The year 2020 has been a year of momentous change for the payments industry not just in APAC but also across the world.

Trends that were identified this time last year as emerging have been hugely accelerated as a result of the pandemic. Rapid growth was predicted, but it was unpredictable on the scale that has happened.

For example, and most notably, we’ve seen cash use decline even further this year amidst revelations that handling cash could spread infection. As the pandemic spread across Asia in the first half of the year, people were quick to reduce contact with physical materials and others, and instead reaching for contactless options to carry out daily tasks.

For retail, this meant a shift toward buying goods and services online, and where necessary, paying in-store by card. In fact, many merchants simply refused cash in a bid to do their part to stop the spread of COVID-19.

In Singapore, this shift was accelerated by the government which encouraged the economy to digitalise quickly to remain competitive and to adapt to the ‘new normal’, even creating payout programmes to incentive local micro business to adopt digital payment forms.

According to McKinsey’s 2020 Global Payments Report, by the end of 2020, we can expect a drop of four to five percentage points in the share of global transactions made with cash, and much more in some regions.

So, after a year of such rapid transformation, what does the (un)predictable future hold for the payments industry in 2021?

Buy now pay later (BNPL) will be a popular payment method

According to Paysafe’s LiT research, 56 per cent of global consumers mentioned that they used a new local payment method in the first month of the pandemic. One of these new popular payment methods is ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL).

BNPL schemes, popularised by larger companies like Afterpay and Klarna, were this year named as the fastest growing online payment method worldwide.

While relatively new to Singapore, local fintech like hoolah, Rely and Atome, are taking advantage of the trend and stealing market share from the traditional credit card services with their interest free offerings.

Predominantly an online payment option allowing consumers to pay in instalments for goods and services, some have even made their way in-store to capture audiences as they slowly return to preferred retail outlets offering on-the-spot credit for purchases and they’re proving popular.

Research from Kaleido predicts that BNPL value will reach over 12 per cent of total global e-commerce spend on physical goods by 2025. What’s more, Europe will be responsible for US$347 billion of e-commerce spend via BNPL mechanisms by 2025, representing 30 per cent of total e-commerce spend in that year.

Also read: 4 ways digital payments are helping businesses thrive amid a global recession

With the economy not expected to recover to pre-COVID-19 levels for some time, cautious consumer spending is a trend we see continuing into 2021. As such, this is certainly a payment method online merchants need to strongly consider offering consumers in 2021 and beyond.

Staying competitive will be harder

It’s no surprise that the figures from 2020 reflect a massive boom for global e-commerce. The ‘quickening’ effect, as coined by McKinsey, describes a 10-year shift in e-commerce experienced in just 90 days.

During the month of June 2020, amidst the height of the strictest lockdowns in many countries, e-commerce sales grew 34 per cent year-on-year — the highest growth rate reported since March 2008.

Interestingly, many consumers were not turning to their trusted brands during this critical period. Many shoppers branched out to new retailers with the ‘support local’ movement growing in popularity as people rallied to ensure the survival of local merchants who were forced to close physical outlets during the pandemic

Disruptions in brand loyalty have created a wealth of opportunities for businesses big and small, pushing them to take their operations online and across borders. Facebook even launched its own shopping feature to enable growing businesses to sell to customers on its owned platforms like Instagram and WhatsApp.

According to PPRO’s own research, one of the most-common reasons for cart abandonment at the checkout is that a customers’ preferred payment method was not available.

In fact, recent research has revealed that the global average rate of cart abandonment is as high as 75.6 per cent — causing brands to lose up to US$18 million a year in revenue. We expect this demand to continue, putting pressure on retailers to expand current payment offerings.

Seamless payments have to meet stricter security standards

As digital payments head toward a global tipping point, the need for greater regulation and security will only continue to grow.

Globally, two-factor authentication is growing in popularity. In 2019, Australia released the Card-Not-Present (CNP) Fraud Mitigation Framework, requiring Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) when a merchant’s fraud rate is above the recommended rate for two consecutive quarters. India requires two-factor authentication for all domestic debit and credit card transactions over INR 2,000.

As we head into 2021, payment providers and merchants worldwide must collaborate to ensure they’re prepared to adapt digital shops to these new requirements, while also ensuring the payments process they offer is seamless for the customer.

Also read: Lessons from the buy-now-pay-later boom

2021 will be the year for action — ensuring customers are adequately protected in an increasingly cyber world.

Payments should prepare for hyper growth

More and more customers are now online, some for the first time, and they’re looking for products or services that suit their very specific needs and they don’t really mind where they find them.

While the pandemic has meant countries are less physically connected than ever, in the online sphere, all borders have been eliminated: a shopper will look across borders (they might not even realise they’re doing it) in search of better-quality products, more payment options, preferred brands and more.

For merchants, this is a huge opportunity and one that could enable them to reach untapped markets if they are able to offer the right mix of goods, user experience (UX), local payment methods and delivery options.

With over 500 significant local payment methods across the globe, every consumer will have different payment preferences. To be able to scale up and succeed in the new normal, merchants must work with payment service providers to activate as many payment methods as possible at the checkout page.

While 2021 might be another challenging year for the global economy and people as they struggle through further restrictions and lockdowns the future for local payment methods (and savvy retailers who offer them) will certainly be very bright.

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As an HR consultant for startups, I’m often asked this question by founders.

In the early stages of their startup journeys, founders typically spend the majority of their focus on product development or sales and marketing, with recruiting often left as an afterthought.

At some point, however, they always arrive back at the classic chicken and egg problem: in order to grow, they need the right talent, but in order to attract and retain the right talent, they need to grow.

To get out of that cycle, I usually advise founders to bulk up their startup’s HR muscle.

There’s certainly no hard and fast rule on when to hire an in-house HR, but generally after achieving product-market fit, there are some rules of thumb around team sizes founders can first take into consideration.

10-15 team members: Resources can be quite limited at this stage. As a founder, you probably didn’t have many issues recruiting the first few employees on your own, but as the business starts to scale and accelerate, the team will also need to expand accordingly. Bringing on outside talent to manage the hiring and onboarding process internally will be critical in preventing HR matters from occupying valuable mindshare. 

15-30 team members: So you managed to get to this stage without hiring any dedicated person to handle recruiting. It still might be wise to bring in someone, as HR expands beyond just recruiting to also include retention. While attrition is quite normal in any startup, retaining an employee (granted they’re performing well) is significantly cheaper than hiring a replacement, which can often waste valuable time and resources. 

30+ team members: If the startup has more than 30 employees and doesn’t have an HR yet, you may need to consider hiring for this role as soon as possible. At this size, sourcing job boards, editing job descriptions, facilitating interview and onboarding logistics will likely distract you from more mission critical things, such as fundraising, product, or business development. 

HR pains of a scaling startup

Many early-stage founders refuse to hire an HR because they view it as an unnecessary expense, and one that’s more suitable for large enterprises. In reality, many founders are unaware of or substantially underestimate the HR problems and needs they’ll encounter as a startup scales and the team sizes grow: 

Recruit specialists vs. generalists

In earlier stages of your startup, you’re likely hiring more generalists that can wear multiple hats due to limited resources. Once your company starts to scale, however, you’ll usually need to divide and conquer, that is recruiting more specialists that can significantly amplify the efforts of each function.

For example, full-stack engineers might be more commonplace in fresh startups, who would then gradually be replaced by separate front-end and back-end engineers as the organisation grows.                                                                                                  

Attracting and retaining talents

This includes everything from building the employer brand and marketing specific job openings to sourcing better quality candidates to adjusting compensation/benefits and work-life balance policies to optimise retention.

Also read: What will the next wave of VC investment in HR tech look like?

Regulatory and compliance requirements

Labour laws can be quite complex from country to country. Founders need to stay informed on basic hiring and firing legal frameworks to prevent the company from encountering any lawsuits.                                                                                                                                    

Company culture, mission, vision, and values development

Setting the vision, mission and values is extremely important, as these help create the company’s culture and establish objectives and goals that help employees navigate the organisation. Unfortunately, many companies lack these core components in the early-stages as the founding team is usually too occupied with other things.               

Performance/OKR/KPI appraisal and compensation structure

Compensation and performance reviews are resource-intensive but nonetheless critical components of any growing startup.                          

Design effective training and development programmes

At a certain scale, a startup doesn’t necessarily need to go outside to seek out talents. Instead, it could facilitate internal training to upskill existing talents and cultivate leaders from within.

However, many founders are not experienced in properly assessing employee capabilities and designing training programmes for them.                               

The different types of HRs

So, you’ve started to face some HR issues as your company has grown bigger and have decided to hire a professional to give you some peace of mind. Actually, there are two types of HR professionals that you most often see in early-stage startups.

HR co-ordinator

This role takes on broader duties and responsibilities, generally encompassing the recruitment, retention, training, management and development of employees; legal issues concerning employment; and salaries and benefits design. 

Recruiter

Given the critical nature and time-intensive nature of talent sourcing, recruiters are often brought in separately to specialise in building a strong pool of candidates for hiring managers to choose from. The scope of their responsibilities include understanding the organisation’s recruitment needs, creating accurate job descriptions, posting job descriptions in different channels, and even attending career fairs or recruiting events to source for candidates.

They also conduct the initial screening interviews before passing the candidate along to the hiring manager, while also managing the job offer process and on boarding.

Also read: 4 rising HR tech startups to watch out for in Singapore

There’s no doubt you will need an HR professional in your organisation at some point. If you have strong hiring needs, and if budget allows, it is best to have at least one HR and one recruiter in an ideal HR team.

But if the budget only allows the organisation to hire one, then you should try to look for a candidate with a multi-tasking gene — that is an HR co-ordinator with a knack for marketing and sales, which are critical for acquiring talent in a competitive industry, or a recruiter with solid interpersonal communication skills, which will often be used internally for talent management and development. 

Choosing one or the other is contingent upon the individual needs of each startup. Nevertheless, no founder wants to be brought down by back office operations.

Although certainly an investment upfront, hiring a high quality HR professional can actually save a founder a lot of time, resources and headaches, particularly those on a hyper-growth trajectory.

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With the Grab-gojek merger talks hitting a roadblock over Grab CEO Antony Tan’s refusal to cede control of the combined entity, the focus has shifted to the merger discussions between Tokopedia and gojek, which have also been in the works for long.

While conversations between these three firms have happened on and off in the past, they have taken a more serious tone recently.

As per the latest report by Bloomberg, Tokopedia is in advanced talks with gojek for a US$18-billion merger deal and that the two tech giants have signed a detailed term-sheet to conduct due diligence of each other’s business.

The report suggests that Masayoshi Son, Chairman of SoftBank, which is an investor in both Grab and gojek, was forcing the two to come together but he failed to convince Tan on the benefits, which in turn is paving the way for a potential marriage between Tokopedia and gojek, Indonesia’s two most valuable startups.

Indeed, Tokopedia and gojek have been engaged in merger talks since 2018, but they gained momentum after the conversations between gojek and Grab reached an impasse.

Also Read: gojek in advanced talks with Tokopedia for a US$18B merger

While a union is still a work in progress and we don’t know yet which two entities will eventually come together, it would be interesting to examine which merger will make better business sense — Grab and gojek or Tokopedia and gojek.

First off, let’s look at the investments raised and valuation being commanded by Tokopedia and Grab.

If we look at Grab and Tokopedia from an investment and strategic points of view, both have surpassed the Series H stage. It means there is no room for the next round of funding, other than an IPO. Plus, neither is profitable as both keep investing money back into the business to further grow, expand and increase customer base.

“However, when compared to the whopping US$10.1 billion raised by Grab to date, Tokopedia’s ‘paltry’ US$2.8 billion looks way more nimble and leaves enough room for a higher valuation at IPO stage,” observed Sergei Filippov, Managing Partner of Singapore-based Morphosis Capital Partners.

Tokopedia, an e-commerce giant, has raised US$2.8 billion over multiple rounds and is currently valued at around US$7-8 billion. This means that the investors’ investments value have more than doubled (2.5-2.75x).

In comparison, Grab, which has raised US$10.1 billion till date, is valued only US$15 billion, meaning the value of the investment has increased only 1.48x.

“This is why I believe a Tokopedia-gojek potential merger holds way more business sense and provides better market value,” added Filippov, who has been closely watching the industry for long.

Incidentally, Grab Financial Group has just raised US$300 million in a funding round led by South Korea’s Hanwha Asset Management, as per a report by The Information. This could signal that the Grab’s financial arm, with all its fintech projects, may go to the IPO separately, which indicates that a Grab has no reason to merge with gojek.

“We should remember that financial services were one of the primary reasons why Grab’s valuation rose from US$3 billion in 2016 (when it was just a ride-hailing service) to US$15 billion in 2020 (when it started to offer wealth management services and insurance plans),” he shared.

Now, in terms of synergy, there is more synergy between Tokopedia’s C2C e-commerce marketplace and gojek’s ride-hailing/delivery/fintech units than between two gojek and Grab, who are direct competitors to each other.

Besides, gojek is already delivering tens of thousands of orders per day for Tokopedia, and there is a lot of on-demand products existing on both platforms; for example, one can buy gold in both gojek and Tokopedia.

“Combining e-commerce and unrivalled logistics network, the potential tech behemoth can play the role of Alibaba or Amazon for Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries,” commented Filippov.

A Tokopedia-gojek deal will also make better sense from a market point of view, as a Grab-gojek deal will only lead to a super monopoly, which will affect end-customers.

“Since SoftBank is a key shareholder in both Grab and Tokopedia, different merger talks are all about making more business sense, please investors and pose more value at a potential IPO to be a success,” according to Filippov. “We shouldn’t forget that all these different merger combinations are also there to test public opinion to estimate potential interest at the IPO stage.”

Unicorn dilemma?

Certainly, Grab, gojek and Tokopedia — all unicorns — make an interesting triangle. But, according to industry watchers, the talks among them indicate that there is a need to address the inevitable question for every tech business at this juncture of its lifecycle: where do you go from here after being coined a unicorn?

In fact, Grab, Tokopedia and gojek are from a similar cohort as Razer and Sea Group — the batch of tech startups founded from the late 2000s to early 2010s. Both Sea and Razer have graduated to the public market and demonstrated admirable success.

“Hence, many will ask whether the likes of Grab, gojek, Tokopedia and even Traveloka could follow suit, and if so, ‘when’,” said Dave Ng, General Partner of Altara Ventures.

In his view, Tokopedia and gojek could be complementary as their businesses have less competitive dynamics. They also operate in the same key market, which makes it potentially appealing to merge and create a national tech champion.

Also Read: Traveloka considers SPAC option as it plans to go public

Secondly, the marriage could create an overall business which now spans across multi-product and services categories, giving more legs to the aspiration of being a true super app.

Thirdly, from a culture and people perspectives, both companies grew up in an “Indonesian tech for Indonesia” environment, and the management of both sides haven’t really crossed swords.

“You can imagine it is likely easier to come to the table vs with someone whom you have tried to eliminate throughout your business life,” Ng opined. “However, this doesn’t automatically translate to more synergy or merit vs the case of a gojek-Grab merger. Otherwise, gojek wouldn’t have explored the option with Grab in the first place.”

Having said that, both these deals have their pros and cons. With the Grab-gojek union, there could be meaningful consolidation of market coverage, better efficiency on the costs side of equation, a combination of the strong regional talent pool and creation of an undisputed dominant player. However, these would only be achieved after considerable rationalisation across leadership, people, operations and processes.

“On the other hand, a Tokopedia-gojek combination may look appealing for various reasons. However, both companies are presumably not profitable yet. At such scale once combined and with multiple business offerings, they would need to figure out how to fund such significantly expanded operations going forward. That is not trivial,” Ng concluded.

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Lazada announced today that it has appointed founding member Magnus Ekbom as the CEO for its Malaysian operations, replacing Leo Chow. This news was first reported by DealStreetAsia.

The company has not disclosed why Chow stepped down from his role and what his new role will look like. However, it states that under Chow’s leadership, “Lazada Malaysia has seen tremendous success with record-breaking growth and achievements year-on-year.”

Nonetheless, Ekbom has been with the e-commerce company since its inception and has served as the CEO of Lazada Indonesia from 2012 until 2015.

In his new position, he will be responsible for further growing Lazada presence in Malaysia and driving its long term strategy as head of the flagship platform of Alibaba Group in Southeast Asia.

Also Read: Consumer satisfaction with Qoo10, Lazada falls on the lower end: Study

Simultaneously, the e-commerce platform has also appointed Jessica Liu as Thailand’s first female country head succeeding Jack Zhang, effective immediately. In her new role, she will continue to serve as the president of Lazada Group and head of LazMall while Zhang will be taking a regional role at the company.

Liu began her career at the publisher China Machine Press, rising to vice president of its economics and management books branch after which she decided to work in Amazon in multiple divisions. She then joined Tmall, a B2C online retail platform operated by Alibaba Group in 2012, initially leading its footwear business. She soon moved to its fast fashion and luxury apparel brands unit.

These appointments come after speculation surfaced around long-running culture clashes between Alibaba and Lazada team in June last year — a claim that was denied by Lazada spokesperson.

Founded in 2012, Lazada is an online shopping and selling e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia which is present in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The company was acquired by Alibaba Group in 2016 after it replaced its CEO with a long-standing Alibaba executive and invested US$2 billion into the business.

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Image Credit: Lazada

 

 

 

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Mynt, a Philippines-based fintech platform offering mobile payments and business loans, announced today it has raised over US$175 million in fresh capital from ASP Philippines.

ASP is a Limited Partnership fund managed by Bow Wave Capital Management, a Private Equity fund with a mandate to invest in strategic partners and investments of Ant Financial and Alibaba Group.

The new funds will go towards growing its product offerings to “further spur” the growth of financial inclusion and digitisation of payments and financial services in the Philippines.

The financing was raised in multiple tranches, with the post-money valuation of the final tranches reaching close to US$1 billion.

Also Read: Top 5 fintech predictions that will take over the world in 2021

Founded in 2015 as a partnership between Philippines’s largest telco Globe Telecom, locally-listed conglomerate Ayala Corporation, and Ant Financial, Mynt operates two fintech companies — GCash, a mobile payments service, and Fuse, a lending platform for Filipinos to get micro and business loans.

“The pandemic has acted as a catalyst in highlighting the importance of digital finance in society today and with this investment from Bow Wave, we look forward to further living out our vision of finance for all, enabling democratised access to payment and financial services to every Filipino,” said Martha Sazon, President and CEO of Mynt.

“Mynt has made great strides in the fintech space in the Philippines. Recognising this fact and our shared values, Bow Wave supports the vision of Mynt to provide finance for all Filipinos,” remarked Itai Lemberger, Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Bow Wave.

As more and more Filipinos turn to digital services, GCash claimed it recorded a gross transaction value of over Php1 trillion (US$20.8 billion) in 2020, spurred by services like online payments, bank cash-in and sending money.

Also Read: GCash and Qwikwire partner to innovate real estate industry in Philippines

GCash shared it has reached over 33 million Filipinos with digital financial tools and services through its mobile wallet, using it for a variety of services including opening deposit accounts and acquiring insurance products.

“We are further encouraged by the fact that Mynt’s momentum has continued, even as the country moved out of quarantine restrictions, suggesting a fundamental shift in our customers’ behaviour towards a cashless lifestyle. We are confident in Mynt’s future prospects as a unicorn in the Philippines,” opined Ernest L. Cu, Chairman of the Board of Mynt.

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Image Credit: Mynt

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When Ox Street started, I had a co-founder for about a month — a talented and experienced product manager, who was going to take care of the tech side of things.

Unfortunately, he got an ‘offer he couldn’t refuse’ from his employer and didn’t follow through. That left me as the sole founder, in charge of finding engineers and leading the development of our product.

No problem! I thought my experience with project management and team management in general, as well as my obsession with structure and clear communication, left me well prepared. I was squarely at the peak of “Mt. Stupid”.

We ended up with a product that wasn’t ready for launch, and at the end of October 2019, I made the hard decision to launch with a Shopify storefront and an elaborate set of Google sheets and Google forms to manage our supply side. Even at that stage, I thought we were only about four weeks away from launching ‘the real thing’.

Well, as I crashed down into the “valley of despair”, we stayed about four-six weeks away from launch until we finally switched over to our own product in May 2020 — seven months later than planned.

It’s not easy to build a marketplace from scratch, it turns out, and product management is a serious job that requires both deep and broad knowledge, as well as both creativity and structured thinking.

Currently, we are shipping a daily release on oxstreet.com, and we are the only regional sneakers marketplace with mobile apps.

With our own product giving us full control over the UX for both sellers and buyers, we finally started to get traction over the past six months, and now we are processing over 5x as many orders as in our peak month on Shopify, with less than a third of the marketing spend. To be honest, I really love the PM job, and I do believe I have started my long journey up the “slope of enlightenment”.

There are endless learnings ahead, but the journey from complete zero to halfway adequate in managing a product, not to mention the satisfaction of shipping a working marketplace across three platforms, has been for my personal journey the most enlightening, frustrating and educating experience of 2020.

There is a fundamental ‘technical co-founder problem’

So much has been written about this already I’m not going to add much to it. If you want to launch a high quality product fast and it can’t be off-the-shelf, you need a technical co-founder, who is aligned with the vision and can and will code the first version themselves.

Also read: How Shopback customers help drive the company’s product development journey

This is almost impossible to find on-demand for a business founder for many reasons. My summary is: there are #1) way fewer technical co-founders around compared to business co-founders, and #2) they have their own ideas to build rather than someone else’s.

Find engineers who will talk to you

At the start, we had engineers who were unable or unwilling to explain what was really going on. After missing deadline after deadline as a founder, you crave clarity and some agency. I have rarely felt so helpless as when an engineer told me to “just trust him that he would get it done” (he didn’t).

Later, I found a great engineer who would actually just show me in the code what the problems were. That was a game changer. I finally became aware of the size and scope of the issues we had with some of our core backend services, and it enabled me to become part of the solution instead of an adversary.

Communication is probably the product manager’s most core job, but it starts with hiring engineers who communicate back.

The wireframes are wrong, the designs are wrong, and the spec is wrong

If you are the Product Owner, in the sense that you own the user stories and the vision and acceptance criteria for the product, you must really own the product. One of the key things I did wrong at the start was specifying the user stories and acceptance criteria, and then just leaving it to the engineers. That is not enough.

It takes constant alignment to make sure everyone really understands the user stories and what is expected. Also, you need to put in the work to find out where and how the specs are wrong and which cases have been forgotten.

Git Flow, Github Flow, branching, merging and shipping

Remember that as kid when you read Donald Duck, you thought quicksand would be a serious danger throughout your life? Shipping and managing merge conflicts was my quicksand, and there was a time in May/June where I was super freaked-out about it.

But every real PM I spoke with considered this something that is not even really in the scope of the PM job. They were right. It did not turn out to be a problem.

Why I thought it was going to be a massive issue is because at the time just before release, we had a develop branch that was often unstable, because many different elements were still in flux. Also, there were so many dependencies between our supposedly ‘micro services’ that often a small change would break all kinds of things all over the app.

After we had a fully featured, relatively stable version of the code, it turns out our develop branch is actually stable most of the time, and since we release (almost) daily, our releases are small and conflicts therefore pretty unlikely.

2021

I plan to continue spending 50 per cent or more on product. One of the benefits of my quantitative background is my obsession with data and measuring stuff.

By measuring and tracking conversion through our checkout funnel and making improvements based on that data, we have more than doubled our conversion rate since June. Looking to the future, there has rarely been a more exciting time to have an early-stage consumer app in the market.

Also read: Founders Series: Data driven product development

Ox Street is a leading player in one of the most rapidly growing, passion-driven product categories. And placed squarely in the centre of the great verticalisation/unbundling/re-bundling that is currently happening in online commerce. We need to follow the market, but also transition into shaping our future and defining our space ourselves. Exciting times ahead and we have lots of stuff planned for January.

Resources for product management

This is a shortlist of my personal key sources of learning. I hope others will benefit as much as I have from these:

• Lenny’s Newsletter: Without a doubt one of the best monthly subscriptions I gladly pay for. This is not just a newsletter providing one person’s opinion, but often incorporates knowledge from some of the best companies in the world. One of the best posts is free and you can find it behind the link above.
• This git guide: I actually did learn to check out, modify and merge branches on github. It is really not that hard, and it helped me a lot to understand how it all works.
• Intercom product blog: Clear, detailed, actionable. Just great deep content on how to ship a product.
• The Mom Test: I would (and have been) recommending this book to everyone who wants to learn to ask better questions and avoid inadvertently asking really bad ones. Absolutely brilliant and I wish I had discovered it earlier.
• My team, advisors, investors and friends: In particular Khoa for coming on-board and knocking it out of the park on engineering, Puli and Yan for helping with interviewing, Karthik, Honey, Mike, Andrew, Gibson, Juan, and so many others for answering my dumb questions and pointing my in the right direction.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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As we head into the new year, one question remains at the top of everyone’s minds: what will the future workplace look like?

Having lived through the biggest remote working experiment in history, many companies are now well-equipped to accommodate telecommuting arrangements.

However, as the number of COVID-19 community cases continues to remain at zero in Singapore, we see safety measures being relaxed and more people allowed back into the office. This poses yet another challenge for companies as they now need to adapt to a hybrid workforce, where only half of employees are working in the office, while the other half work from home.

For small and medium enterprises (SMEs), these frequent changes can dampen their productivity and efficiency. Compared to their larger multinational counterparts, SMEs have fewer resources, and oftentimes, employees need to wear multiple hats.

For instance, it’s not uncommon to find an administrative clerk doubling up as an office manager due to limitations in manpower. Thus, these frequent changes in workplace regulations can disrupt their daily duties, causing a dip in productivity and efficiency.

Moreover, through working with our clients and staff, we noticed that having the right digital tools is not enough to keep companies nimble and quick to adapt to today’s ever-changing work environment. Instead, there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the business operates.

To help SMEs tide through the crisis, we have found three proven business methodologies that SMEs can implement to stay leaner, operate at faster speeds, and be more agile. These methods include Parkinson’s Law, Kanban Board and the Agile Method.

Parkinson’s law

According to Parkinson’s Law, any given task requires as much time as it is permitted. Simply put, if you’re given two weeks to complete an assignment, you’ll most likely take the full two weeks to finish it, even though it could’ve been done in five days.

Now, imagine the amount of time you could have saved if the deadline was reduced by half! Thus, Parkinson’s law forces leaders to question how they set their deadlines and rethink how to best manage projects.

There are many ways SMEs can implement Parkinson’s Law in their business methodology. For starters, try cutting all allotted time for tasks and meetings by 50 per cent. Chances are you’ll find that many of these tasks can be accomplished in half the time.

Also read: 7 ways to increase productivity at work

However, if you find that the new deadline is too short, you can always extend it as you see fit. The key here is to experiment in searching for the optimal deadline times.

Parkinson’s law is especially relevant in today’s hybrid workforce, where physical oversight is virtually impossible. Leaders can’t stand over the shoulders of a team member as tasks are being performed, and hence implementing Parkinson’s Law can help to reduce time wasted on tasks.

Kanban Board

Kanban has slowly but surely become one of the most popular methodologies in modern business. This is because Kanban is a very visually representative methodology, requiring a big board either physically or digitally.

At its core, Kanban starts with three columns labelled “requested”, “doing”, and “done”. Each card is passed through the columns as it gets completed, but the kicker is the limit for each column. This forces teams to address problems if a card is stuck in “doing” for too long, creating a bottleneck for the next series of “requested” cards.

Many of today’s most popular productivity applications such as Lark have Kanban capabilities built-in, allowing users to quickly implement this methodology on a company-wide scale, departmental level or even on an individual level.

The Kanban is an effective method to help you understand issues your organisation may have with existing processes. The visual nature of Kanban means that you will naturally recognise bottlenecks when you see a column where tasks arrive faster than they leave and allow you to take appropriate steps to deal with the issue.

Furthermore, the strict work-in-progress limits imposed by the Kanban Board also push you to focus on completing existing tasks before taking on more.

Agile method

The last methodology is the agile method, which emphasises delivering products or outcomes in small increments. This incremental delivery comes with many advantages, as it allows teams to bring new products to the market faster, incorporate feedback along the way, and easily experiment with new features.

With the agile method, teams are also encouraged to continually test out new ways to see what does and does not work. This makes the agile method suitable for an environment where change is constant, such as in a post COVID-19 world, and helps teams remain nimble and adapt quickly.

Also read: How to manage energy and improve your productivity

While startups and computer software companies would be most familiar with this method, it’s starting to gain popularity in other industries as well. SMEs can also stand to benefit from the agile method, as its incremental approach allows companies to pivot quickly according to changes in the environment or market.

Overall, these three methodologies can be adapted and scaled depending on the size of the company. However, it’s crucial to note that above all, embracing change is key in today’s uncertain world. Whether that change stems from adopting one of these methodologies or from one of the dozens across the ecosystem, the process differs from business to business.

Finally, while we may not be able to predict how the future of workplace looks like, one thing is for certain: the way we work and collaborate has changed and will never go back to exactly how it was.

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Nusantics, an Indonesian genomics technology startup, announced today it has raised an undisclosed amount in Series A funding, led by East Ventures.

The money will be used to further enhance its R&D capability to improve its microbiome analysis and medical diagnostic kits.

Additionally, Nusantics has roped in Triawan Munaf, a Venture Advisor at East Ventures, as its Commissioner. A former Indonesian cabinet member under President Jokowi, Munaf is currently President Commissioner of flag carrier Garuda Indonesia.

The funding news comes less than a year after East Ventures led the biotech startup’s seed funding round. The VC firm said the fresh financing is a result of the “strong growth” and “swift response” by Nusantics to disruptions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nusantics was started 2019 with the ever growing belief in the importance of microbiome balance in life, that is focused in providing sustainable solutions by integrating science and nature​. ​

Despite its core focus on microbiome research, the biotech startup repurposed its capability to develop COVID-19 test kits that can detect mutations of the coronavirus, including the recent UK strain.

The firm said it has partnered with state-owned biotech firm Bio Farma to produce up to three million test kits per month. First-generation test kits were also distributed to 19 provinces across Indonesia as part of the Pasti Bisa movement, a collaborative effort by East Ventures to stem the rise of the virus-19 cases in Indonesia.

Also Read: Startup of the Month, December: Biopharma company Krosslinker

Plans are underway to develop a third-generation test kit that can detect the coronavirus through salivary samples.

“We plan to develop a new test kit that can detect the COVID-19 virus in a salivary sample. This will be more efficient, less painful for users, and safer for medical practitioners. Saliva will also make infectious and less-infectious detection possible,” shared Revata Utama, CTO of Nusantics.

Last year, the startup opened Nusantics Hub in Jakarta, which it claims is the first skin microbiome laboratory in the archipelago that provides testing and consulting services for skin microbiome balance treatment.

“Indonesia’s rich biodiversity makes it the ‘world’s pharmacy’. We must protect the future of our future generations by preserving this biodiverse wealth and preventing exploitation for other interests that do not benefit us as a nation. This underlines the urgency to support the growth of startups like Nusantics, who possess expertise in this preservation,” Munaf remarked.

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Image Credit: Nusantics

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Poema Global Holdings, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) focusing on tech firms in Asia and Europe, has announced it has raised US$300 million in its IPO on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

The capital stems from pricing 30 million units at US$10 each, with each unit consisting of one share of common stock and one-half of a warrant, redeemable at US$11.50. The company offered five million more units than anticipated.

The units is listed on the NASDAQ Capital Market and is traded under the ticker symbol “PPGHU” beginning January 6, 2021.

The offering is expected to close on January 8, subject to satisfaction of customary closing conditions.

Led by Emmanuel DeSousa and Joaquin Rodriguez Torres, Co-founders and Managing Partners of Princeville Capital, the SPAC intends to focus on highly-scalable tech companies with high growth rates and sound unit economics across Asia and Europe.

Princeville Capital is a San Francisco-based venture investment firm founded in 2017. With offices in Berlin and Hong Kong, the firm has over US$1 billion in capital under management and 13 active portfolio companies.

Also Read: David Gowdey of Jungle Ventures: Why we will see an IPO from SEA in the next 12-18 months

As per Investopedia, SPAC is a company with no commercial operations that is formed strictly to raise capital through an IPO to acquire an existing company. They are also known as blank-check companies.

While the concept has been around in the market for many years and is used as a mechanism to bring companies public in the US, it has been relatively new to Asia, where companies are yet to jump on the SPAC bandwagon.

This news comes amidst the growing popularity of SPACs as an option to go public for startups within the region.

“A SPAC is one of the options we are evaluating given we have been approached by a few,” Traveloka President Henry Hendrawan said in a statement in response to a Reuters report that it was evaluating a merger with a SPAC as a possible listing option.

Also Read: Traveloka considers SPAC option as it plans to go public

Earlier, Bridgetown 2 Holdings, a SPAC targeting internet economy companies in Southeast Asia and backed by billionaires Peter Thiel and Richard Li, announced last month that it was seeking to raise US$200 million in an IPO in the US.

In an interview with e27, experts commented that the SPAC model that the company is implementing can be “an alternative” way to fundraise for startups in SEA.

“Having seen the more than 100 SPACs emerge in North America earlier in 2020, we are not surprised to see this new SPAC coming out to focus on Southeast Asia. We welcome this initiative, which will provide an alternative path to liquidity and access to public markets for one or more rising tech, financial services or media company in the region,” said Sanjay Zimmermann, Senior Associate at White Star Capital.

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