to be delivered on the site. It means more waste and more CO2 emission,” said Sanz.

It’s common knowledge that CO2 contributes mainly to climate change. Statistics from the UN’s 2017 Global Status Report show that buildings and construction account for approximately 40 per cent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.

There is a clear link between the amount of machinery used, the material delivered and environmental fallout, or how much CO2 is released into the atmosphere when construction is in progress. 

“If we can reduce one day of construction, it makes an impact on the environment as it reduces CO2 emission. It also makes the whole process more efficient,” Sanz explained.

Efficiency coupled with climate change mitigation

Experts have pointed out several significant global innovative construction trends, including the ability to capture the real world in a detailed digital model, or digital twins; the production of smarter, better, lower-carbon materials; and the management of the construction ecosystem surrounding self-contractors, contractors, and planners.

Some startups have been forging ahead with innovative solutions for construction planning and data analytics.

In 2014, Skycatch first collaborated with Komatsu to generate high precision data at construction sites through its drone technology. The startup enables its partners, including Komatsu, to see minor details of the sites inside out and track them efficiently. 

Another synergy between Skycatch and big corporations is in the infrastructure investment of ADB in Port of Nauru, where the supervision was done remotely through Skycatch’s daily 3D model of the actual site that can be used instead of physical surveillance.

“The other thing is that most of the analysis takes place after the mistakes,” Abell said. “What we’re doing at Skycatch is we’re building technology for you to see the mistake before you even install anything.”

For example, Skycatch’s drone data and analytics track change over time across dams, reducing industrial accidents. When combined with sensors and IoT devices like piezometers and inclinometers, the tailings dam engineers get a far larger digital picture of potential mishaps to solve.

Bangkok-headquartered construction-tech company Builk One Group, which has just closed its Series B+ round, also provides a range of SaaS products. They include business management services and online construction material trading platforms to enable firms in Thailand and ASEAN to digitalise their construction projects. It has also developed a technology for construction sites to enhance operational efficiency and reduce errors.

“We can use these technologies in planning. We can also use them in the actual construction more efficiently, leveraging materials more quickly, locating issues, turning around projects more quickly, and even doing projects in more financially efficient ways as well,” Abell added.

This practice also presents a massive opportunity for startups to support the industry in realising physical climate risks, according to Hara Wang, investment director at the nonprofit climate tech accelerator-cum-investment fund Third Derivative.

“They can help the building and construction sector in better understanding and monitoring the performance of construction and infrastructure projects, especially when the risk of heat and flooding increases as a result of climate change,” said Wang.

Also read: COVID-19, the environment, and the tech ecosystem: what opportunity is available out there for us?

British multinational professional services firm, Arup, has created machine learning technology in Shanghai as part of a project to address the city’s rising flood and river pollution problems. 

Since 1990, climate change and Shanghai’s tripling population has put the city at higher environmental risk. Arup has employed satellite images and a machine-learning algorithm to map parts of the landscape, identifying “green” infrastructure and maximising the potential of the existing network before deploying any new construction projects.

Technology has helped in building infrastructure in cleaner, greener, and significantly more climate-friendly. 

Asia’s smart construction at the forefront

According to an ADB report, Asia is expected to contribute roughly 60 per cent to global growth by 2030. As per The World Data Lab’s figures, nearly 90 per cent of the 2.4 billion new middle-class members will be in the region.

As construction is also the inevitable companion to economic development, Daniel Hersson, senior fund manager at Asian Development Bank’s ADB Ventures, believes that most of the world’s new infrastructure and building expansion will thus likely occur in Asia. 

“Asia is the big market for many, many solutions,” said Hersson. “You can’t avoid that. Not only most of the growth but also most of the opportunities will be in Asia.”

Hara Wang echoed this viewpoint. She says she has witnessed that Asia is more exposed to physical climate risk than any other part of the world. However, it is still the ideal location for taking advantage of decarbonisation prospects.

“It’s also critically important that we have this climate adaptation and climate resilience mindset for this new phase of infrastructure build down in Asia,” added Wang.

As the region is home to some emerging hard-tech advancements from China, India, and some regions of Southeast Asia, Wang emphasised that Asia is no longer just the implementation place but puts itself at the forefront of the world’s fundamental technology developments.

But when it comes to the symbiotic relationship between construction companies and technology startups, it’s about the technology and getting people to accept and choose to utilise it. 

“A large company like Komatsu with decades of experience can achieve efficiency if it works with a fast-growing startup like SkycatchThat’s where we see a lot of value being created,” said Hersson of ADB Ventures.

Nori Onodera, who leads the smart construction solutions company Earthbrain, a spin-off from Komatsu, stated that construction corporations face challenges in figuring out exactly what pieces of technology are required to hit the goal.

“Some of the technologies are already in existence today, so it’s just a matter of implementation; some of the technologies don’t quite exist yet, especially technologies for them to cover these emissions, not coming from power consumption or transportation consumption,” Wang explained.

The inflexion point lies in the globalisation of the innovation ecosystem, which is not just from the perspective of startups and technology but also other collaborators at the borders of startups, corporates, policy-making networks and investors.

“It’s not just about startups themselves; it is actually about the innovation ecosystem built around each technology,” she said. “It takes a dance globally to make it work.”

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Image credit: 123rf

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Image credit: 123rf

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Image credit: 123rf

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