We live in unprecedented times, where working from home and being isolated from friends and family for long periods have become the norm. The past two years have required quite a bit of adjustment; work and personal/home life became intricately intertwined. All of us have had to juggle between tending to unique/family needs while handling tight deadlines and often increased workloads in our professional lives. This often takes a toll on our mental health.

As humans, we are social beings by nature. We thrive in the presence of others, and social interactions are crucial for our psychological and physical health.

While the workforce started working remotely in the heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, expectations remain the same, or even higher, as some businesses are struggling to survive while others are trying to capitalise on unprecedented growth opportunities driven by the massive shifts in consumer behaviour during this pandemic. 

At Carsome, we understand that this can be challenging for our team members, especially those with a family needing care.

As such, I was glad to become one of the champions of our self-care month throughout October this year, in honour of World Mental Health Day, which falls on 10 October.

Here is a summary of what fellow Carsomers were up to, in the spirit of #CarsomeCares: 

Normalising discussions on mental health

Mental health issues are no stranger among employees across all organisational levels. According to news sources, more people reported at least one symptom of a mental health condition in the past year.

Also Read: How to tackle employee mental health to build a resilient workforce

We want fellow Carsomers to feel empowered in asking for help if they are struggling.

So, we scheduled various mental health talks throughout October to spread awareness and shed some light on relevant mental health topics that could benefit all of us. 

Carsomers from Malaysia gathered for a talk to learn about mental health issues and how to build healthy relationships at work

Our team members are the backbone of Carsome, and they’ve been an integral part of growing the business to where it is today. We want to support them in any way we can, especially in regards to their mental health. 

Mental health support

An important takeaway of the COVID-19 pandemic is that support for mental health went from a nice-to-have to a true business imperative. Besides having talks, we wanted to extend the support into something more tangible.

That’s why we partnered with Doctor Anywhere to provide a mental health self-assessment tool for Carsomers to assess and recognise signs of anxiety. 

Also read: Voice of Employees: How the pandemic accelerated focus on employee welfare

To take this one step further, we also paid for team members to consult with a psychotherapist. We understand that anyone can be affected, and we want to provide the necessary mental health support for our team members so that they don’t have to worry about the cost.

We were glad to hear that close to 300 team members have benefitted from the self-assessment tool. Additionally, more than 10 were able to get the help they needed from a professional. 

Carsomers across all of our markets sharing the care packages they received

In the true spirit of #CarsomeCares, our HR teams across all of our markets worked tirelessly to put together well-curated care packages and sent them out to all 2,000+ Carsomers.

It was heartwarming to see all the exciting photos and videos featuring these care packages shared by team members all across the region.  

Movement for the soul

Physical activities have been proven to help increase the production of the brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins.

With that in mind, we organised classes that cater to the mind, body, and soul for Carsomers to join throughout the month. 

Carsomers broke some sweat doing yoga with the talented Yoga Practitioner and renowned artist Atilia Haron

Team members who have not met each other also had the opportunity to break the ice, get to know one another better, and bond while doing these activities together.

Some of our team members broke a sweat practising yoga with renowned artist Atilia Haron, an avid yoga practitioner and instructor.

Others joined in on the origami fun and folded away their stress and worries by making origami curry puffs and bunnies.  

Also Read: Why Khailee Ng puts mental healthcare support as key to successful founders-investors relationship

Mental health days

It is not easy to juggle between work and personal lives as we continue working from home. Despite that, Carsomers have gone above and beyond to ensure that tasks and deadlines are completed, and work continues during the pandemic.

We declared dedicated “mental health days” with specific activities for both individuals and teams. 

Wellness Wednesdays

On every other Wednesday, teams are encouraged to gather and bond through fun activities outside of work. I was excited to see many teams organising Wellness Wednesdays activities and having so much fun during those virtual get-togethers.

Carsomers gathered virtually for karaoke or word game sessions, among others, fueling creativity and encouraging them to connect despite the physical distance.  

Freedom Fridays 

The pandemic helped coin the term “Zoom fatigue”, and I can relate to this as my days are frequently packed with back-to-back meetings. So there was no surprise on my immediate buy-in for Freedom Fridays, a.k.a. no-meeting Fridays, which took place on alternate Fridays in October.

Freedom Fridays, gave our team the chance to focus on serious work activities that require minimal interruptions. It also allowed team members to recharge and plan deliverables for the next week.

I found Freedom Fridays very productive, ultimately putting pressure on other meetings to be more focused, efficient, and goal-oriented. 

Make it #CarsomeCares

The activities for our self-care month were guided by our #CarsomeCares spirit and aimed at helping Carsomers weather any situation. We want our team members to know that we care about their wellbeing, and we understand that they do some of their best work when they are happy and fulfilled.

Tough times don’t last, but tough people do – so to fellow Carsomers and everyone else out there, stay strong and take care of yourself. We will get through this together!

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The Stockbit team

Stockbit, an Indonesia-based stock trading platform and community, has secured approval from Financial Services Authority (OJK) to acquire local securities company Mahakarya Artha Sekuritas.

The deal value has not been disclosed.

Mahakarya Artha Sekuritas has been Stockbit’s brocking partner since September and will now be rebranded to Stockbit Sekuritas, TechinAsia has reported.

The acquisition will enable Mahakarya’s users to open stock accounts and trade in the Indonesian Stock Exchange via the Stockbit app.

In May this year, Bibit, a mutual fund investment app acquired by Stockbit in 2019, raised a US$65 million growth round led by Sequoia Capital India. The Stockbit app itself also raised an undisclosed amount of Series A funding led by East Ventures in 2019.

Also read: Pocket power: 27 personal finance startups in SEA to help you manage money

Founded in 2013, Stockbit is a social network for stock investors, before gradually changing into an app that integrates stock trading, information aggregation, and social networking. Its Bibit and competitors aim to simplify capital investment for first-time investors while requiring a lower fee and a smaller minimum initial investment sum than traditional brokerages.

To provide its users with stock trading services, Stockbit is required to team up with traditional securities firms, such as Sinarmas Sekuritas. This partnership then ended up in August before Stockbit’s tie-up with Mahakarya.

According to OJK, retail investors in Indonesia surged 56 per cent year-over-year in 2020. Investors in mutual funds also grew 78 per cent year-over-year to 3.2 million. 

However, financial literacy in the country’s capital market remains low at 4.9 per cent, with a total of only 2.69 million retail equity investors out of its 270 million population.

This presents opportunities for investment services, which are buoyed by the COVID-19 pandemic when people took advantage of a market pullback and turned to online environments.

Last month, Indonesia produced a unicorn in the stock and mutual fund investment sector. Ajaib, a Robinhood-like mobile-first stock and mutual fund investment platform, became a billion-dollar company after a US$153 million Series B fundraise. The app requires no minimum sum to open a brokerage account and claims to charge the lowest brokerage fees in the market. 

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Also read: Stockbit

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When Malaysia first took notice of the COVID-19 pandemic, not many businesses in the country were prepared to strap themselves for unprecedented times. The first nationwide lockdown declared in March 2020 became the first step to a challenging journey for F&B businesses.

Since then, many businesses have stayed resilient and adapted by finding new methods to stay afloat during this period, realising that digitalisation is one of the only options to sustain their business.

This is also evident in the local F&B industry, with a report by Flanders Investment and Trade indicating that the pandemic has triggered Malaysian F&B retailers, such as food suppliers, supermarkets and restaurants being seen to shift their operations and embrace digital marketplaces.

Challenges faced by the F&B industry

When the lockdown was first declared, the F&B industry faced its own unique set of challenges. In an ecosystem where business deals were traditionally carried out physically, the food supply chain was severely disrupted due to restricted operation hours, logistical difficulties, and communication hurdles with suppliers, buyers, and end-consumers.

This is also the challenge suppliers face in reaching out to retailers and vice versa.

For example, on one end of the food supply chain, several farmers in Cameron Highlands were forced to give away their farm produce due to the perishable nature of the produce, whereas, on the other hand, buyers were flocking onto online marketplaces, only to find limited options available for their choosing.

This is a clear reflection that the pandemic has affected the mode of communication, even between buyers and suppliers, thus impacting the source of revenue for all parties within the industry.

Also Read: How millennials and the pandemic are driving the growth of cloud kitchens in Indonesia

The emergence of digital solutions for the F&B industry

The shift in communication habits has also forced F&B businesses to pivot and adapt to digital solutions to sustain and identify new revenue streams for their business operations.

Adopting digital space has given businesses an increased interest in the digital marketplace, which allows them to connect with companies within the F&B industry.

For instance, Saladplate, an online marketplace, was launched to bridge the gap between suppliers and buyers, making it easy to digitally discover new products and services through an innovative sourcing solution.

Okinawa Trading, a Japanese company that specialises in exporting fresh meat to countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia, is one of the brands that has embarked on a digital transformation journey using Saladplate’s solution.

Having onboarded Saladplate during a promotion with the Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), Okinawa Trading has increased inquiries from buyers, opening doors to more business opportunities.

Furthermore, since joining Saladplate, the number of website visitors on Okinama Trading’s page saw an inspiring 414 per cent increase, with buyers spending an average of three minutes on the page.

Another example of a digital F&B platform would be Food Market Hub, a procurement and inventory system for F&B businesses. Food Market Hub streamlines all operational data from procurement to inventory and eventually into the accounting systems.

It then churns the data and consolidates the cost of goods sold, ultimately allowing F&B business owners to make smarter decisions for their business.

Din Tai Fung, an upscale Taiwanese restaurant chain, are among the businesses that have successfully adopted the platform. The brand has seen a 31 per cent increase in year-on-year growth result in 2020 through the platform, which has helped streamline communications between the central kitchens and outlets, enabling it to weather through the pandemic.

Also Read: How Philippine cloud kitchen industry is piggybacking on the country’s unique food culture, shifting customer behaviour

These success stories are just the many examples of why both F&B suppliers and buyers should embrace digitalisation to stay afloat, build resilience and regain normalcy in this new digital age.

With many more digital solutions and guides to digitising made available, F&B businesses can use it to their advantage to adopt this new average while looking at other possibilities for growth.

Previous challenges such as communication hurdles, low sales volume and mismanagement of inventory and expenditure can be resolved, thus enabling these businesses to remain resilient and scalable even during these challenging times.

Platforms such as Food Market Hub and Saladplate, or a combination of both, albeit temporarily, would be beneficial, cost-efficient and would potentially help bridge the communication currently faced by both buyers and suppliers in the F&B industry.

Digitalisation is paving a new future

As digitalisation becomes a key fixture during this new normal, the digital transformation journey for businesses is expected to continue even in a post-COVID world. A report by Bain & Company indicates that COVID-19 has rewritten the rules of survival for businesses.

Online purchasing, digital consumption and average online basket size have risen substantially and will continue to grow at record-setting rates, providing an opportunity for traditional businesses, significant marketplaces, and disruptive business models to thrive.

The report also indicated that around 83 per cent of online buyers share that they are likely to continue their increased spending online even after lockdown restrictions are lifted.

Echoing the importance of digital transformation, the Malaysia Digital Economy Malaysia (MDEC) recently launched an SME Digital Guidebook and Quick Guide for the Food & Beverages (F&B) and retail industry.

Intending to help businesses in the F&B industry reassess their digital opportunities and readiness, MDEC, a government-linked company, introduced a step-by-step guide to enhancing their current digital capabilities and beginning their digital transformation journey.

Also Read: Everything from soup to nuts: Meet the 27 ghost kitchen startups in Southeast Asia

All these potentially indicate a rebound for the Malaysian F&B industry should they pursue and consistently transform their business digitally.

By identifying these new opportunities, F&B businesses can regain normalcy while opening doors to future growth.

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Talon co-founders

Foxmont joins Talon’s US$5M Series A round

The crux: Hong Kong-headquartered competitive gaming, entertainment and culture startup talon has secured US$5 million in Series A financing round.

Investors: Animoca Brands (lead), Hana Digital Transformation Fund, HZL Capital, AK Partners, Token Bay Capital, Foxmont Capital Partners, Arete Capital Asia, BlackPine, Yieldly, and PAC Capital.

Plans: Talon will continue to grow its lifestyle and cultural platform, focusing on working with fashion labels, KOLs, musicians and traditional sports athletes to deliver entertainment to the next generation of youth, targeting Gen Z and millennials.

Also Read: Monde Nissin CEO backs Foxmont Capital’s initial close of US$20M Fund II

As part of this strategy, it will place a strong focus on the development of digital and blockchain solutions alongside Animoca Brands to deliver unique experiences, collectibles and opportunities via different metaverses, P2E games and NFT platforms.

Additionally, Talon will further expand its regional footprint into Southeast Asia, focusing on the Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia.

About Talon: It is an e-sports, culture and lifestyle platform in Asia. Established in 2017, it operates six professional e-sports teams in five markets. Talon operates its creative studio to run e-sports marketing, content creation, and activities for Talon and its partners. Talon boasts over 25 million followers across its combined social platforms.

With headquarters in Hong Kong, it has regional offices in Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines and South Korea.

India-based CoreStack bags US$30M Series B

The crux: CoreStack, a global multi-cloud governance SaaS provider, has secured a $30 million Series B funding round.

Investors: Avatar Growth Capital (lead), Dallas Venture Capital (DVC), Iron Pillar, and angels.

Plans: The funding will help CoreStack grow and innovate its AI-powered continuous and autonomous cloud governance and expand into new markets.

About CoreStack: CoreStacki is an AI-powered next-generation multi-cloud governance solution. It helps enterprises achieve autonomous cloud governance at scale.

CoreStack’s proactive approach to AI-powered cloud-native governance utilises a cloud-as-code approach, orchestration frameworks, deep AI/ML, and patented connector-less model. The firm enables enterprises to realise outcomes across FinOps, SecOps and CloudOps, such as a 40 per cent decrease in cloud costs and a 50 per cent increase in operational efficiencies by governing operations, security, cost, access, and resources.

India-based Eximius Ventures launches student venture partner programme

The crux: India-based micro VC firm Eximius Ventures has launched its first cohort of the student venture partner programme, an initiative designed to empower undergraduate students to participate in deal sourcing and support upcoming startups from their campuses.

Objective: Through this programme, Eximius Ventures aims to accelerate the success of nascent-stage student-led startups and groom the student venture partners to become a part of the VC ecosystem.

The one-year programme will allocate up to US$500,000 to student venture partners for investing in startups from their network. It will also enable them to present deals to Eximius’s internal committee (IC) and gain hands-on experience working at a VC.

The programme has selected three students: Aryan Mittal from IIT Delhi, Bhargav Chaudhari from IIT Bombay, and Parth Goel from IIT Kharagpur, and is scheduled to start in December 2021.

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Pintek (PT Pinduit Teknologi Indonesia), a provider of financial services for the education community, has secured US$7 million in a Series A funding round via its holding company Socap Holding.

The round saw the participation of new investors, including Kaizenvest, Heritas Capital, Blue7, and Earlsfield Capital. Existing stakeholders Finch Capital, Global Founder Capital, Accion Venture Lab, Strive, and Fox Ventures also joined.

With this new funding, Pintek plans to hire new people to accelerate its product development, enhance the platform, and broaden its commercial reach.

This round comes less than a year after Pintek bagged a US$21 million debt facility from Accial Capital, a US-based impact-focused private debt investor.

Also read: Pintek closes US$21M from debt investor Accial to accelerate educational financing in Indonesia

The company aims to improve access to education and livelihoods of unbanked/underbanked MSMEs in Indonesia. Within the next five years, Pintek sets the goal to impact 10 million customers, maximising its contribution to the country’s education ecosystem. “We want to be one of the key enablers to accelerating the penetration of education technology and embedded financial services products for inclusive and high-quality education in Indonesia,” said Ioann Fainsilber, CEO at Socap and co-founder at Pintek.

Founded in 2018, Pintek provides innovative financial services to students, parents, education institutions, and education suppliers. To date, the startup claims to have supported more than 2,750 education institutions and 100 education MSMEs to reach more than 650,000 students spreading across 29 provinces in Indonesia.

“Pintek’s tech-enabled ecosystem-funding approach enables credit data insight and superior lending decisions, thereby driving a virtuous cycle of growth and impact resulting in enhanced access to education in Indonesia,” said Charis Goh, director at Heritas Capital.

In addition, Pintek and its affiliates also offer financial education content to a community of 1,350,000 unique monthly visitors, states the startup.

Also read: Pintek secures investment to help students, education institutions access loans in Indonesia

According to government data of March 2020, Indonesians had to grapple with school closures affecting more than 60 million students. Since then, only 39 per cent of schools have reopened with limited operations. This paves the way for innovative players to support the education sector to switch to online learning with reliable and easy-to-access financing sources.

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Image Credit: Pintek

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OKHOME, an Indonesia-based homecare services startup, has completed its US$3 million Series A funding round with investors, including POSCO Venture Capital, A Ventures, ES Investor, Honest Ventures, and Enlight Ventures.

The capital injection will enable OKHOME to scale through product development and aggressive marketing.

The firm also aims to leverage customer loyalty through the “lock-in effect”, which offers customers various additional home care services that are not limited to cleaning.

Also read: The 27 Indonesian startups that have taken the ecosystem to next level this year

OKHOME was founded in 2017 by South Korean founders Daehyun Kim and Choi Jin-suk, who worked at the strategy and management divisions of Korean entertainment powerhouse YG Entertainment. The duo then travelled to Indonesia in 2015 to start their venture.

They built OKHOME as a platform to offer comprehensive home care services, including general cleaning, disinfection, and air conditioner management. Its automated app-based reservation system serves customers across Jakarta and Surabaya areas. The startup claims it accepts bookings within only a minute.

OKHOME stated in a release that the platform has grown rapidly thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced people to be more concerned over house hygiene.

The startup also boasts of a network of trusted, reliable and competent cleaners and professional technicians. According to it, this will help create quality jobs for cleaning helpers. Kim said in an interview that OKHOME pays employees higher than most full-time domestic helpers.

In 2018, the startup raised US$300,000 in seed funding from Daum Kakao-backed K-Cube Ventures and Spring Camp.

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Image Credit: OKHOME

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Most founders know secretly that their idea is not going to work. Months of pulling levers, feeling hopeless and anecdotal quotes telling you never to give up .

Founders have to navigate, keep a pulse on data and feedback, adapt and redefine themselves and their companies at all times, and especially when they are wrong.

Our assumptions were wrong, and below is what we went through with some unsolicited advice.

Listen to the early signals

Your gut will tell you where this is heading, listen to it, fail fast and don’t waste time. Investors’ capital and entrepreneurs’ ROI of time have the same incentives. In either case, remember that you are in the driving seat.

Tishad and I waited a few extra quarters until the partners at Iterative, Brian and Hsu Ken, pointed out what we already knew deep down– cloud kitchens won’t scale in today’s Bangladesh, and we were early.

Sometimes you need someone to say it. Sunk cost bias, loss aversion, discomfort, fear will discourage you– audit them.

Write down where you were wrong

Turn energy into matter. Once we articulated the macro and micro pitfalls of the business model and market and where we were wrong in our assumptions, clarity followed. The hardest part is to convince yourself that your thesis is incorrect and that the alternative is better than what you have.

Also Read: 5 things entrepreneurs need to know about running a business in the new normal

In our case, the alternative was the discovery process that we started to run to validate problems that we believe exist in the market with a billion-dollar opportunity.

Embrace the confusion and uncertainty– this is an SOP

Uncertainty can be very stressful, and confusion can be paralysing; we felt it. When you start digging into a new problem, talking to potential customers and validating ideas, the uncertainty becomes clear.

During a pivot, the anxiety can feel heavier than usual because you changed your thesis, and you might feel guilty for changing your thesis.

We realised that our earliest investors placed the bet on the team to navigate, and this unfolded as we started to run the change management sprint.

Get buy-in

We made sure that we ran a very tight change management process to align with all our investors, who have been supportive since day one. Our approach looked like this:

• Individual calls to explain why we are going to pivot out
• An email explaining the thought process
• Board resolution
• Biweekly updates

Since things were changing fast, we decided to keep our community posted more frequently than usual. The best part of this experience was to see that our investors continue to stay supportive and helpful as always.

Move fast

Think carefully, and act deliberately. Anything that doesn’t add to long term vision is a sunk cost. The legacy business model can become a distraction and ultimately take bandwidth away from proving the new thesis. This isn’t a price worth paying.

We ran a project management drill to clear our contractual obligations, ensure that the runway is protected and our departing clients have sufficient time to figure out their next move. It was a balancing act.

Also Read: How startups should pivot towards being customer-centric

Pilot

After doing 150+ user interviews, we were buzzing with insights on deep customers problems and got very excited to test. But, the challenge was that we had two directions that we were curious to learn more about, so we tested them both out.

Hsu Ken’s feedback was much more structured, and metric-driven for making this decision, and below is what he emailed to us.

We ended up leaning towards one model over the other in the first two weeks; it was pretty obvious what the team was most passionate about.

The problem space of financial inclusion for the underserved is deep-rooted in our country, and we feel compelled to tackle this space.

Pivots mean that you are changing your idea, based on learnings, towards a new direction that is more likely to grow and scale. In Bangladesh and other emerging markets, founders are usually fearful of pivots because markets are less forgiving than Silicon Valley. This mentality has to change.

Pivots can lead to disproportionately high returns for entrepreneurs and investors, and this point has to be drilled in. It is counterproductive to fall into the trap of loss aversion when startups are meant for outlier results.

In retrospect, we feel relieved, optimistic, and energised to build a legendary company and a problem space with which we are in love.

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Grab may list in the US as early as December

The crux: Southeast Asian tech giant Grab plans to list in the US as soon as December 2, Tech in Asia reported citing a source.

In April, the Singapore-headquartered Grab confirmed its plans to go public in the US in partnership with Altimeter Growth, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

The combined entity expects its securities will be traded on NASDAQ under the symbol GRAB.

Valuation: The proposed transactions value Grab at an initial pro-forma equity value of approximately US$39.6 billion at a PIPE size of more than US$4 billion. It will provide the company with approximately US$4.5 billion in cash proceeds.

Ascendo Ventures fund for early-stage ESG-themed startups

The crux: Seoul-based early-stage VC firm Ascendo Ventures has launched a US$33-million Ascendo New Horizon Fund to invest in Korea-focused tech startups incorporating ESG values in their technology development or business models.

More on the fund: New Horizon Fund will opportunistically make follow-on investments in the portfolio companies of its first fund. It will also invest in tech startups not only in the focus areas of the first fund, but also in startups with ESG themes and values in sustainable and renewable energy, foodtech, digital technologies impacting carbon emissions, and innovative businesses with blockchain-driven decentralized governance structures.

The first fund, Ascendo Genesis Fund, primarily invested in pre-Series A stage Korean tech startups in the areas of contactless tech services and platforms, operations automation via AI and robotics, and digital healthcare.

Who manages the fund: The new fund will be managed by Ascendo’s co-founding members Jason Lee (MD), Aaron Shin (MD), and Alex Namkung (director).

With a population of almost 52 million, Korea, ranked 9th in GDP amongst OECD countries in 2020, has topped Bloomberg’s Innovation Index seven of the nine years it has been published and has one of the highest unicorn per capita rates in the world.

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