Google, Temasek and Bain & Company returned with the latest edition of its annual report on Southeast Asia’s (SEA) internet economy, e-Conomy Southeast Asia (SEA) Report – Roaring 20’s: The SEA Digital Decade.

In its sixth edition, the report stated that the region’s internet economy is expected to reach US$1 trillion in GMV by 2030, a prospect that led Google Southeast Asia Vice President Stephanie Davis to dub the region as one that will “define the future of the global digital ecosystem.”

The report further revealed that SEA’s internet economy is estimated to reach US$174 billion in GMV by the end of 2021. It is also expected to reach around US$360 billion by 2025, outgrowing the earlier projection of US$300 billion.

The region now has more than 440 million internet users with 80 per cent (350 million) of them being defined as “digital consumers” –or internet users who have bought at least one online service.

How the pandemic impacts the internet economy

The report touched upon the topic of how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the internet economy in SEA by changing customer behaviour and propelling the growth of several verticals. It highlighted how since the pandemic began, SEA has added 60 million new digital consumers, of which 20 million joined in the first half of 2021 alone.

This growth is “primarily driven” by the e-commerce and food delivery verticals.

Also Read: Google Temasek Report: Southeast Asia’s internet economy to hit US$240B by 2025

“In a strong lead-up to 2030, e-commerce GMV could exceed US$120 billion by end 2021 (a near doubling from 2020) with the potential to reach US$234 billion by 2025. The food delivery sector emerged as a bright spot, growing 33 per cent y-o-y to reach US$12 billion in GMV. It has now become the most penetrated digital service, with 71 per cent of all internet users ordering meals online at least once,” the report wrote.

In addition to e-commerce and food delivery, digital lending services are also expected to grow due to an appetite for consumer financing options and supply chain financing.

“By 2025, digital payments are forecasted to reach over US$1.1 trillion in gross transaction value (GTV), up from a forecast of US$707 billion in 2021. Digital lending could see a 50 per cent increase in outstanding balance from US$26 billion in 2020 to US$39 billion in 2021, led by a rebound in lending appetite and growth in usage of buy-now-pay-later services,” the report said.

How about verticals that have taken a hit during the pandemic, such as travel tech? The report stated that while growth remains muted, it is likely to see a recovery in the medium-to-long term, driven by pent-up demand and vaccination progress.

Startup investments: Reaching “all-time high” in 2021

One of the highlights of SEA’s internet economy in 2021 was the resurgence of startup funding and the so-called race to IPO, which led the report to declare the region’s internet economy to be “expected to reach an all-time high in 2021.”

“Deal value came up to US$11.5 billion in the first half of the year, surpassing the US$11.6 billion for the entire 2020,” it wrote. “Investors see SEA as a lucrative investment destination for the long-term, especially in sectors such as e-commerce and digital financial services, which continue to attract the majority of investments (more than 60 per cent of deal value).”

“Increased deal activity and larger valuations that led to bigger funding rounds have spurred the induction of 11 new consumer technology unicorns in 2021, bringing the total number to 23.”

The year 2021 had also seen IPOs of notable tech companies in the region, such as Indonesia’s Bukalapak. According to the report, more tech companies are exploring IPOs as viable pathways to raise capital or allow early investors to monetise their holdings, especially in view of strong valuations and novel listing approaches such as special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).

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• With the UK releasing massive requirements for sustainability-related disclosure on public markets, Biden is set to come back from COP26 with tangible guidelines for fueling the US green finance landscape.
• As stated by Guido Giese, executive director at MSCI Research, the data shows how stocks with better ESG scores tend to generate better earnings than those with lower ESG scores.
• Over the next five to 10 years, the climate will have financial consequences for most industries and business models – many large corporates are starting to embed sustainability in their core strategy.

Climate risk is investment risk

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Lista, a book-keeping app for micro, small, and medium enterprises in the Philippines, has secured undisclosed funding from 1982 Ventures, East Ventures and Saison Capital, and Alternate Ventures.

Monde Nissin Family Ventures’s Willy Arifin, former Grab Philippines President Brian Cu, Pinelabs CEO Amrish Rau, CRED founder Kunal Shah, Jupiter Bank CEO Jitendra Gupta and Google APAC senior executives Aurelien Pichon and Alap Bharadwaj also co-invested.

Lista will use the funds to grow the team and expand the product offering to reach more MSMEs.

Lista was founded by Aaron Villegas, an experienced entrepreneur with product experience, and Khriz Lim, a former Grab executive.

Also Read: BukuKas makes book-keeping easy for Indonesian MSMEs to save money and time

The Lista app helps MSMEs (freelancers, logistics operators and riders, and other small businesses) digitise their business. In addition, the app also enables them to manage their finances, such as debt tracking, transactions recording, and invoice issuing.

Since its launch in September, Lista claims to have helped collect about US$1.5 million in receivables from MSMEs in the Philippines.

MSMEs are vital to the Philippine economy as they comprise about 99.51 per cent of business establishments in the country and employ around 63 per cent of the country’s workforce, according to data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA). However, the COVID-19 pandemic severely hit them. The prolonged lockdown and quarantines led to the halting of almost 74 per cent of these MSMEs, according to the country’s Department of Trade and Industry.

“MSMEs are the backbone of the Philippine economy, and it’s time we stop leaving them behind. Through this app, we want to revolutionise the way MSMEs operate and provide them with a reliable digital partner,” said co-founder Khriz Lim.

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Though the COVID-19 pandemic has burdened the entire world with unprecedented problems, it has also offered an opportunity for accelerated digital transformation. COVID-19 has caused a shift in the way transactions are executed, has expedited the migration to an enhanced digital environment, and has influenced purchasing habits.

This has resulted in a considerable rise in the region’s digital marketing sector, giving women entrepreneurs a significant opportunity to excel and explore global and regional markets.

Women entrepreneurs are seen as key to economic growth because of the multiplier impact on job creation, labour force participation, and uplifting families out of their lower socio-economic background. They can help achieve several SDGs, especially SDG 5 – gender equality.

Women entrepreneurs in the developing nations within the SEA region, on the other hand, face challenges in terms of access to finance, ICT and are unable to expand their businesses and join wider regional and global supply chains, owing to a lack of knowledge and the small scale of their companies (micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSME)).

E-commerce could be a powerful tool for interacting with customers and participating in a larger supply chain.

At the same time, the studies discovered that in response to COVID-19, women business leaders exhibited greater flexibility in their business models and were more likely to earn more than 50 per cent of their sales through digital channels.

Despite the passage of time, which has resulted in over 252 million women entrepreneurs worldwide, they continue to struggle to overcome the obstacles they encounter daily.

Also Read: Meet the 13 UN Women Care Accelerator startups transforming care work in APAC

With women accounting for around one-third of all entrepreneurs worldwide, things have never looked better for them on paper. Unfortunately, these figures only tell half of the picture.

Gender norms are impacting the ecology of entrepreneurship and posing tremendous obstacles for women worldwide, just as they do in other sectors today.

Between 2013 and 2019, the number of female-led businesses that became unicorns increased. In 2019, there were 21 new female-led unicorns reported globally, six more than the previous year.

There were only four new female-led unicorns recorded in 2013; therefore, unicorn numbers rose by more than 400 per cent over this period.

Being a woman entrepreneur is challenging since you must look after everything on your own. Being the primary caregiver makes the job double as hard. In addition to taking care of the household, unless heavily funded, you must be a jack of all trades at business– operations, sales, marketing, product development, and finance.

However, with a solid digital outreach plan, you may at least minimise the strain of obtaining excellent sales and keeping the cash flow going. Most businesses don’t know what they want to or can achieve with digital marketing, and as a result, they fail at the first hurdle. You must sit down and write out the goals you want to attain by investing time and effort in advertising your company online.

In the long run, a strong band helps with organic growth; however, in the initial days, the approach is towards customer acquisition, successful servicing or order fulfilment to keep the engines running.

The approach begins with identifying the businesses target audience. Understanding wherein the internet world they lurk, what content they consume, who they follow.

Next is to build a detailed plan to reach this identified audience group through social and search channels, influencers and sponsored campaigns.

When constructing the tactics, consider:

Numbers to define success, including time, budget and Objective KPIs to measure

As soon as someone decides to start their own business, they have a sales goal in mind. It is, by far, the essential KPI that companies should focus on. However, in addition to sales, it is critical to focus on growth and scalability.

Also Read: A woman among women: 27 female-led startups in SEA that are going places

Direct and indirect competitors and their most successful campaigns

Who are the top five direct and indirect competitors? What is their marketing strategy? Which platforms are they putting their money into? Do they have a hyper-personalised or localised approach? Most of the time, the answers to these questions will assist you in developing your marketing plan.

In my opinion, most businesses ignore some of the most critical techniques that their competitors exercise. It usually pays more to improvise than to reinvent the wheel. Whether it’s an off-page SEO plan or influencer marketing on Instagram, you could overlook fundamentals that your rival is flourishing online.

Ways to localise your product or service

Finding the correct marketing platforms is the simplest of all if you can complete all of the processes, including establishing your goals, identifying the right consumer persona, recognising your local competitors and drawing inspiration from successful ones in your space.

Digital marketing is broad and offers many various ways to create revenue for every firm. Still, it’s critical to pick the correct approach for your budget to avoid going overboard with your marketing costs.

Multiple variations of your campaigns to test resonance with your target audience

You must decide on your marketing budget based on your desire to create sales for your brand. For example, as an eCommerce business, if you can only send ten orders per day, decide how much money you want to spend on advertising to achieve those ten orders. As the adage goes, “never put all your eggs in one basket.”

As a result, distribute your spending over several channels to determine which ones perform best for you. Regular experiments and assessments of each platform provide the highest ROI and adjust your spending appropriately.

Once the basics are covered, focus on building a brand for longevity and organic growth.

The life of an entrepreneur is hard and lonely. With the community’s help and a robust support system of customers, partners, the team with a similar vision, the statistics say, less than 2 per cent of startups survive.

The mechanics do not change as per the gender of the entrepreneur. However, given the nature of one’s surroundings, for the fairer sex, statistically, it is much harder to build a business.

Also Read: Why women and tech are a rocking combination!

Although I’d like to believe the struggles are more internal and one can overcome the challenges with meticulous planning, undeterred execution and perseverance, the truth may be far from it.

It takes a village to run a business, and for women, the process is multiple times harder. Time and again, successful entrepreneurs have established to build for a brand, network, lean in the community to learn, grow and pursue the goals with grit and determination, which will lead to success, so let’s build one for one another.

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Better HR, a cloud-based HR tech startup, has raised a six-digit USD funding in a bridge round from new and existing investors, such as Seed Myanmar Ventures, Blibros, and nexlabs.

The funds will be used to further fuel the expansion in other target markets across ASEAN and South Asia.

Better HR was conceived out of nexlabs, a digital agency in Myanmar. It later set up a separate entity, called Better Technologies, with Seed Myanmar Ventures as an angel investor in 2019 to push the product into the market.

Founded in September 2019, Better HR provides cloud-based enterprise web and mobile apps enabling organisations to streamline HR processes for SMEs, such as attendance, leave, overtime, and payroll.

Also Read: How your HR team can help with crisis management

The firm claims that more than 200 companies across Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam use its products to manage over 35,000 employees and process over US$2m salaries per month.

“Our clients are using Better HR to keep up with employee communications and HR processes going despite having to work remotely. That gave us the confidence to move forward and raise another round to accelerate the growth,” said Ye Myat Min, chairman of Better HR.

In 2019, Better HR raised a six-digit seed round funded by Seed Myanmar Ventures.

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