Here’s a glimpse into our automobiles’ future. Electric vehicles (EVs), once regarded as a lifestyle item, have now come full circle to be considered essential in Singapore’s 2030 Green Plan, a nationwide initiative to advance the country’s national agenda on sustainable development.

The adoption of EVs pushes for a greener, cleaner, emissions-free future. 

Why are EVs so important?

Environment

By opting for an EV, you are assisting in reducing hazardous air pollution caused by exhaust emissions. When an EV is charged from the grid, it produces greenhouse gas emissions, much lower than the usual carbon emissions from a diesel-powered vehicle.

Minimising carbon emissions cleans up our environment and makes resource and energy conservation the new normal.

Health

Reduced hazardous exhaust emissions are beneficial to our health. Better air quality will result in fewer health problems and pollution-related costs. Electric vehicles are also quieter than gasoline and diesel vehicles, resulting in reduced noise pollution.

Also Read: Ecosystem Roundup: J&T Express in talks for US$1B with Tencent, Carsome bags US$200M, Play Ventures raises US$30M+ for new vehicle

Automakers’ 0pinions

It’s rare to see the industry leaders divide as radically as they have with electric vehicles in an industry as entrenched as the automobile industry. When it comes to the future of electric vehicles, however, the two largest firms, Toyota and the Volkswagen Group (VW) have taken diametrically opposing positions.

The Volkswagen Group has taken a hard line on electric vehicles, emphasising the need to adapt fast and effectively. Toyota, on the other hand, has consistently poured cold water on the future of electric vehicles.

Toyota remains investing in hybrid automobiles. However, unlike plug-in hybrids, regular hybrids cannot be charged and must rely on fossil fuels for electricity.

Obtaining public opinion

Motorist is an automotive platform headquartered in Singapore with over 115,000 app users, i.e. eight per cent of Singapore’s vehicle population. Through transparent transactional processes (buy, sell, insurance), personalised smart reminders and notifications, Motorist hopes to simplify car ownership for the masses.

Currently, eight in 10 users act upon a reminder, whether it’s time to renew their road tax or pay a traffic fine, has conducted a poll with close to 3,400 of their app users in Singapore regarding Singapore’s energy-saving strategy.

Over 73 per cent of users surveyed expressed interest in government attempts to promote the use of electric vehicles in a study done by the company.

Furthermore, over 65 per cent of respondents expressed an interest in adopting EVs after the S$5,000 minimum additional registration charge for EVs was eliminated in January 2022.

The poll also revealed that non-EV users were enthusiastic about moving to EVs, with 68.1 per cent of interested respondents. At the same time, the remainder expressed reservations due to pricing, range, and the bother of charging EVs but said they would keep EVs in mind in the future.

Transitioning too soon, whether as a producer or a consumer, has its drawbacks.

However, given what is at stake for both parties, people should promptly consider this shift. With what the future holds, it’s evident that the automotive industry is on the verge of seeing a level of technological upheaval that hasn’t been seen in decades.

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Unlike most sectors, edutech has been booming over the past year amidst the pandemic, as many brick and mortar education and professional training institutions in the region are scrambling to digitise. The global edutech industry is currently valued at US$ 89.49 billion in 2020 and is expected to witness a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9 per cent from 2021 to 2028.

This provides ample opportunities for entrepreneurs and investors to capitalise on the growing demand locally and globally and poses a few challenges to the industry.

As industry players continue to innovate to streamline online education, Knovo’s take on three issues that must be addressed to ensure learners can fully benefit from the digitisation of education.

Unfiltered education content and fragmented industry

As of January 2021, about 60 per cent of the global population is reported to have access to the internet via mobile devices, allowing them to access hundreds of edutech platforms and making it difficult for the average student or professional to figure out which education platform is right for them.

Therefore, data aggregation and adaptive learning technologies are important in edutech platforms to help filter education content on the internet.

The high influx of edutech providers has also resulted in the industry becoming more fragmented due to various learning management systems.

The key is to democratise access to quality education tools for students, professionals and educators, thereby driving inclusiveness in e-learning.

To illustrate, Knovo recognises the importance of data aggregation and the impact adaptive learning technologies have on a user’s learning journey.

Its Virtual Interactive Knowledge Exchange (VIKE) platform actively aggregates key players in the edutech industry. Its “one-stop” learning system allows users to tap into a repository of educational content and learning resources to learn synchronously or asynchronously.

As edutech allows ‘flipped learning’ where learners can consume materials offline at their own pace, Knovo addresses the gaps in allowing students to reach out to connect with educators for validated learning and real-time interactions.

Also Read: VUIHOC gets funding from Do Ventures to provide primary school education through animation, gamification

This mode allows a recurring bond between the educators, enterprises, and learners while giving the recognition and exposure for the educators and institutions to connect with new learners globally, outside of their own market or learner base.

This creates an “edu-social” experience between students and educators, giving them flexible learning modes and technology-based features to deliver adaptive digital education content.

Knovo focusses on ‘right’ educator and supply of quality educators

With unfiltered education content comes the challenge of finding the ‘right’ educator. From firsthand experience, the right tutor could change a person’s life as it did for me.

Shadow education is deemed necessary, especially in Asian countries, as most parents believe that an investment in education will pay the best dividends in the years to come.

From a score of F to an A in Mathematics, my experience with an amazing tutor changed my life and was fundamental in earning a good degree and opening up many career options.

With the heightened restrictions and lockdowns implemented worldwide, we recognise that not many have the financial capacity or equal access to quality education. This is where Knovo’s solutions come in.

In collaboration with Singapore Brand Educators and centres, we facilitate access to quality education for underserved communities, making online learning and teaching easier through end-to-end solutions, from class booking, scheduling, virtual learning delivery tools and payment solutions for both learners and educators, all in one.

Our primary goal is to digitally connect qualified educators to learners from all over the world so that those who desire to learn can access quality education without breaking the bank.

Gaps in quality workforce

The reality is that even in this day and age, not many have access to quality education, especially in developing countries. The gaps in the quality of the workforce can directly impact standards of living, business decisions, and the economic growth of countries. These issues derive from lower education standards and have an impact on the way people think and act.

At the K-12 level, where more supervision is needed, the future of education will likely move towards a blended learning model. In tertiary and vocational education, there will be a need for more flexible learning modes to help students acquire the skills they need for jobs or provide them with the opportunity to reskill and upskill at ease.

Hence, as automation and technology transform the labour market, more emphasis will be placed on developing skills that cannot be easily automated, resulting in requirements to be retrained multiple times during their career.

Therefore, I see a rise in AI-powered training suites for enterprises to manage content for such training and drive acceleration in reskilling and upskilling over a longer term.

Also Read: How edutech startups can accelerate active learning

In that vein, the tertiary education spectrum can benefit greatly from blockchain, which provides easy records of students’ educational qualifications or admission details.

This will transform the record-keeping of certificates as well as student credentials in learning institutions and issuing credentials. While many appreciate blockchain as ‘that thing that makes bitcoin work’, there are far more applications for it.

Being secure, decentralised ledgers, blockchains can be applied in many fields, including healthcare and education. I think this is an area that edutech could look at adopting to achieve its full potential.

Our internship programmes for local tertiary and university students allow them to work on real software development projects and understand more about the tech industry and career paths through our extensive database of live instructors and industry experts.

Such courses are targeted towards industry-relevant skills required for jobs and provide lifelong learners with the opportunity to upskill or re-skill through industry-based programmes.

With more initiatives from other edutech providers, we would support a steady pipeline of industry-relevant talent and further establish Singapore as a Global-Asia technology hub.

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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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Portcast, a Singapore-based AI-powered logistics startup, announced today that it has closed a US$3.2 million pre-Series A financing led by Imperial Venture Fund.

Imperial Venture is a US$20-million joint corporate VC vehicle between Newtown Partners and South African logistics company Imperial.

The round also saw participation from Wavemaker Partners, TMV, and Innoport, among others.

Portcast plans to use the new funding to press ahead with international expansion, double the team size and product enhancement, and move from predictive AI to prescriptive AI. The startup also plans to launch new product features such as order-level visibility and scenario planning.

Founded in 2018 by Nidhi Gupta, Portcast offers global freight forwarders and manufacturers an intuitive SaaS platform and APIs to accurately predict air and ocean cargo flows and forecast daily demand.

By leveraging proprietary machine learning algorithms and real-time external market data, Portcast helps its clients achieve real-time visibility, reduce operational costs and improve customer experience, thereby improving supply chain profitability.

The company claims to have predicted the estimated time of arrivals of more than 90 per cent of ships globally and forecasted demand for over 30,000 trade routes (both air and sea) daily.

Also read: Vietnam’s supply chain amid worst COVID-19 outbreak: How tech startups are getting along

According to Gupta, record delays, unprecedented congestion at ports, and constrained capacities have led to high transportation costs of the global supply chain. This translates into the end consumers’ loss and low service reliability.

“We believe that companies with predictive visibility on cargo movements have a significantly higher preparedness to downstream planning and customer service,” said Gupta. “The cloud-based technology has the ability to map out the cascading effects of disruptions such as Typhoon In-fa and the Suez Canal congestion, allowing forwarders and shippers to respond and react more effectively in such scenarios.”

Gupta added that the technology contributes to the reductions in overall port fees by 20 per cent and manual work by 80 per cent for our customers.

“Portcast has proven its technology not just in the long-haul routes, but also in multi-port voyages and emerging economies, which are harder to predict,” said Llew Claasen, managing partner at Newtown Partners. “We believe the technology has global replicability in automating logistics workflows and digitisation.”

Before the latest round, Portcast received US$758,000 seed funding from Wavemaker and SGInnovate.

COVID-19 has enabled the global supply chain to touch its inflexion point, which empowers real-time visibility and forecast capabilities. Gartner reports that 50 per cent of product-centric supply chains will invest in real-time transportation visibility platforms by 2023. 

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Image credit: Portcast

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Pasarnow, an Indonesia-based multi-channel e-groceries platform, has secured a US$3.3 million seed funding, led by East Ventures.

SMDV, Skystar Capital, Amand Ventures, Prasetia Dwidharma, and other angel investors also participated.

This funding will be used to expand Pasarnow’s regional coverage and strengthen its capability in the groceries supply chain and last-mile solutions.

Pasarnow seeks to expand into new cities, hire key talents, enhance its data and technological infrastructures, and develop micro warehouses called frontline mini hubs. As a complement to the current ten hubs across Greater Jakarta, the hubs are designed to enable instant delivery and provide the best last-mile fresh produce solutions to customers. They are located in densely populated areas and equipped with proper fresh and frozen products infrastructure.

“Currently, Pasarnow operates in Greater Jakarta and Bandung, with over 100 full-time employees and 200 daily workers and driver-partners,” said Donald Wono, CTO and co-founder of Pasarnow. “This funding round enables us to cater to more customers and further increase our tech capability.”

Also Read: Agritech ecosystem in Thailand: More than 60 per cent of startups have not raised external funding

Founded in 2019 by Wono, James Rijanto, and Cindy Ozzie, Pasarnow aims to streamline Indonesia’s complicated and layered fresh products supply chain and deliver quality food products to its customers through its multi-channel platform.

“Ensuring product freshness when it reaches the customers is supremely challenging. Food products like fruits, vegetables, and frozen meat are susceptible and perishable, requiring fast and temperature-controlled delivery, which causes expensive logistics costs,” said CEO Rijanto.

“That is why Pasarnow has been investing heavily in our technology and operational infrastructures to solve these issues. Furthermore, having a multi-channel platform helps us in achieving faster economies of scale and in creating greater efficiency in our operations,” he added.

Pasarnow applies a multi-channel ordering system in a single mobile application to provide a unique customer experience based on the channel segmentation: B2B and B2C.

Each channel has a different set of prices, promotions, and key features to meet customers’ specific needs. The operational back-end aggregates all the orders and develops a demand forecasting system that helps its 1,000-plus farmers and suppliers better plan and optimize their harvesting and delivery schedules. It enables Pasarnow to offer fresh and great quality products at fair-trade pricing to customers and minimize its wastages.

Indonesia’s grocery retail value is estimated at US$108 billion in 2019 with online grocery accounting for only less than one per cent of the total. Online grocery retail is projected to increase at around US$13 billion by 2025.

Also Read: Go-Ventures leads US$16M Series A in grocery social commerce startup Segari

With the vast opportunity driven by a shift in customer behaviour towards shopping groceries online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pasarnow has expanded its operations to other cities, claims to have yielded a 400 per cent increase of B2C orders and doubled its monthly revenue.

East Ventures, co-founder and Managing Partner of Willson Cuaca, said, “The changing shopping behaviour of consumers due to the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about another challenge in the grocery industry. Customers demand fresh and high-quality produce daily amidst the complex grocery supply chain. Pasarnow comes to tackle the challenge, eliminating inefficiencies in the process through its data-driven business model.”

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Image credit: Pasarnow

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Rainforest, a Singapore-headquartered e-commerce brand aggregator, has bagged an oversubscribed US$20 million pre-Series A round led by Monk’s Hill Ventures.

Other investors that have participated in the round are January Capital, Crossbeam Venture Partners, Amasia, Lo & Behold Group. Existing backers Insignia Ventures and Nordstar also joined. 

According to co-founder and JJ Chai, Rainforest will use the money to double down on its growth strategy to acquire more e-commerce brands in Asia Pacific, including China, Southeast Asia and Australia. 

Also Read: Former Carousell, OVO execs launch e-commerce brand aggregator Rainforest with US$36M seed funding

A portion of the capital will be used to hire new employees in the acquisition, branding and marketing, product development, supply chain, operations, and strategy.

Rainforest was launched in January 2021. In May, it secured US$36 million in seed funding, led by Nordstar, with participation from Insignia. The round also included a US$30 million debt facility from an undisclosed US-based debt fund.

The company acquires consumer e-commerce brands, providing entrepreneurs with a healthy exit. It also invests in the acquired brands to grow them globally. It leverages its proprietary technology to improve inventory management, cost optimisations, and expansions to new marketplaces and channels for these brands — mainly in home goods, mother & kids, personal care, and pet categories. 

Rainforest has used the previous financing to buy out six e-commerce brands on Amazon marketplaces. Its claims its portfolio has seen over 50 per cent improvement in annual growth rates post-acquisition. Recently, it acquired a China-based brand for US$3.6 million as part of its latest initiative to expand into the Chinese market. 

The company now aims to triple its portfolio by the end-2021 and expand across the European and American markets.

“As one of the largest Amazon sellers in Southeast Asia, Rainforest is tapping into the rise of marketplace sellers off the back of a large, fast-growing e-commerce market,” stated Peng T. Ong, co-founder and managing partner at Monk’s Hill. “JJ and his team have demonstrated thoughtfulness while being formidable operators in acquiring and significantly growing e-commerce brands.”

Additionally, Rainforest recently hired two VPs — Yev Ivanko and Christine Ng. Each brings with them over 15 years of experience in international expansion and business development.

Also read: E-commerce for the future: How open banking enables greater security and trust

According to Marketplace Pulse, third-party sellers on the Amazon marketplace sold US$300 billion worth of goods in 2020, adding a staggering US$100 billion net growth since 2019. Of which, 30 per cent are based in Asia, Chai told TechCrunch.

A recent Asian Development Bank report says B2C platforms revenues reached US$3.8 trillion in 2019, with US$1.8 trillion of it in Asia. E-commerce accounted for over half of these revenues (more than US$1.9 trillion globally), of which $1.1 trillion was generated in Asia.

In May this year, Una Brands, another Singapore-based e-commerce brand aggregator, announced a US$40 million seed round of equity and debt financing. Una was co-founded by Kiren Tanna, the former CEO of Rocket Internet Asia and founder of foodpanda and ZEN Rooms.

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Image credit: Rainforest

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