Investors are cautious but confident and optimistic about SEA; The Google e-Conomy SEA 2020 report says although unicorns are now refocusing on their basic services, most areas of investment, particularly sectors that sowed the opportunities afforded by COVID-19, will be likely to produce a healthy investment ecosystem for the region. More here

How 5-year-old live-streaming app 17LIVE acquired 60M users globally; It runs customised loyalty programmes for our customers; It has an in-house merchandise team who designs exclusive merchandise that can be used in reward programmes. More here

4 non-pandemic-related trends in 2020 that will shape the SEA startup ecosystem next year; The rise of SPAC as an alternative route to public listing and the proliferation of digital banking are among them; The proliferation of digital banking is another trend. More here

AI in the smart retail era; The tech has the capability not just to analyse numeric and text data, but also what we might call ‘sensory’ data, such as visual cues from customers as they browse products; Al can aggregate online and offline data for a holistic view of the customer and use it to find people with the intent to interact with a product. More here

Investors say these enterprise software sectors will likely remain hot in 2021; Companies that can solve the multitude of issues caused by WFH –including collaboration, security and productivity — will continue to be attractive. More here

Korean agritech startup E Green Global bags US$9.2M from YD-SK-KDB Social Value Fund; EGG plans to use the capital to expand its production facility to supply seed potatoes to its US and Chinese clients, with whom it has signed a contract worth US$92M. More here

New health app HeatraX receives funding from Indonesian government; It is an upgraded variant of thermal scanners; One of the app’s primary features is a contactless thermal screening that runs on an on-device AI; It also comes equipped with face recognition and a real-time warning feature that measures a person’s temperature. More here

What the Tech.Pass scheme means for startups and the rise of Singapore as a thriving centre of innovation; Within one to two-hour flight distance from other emerging tech cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Penang and HCMC, Singapore makes a strategic regional tech node; At the height of US-China trade tensions this year, Singapore continued to see increased investments from US MNCs and unicorns and Chinese tech titans alike. More here

Why the buy-now-pay-later concept makes sense for SEA; The concept is becoming increasingly popular due to a combination of factors; These include changes in human behaviour caused by COVID-19-imposed restrictions — we have more spare time but are unable to go out shopping which we compensate by shopping online. More here

This self-learning crib with a built-in monitor can spot your baby’s wake-up signs and put it back to sleep; Along with the natural-soothing-noiseless bounce, Cradlewise also plays curated music and prevents the baby from reaching the crying stage; It also enables parents to connect their phones to the cradle using an app to get a live video of the baby or listen to the baby anywhere, any time. More here

Bambooloo raises US$250K+ via ECF to expand its plastic-free home goods into UK; Bambooloo’s main goal is to provide cost-effective, safer, healthier daily essential products that help reduce water usage, carbon impact and slow deforestation; The brand recently added a bamboo-based personal safety mask-line to its products. More here

How startups can improve customer engagement and grow LTV ratio; There are many strategies but the linchpin is a deep understanding of who your customers are and what problem they come to have solved; The first thing you can do to increase customer engagement is to segment your leads and customers. More here

How hoolah aims to tackle the misconceptions of BNPL; Research detailing the impact of BNPL services in Singapore by financial comparison platform Finder showed that 27% of a thousand Singaporeans surveyed admit to being financially worse off when using a BNPL service, with impulse buying being the most common mistake. More here

Want to be an entrepreneur? Here’s why 2021 is a better year than 2020 to start a biz; The number of people around the world using the internet has grown to 4.54B in Jan 2020, an increase of 7% compared to Jan 2019; It has now become easier and more accessible for everyday people to start businesses such as e-commerce, virtual assistant work or coaching. More here

How can blockchain and other emerging technologies transform supply chains?; Blockchain adoption is slighted to dramatically improve the efficiency of cross-border transportation flows by democratising access to data and seamlessly connecting cross enterprise processes between different collaborating parties – essentially building a digital network of trust amongst stakeholders. More here

Is your product suffering from service design issues?; Service design is “the activity of planning and organising a business’s resources in order to directly improve the employee’s experience, and indirectly, the customer’s experience; The discord between product design and service design can lead to some baffling trends in user behaviours. More here

4 cloud and data trends to look for in 2021; Gartner is forecasting global public cloud revenue to grow by 19% from US$258M in 2020 to US$307M by 2021; Creating a cloud-based culture and democratising data will receive a lot of focus in 2021. More here

Grab releases statistics to boost Myanmar’s digital economy; Between March and November 2020, GrabFood’s daily order volume increased by approximately 470%; During the same period, GrabFood saw an 80% increase in the number of merchant-partners using the platform to serve their customers. More here

“Innovation can no longer be delayed”, says Connie Leung, Business Lead (Financial Services in Asia), Microsoft; There is a move toward a super-app for financial services, where customers can access multiple touchpoints across branch, call centre and mobile app services, for ease of access. More here

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What a year this has been. 2020 forced us to think differently and allowed us to experiment with a lot of the ideas that have been on the back burner. It forced us to rethink our role in the regional tech ecosystem, and here are some of the details to how we changed how we worked during 2020.

Echelon 2020

One of the first things we did was to actively scrap Echelon 2020 from happening. This took everyone, internal and external, by surprise as everyone was expecting us to change Echelon to virtual event. However, we believed that due to reduced costs and complexity in running events, there would be a slew of high quality events happening globally, which was great for the ecosystem. Our efforts were better spent in activities that allowed us to make consistent and meaningful impact on a regular basis, hence the birth of e27 Pro Membership. Sometimes, you need to shift the entire company in direction, and that means giving up your past work to focus on future efforts.

Pro Membership

We were pumped, and really afraid, to launch e27 Pro Membership. The original plan, which got kicked in the nuts by COVID19, was to build the feature set for 6 months, and launch it all at Echelon with a bang. We now had to rethink building an MVP, where to focus our efforts on and how to go to market as quickly as possible. We nailed it to a few key area that the community needed help with the most:

• Saving costs on services, hence the launch of Perks
• Fundraising and access to investors, hence the launch of Connect and the improvements to our Investor database
• Better ways for Startups to showcase what they do, hence the improvements to the Startups database and profiles

It’s been quite ride, and we had the fortunate opportunity to work with hundreds of Startups and Investors who have signed up to Pro. The exciting part is that we can now make meaningful impact every day to the ecosystem, and not just wait for a 2 day period once a year.

Webinars, Connect Programs, Workshops and More

With the membership model came new ways to engage and interact with our community. We launched a slew of monthly webinars including Meet the VC series. We partnered with the Open Circles team to launch OC27, a webinar series featuring top speakers from around the world, including the Founder of Siri. We launched the Connect Program, where we matched Startups with Investors from around the region. We did this in different ways throughout the year, including a 2 week intensive Connect program. Now we do it in a more automated way, via the Connect buttons and early next year, we will be launching the Connect dashboard. It’s been pretty non-stop all year with activities and programs to better Connect and educate the ecosystem.

One of the highlights of what we do is that we are able to work with many different organizations that make an impact far beyond our reach and capabilities. Facebook was one of them, and we are thankful for the opportunity to partner with them for the Facebook Community Accelerator in 2020.

Facebook Community Accelerator

13 communities from a range of community efforts including LGBTQ to mental health awareness were part of this program. In a time like this, community organizations are more critical than ever. Members depend on them for support, and in some cases their livelihoods. Through our partnership with Facebook and various mentors, we were able to equip these communities with the tools to grow their communities and impact their members in more relevant ways. The 6 months program allowed them to think of news ways to serve their members, work out plans to these initiatives executed and milestones to keep the leadership members on track.

COVID support program

Finally, we understood first hand how the real the struggle was for Startups. At the end of March, just as different cities around the world were going into lockdown, we put in effort to promote Startups and share deals for companies to save costs on various services. We also shared various resources from VCs and the general community on business continuity planning activities, to guide Startups on how to evolve their working practices. We launched special webinars specific to COVID19 centric activities and even launched a category for COVID19 stories. It was a tough time for everyone, and we tried to play our part.

 

COVID19 has forced to rethink our way of doing things and reflect on our lives. It has been a stress-filled and challenging year, and a tragedy for too many people. However, it has also been a year of learning,  change, reflection and growth.

I am proud of the way the team at e27 has responded to the challenges we faced this year. We wish the same for all of you as 2020 comes to an end and we look forward optimistically to a better year ahead.

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Are venture capital investors turning to Artificial Intelligence to find and source deals?

As per a recent Crunchbase report, US-based VC firm SignalFire and European fund EQT Ventures have developed their own AI platforms to analyse and vet investment opportunities. EQT’s AI platform, called Motherbrain, was used to source its portfolio companies and played a role in more than US$100 million of its ~US$900 million total invested since its first fund opened in 2016.

No doubt, new-age technologies such as AI have conquered almost every industry in the world, and venture capital is no exception. The tech adoption has further accelerated thanks to the spread of COVID-19. As the virus mutates sending shockwaves in many parts of the world and making physical due diligence almost impossible, VCs turned to new ways to make sure the process goes uninterrupted.

But could AI be a game changer here? What will be its roles in the space? Is this going to be the future? Will more VCs come forward to adopt this technology in the coming years?

We threw these questions at several notable investors and industry veterans in South and Southeast Asia.

Also Read: What you need to know about Artificial Intelligence and its compliments to data science

Below are their edited comments.

Dave Ng, General Partner, Altara Ventures

AI and Machine Learning works well when you have high quality data set to operate with. And the larger and more relevant the data are, the better in terms of outcome you could get.

Think of data as being the fuel that powers AI, which is the engine. Hence, when the fuel is cleaner and high in quality, your engine will go faster.

In recent times, AI/ML has been applied in many fields, including investments. It works better in an environment where you have meaningful volume and veracity of information.

Naturally, this means more applications of AI/ML and data science in areas like public equities, hedge funds, quantitative strategies.

In the realm of venture capital, the notion of applying AI is no doubt attractive. However, the question is where could AI be truly impactful? Because within early stage venture investing, very often you are faced with incomplete information and even a lack of data.

Hence, to strictly or even heavily rely on AI for your decision making process would be a stretch. For that to happen, we would be talking about Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), which is the holy grail in the AI field.

Think of JARVIS in the Marvel superhero movie Ironman. But today, we are still quite some distance in getting there. This is why many would say venture investing is both art and science.

While you could crunch numbers and analyse operating metrics of a business with technology, you can’t read the founders’ behaviours and qualities using a machine — their characteristic, mood, attitude, ethics, level of grit, ability to persevere etc.

And better still, it often takes an experienced former entrepreneur and business builder to really empathise and grasp the nuances of another startup founder and her/his business.

Where I think AI/ML and Data Science could be helpful would be in a few key areas such as (1) top of the funnel sourcing, (2) market signals processing, (3) trends analysis & pattern matching, and to a certain extent, and (4) predictive extrapolation. And many of these are still predicated on how good your data set is. You can imagine this is harder to do in emerging markets and early ecosystems.

I think AI/ML and Data Science are already increasingly being applied in many fields, including investment. Hence, regardless of COVID-19, this is a trend that will continue to pick up. I really see them as being independent from the pandemic.

Also Read: Differences between AI and Machine Learning, and why it matters

At Altara Ventures, for example, we apply technology to many of our processes and activities. We take a data-driven approach to our investments and constantly fine-tune our tech stack to enable our venture activities.

Justin Nguyen, Partner, Monk’s Hill Ventures

As former tech entrepreneurs working among AI and now venture capitalists investing in AI, our natural inclination is to always be on the lookout for ways to apply technologies to improve the status quo.

We are constantly asking ourselves “How do we apply technology for an advantage in the investment process?”, with one simple goal in mind: let humans do the relationship and intuition parts and let’s see how far we can push computers to do the rest.

Perhaps the adoption of AI in investment will hasten a bit during COVID-19, but not significantly, especially among the early-stage funds. Somewhat ironically, tech VCs are sometimes some of the slowest to adopt technology in their own practice. This is possibly best exemplified by the sheer number of firms that run their deal sourcing and investment process with little more than a handful of Excel spreadsheets.

In fact, we find ourselves a bit of an outlier among our peers in Southeast Asia, having invested in systems and data analysts from the very beginning. And we’re already evolving — earlier this year, we overhauled our customer relationship management (CRM) system to help us pool our individual networks.

Our current system constantly analyses billions of data points to inspect, measure, and surface relationships in our network, giving everyone at the firm a 360 degrees view and a shared history of our collective Rolodex, eliminating the silos that were previously plaguing us.

There’s a lot more to be done and certainly ways to go to realize our goal of letting humans do the relationship and intuition parts and pushing computers do the rest, but we’re well on our way.

Edward Tay, CEO, Sistema Asia Capital

AI has a phenomenal role to play in VC and private equity, albeit to different degrees. In terms of sourcing, VCs have much to gain from tapping on domain knowledge from seasoned in-house practitioners, such as Sistema, which has been investing since 1993.

Also Read: Demystifying artificial intelligence: Breaking down common AI myths

Key advantages are to reduce the work and headcount and increase the ability to curate higher quality of startups across cyclical business cycles as it removes innate human elements.

In terms of portfolio management, it improves the portfolio management efficiency and speed as it automates and focuses valuable management energies onto resolving key issues residing within the portfolios, and also the optimum time for exit, as the startups navigate the ups and downs in the post covid world.

This subtle advantage is further amplified for bigger funds that operate across different territories and countries. Sistema has fund management experiences and portfolios across major economies globally.

Compliance will be key as we will still need high calibre professionals and employees to ensure that results are consistent in quality of data sets, and ensure proper processes are in place for the extraction of such data — many of which are proprietary in nature to the organisation.

James Lee, Managing Director, Vertex Growth Fund

With the increasing availability of data — private market data and alternative data stream — there is a growing potential to leverage AI to derive signals and patterns that can inform and complement investment decisions.

At Vertex, we built an internal platform that supports our deal sourcing efforts as well as business development and cross-border partnerships between our portfolio companies and strategic corporates.

From our experience, the challenge has shifted from availability of data and AI tools to identifying the most relevant business challenge statement. With AI, this has become more streamlined and efficient, therefore helping us better identify investment opportunities.

In the near term, we see AI being a powerful decision support tool as part of our investment process. The ability to find patterns in the data universe to signal promising companies or emergent sector trends can help with deal sourcing. Graphs and data analysis can also be applied to portfolio value creation use cases.

Also Read: Ethics and Artificial Intelligence: Is the technology only as good as the human behind it?

We are not yet concerned that AI will replace human investment professionals, but recognise that it can be a great complement to the investment decision making process.

The acceleration of digital adoption by both individuals and enterprises due to COVID-19 will only further expand the data universe and increase the scope for AI application. AI adoption will naturally become increasingly common in the industry as it becomes an indispensable tool and a competitive advantage for firms.

Nitin Sharma, Founder of FirstPrinciples VC

Quantitative VC has been talked about for over a decade; firms like Correlation Ventures, Google Ventures and Social Capital were part of the first wave of funds using data science to track myriad of data sources and pick investments.

There are now many more funds building internal data teams and tools, and using AI to guide not only sourcing and tracking of new startups, but also diligence and post-investment support as well.

However, this is still a phenomenon primarily restricted to a subset of firms, and only in certain very dense and mature ecosystems where VCs are competing for any small advantage in deal flow. When it comes to India or SEA, I am not sure many investors are relying on advanced data signals yet.

VC, especially here, is still very much a people business driven by intuition and relationships. In the COVID-19 world, VCs everywhere have become used to completing the deal cycle online, and the trend towards applying AI in investing decisions has probably accelerated.

Also, certain types of financing decisions, such as ARR-based SaaS financing, can be more easily automated and linked to metrics.

Overall, however, early-stage equity investing will always have an element of subjective judgment (storytelling, founder chemistry, grit, etc.) that can’t be quantified.

Doing quantitative VC right also requires a serious investment of time and talent, which most VCs in the region are not ready for.

Wing Vasiksiri, Managing Partner, iSeed SEA

I’m a big believer in AI helping VCs in the sourcing process but am less optimistic about AI helping VCs in the picking process.

In the sourcing process, there are several ways this can be streamlined especially if a VC has a specific thesis they are looking to invest in.

For example, if I have a thesis around a specific type of founder with a certain background, I could build a software layer on top of this to source them.

Also Read: Will China lead the Artificial Intelligence game by 2030?

However, I believe that the picking process is very human and is not scalable through software. For us, picking great founders means getting to know them on a human/personal level and this can’t be done through software — we’re making bets on people rather than products and companies.

COVID-19 has increased the adoption of software tools globally. However, unless a fund has been software and AI first from the start I think it is unlikely that COVID-19 has accelerated the use of AI in investments.

During uncertain times, humans tend to become risk-averse and resort to what they know and what has worked in the past, rather than seek a new investment and deployment strategy.

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