Former Airbnb Head of Americas Marketing Jennifer Yuen
Despite all our differences, in many ways, we are the same. Cultures diverge, but commonalities bring us together. Airbnb has been an extraordinary platform for allowing people to truly experience new cultures in every corner of the world, and it has been thanks to passionate leaders like Jennifer Yuen.
In this second Global Class podcast episode, learn how it can be better to focus on cross border “tribes” instead of other target demographics, how some markets can influence others (helping you prioritise your expansion plans), how diversity can be a strength, and why “there’s no place called global.”
Jennifer is the former Head of Americas Marketing for Airbnb and was an early team member who launched the business in the APAC region. Previous to that, she led product marketing for the Facebook search product and held marketing roles at IHG, a global hospitality company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS), and AT&T.
The early stages of starting a business can be brutal. Funding is scarce, the team is lean, everyone has to wear multiple hats, and nobody knows you exist. You need to secure funding to grow, but you’re also competing against thousands of other companies. Most importantly, you don’t want to fail.
There’s been a worrying tendency for founders to stray into ‘moral grey areas at this juncture. Essentially, they artificially inflate their attractiveness with misrepresented statistics or sensationalise their offerings to stand out and entice investors.
This has been a problem since as far back as 2013, but with the current startup boom, it’s more evident than ever because more people are doing it.
There’s no hard right or wrong here, but if you’re a founder and you do this, understand what’s really at stake. You’re gambling not just the reputation of your company on this dishonesty but your own as well.
If you knowingly make claims you can’t back up, the trust lost is almost impossible to rebuild when people find out – and that reputational blow is never worth it.
Fear-driven fakery
Fear of failure is a powerful motivator in business, especially in the startup ecosystem. Startups fear that if they don’t play their cards right, they’ll become another contribution to the 90 per cent startup failure rate.
On the other side, VCs fear missing out (FOMO) on the Next Big Thing if they don’t make suitable investments, which could cost them millions in potential revenue.
Many founders focus on trying to spin a good story to attract VCs. Common tactics include exaggerating their numbers, talking up their product and how it will change the world, or even creating fake demand with fake reviews.
They also capitalise on the FOMO sentiment among VCs by framing their pitch in an ‘it’s now or never’ time-sensitive deal, putting pressure on VCs to leap.
This might work in the short term, but sooner or later, it’ll catch up with them. ‘Fake it till you make it’ only goes so far– the Theranos story is an excellent example– and VCs themselves are quickly wising up to the game. Once you’ve earned a bad name, even if you try to start over with a new company, it’ll be much harder to convince them to put their faith in you again.
Why fear failure?
When children fall, we tell them that it’s okay. They can get up and try again. It isn’t the end of the world. It teaches them what they must do to avoid falling again.
This lesson is just as valuable to adults. We’re often so focused on getting to the finish line that we forget the journey is just as important, even if there are a few bumps and scrapes along the way.
Failure is the greatest teacher, as they say, and once we’ve learned our lesson, we can adapt. From Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, we saw that it wasn’t the strongest or the most intelligent species that survived, but instead the one that was best able to adapt and adjust to changing environments.
Founders tend to take failure as a massive blow to their reputation, but the irony is that they could do significantly more damage by lying and failing to deliver.
Instead, they should embrace failure and learn to adapt to it instead of avoiding it through deceit. People understand that failure is a part of life. It’s what you do next that matters more.
Being upfront about the potential for failure and showing how you will handle it can help your reputation.
When my co-founder Surekha and I started Redhill, we were clear on our ambitions, but we also said: “We’ll do our best, but we’ll tell you if we fail.”
We were very transparent about the possible risks and what our strategy was to mitigate them. People appreciated our honesty, and this helped us build a reputation for responsibility and trustworthiness.
Staking your reputation as a founder
As a startup founder, your reputation is everything. You are your product. People work for and invest in your company because they believe in you and trust you to lead the way forward. That doesn’t mean they expect you to be perfect, but it does mean they expect you not to betray their trust.
Reputations precede the person. You might get away with one lie, but lies only engender more lies. If you make things up to avoid failure and it backfires, that stains not just your company’s reputation but your own as well.
Plus, now that everyone has a digital footprint, a bad reputation is not only difficult to reverse – it can follow you for years and affects the trust that people have in you.
On the flip side, trust and authenticity are byproducts of a genuine effort to create a good reputation. If, as a founder, you are consistently honest and authentic, people will also associate that with your business.
Inspiring trust is invaluable because people believe in your ability to deliver your best even if you fail, which makes them more likely to work with, support and even advocate for you.
At Redhill, we’ve returned the money to people when we couldn’t deliver on what was promised. We also explained what we learned from the mistake and how we would do better next time.
In many cases, admitting failure and explaining our learnings has fortified our reputation because our clients see that we’re not just in it for the money– we genuinely care about doing a good job. Some have even rehired us and recommended us to others because of it, and that’s actual gold.
Trust has been the foundation for business success since the beginning of time. Unfortunately, the high-pressure, high-stakes environment of the startup and VC ecosystem has made the current ‘win at all costs mindset somewhat endemic within the industry.
Being the little guy is hard and talking up a big game often seems like the only way for founders to get their foot in the door, but that’s a very short-sighted play; what happens when the house of cards falls?
The more this happens, the more cautious VCs will be about investing and the more difficult it will be for startups to get funding. Fewer founders will be willing to take the plunge, and there will be less innovation overall.
Ultimately, this mindset takes ‘putting your best foot forward’ too far and only hurts all of us in the long run. That’s why it has to start and stop with us.
As founders, we started this journey knowing the risks because we felt it was worth it. Sometimes things don’t work out, and that’s okay. Failing is just part of the process, not the end of the story. It’s never worth pawning your reputation to avoid failure because having a good name is everything.
As long as you have your name and reputation intact, you can always pick yourself up and try again – and that’s a rare privilege.
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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
Bangkok-headquartered digital asset and cryptocurrency exchange Bitkub has sold 51 per cent of its total shares to SCB Securities (SCBC) for 17.85 billion baht (~US$536 million).
SCBS is a subsidiary of one of Thailand’s largest and oldest banks, Siam Commercial Bank or SCB.
Upon the deal closing (expected to complete in Q1 2022), SCBS will become the major shareholder of Bitkub. This brings Bitkub’s valuation to more than US$1 billion, making it Thailand’s third unicorn, alongside Flash Group and Ascend Money.
SCB intends to work closely with Bitkub as a business partner, develop digital asset businesses through new business models to create long-term added value and lay the foundation for the bank’s further entry into the financial world of the future.
“We strongly believe that together we can drive the Thai economy into the future to be a regional financial and technological centre. And it is an important opportunity to create a new national champion for Thailand,” said Bitkub CEO and founder Jirayut Srupsrisopa.
Founded in 2018, Bitkub offers services including cryptocurrency and digital assets exchange, blockchain solutions and ICO advisory services, education workshops, and venture capital investments. The startup aims to push forward the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem toward mass adoption in Thailand.
The acquisition is in line with SCBx Group’s (the holding company of SCB) strategy to upgrade to a financial technology group, meet new consumer needs, and enter the new competitive and emerging arena of digital assets in the next three to five years.
SCB also owns a fintech venture subsidiary SCB 10X, which has invested in enterprise blockchain solution provider Ripple, custody tech firm Fireblocks, investment bank Sygnum, and centralised crypto lender BlockFi. The firm also participated in the US$93-million funding round of The Sandbox.
Thai crypto market has witnessed the involvement of notable banks this year. In August, Bank of Ayudhya, through its VC arm Krungsri Finnovate, participated in the US$41 million Series B of Zipmex, a Singapore-based crypto exchange that has been licensed in Thailand.
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In recent times, telcos have never been the epitome of ‘cool’ regarding brand positioning. Because there are usually only a couple of dominant telco players in each market, they typically don’t have much incentive to innovate or provide a stellar customer experience.
This means it’s rare for customers to get genuinely excited about a telco brand. At least, this much is true, according to Delbert Ty, head of marketing at Singapore-based digital telco Circles.Life.
Circles.Life is on a mission “to bring power back to the consumers,” explains Ty. Launched in 2016, the company offers no-contract mobile carrier plans with fully digital support.
While this is the norm in many developing nations, the approach is considered novel in developed markets such as Singapore, as incumbent telcos lock customers into 12- to 24-month contracts and provide SIM cards and customer service at offline branches.
With Circles.Life, customers can instead buy a SIM card online and pay as they go. They can take comfort in knowing that the amount they spend on mobile fees sync with the data and minutes they use.
In 2019, Circles.Life claimed to have reached a five per cent market share in Singapore. The company then expanded to Taiwan and Australia that same year.
On top of simple and unique offerings, Circles.Life’s marketing efforts have injected a breath of fresh air into the regional telco space. The company has consistently created viral campaigns that get the public talking.
For example, the brand made waves during its 2016 launch by involving influencers who vandalised what seemed to be a new telco’s outdoor ads offering 3GB data for S$40 (which was the norm back then).
The campaign sparked conversations that the offering was indeed nothing special and garnered media coverage about Circles.Life’s new data plan (20GB for S$20) after the brand unveiled itself as the one behind this stunt.
Speaking with ContentGrip (an online media powered by ContentGrow for professionals in media, marketing, and tech), Ty shares some of his recipes to help fellow marketers create viral campaigns.
Viral campaigns get folks talking about Circles.Life
Influencer youtiao666 vandalised a fake telco ad in 2016.
When done correctly, viral marketing can significantly increase brand awareness. People will Google the brand responsible for engaging campaigns and visit the website. This, in turn, can help the company retarget them later on using paid ads.
Generally speaking, retargeting campaigns cost less than those that aim to bring in new visitors. As a result, this helps to bring the customer acquisition cost (CAC) down.
Higher awareness should also help increase a brand’s overall search volume on Google. Ideally, this will help increase SEM impressions and bring CAC costs down even further. According to Ty, these tactics can apply to any industry, whether it’s B2C and B2B.
“Be clear with your strategy, message, creative material, and plan,” says Ty. “They all have to have in clear linear sync — meaning ‘this therefore that.’ When it comes to execution, you should be able to explain this to any layperson.”
In the case of Circles.Life’s vandalism campaign, the idea was about waking people up to the reality that what incumbent telcos offer is — quite simply — not good. Instead of just showing a ‘brand A vs brand B’ message, the team brought to life the sentiment of customer dissatisfaction through faux vandalism.
Circles.Life announced its most extensive no-contract data plan in this campaign, which was 20GB for S$20. This was an outsized improvement from the 3GB for S$40 commonly offered by other local telcos at the time.
Viral campaigns should evoke strong, visceral emotions
Circles.Life giving 2020 the middle finger in Australia
The core component of viral marketing is not so different from traditional marketing. Practitioners need to have a strategy, a target audience they want to reach, a clear message they want to convey, a creative idea, and a plan that stitches it all together coherently.
“The only thing that sets what we’ve done apart is the creative idea. We think of the Nth level extreme of what can elicit a visceral and emotional response,” says Ty.
“This usually considers culture and local norms, as what gets a strong response in one market could very well fall flat in another. But there’s also a flip side. Something that gets the appropriate emotional response in one market might end up being way over the top in another.”
In the case of Circles.Life’s vandalism campaign, Ty believes the strategy might not work in a country where vandalism is more common (in Singapore, there is very little vandalism).
So marketers need to understand each target market’s culture fully. According to him, culture is the vehicle in which a company’s ideas can be distributed.
Circles.Life’s also made headlines in Singapore when its ‘vending machines’ let locals pay S$3 in exchange for S$50. The free money stunt drew such a massive queue that police eventually stepped in to disperse the crowd. This was done to promote the company’s new S$3 unlimited data plan.
To find viral campaign ideas, the team does rapid-fire brainstorming sessions to populate a list of ideas. The team discusses trending topics, perennially hot issues and explores which ones sync well with the brand’s strategy and messaging.
Ty notes that marketers should always try questioning the premise. He asks, “Why are certain things done the way they are? Why is this the right channel? Why should we be liked as a brand? Through this line of questioning, you’ll unearth the weirdest, wackiest ideas that will help you drive distinction.”
To objectively assess whether an idea has a decisive score in “discussion worthiness,” Ty’s team will check Google Trends and Twitter to see what’s trending. Another avenue is to look at media mentions via various tracking tools such as Google Alerts and BrandWatch.
“Lastly, we’ve also explored doing ‘fake door’ tests on ideas by creating meme versions of the concepts and posting them on social media organically. Based on the upvotes and likes, we’re able to assess its discussion worthiness,” adds the marketer.
How Circles.Life handle mystery brand reveals
Several of Circles.Life’s publicity stunts have been kept unbranded initially, with the brand then revealing itself later on to spark interest. This is designed to explore whether the team can achieve more significant virality if the campaign is perceived as ‘organic’ by the public — rather than an advertisement.
The first ad features a lover’s break-up message
In Australia, the team decided to do a fake print ad of a scorned lover breaking up with her partner on a major publication. This stunt generated several media pickups, including one from the world-renowned tabloid Daily Mail.
As a former Procter & Gamble marketer, Ty shares that he uses Pantene’s playbook for mystery brand reveal activities. He emphasises the importance of providing a clear narrative that follows each initial mystery.
For the Australian fake ad stunt, the team followed it up with another print ad. It revealed how this disenchanted lover was breaking up with her telco and that Circles.Life is here for her now.
The follow-up ad unveiled Circles.Life’s publicity stunt
Ty explains, “This continuity in the narrative makes it easy for the audience to recall the previous coverage, and we eventually can drive the user’s journey back to our brand.”
That said, some stunts don’t need to be mysterious at all. For example, earlier this year, the telco created a S$20,000 lottery for families who, for some reason, are not eligible for housing benefits or loans from the government. The stunt was introduced as part of its new family plan launch.
Ty adds, “Even though we knew it would ruffle feathers, it only made sense if we put our name on it. In this case, we believed that because we were making a stand, literally putting our money where our mouth is, and most importantly, not selling anything, we’d be able to achieve the cut-through we wanted.”
He reminds fellow marketers to make sure that there is a reason why they’re not revealing a brand during bold marketing stunts. Further, each stunt should be carefully orchestrated not to contradict the creative idea. Lastly, practitioners should be mindful that this is a tactic. Tactics don’t work indefinitely, and they certainly don’t work if the strategy is wrong.
He explains, “Our approach here is that with risky bets like stunts and viral activities, there is an inherently low chance of success. So, no matter how creative you and your team are, you’ll never have a greater than 50 per cent hit rate.”
Because of this dynamic, Circles.Life’s marketing team hedges the risk by spending less than 20 per cent of their time and money on publicity stunts. This allows them to be braver and not worry about the cost of failure. They spend most of the budget on more traditional and reliable channels that are easily trackable, like performance marketing.
Ty says, “Don’t be afraid to fail. Failure is okay, so long as you have a contingency if it does happen.”
Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
BeeX, an autonomous robotics startup in Singapore, has secured an undisclosed “seven-figure” USD in a seed investment round.
Cap Vista, the strategic investment arm of Singapore’s Defence Science and Technology Agency, led this round. It also saw participation from Quest Ventures-Maritime Fund, IMC Ventures, SEEDS Capital, and the National University of Singapore.
With the money, BeeX will expand its team to accelerate the development of autonomous capabilities across more diverse and critical environments, it said in a note on its website.
It will also commission a more powerful hovering autonomous underwater vehicle (HAUV) used for harsher conditions in offshore wind. It represents a unique opportunity for rapid growth in underwater infrastructure as the world adopts renewable energy at an unprecedented rate to achieve net-zero.
Founded by Grace Chia and Goh Eng Wei, BeeX is a deeptech engineering spin-off from the National University of Singapore, with a decade of R&D. It designs and builds vehicles to redefine how underwater work can be done. BeeX has a multi-disciplinary team with experiences in marine robotics, autonomous self-driving, electronic design, and naval architecture.
While autonomous robotics has impacted how work is done on land, air, and even outer space, the underwater world has stayed the same. Humans are still working in dangerous environments — be it physically diving or being mobilised on multi-billion-dollar large vessels — to deploy human-controlled remotely operated vehicles.
BeeX believes that Hovering Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (HAUVs) independent of these big boats can provide a sustainable way of large-scale underwater inspections. This will become a fundamental building block in ensuring the safety of coastal cities and accelerating the shift towards renewables, such as floating solar and offshore wind, by significantly reducing their operations and maintenance costs.
BeeX claims its HAUV — A.IKANBILIS –performs repetitive tasks efficiently with advanced autonomy, enabling better data and insights into critical large scale infrastructure like offshore wind, floating solar and aquaculture farms. It excels operationally in high currents and low visibility, with its custom propulsion, electronics, and sensor fusion techniques.
“BeeX’s marine autonomy technology will revolutionise underwater inspections and disrupt the maritime sector, and contribute to applications in sustainability and defence,” said Chng Zhen Hao, CEO of Cap Vista.
James Ong of IMC Ventures, commented: “The best validation of BeeX’s solution is demonstrated through the demand for their product in the maritime industry. BeeX has shown the commercial ability to sell its solutions on commercial terms, and it validates that the technology works and the pricing is viable. IMC hopes to help BeeX scale by utilising IMC’s broad network across Asia Pacific”.
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Thai fintech startup Lightnet, which provides blockchain-based solutions for the Asian remittance market, has received US$48 million funding from its co-founders Chatchaval Jiaravanon and Tridbodi Arunanondchai, DealStreetAsia has reported today.
Jiaravanon is a family member of Thailand’s largest private company Charoen Pokphand Group. He also boughtFortune magazine in 2018 for US$150 million.
Arunanondchai is a serial tech entrepreneur and former investment banker. His previous companies include travel club Privepass.com and digital agency Play Media.
Lightnet is based in Bangkok and headquartered in Singapore.
Founded in 2018 with Jiaravanon’s US$10 million, Lightnet leverages smart contract and distributed ledger technology to tap into “a trillion US dollar” global remittance market, connecting existing financial systems with its network of cash agents and wallets.
The startup claims it increases the efficacy of existing money transfer operators, financial institutions and other cross-border payment providers. According to it, these businesses are currently relying on “outdated, costly and fragmented” services. Lightnet pays close attention to the millions of unbanked migrant workers in major Southeast Asian markets.
In January 2021, Lightnet announced its adoption of Velo Labs’s Velo Protocol as its blockchain protocol. It now positions itself as the next generation clearing and settlement network across the Asia Pacific region.
Velo Labs develops Federated Credit Exchange Network, which allows partners in legacy finance, CeFi and DeFi industries to safely and securely transfer value between each other with maximised efficiency and transparency. The firm regards itself as one of few blockchain projects “with a clear path towards mass adoption.”
Earlier in January, Lightnet bagged US$31.2 million in a Series A financing round co-invested by six conglomerates and two VCs, including UOB Venture Management, Seven Bank, Uni-President Asset Holdings, HashKey Capital, Hopeshine Ventures, Signum Capital, Du Capital and Hanwha Investment and Securities.
According to the World Bank’s latest data, despite the COVID-19 headwinds, remittance flows remained resilient in 2020 in low- and middle-income countries, amounting to US$ 540 billion in 2020, down only 1.6 per cent compared to the 2019 total of US$548 billion.
In recent years, Thai fintech firms have snagged big deals, with Ascend Money becoming Thailand’s first fintech unicorn in September.
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The word ‘trust’ holds a multitude of meanings. A quick look at the dictionary would show that “trust” is about ‘having confidence in somebody’ or ‘believing that something is true’.
But in today’s thriving digital economy, where digitalisation has completely transformed our everyday lives, the meaning of ‘trust’ is evolving and in fact, under great scrutiny in the complex digital environment.
From credit card transactions to medical records and daily social media interactions, we are all constantly sharing a multitude of personal information digitally. This requires a high degree of trust from users who have no choice but to entrust digital platforms and services with key information about their lives most of the time.
However, the reality is that we don’t actually own these data. From the moment we register for a credit card, we are effectively letting a financial institution take hold of and control our information. This is a key concern especially as the cyber threat landscape is constantly evolving and security leaks have happened at a massive scale, often transcending the capabilities of organizations as well.
Recent high-profile cyber-attacks have only proven how attackers are becoming more sophisticated and stealthier in targeting the loopholes of robust security infrastructures.
Fostering digital trust
Against this backdrop, consumers and businesses alike are increasingly vulnerable to potential threats such as loss of confidentiality, unauthorised access, and inappropriate modification of crucial information. This is why digital trust must be forged and strengthened.
Digital trust serves as the beating heart of the digital economy, and a lack of it will eventually impede wider growth.In the race towards a digital-centric society, businesses and individuals would require greater assurance and confidence in using new technologies to unlock opportunities.
It is heartening to know that countries like Singapore are making more investments to advance the city-state’s digital trust capabilities within the next few years and strengthen its position as a trusted digital hub.In fostering digital trust, efforts must enable a simpler and more convenient method of managing data and personal information.
The growth of privacy-preserving decentralised technologies
Amid a changing digital and threat landscape, privacy-preserving, decentralised technologies will increasingly take on a bigger role in fostering digital trust for the next iteration of the internet. This is where Affinidi is making a difference.
We recognise the loopholes along with the challenges that individuals face today with regards to owning their information and digital identity and we want to empower everyone to be able to safely access financial, healthcare, and employment platforms, and enable new ways to share, control and store our personal data.
To this end, we are pushing for greater use of decentralised technologies, which would award individuals with the power to fully control their data.
With decentralised technology, individuals everywhere can gain ownership of their own digital identity, claim their credentials, and share data selectively in a privacy-preserving manner as they consume digital services from different providers. These would allow them to unlock new opportunities and the potential to enjoy life to the fullest.
This new decentralised architecture fosters greater transparency and accountability between all parties, enabling institutions, governments, and individuals to participate and contribute in ways that foster great trust. Let’s look at a few examples.
For businesses, decentralised technology makes the digital infrastructure and services more resilient to cyber threats, while minimizing the attack surface, scale, and potential impact in the event of a compromise. It could also help businesses reduce costs on data management and compliance resources, especially for small business owners.
For job seekers today, many have had to pivot to a fully digital hiring process amidst the ongoing pandemic. Gone are the days when job seekers had to prepare hard copies of their certificates for physical interviews.
Now, employers require candidates to digitally share their previous employment records, education qualifications and other information for pre-employment checks. Given that these credentials are highly personal and issued by various entities, candidates should demand a secure approach to ensure their data don’t fall into the wrong hands.
Verifiable credentials– tamper-proof credentials that can be verified cryptographically – help address this. Candidates can collate their credentials in their own digital wallets and only share them with relevant employers who require this information.
This decentralised approach ensures data is shared in a secure and privacy-preserving way while empowering the individual.
The benefits of Affinidi’s decentralised technology do not stop there. Amidst the pandemic, COVID-19 tests have become a necessity for travel, but the absence of a global standard for digital health credentials impedes the verification process.
There is also the issue of fake COVID-19 certificates, as some attempt to profit from travel restrictions through selling fake negative test results.
Through verifiable credentials, healthcare providers and other relevant bodies can issue digitally verifiable COVID-19 test and vaccine credentials to travellers in a secure and privacy-preserving way.
Airlines and immigration officers can then use Affinidi’s verification technology to accurately verify the credentials’ authenticity and match these against destination entry requirements.
Beyond these use cases, verifiable data and decentralisation will have far-reaching benefits across every sphere of our life. Scheduling health checks, applying for credit cards, computing insurance premiums, and selling/buying a property are just some areas in our daily lives where these new technologies can play a role in verifying information securely while safeguarding our digital identity.
Building an ecosystem to become a digital trust hub
While much has been said about the need for privacy protection and identity management, the truth is that decentralization is not common knowledge or widely adopted among the community and the business world yet. There is a need to foster stronger partnerships in advancing digital trust and decentralized technologies to build on what we have created and to sustain it.
To do so, concerted efforts are required from everyone involved such as regulatory authorities, users, and companies operating in the private and public space.
Singapore is doing well with championing privacy-preserving models and establishing solid trust networks, but globally, there must be a greater push for government and key stakeholders to embrace and integrate this change into their business processes to award data control back to individuals for the benefit of the world.
Though we often get lost in technologies, frameworks, legislation, and economic models, it is ultimately the human aspect of it all that will define the future of the digital identity industry.
Hence, while governments and institutions should drive research and introduce solutions that support digital trust principles, we also believe that there needs to be a strong mindset shift among the wider population.
Bearing this in mind can determine the heights we scale, and how quickly we get to establish a strong and globally trusted digital ecosystem that empowers the world.
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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
Founder of Youadme, Zhi Ying Chai (centre) with her Cambodian colleagues
My journey in tech only began after graduating from Nanyang Technological University’s School of Art, Design and Media. Fresh-faced and ambitious, I joined an agency to provide creative services to help businesses market and drive user engagement.
Despite running on the creative route, the company operated on the traditional model that many businesses were familiar with.
Besides, I also quickly observed that most of these businesses were not understanding the changing behaviours of consumers who are always well-connected online, and I wanted to help close this gap.
From arts to tech: A change in medium
While there were pragmatic reasons behind my decision to go into the tech scene, I quickly realised that tech was also an excellent platform for showcasing my creativity. I craved creation and engaging with my imagination to tell stories.
Tech was able to help me quickly find my audience and allowed me to resonate with them. A change in medium only affects how one’s skills are applied, and no matter the industry, there is an opportunity for creativity to be expressed.
In today’s world, expressing our creativity in varying magnitudes is key to improving our lives, and there is a lack of platforms for which creativity can be demonstrated and shared.
Trained in the arts and with the opportunities given to me in the technology scene, I was set on helping others tell their stories and bring people closer together with their communities.
Accessibility was important to me, as I felt that nobody should experience the kind of hurdles and bad experiences I did to achieve and express what they wanted. My team was aligned with me on this front, and we set out to create a platform to make this happen.
From Singapore to Cambodia: A new journey of learning
After some deliberation, the team onboard decided to venture out from Singapore into the region. We set our sights towards Cambodia, a market in which we have some experience with some clients.
Then, we had noticed that more Cambodians were turning to entrepreneurship, with many of them quick to jump onto the digitalisation trend, progressing perhaps even faster than Singapore. The youth were well-connected to different social media platforms and were putting out creative marketing ideas to promote their business.
We saw as an opportunity that different players in the market were openly willing to experiment with new technologies or new platforms.
Eventually, after much thought, I took off for Cambodia with a team from Singapore to better understand the market. It wasn’t easy at first, as I did not speak the local languages, and I could only converse in simple English.
I was also physically away from family and friends in a foreign land that not many women would subscribe to as the first choice for an overseas stint. As our company had just started, I had to go through some months without a salary too.
Adapting to the new environment proved to be a challenge for most of my team, as they eventually left and returned to Singapore, leaving me there with just one other member to manage the company.
The biggest challenge, however, was the working culture. Over there, the women I worked with within the tech scene were very active and often more than happy to speak out for themselves. They actively ensured that they were heard, which contrasted with my experiences in Singapore.
From my conversations, this respectable difference could be due to the multiple responsibilities that most women in Cambodia had to juggle, including raising their children and running the household by themselves without any extra help.
This has made them more outspoken about their wants and ideas. While their outspoken nature surprised me at first, I grew to find this determination to have your voice heard in a male-dominated industry as something we can all learn from.
This determination was especially crucial to be seen and heard for a company in a new market. I also spent a lot of time learning and understanding from the locals, so I could better leverage the team’s strengths bundled with my creative knowledge to create a more effective platform for our community of users.
After many months of hard work, we finally launched YouAdMe, a social commerce platform to connect brands to loyal customers.
Tapping into the social media habits of the society, this platform also allows the customers to show their support for their favourite brands while also helping entrepreneurs and brands to receive the benefits of marketing from the customers’ content.
Our platform has become the bridge between brands and customers, allowing their creative voices to be heard and showcased.
The successful launch of YouAdMe was well-received by many. On the international stage, I embodied the same confidence I have learnt from the Cambodian ladies I worked with and pitched our solution on several professional platforms.
We won awards with the team’s hard work, including the 2018 ASEAN Pitch Fest Cambodia and the 2018 Singapore MAS ASEAN Top 10 Innovative Fintech.
Lesson brought back to Singapore
Today, I work remotely with my Cambodian team of 30 to assist 1,500 traditional businesses on our platform of 250,000 users.
Many of my team members are women who have to deal with the everyday stresses of life on top of their work. Despite these challenges, their contributions have been greatly significant and are always deeply appreciated.
If anything is key to my own growth so far, my constant travels between Singapore and Cambodia have opened my eyes to observe the people I’m designing the platform for.
YouAdMe aims to connect the businesses on our platform with their consumers directly, so it is vital to listen to the needs and wants of both ends. Within our team, local sentiments are expressed by our members, which we consider with mindful analysis and market research.
As Women in tech, we need to remember to make ourselves heard on our terms. It might be uncomfortable to assert yourself at first, as I was when I first started.
Yet, as the extraordinary ladies in my Cambodian team have taught me, the path to success requires stepping out of the comfort zone. To achieve the things you want and find your voice, you must listen and be comfortable with the discomfort of finding your voice in the industry.
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Philippine-based cloud kitchen startup CloudEats announced that it has raised a US$5 million ‘oversubscribed’ Series A funding round led by Vulpes Investment Management of Singapore and Gobi Partners, particularly the Gobi-Core PH Fund.
Alibaba-backed BAce Capital, Intera Investments Limited, GMA Ventures, and angel investors also participated in this funding round.
Following the funding round, BAce Capital Founding Partner Benny Chen is set to join CloudEats’ board of directors.
The company has also established an outstanding international Advisory Board composed of the current and former CEO of Monde Nissin, McDonald’s and Starbucks in Europe.
It plans to use the new funding to support its regional expansion plan; CloudEats plans to launch in two new Southeast Asian (SEA) markets within the next 12 months.
“We are very excited to launch operations in Vietnam this November, and continue our aggressive expansion in the Philippines,” says CloudEats Co-Founder Iacopo Rovere.
The company also aims to develop new F&B brands to follow its own Burger Beast.
In the past year, cloud kitchen has been one of the most popular sectors in SEA, as the COVID-19 pandemic changes the behaviour of F&B customers in the region to become more reliant on food delivery services.
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Una Brands, a Singapore-based startup providing a “fast and fair way” for e-commerce business owners (vendors) to sell their companies, has raised US$15 million in Series A financing.
White Star Capital and Alpha JWC co-led the round. Besides its current investors, Ninjavan co-founder Alvin Teo also joined the round.
This investment comes just five months after Una Brands secured US$40 million in its seed round from 500 Startups, Kingsway Capital, 468 Capital, Presight Capital and Global Founders Capital.
Una Brands will use the new capital to acquire e-commerce brands in Asia Pacific and further strengthen its technology and team. “With this raise, we will continue to invest in acquiring great brands, developing our multi-channel capabilities, expanding into our newly launched markets and supporting our brands’ growth,” founder and CEO Kiren Tanna said.
Una Brands was established in 2020 by Tanna, the former CEO of Rocket Internet Asia and founder of foodpanda and ZEN Rooms. Adrian Johnston, Kushal Patel, Tobias Heusch and Srinivasan Shridharan are the other co-founders of the startup.
Una Brands acquires brands selling across multiple e-commerce channels such as Shopify, Shopee, Lazada, Tokopedia, Amazon. The firm mainly primarily focuses on profitable independent brands with revenue between US$1 million and US$50 million.
Una claims it can complete the end-to-end transaction process in under six weeks with flexible deal structures.
Currently, Una employs 90 people across seven offices — Singapore, Australia, India, China, Taiwan, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Jefrey Joe, the managing partner at Alpha JWC, added: “Digitally native brands in APAC is a secular trend growing at 4x the rate of those in the West. We believe Una Brands’s value proposition will resonate with brands across the region and further propel the growth of D2C in countries such as Indonesia.”
Brand aggregation is the new trend in Southeast Asia. In May this year, former Carousell and OVO executives launched the e-commerce brand aggregator Rainforest with a US$36M seed funding. In September, Rainforest bagged an oversubscribed US$20 million pre-Series A round led by Monk’s Hill Ventures.
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