Mark Zuckerberg made the headlines when he said in June that Facebook would become a “metaverse company“, or strive to build a “maximalist”, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi.

Gamers also seem to be excited about metaverse, with NFT-driven games like Axie Infinity or CryptoKitties gaining popularity. It indicates the play-to-earn economy is becoming a global phenomenon.

As for metaverse, you can imagine it as a single, persistent and connected virtual environment shared by everyone (in the form of a “digital avatar”). Non-fungible tokens (NFT)-based games are the pioneering version of this metaverse.

“Virtual identity has become an extension of our physical identity as we spend so much time on the Internet for shopping, socialising, etc.,” said TJ Kawamura, partner at Republic Realm. “I think the metaverse is a natural evolution to that.”

Based out of the US, Republic Realm is a digital real estate investor in the metaverse. 

This evolution of the metaverse goes along with the bubble-associated NFTs, or programmable blockchain-based records that uniquely represent digital arts such as videos, music, or goods.

The Google Trends data shows that NFTs are gaining steam, with global interest jumping 426 per cent in August 2021. Experts consider this a stepping stone for the not-too-distant metaverse, where digital assets can secure their scarcity and values through verifiable randomness.

Also read: The art of blockchain: What is the NFT craze all about?

Realising this future, investors are betting big on this with hundreds of millions of dollars. For instance, Republic Realm recently bought virtual land in the Decentraland metaverse for a record US$913,000 in June. 

So far, Republic Realm has acquired more than 1,700 parcels across eight metaverses, including Axie Infinity, The Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Somnium Space.

Earlier in April, Epic Games, the owner of the famous battle royale video game Fortnite, raised US$1 billion from a slew of investors to pursue its metaverse ambition.

It is not unrealistic to anticipate an alternative universe that simulates a new reality amplified from the existing one. Ready Player One sci-fi novel’s OASIS — a virtual universe where people stay to escape the real problematic world in 2045 — is the nearest example of this concept.

“It is still early days for the metaverse,” Janine Yorio, managing director at Republic Realm, told e27. “However, we believe a convergence of fundamental shifts in technology, society, socialisation, gaming, and retail provide significant tailwinds for mass metaverse adoption and development”.

People are working to achieve this goal step by step. Developers still need more time to break down the technical hurdles to set up the immersive system with augmented reality and virtual reality (VR/AR) applications and troves of hardware production.

But can you afford to miss this dream-come-true opportunity? 

Here are some of the roles that you could take when jumping on the bandwagon.

A player in a digital in-game world

Gaming has always paved the way for adopting various revolutionary technologies, from Pokémon Go with AR to Farmville with social media (Facebook) or simple digital card games that get you accustomed to PC.

Axie Infinity, Animoca Brands, or Fortnite are some prominent players bridging the gap between millions of people and the immersive digital experience of a future metaverse.

Within these in-game environments, people are not only attracted to the gameplay as a recreational activity, but they can also socialise with other people, create their own assets, trade them and earn real-life money.

This, however, comes with a challenge to build an appealing play-to-earn model, especially when a portion of players only go to NFT-based games for financial gains.

Tin Nguyen, the founder of blockchain game Sipher, said that there were case studies of some crypto native games which had acquired millions of users too fast but then went out of tokens after few months.

“The most important part is it has to be a game that is fun to play. It has to be a game that attracts people because of the experience you’re providing and not because of the token or some financial value that you’re giving them for just grinding game,” said Nguyen in a recent event on the future of NFT sales in the metaverse.

Sébastien Bisch, general manager of Novaquark, the developer of sci-fi massively multiplayer online (MMO) game Dual Universe, speaks of another challenge: the limited types of virtual experience in the modern games industry — a step away from a truly unified, persistent game world of a metaverse.

“Very few games have tried to propose a unified, persistent game world for all players. Even when they did, the scalability was extremely limited with a cap to the number of players able to play in the same area,” said Bisch, as cited by gamesindustry.biz.

Fortnite, for instance, has to spread users across different servers and therefore does not bring everyone to the same virtual place of an in-game event as we expect with an ideal parallel universe.

A worker in “a level playing field”

CoinDesk recently reported that a Filipino earned around 10,000 PHP (US$206) per week from playing Axie Infinity around the clock and considered earning SLP (Axie Infinity’s in-game utility token) as his full-time job. He then inspired 100 more people in his local community to play since the pandemic deprived people of their jobs.

Metaverse Filipino Worker (MFW) then becomes a new career option in the country. The metaverse turned into a workplace that people could reach with a smartphone and an internet connection.

“People are making more money than they would in their local economies,” said Kawamura of Republic Realm. “That’s creating a level-playing field when it comes to being able to make money from anywhere.”

But what’s truly disruptive is that as metaverse leverages decentralised blockchain ledger and NFTs to ensure ownership and scarcity of digital assets, the artist community can now take full credit for their works. The community can easily trade them to global audiences and move the digital product from one metaverse to another without losing their commercial copyrights.

“It’s something that our art world has struggled with — their licenses and royalties,” said Yorio. “This idea of being able to trade things with a ledger tracking their legitimacy and making sure that they’re not counterfeit makes a lot of sense.”

Virtual artist Hiroto Kai created NFT art and digital clothing and sold them to the in-game players in the metaverse of Decentraland. In July, Sony Music Entertainment teamed up with the global gaming platform Roblox to help recording artists reach and monetise new audiences from Roblox’s 199+ million monthly active players.

As metaverse economies leverage the interaction between traditional cash economies and a digital in-game economy, people can now rely on that to put food on the table.

Another topic that might transform the work of various professionals worldwide is how the omniverse employs the laws of physics to control factories, buildings, and infrastructures in the real world. 

Omniverse is a simulation and collaboration platform that constitutes the foundation of the metaverse.

Manufacturing giants BMW Group and NVIDIA are on track to set new standards of virtual factory planning with these omniverses. They will employ a range of planning data and applications and allow real-time collaboration between virtual omniverse and physical facilities with unrestricted compatibility.

A consumer in an immersive business scenario

Over the past year, brands such as Gucci, Vans, Stella McCartney, Burberry, Coca-Cola, Netflix and Warner Bros have all set their foot on the metaverse ground to create brand awareness among younger users.

“This generation grows up doing things just like we are now interacting in Zoom. They’re more accustomed to immersive experiences when they use the Internet,” said Yorio. “The companies that fail to adapt will be left behind because the next generation of consumers is going to expect to find new products and their favourite old products in these immersive environments.”

Imagine walking down a street and seeing a Burberry accessory; you buy it, and then it appears with your avatar in a metaverse game. The same applies when you purchase an item in your metaverse game. There are entirely no boundaries between the physical world and a virtual universe.

Just as how the Internet arrived 25 years ago, it is high time for any consumer product/airline/hotel company to think about what metaverse means for their businesses.

Some are worried that when big shots such as Facebook publicly announce plans to build out their version of the metaverse, they will trounce any of the various companies building their ones.

“However, crypto is all about giving the representation back to the people; that is its core ethos,” noted Yoiro. “Decentralisation is what people are drawn to, so there may be pushback against a big player getting involved in the space.”

Yorio added that many metaverses utilise what is referred to as a DAO — a decentralised autonomous organisation. These act as the media for decision-making and can be joined by regularly contributing to the specific DAO’s community.

In the end, you are the one who would choose the role you play in the imminent metaverse, and your participation and engagement would define the development of this parallel world. 

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Image Credit: Republic, Decentraland

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Society Pass, a data-driven loyalty platform in Vietnam, today announced the closing of its Series C funding round.

The details of the money raised and investors remain undisclosed.

The funding will enable Society Pass to acquire new growing e-commerce brands in Southeast Asia, with Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines among its priority markets, with several deals in the pipeline for 2021.

“This new funding will allow us to replicate our success in our target markets and our ongoing aggressive M&A initiatives in the pipeline,” said founder, chairman and CEO Dennis Nguyen.

Founded in 2018 by Nguyen, Society Pass operates multiple e-commerce and lifestyle platforms across its key markets. Its business model focuses on collecting user data through the regular circulation of its universal loyalty points. It connects consumers and merchants across multiple product and service categories fostering organic loyalty.

Also Read: Society Pass acquires Vietnam’s luxury e-commerce brand Leflair that was closed last year

Society Pass claims it has amassed over 1.5 million registered users and over 3,500 registered merchants and brands.

Separately, Society Pass announced the relaunch of Leflair that it acquired in June this year after the luxury e-commerce brand filed for bankruptcy in 2020. Before the acquisition, Leflair generated over US$10 million in sales y-o-y and was ranked amongst the top 5 e-commerce platforms in Vietnam.

The addition of Leflair complements Society Pass’s two other existing businesses: SoPa, an online ordering and loyalty platform, and #HOTTAB, a POS service provider specialising in payment infrastructure, loyalty management and joint marketing programs for merchants.

It builds on the fast-growing e-commerce opportunity in Vietnam, one of Southeast Asia’s fastest-growing e-commerce markets, valued at US$13.2 billion and expected to grow steadily until 2025.

According to the Digital 2021 Global Overview Report by HootSuite & We Are Social, Southeast Asia is sporting a 69 per cent internet penetration rate with 9.6 per cent YoY growth, and South Asia with a 42 per cent internet penetration rate with 9.1 per cent y-o-y growth.

Both regions stand to see tremendous growth, with Google, Bain, and Temasek estimating Southeast Asia internet economy GMV reaching US$309 billion by 2025, while RedSeer Consulting estimates the South Asia internet economy to touch US$250 billion by 2025.

E-commerce and online travel are expected to take the lion’s share of this growth. Society Pass plans to expand its market presence by harnessing the untapped potential of South and Southeast Asia believing that developing countries are only now experiencing a surge in digital adoption, with large potentials for future growth.

Society Pass capitalises on the rapidly developing earlier stages of the internet economy in the region, spanning verticals such as F&B, beauty, travel and lifestyle.

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While COVID-19 catalysed ASEAN’s digitisation, the upward trajectory of the region’s digital economy was already apparent before the pandemic – on track to cross a whopping US$300 billion by 2025. 

What’s the lifeblood of this digital economy? Data. With more than 40 million people coming online for the first time in 2020 alone, it is no surprise that ASEAN is one of the most data-rich regions in the world. Data as a resource is abundant and will only continue to grow in this region.

Many organisations have leveraged this data to become more resilient amidst the uncertain economic climate. They are stepping up investments in core data competencies across business intelligence, data engineering, data science, and machine learning.

Yet, few organisations have laid the proper groundwork for a truly data-driven business model in getting ahead with these technologies.

According to recent research from MIT Technology Review, just 13 per cent of organisations worldwide ‘excel’ at delivering upon their data strategies. Another study finds that anywhere from 60 per cent to 73 per cent of all data goes unused.

Without adequate data strategies, businesses miss massive opportunities to understand their customers better, offer high-value products, streamline operations, and more.

If it is so critical to succeeding in the long-term, why are so many organisations effectively using it— or worse, struggling even to get started entirely?

It’s not too late for organisations to catch up.

To provide the optimal performance and capabilities that will drive your organisation forward, organisations can look to these three technology pillars to create the foundation for a successful, transformative data strategy. 

Modernise your data architecture

To set your organisation up for data-driven success, reevaluate your data architecture. In the past, different use cases demanded other data structures. For example, business intelligence typically requires data warehouses— a collection of data structured and filtered for particular purposes.

Other use cases, like data science or machine learning, required separate data lakes — or extensive collections of unstructured, raw data. Over time, organisations will adopt more solutions or add onto existing ones, creating a messy and expensive network of applications that don’t always work well together.

Networks like these are difficult to maintain and prevent separate data teams from collaborating with a single source of truth, limiting an organisation’s ability to get the most value from data. 

A fast-growing trend in the industry is to rationalise existing, complex architecture to streamline the ability to gain new insights. With over half of respondents in Asia-Pacific and Japan either searching for or implementing a new data platform to address current data challenges, more so than any region. What type of platform should they adopt?

Rather than incorporate several disconnected solutions for different use cases, look for an open and modern data architecture that can grow with your organisation. Architectures that allow all data teams, from marketing to data engineers, to work with it and collaborate on a central platform — no matter the use case — will accelerate innovation faster for the entire organisation. 

Build your tech stack in the cloud(s)

While it was initially considered a nice-to-have, cloud is now the foundation for modernising and successfully scaling data management. The shift towards the cloud has steadily gained momentum since its introduction in the early 2000s, exploding in recent years as the de facto approach to building modern platforms.

It provides more excellent storage, computing ability and interoperability, making it an obvious choice for most enterprises. 

2020 may have best highlighted the many benefits of the cloud. When companies closed offices because of the pandemic, cloud-based technologies like Zoom and Slack helped teams seamlessly work together when they couldn’t access on-prem solutions.

The shift is likely to stick; most significant enterprises in Singapore have begun to use some form of cloud storage, and investment in the public cloud is expected to grow rapidly over the next five years, from US$1.5 billion in 2018 to about US$3.6 billion in 2023.

Even further, many data and technology leaders go as far as to say that it’s not enough to think about cloud in the singular sense but rather about building for a multi-cloud environment. As the adoption of cloud-based technology grows, many data teams are now looking for solutions that can move across major clouds like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud if needed.

Typically they understand a multi-cloud capability can provide their organisations with several benefits: the flexibility to run workloads anywhere, easy integrations when bringing on new solutions or businesses that use other cloud providers, and the assurance that they can comply with regulations down the road.

Embrace open source and open standards

As data architectures evolve, the value of open-source and open standards will only increase. Open source is already top-rated; RedHat found that over two-thirds of IT leaders in the Asia Pacific use open source for infrastructure modernisation.

The region is also ahead of others in tapping open-source for AI and machine learning workloads, with 51 per cent using open-source software in those projects today compared to 48 per cent in the US and 45 per cent in EMEA. 

Open source has several advantages. It prevents teams from building tricky solutions in-house from scratch, which eats up resources; it usually comes at little to no cost, and it’s tried and true— solutions have been thoroughly adopted and vetted by many, meaning fewer headaches for your IT team down the road.

It also offers complete transparency and visibility into source code and discussions surrounding it. Your team will know how bugs are addressed, while proprietary software may not disclose bugs or common problems experienced by others. Even more, open-source brings with it an entire community of those encountering the same challenges and working toward the exact solutions as you.

These technologies further complement cloud-based platforms, helping enterprises quickly roll out the latest innovations even with a strapped budget. Embracing open data formats also helps fend off vendor lock-in, delivering the flexibility that will allow organisations to more easily share data securely across systems and tools, from wherever their it lives.

As data becomes increasingly integral to your organisation’s success and growth, the technology you put into place can either enable that growth or hinder it.

Together, these three pillars of technology— modern data architectures, multi-cloud, and open source— will establish an IT ecosystem that not only supports your data strategy and solves for business needs, but future-proofs your organization to take on whatever challenges may come.

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One of the biggest challenges in the workplace is employee burnout. Most of us are not strangers to stress and fatigue caused by work, but these have been made even more apparent with Covid-19. A recent report by job portal Indeed showed that 52 per cent of all workers are feeling burned out, 9% higher than pre-pandemic levels. 

It comes as little surprise, then, that mental health in the workplace is one of the key issues that all organisations have to tackle. While work can be good for mental health, a poor working environment can lead to problems in the long run. 

For example, harassment and bullying are both commonly reported problems, and lack of rest due to overwork is also harmful.

Fortunately, in recent times, there has been more emphasis placed on the importance of mental health in the workplace. This is partly due to the rise of work-from-home arrangements and the blurring of lines between individuals’ personal and professional lives. We see this in how China’s controversial ‘996’ culture — working from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week — has come under fire for ruining work-life balance.

Also read: Finding product-market fit with the power of product analytics

For fast-growing startups that are pursuing growth, this is even more crucial.

While there is nothing wrong with striving for speedy and exponential expansion, steps must be taken to prevent employees from burning out. Both employees and leaders must take active roles in ensuring the overall mental wellbeing of the organisation.

This is why corporate wellness platform Mindfi held a webinar addressing this specific issue on 13 August 2021, 1-2 pm SGT. Titled “Startup Success: Building your team’s mental wellbeing”, the webinar had three prolific panellists who shared their thoughts on mental wellbeing on both personal and professional levels. 

The panellists were:

• Anita Sadasivan, chief wellbeing officer at MindFi
• Jeffrey Tiong, chief executive officer (CEO) and founder of innovation intelligence platform, Patsnap
• Michelle Alphonso, CEO and co-founder of cloud computing consulting company, PointStar Consulting

The webinar was moderated by Mohan Belani, CEO of e27.

Exacerbated by COVID-19, mental wellbeing takes a front seat

Before diving into the organisational level, the webinar kicked off with each panellist sharing their personal challenges with mental wellbeing and what approach they took to address these challenges.

As a mother of two very young children, Michelle had to take care of her family while managing many organisational changes within PointStar. 

“The last year, we had a lot of changes to make because of the Covid-19 situation,” she said. “So I think it was all piling up.”

However, she found that creating clear boundaries between work and home helped her deal with the stress. Every month, she also finds time to step back and take stock of what is happening in her life.

Both Jeffrey and Anita shared their stress management tips as well. As the founder of a startup that recently achieved unicorn status, Jeffrey is no stranger to stress and finds time to exercise and get enough sleep in order to alleviate it. For Anita, she engages in a daily gratitude practice at the end of each day and tries to do a different activity every weekend, like going to the museum.

The discussion then moved toward mental wellbeing on the organisation level. 

Michelle shared that while issues surrounding mental health in her company had always been around, they were never brought to the surface nor obvious to management until Covid-19 struck. With lockdowns and work-from-home as the norm, on top of company expansion, she noticed that stress was escalating among employees.

Her trigger point, she said, was when she found out that three of her staff had sought professional help for depression and anxiety without her knowing. This incident led her to take mental health much more seriously.

Jeffrey echoed Michelle’s points, citing Covid-19 as a key reason for employees’ mental health deteriorating. For example, some of his staff had to deal with loved ones passing away. 

Once he realised that mental health had to be addressed, Jeffrey started putting measures in place. They started by engaging speakers to share about mental wellbeing and launching an open hotline so that those who need help have a channel to turn to.

Also read: Connect with these X-PITCH 2021 startups through e27 Pro

Similarly, Michelle put programmes in place for her staff at PointStar. For example, the company started using Mindfi to keep track of employees’ mental health in an anonymous way, which made them feel safe and more comfortable sharing about their wellbeing. Employees also went for anagram training to understand each other’s personality types, reducing friction between their working styles.

Anita affirmed that Jeffrey and Michelle’s experiences were not uncommon. The key, she said, is to ensure that there are preventive measures in place.

“Even if you are depressed or anxious, you can do early interventions,” she explains. “You address it early on, and it doesn’t escalate.”

Another key challenge that the panellists agreed on was fostering a culture of being open about mental wellbeing. People in the United States and Europe are generally more receptive to speaking about mental health compared to those in Asia. 

Ultimately, both employers and employees have a part to play. For example, individuals can find what stress management activities work best for them, while companies can push for more awareness and education by organising talks and webinars that tackle the issue.

“At the end of the day, everybody needs to take responsibility for their own wellbeing, but organisations can help by giving them tools and resources,” says Anita.

Overall wellness as a key driver for performance

MindFi is a corporate mental health and wellness startup that aims to help enterprises build productive workspaces. 

Specifically, it provides services like a dedicated app, analytics and recommendations for human resource teams, and learning and development masterclasses on topics like mindfulness, resilience, and teamwork.

MindFi strongly believes in making positive changes in people’s careers and everyday lives by helping them prioritise mental wellbeing through a variety of innovative methods. Ultimately, their mission is to empower people to achieve peak mental performance.

Among other initiatives, the team aims to generate impact by providing self-care recommendations, 24/7 guided support, and educational masterclasses held by their behavioural coaches.

For example, the MindFi app helps employees build sustainable habits, access video classes and audio courses on mindfulness, and track their progress. Employers can also implement a ‘mind challenge’ for employees to clock ‘wellness minutes’ by completing exercises on the MindFi app.

Also read: Gearing up for the new normal: What do VCs want and how can startups ace their funding applications

MindFi’s latest initiative, the webinar ‘Startup Success: Building your team’s mental wellbeing’, complements the company’s overall mission of building a strong culture of mental health support in corporations. 

The company recently secured US$750,000 in a pre-seed fundraise that includes investors such as iGlobe Partners and M Venture Partners and was selected for Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 programme. They have also onboarded Erica Johnson, co-founder of unicorn startup Modern Health, as an executive adviser to accelerate the company’s growth in Asia-Pacific.

From February to August this year, MindFi has tripled its headcount and customer base. The company boasts more than 30 enterprise clients throughout Asia and 68 per cent of employees have reported improved mental wellbeing within one month of using MindFi’s app.

For more information regarding the event and other similar projects being spearheaded by MindFi, visit https://www.mindfi.co/  and watch the full webinar here.

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

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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KitaBeli, a consumer-facing social commerce platform based in Indonesia, has extended its Series A financing round.

Co-founders of India-based e-commerce platform Meesho and VC firms, including Indonesia’s Kopi Kenangan Capital and the US-based Banana Capital, also participated, reported Tech In Asia.

With the fresh funding, KitaBeli plans to expand its operations across the archipelago while strengthening its current presence in 10 cities in Indonesia, including Jakarta, Solo and Malang.

The extension follows its US$10 million Series A round led by Go Ventures. East Ventures is another investor in KitaBeli.

Also Read: RateS snags Series A to expand social commerce platform to tier 2, 3 cities in Indonesia

Launched in March 2020 by four co-founders, KitaBeli offers a mobile app that enables users to buy daily essentials, ranging from fast-moving consumer goods, fresh produce, beauty, electronics and other household items.

The startup optimises the “team-buying” model, where users can receive discounts and benefit from lower prices by sharing information with their friends and neighbours.

KitaBeli’s model combines the best practices of Chinese e-commerce Pinduoduo’s group-buying network and the community leader ecosystem of high-growth companies in China and India. It manages to drive cost-effective growth in rural Indonesia through its scalable user acquisition strategy.

Unlike other social commerce models that utilise agents to sell in their communities, KitaBeli’s users could place orders directly on its platform with free shipping, one-day delivery, daily deals and 24×7 online support. 

The startup then leverages its partner-based delivery network, where individuals within the community earn commissions for performing last-mile delivery of ordered items.

KitaBeli sad it has witnessed robust growth in tier 2-4 cities across Indonesia and aims to leapfrog more capitalised players in the market.

In Indonesia, the gross merchandise value (GMV) sold through B2C marketplaces reached over US$30 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach US$ 83 billion by 2025, according to Statista. 

Last year, the country also secured the largest e-commerce revenue among the tiger cub economies, including Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Indonesia.

Shopee, Tokopedia, and Bukalapak together hold the largest market share in the archipelago.

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Image Credit: KitaBeli

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