Many people I talk to started a company to solve a problem they encountered and found no other solution. There are also cases where the solutions that they found didn’t do a good enough job to satisfy their needs, creating an urgency for a new, improved one.

Today’s guest Sam Starns is no different.

After regretting her own traditional wedding, she wished there was someone who could have advised her to find the strength within herself to fight for the wedding she really wanted. That led Starns to start her own company which specialises in advising, planning, and leading couples to experience a custom elopement style wedding with under 25 guests in the most beautiful parts of the world.

How exactly is her company different from the existing wedding organisers? How does it seize the opportunity in a highly competitive market?

Most importantly, when starting a company, why is it so important to find the Why factor? How can it make a difference for you and your company? If you have not found it yet, then what are the steps that you can take? What are Starns’s experience in the matter, and what kind of advice can she give you?

If you are starting a company and need that extra push that inspires you, make sure you don’t miss this episode!

If you don’t see the player above, click on the link below to listen directly!

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This article on finding your Why in starting a company was first published on We Live To Build.

Image Credit: Michal Czyz on Unsplash

The post When starting a company, focus on your Why: An interview with Sam Starns appeared first on e27.

Starting a business comes with its own set of difficulties but maintaining a business is the larger challenge. When it comes to small and medium businesses, money management is one of the main challenges they are faced with worldwide. Some of the most recognisable brands in the region have shut their doors due to financial losses and bankruptcy, including the 162-year old Singapore department store, Robinsons, and souvenir chain, Naiise Iconic. According to a survey with 1,000 SME founders from Asia, businesses are most likely to fail because of an inability to manage costs or anticipate rising costs.

As per a recent UNESCAP report, many respondents in diagnostic studies of SME development perennially cite the common complaint that access to finance is inadequate. The study also highlights that financing constraints play an even more critical role later on, when operating SMEs are seeking to expand and develop, but lack access to sufficient long-term funding sources in particular.

Capital is crucial not only for a business to run but for it to thrive. Limited access to the right financial services and tools is one of the main areas where SMEs struggle. They are more often than not struggling to cover daily operational costs to somehow manage their essential expenses such as payrolls, and are therefore unable to pursue a path of exponential growth.

According to a 2020 report by Oracle NetSuite, more than half of the top 10 challenges faced by small businesses involve finance. From limited or inconsistent cash flow to inadequate capital, funding can make or break small businesses in one way or another.

Also read: Startup Thailand Marketplace: a gateway to new markets

This is not only a challenge uniquely faced by SMEs during a precarious time. Corroborating this report is an earlier study by Synergix Technology conducted in 2019 which concluded that “finance-related problems are an ongoing issue for all businesses worldwide including SMEs in Singapore. Regardless of the operational sector, enterprises will more likely fail to succeed if they are not able to maintain a sustainable financial condition.

This is where the right fintech tools and services can help small and medium businesses tackle the issue of money management and thrive in the competitive market. One such company that is making strides in this direction is Finaxar.

Finaxar is a financial service provider focused on providing SMEs access to working capital so that they can supercharge their business towards accelerating growth. “We streamline the E2E process of providing short-term working capital, enabling digital payments, and facilitating expense management from one centralised platform using the power of technology,” shared Dr Tan Sian Wee, Group CEO of Finaxar.

Solving money management challenges faced by SMEs

Founded in 2016 and serving primarily the Singapore market with its focus on changing the way small business financing is done using technology, Finaxar is a Singapore-based fintech firm that is solving working capital challenges faced by SMEs

Finaxar finances directly from their balance sheet to provide innovative data-driven credit and payment solutions. In July 2019, with the support of Enterprise Singapore, the firm cemented its Lending-as-a-Service^TM in a new cross-border partnership with Cathay Financial Holdings and Indovina Bank to improve access to SME financing in Vietnam — setting a milestone of its first overseas market beyond Singapore. In the firm’s vision to digitising SME finance, Finaxar grew its capabilities in 2020 with a “Buy-Now-Pay-Later” solution for businesses in the B2B sector — on top of their existing Finaxar Credit Line, which enables business payments through a single, integrated platform that aligns seamlessly with businesses’ cash flows to provide rapid liquidity to SMEs.

Flex by Finaxar, powered by Visa: A unified spend management solution

Last year, when many small and medium businesses were struggling to survive and capital was one of the top concerns across the industry, Finaxar announced the launch of Flex: A unified spend management solution jointly developed in partnership with Visa. With the aim of providing businesses with a platform to unify spend, payables and receivables, the solution was launched in line with Finaxar’s focus to transform SME finance through digitisation. With Flex by Finaxar, businesses now have access of up to S$100,000 in interest-free credit within 48 hours.

“Our initial journey as an SME lending company gave us the opportunity to speak with our SME customers, which allowed us to validate some severe gaps in accessing working capital in Southeast Asia. With the digital ecosystem landscape dramatically changing, we had the chance to innovate our core capabilities to support SMEs in a more purposeful and meaningful way, at the scale and speed that is beneficial to everyone.” shared Dr Tan.

He added, “We were able to leverage our ability to underwrite SMEs efficiently, providing them with short-term working capital to fuel their business, and enabling them to gain more transparency and control over their finances. As a financial services provider, we introduced Flex to ease the process of applying for working capital and facilitate the convenience of managing business payments using digital capabilities in a secure, efficient, and low-cost manner.”

Also read: RE:SOLVE — the biggest summit for digital-first customer experience

With changing consumer behaviour and a landslide shift towards online payments amidst the pandemic, digital payments have become the most preferred method in Singapore, and SMEs need to be ready for that. They need holistic and agile solutions for better money management. In line with that, the Flex solution comes as both a virtual and physical corporate card — a key feature made available only to businesses in Singapore and is part of Flex’s all-in-one spend management solution. Flex enables easy reconciliation and integration into existing accounting tools to help SMEs keep track of the payments that require reimbursement. 

Employers can empower employees to make payments via corporate cards without prior approvals. This can be done by setting customisable parameters such as monthly amounts loaded to the cards, controlling specific expenses (e.g. transportation, entertainment, bulk purchases) and more. All expenses will be captured by the Flex platform for easy reconciliation and seamless reimbursements, thus improving the efficiency of SMEs.

Flex by Finaxar provides a three-fold money management solution

Flex’s proprietary solution that covers working capital provision, instant card issuance and spend control management is the first of its kind in Singapore. With an interest-free, fee-free credit line of up to 35 days with adjustable billing periods, it eliminates friction points and hidden costs typically associated with traditional lending. 

“We facilitate cross border payments with zero FX markup, and domestic payments on Flex are free for our clients. It is simple to apply, fast to get a credit line and very affordable for small businesses. We continue to innovate our platform with SME customers’ need for better control of their expenses in mind,” added Dr Tan.

Also read: Revolutionising the food industry with Malaysia’s StixFresh

Flex’s all-in-one financial management platform enables SMEs to:

• Regulate their spending: Businesses can determine exactly where and when the money was spent by setting up request-approval workflows and customising spend limits.
• Manage their spending: With the issuance of physical and virtual Flex Visa corporate cards, businesses can capture and monitor invoices, initiate payments and reconcile their payments using their accounting software via a single platform.
• Track their transactions: Using real-time spend insights, businesses can obtain an up-to-date, accurate, and comprehensive financial outlook — and easily integrate into any existing accounting software.

“We are not a technology company attempting to provide financial services. We are a true financial services company which leverages the depth of our team’s long backgrounds in finance. Today, we leverage the power of technology to better serve the SME community, aiding their ambitions to grow without limits,” concluded Dr Tan. 

Interested in improving your startup’s finance management and maximising business growth potential? Learn more about Flex by Finaxar at https://flexnow.co.

 

This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Finaxar

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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The world has been living with the pandemic for over a year now. Although vaccinations are already underway worldwide, many dramatic changes that businesses have adopted during COVID-19 are irreversible.

Both startups and corporates have increasingly turned to AI, cloud, and digital transformation to streamline operations and survive under the new normal, permanently altering the way we do business.

During the first half of 2021, the Taiwanese AI ecosystem reached a significant milestone with Appier’s public listing in Japan, becoming the first Taiwanese startup to officially achieve unicorn status.

Additionally, AI chip startup Kneron received funding and resources from major electronics manufacturers Hon Hai and Winbond at the beginning of the year, signalling a continuing demand for increasingly higher-efficiency computing capabilities from major technology companies. 

AppWorks Accelerator has updated Taiwan’s AI Ecosystem Map First Half 2021 with our learnings over the past six months. With the breakneck pace of digital adoption, some applications are no longer limited to a specific industry and have thus been reclassified as cross-industry solutions or technologies, which we believe is more reflective of the AI ecosystem in Taiwan.

In reviewing the changes in the overall ecosystem, we have observed several notable trends for the first half of 2021:

New perspectives and opportunities in AI

According to Hive Ventures’ AI report for Taiwanese enterprises released in the first quarter of 2021, 25 per cent of companies have deployed relatively mature AI applications in their organisations.

In addition, 53 per cent of interviewed companies believed that there was a need to introduce AI to their organisations, with learning how to deploy and apply AI more effectively becoming a top priority for many leaders.

We noticed that companies have gone from directly seeking external solutions to building an internal team to sort integrated data, define application fields, develop and deploy AI models, and finally realise the assimilation of AI in their organisations.

Also Read: Taiwan is poised to power the AI economy in the region

It is precisely because of this trend that we see a number of AI enablers gaining significant momentum in the market.  ProfetAI, an automated machine learning engine aimed at assisting companies to introduce AI with the best efficiency, received pre-A funding from AU Optronics, Hive Ventures, and other investors in early 2021.

In addition, Infuse AI received a US$4.3 million Series A round of fundraising led by Wistron in the first quarter of 2021 to continue to develop their MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) platform.

Model development, management, and monitoring are optimised this year to assist more companies in deploying and managing AI models.

The next step in martech

As the penetration rate of e-commerce in Taiwan continues to rise, the concept of online-merge-offline (OMO) fusing virtual and physical sales and marketing is demonstrating powerful potential. The effect of Google’s announcement of phasing out third-party cookies continues to ferment, forcing companies to reassess how they manage their scattered online and offline data pockets.

Specifically, companies are now left to contend with the challenge of effectively accumulating, integrating, and drawing insights from fragmented customer data, and using that to make agile marketing decisions. Such issues have created new development opportunities for AI innovation within martech.

In the face of making increasingly complex marketing decisions, the data required is more difficult than ever to integrate by yourself. We noticed martech startups have begun to actively seek alliance opportunities with other companies, jointly form teams to share data, improve product content together, or even derive new service models.

Whether it’s teaming up between new ventures or seeking cooperation in different industries, you can find clues of these synergies happening throughout the first half of 2021. For example, two conversational AI startups, GoSky and Crescendo Labs, cooperated with iKala’s KOL Radar to collect the data they needed to launch social commerce solutions.

Another martech startup, Accuhit, collaborated with key media players in early 2021 to establish a joint venture in AI and big data called DaEX. Through cross-industry alliances, the media’s advertising data will be integrated with CDP (Customer Data Platform) to create a comprehensive marketing ecosystem.

In addition to its aforementioned fundraising news, Appier also acquired BotBonnie, an omni-channel social commerce platform to enrich their services and data analysis. With this wave of martech teams building strong networks, more AI applications will be born through such synergies.

Roles for large companies in Taiwan’s AI ecosystem

In the development of the overall AI ecosystem, whether in Taiwan or internationally, the participation rate of integrating AI in organisations and processes is increasing. In terms of startup accelerators, AppWorks Accelerator, established in 2010 and focusing on founders working in AI and Blockchain since August 2018, has graduated over 100 AI teams so far and continues to build up Taiwan’s AI ecosystem.

In April 2021, AppWorks also announced a partnership with Wistron, an active player in the AI ecosystem, to launch the first batch of the new Wistron Accelerator powered by AppWorks to focus on startups in the fields of AI, IoT, cloud computing, and information security.

Various business units of Wistron Group will collaborate with these startups to propose solutions for their departments and seek more growth opportunities within the overall AI/IoT ecosystem.

Also read: Why Taiwan’s AI ecosystem is a fast-emerging opportunity during the pandemic

Leading AI chip maker NVIDIA also announced that it will establish Asia’s first NVIDIA Inception AI startup base in Linkou’s innovation park, supplemented by the NVIDIA Inception AI accelerator program to inject talent and innovative technology into Taiwan.

In addition, startup accelerators that support AI startup teams, including SparkLabs Taipei, Taiwan AI x Robotics Accelerator, and the CIAT Accelerator, are all recruiting AI startups to join them.

Taiwan AI Academy Foundation and Taiwan AI Labs are Taiwan’s representative institutions in AI education and research, respectively. The former, a consortium, combines industry and academia to promote the implementation of AI in various industries.

It promotes services for AI project evaluation and transformation strategies. Taiwan’s smart driving test lab and Taoyuan’s innovation park connect government and corporate resources to provide an R&D environment for self-driving cars to test.

With organisations now banding together to push the AI agenda forward, we will continue to see the demand for integrating AI rise.

Taiwan’s AI Ecosystem Map First Half 2021 is jointly produced by AppWorks and Taiwan’s Artificial Intelligence Foundation (AIF), and is updated every six months. Download the map here: Taiwan’s AI Ecosystem Map First Half 2021

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Over the next ten years, media and entertainment will become one of the most attractive sectors for investments in Southeast Asia, as per a recent report by Golden Gate Ventures. It is already evident from the number of startup exits in the region. Of the total 80 exits so far, media and entertainment registered the fourth most exits, as per Crunchbase.

In entertainment, gaming is the largest and most expansive industry globally. As of 2021, it has a staggering three billion game players, which is equivalent to nearly 40 per cent of the world population. Newzoo forecasts that the global gaming market is expected to generate US$175.8 billion in revenue this year. When it comes to Southeast Asia, the market is set to grow by 8.5 per cent per year on average, according to a Research And Markets study.

Where is the gaming industry headed and what are the key trends in this booming industry?

e27 spoke to a few market players, including the region’s fastest-growing media publisher SHAREit, Singapore’s social media unicorn Bigo, and Vietnamese blockchain game developer Sky Mavis, which owns the popular NFT-based game Axie Infinity.

Pandemic-fuelled behaviour shift: mobile, e-sport, and live streaming

Ranked first in the 2019 global growth rate, mobile gaming in the region made its mark, thanks to high smartphone penetration. This hype has been accelerated further in recent years due to the extended lockdown induced by COVID-19. Mobile games have led the charge as the most viable form of entertainment for the homebound.

According to mobile consultancy App Annie, users worldwide downloaded 30 per cent more games in Q1 2021 compared to Q4 2019. The spending on mobile games also reached a record US$1.7 billion per week in Q1 2021, up 40 per cent from pre-pandemic levels. 

Plus, emerging markets such as Vietnam and the Philippines have seen over 50 per cent growth in consumer spending on mobile games.

“While, at one point, gaming used to be considered as socially isolating, people all over the world under lockdowns turned to gaming as a way to seek out a community connection on the other side of the screen,” said Karam Malhotra, partner and global vice president at the SHAREit Group.

Social gaming, therefore, has emerged as a notable trend that drives the explosive growth of e-sports.

“Southeast Asian gamers’ strong inclination towards community play — coupled with a lucrative environment and government policies — has aided in the rise of e-sports in the region,” Malhotra added.

Since people cannot go and watch real-life sports in stadia, e-sports viewership in Asia has grown to 618.4 million in 2020, a 21 per cent increase compared to 2019, according to research published on Research And Markets.

Also read: ESPL raises pre-Series A to grow its e-sports platform for grassroot gamers

E-sports turned mainstream when Singapore-based live streaming platform Bigo signed an agreement with Pakistan’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and Garena to launch an initiative to support and facilitate young gamers to enter the industry.

Gamers use global live streaming platforms such as Bigo Live to observe, showcase, connect and create content for real-time game streaming. Some of the most viral games on Bigo Live are Bang Bang (MLBB), PlayerUnknown’s Battleground (PUBG), Free Fire, Fortnite, Call of Duty and Valorant.

“Livestreaming has not only emerged as a popular format for gamers to view and participate in e-sports but also an important platform for gamers to build and connect with the community,” said Mike Ong, Vice President at Bigo.

Ong added that the lockdown blues drove more people to turn to digital platforms and watch live game streams. The number of users enjoying live streaming games saw an uptick of more than 11.7 per cent globally between 2019 and 2020.

“Users are shifting to video-first social experiences such as live streaming that favours content creators,” Ong noted. “We have noticed a shift towards authentic experiences as users are starting to move towards a model of directly recognising content creators instead of traditional content produced by production houses.”

Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand have emerged as the top countries in terms of game live streaming, according to Bigo.

Blockchain-based games attract venture capital

These changing user behaviour also increased the need for technology-powered gaming experiences. In particular, the growing blockchain technology advancements in recent years have fostered blockchain-based games’ positive momentum in Southeast Asia.

Axie Infinity, a blockchain game developed by Vietnamese startup Sky Mavis released in 2018, became the first-of-its-kind NFT-based game developed in Southeast Asia. In August, the startup announced that the game drew a record 800,000 daily active users in July and will soon hit the one million mark.

Ever since, the combination of gaming and blockchain technology, wherein gamers utilise the true in-game item ownership, has become more popular and attracted investments.

Earlier this year, My DeFi Pet, a game developed by Vietnamese studio Topebox, also received a US$1 million investment from Axia8 Ventures, OKEx Blockdream Ventures, and OKEx. Having decentralised finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) features, the game allows players to earn tokens while playing, get rewards by joining events and make profits from trading in-game characters.

Just last month, Virtually Human Studio, which owns virtual horse racing platform Zed Run, raised US$20 million in a Series A round led by media and technology-focused investment firm TCG Capital Management, besides Andreessen Horowitz and Red Beard Ventures.

These deals mark investors’ appetite for companies that stand at the crossroads of entertainment, gaming and NFT.

The capital, however, is not restricted only to conventional VCs or corporate VCs. Even retail cryptocurrency investors are also betting on the governance token of the game to fuel its development. Axie Infinity’s token is now worth around US$70 per token, which was just US$3-4 a month ago.

Also read: VCs, IEOs, and crowdfunding: How the likes of Sky Mavis manage good relationship with each investor

Game design and Economic design 

“Blockchain is changing the monetisation and mechanics of mobile games,” stated SHAREit’s Malhotra. “It allows players to monetise their own gaming experiences with NFTs unlike traditional gaming, which forms an opportunity area.”

As a prominent success case, Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen said that Axie Infinity combined both game design and economical design. With the “play-to-earn” model, gamers can have verified ownership for digital assets, create digital value in tokens for virtual items, and then trade or convert them to local currencies.

“Nevertheless, there are still several conflicts between designing blockchain games and other conventional games,” Nguyen said. “While conventional games aim to maximise the unilateral revenue towards the developer, a decentralised platform of blockchain games works as a true economy, where the ecosystem is broadened by maximising total in-app transaction and creation value of users.”

In his view, balancing these conflicts by designing enticing gameplay and ensuring a healthy in-game economy will help secure and scale its user base.

Blockchain games have also become an alternative, easy-access approach for financial benefits or savings. The games act as an “abstractor” to popularise technologies and “increase financial inclusion”.

This, combined with the rise of mobile as a platform to offer publishers a direct line to reach a broader audience than before, has empowered developers to be creative in genres, formats and monetisation models.

For example, immersive in-game ads have become more sophisticated, which require a deep understanding of gaming technology and the audience. Ads must reside within a digital world seamlessly and not be intrusive in any way.

In the past two years, developers across regions also increasingly shifted their focus from an ad-only monetisation strategy to include in-app purchases. “The publishers that creatively integrate ads will see higher lifetime value and retention with lower churn,” said Malhotra.

In the case of game streaming activities, creators can also be recognised for their work through ‘gifts’ or in-app currencies given by the audience.

“Our users can give various forms of virtual gifts to their favourite broadcasters, which can then be converted into cash,” said Ong of Bigo. “This is part of our ongoing efforts to foster a sense of giving back to our broadcasters and being at the forefront of the creator economy.”

In a broader sense, the democratisation of the gaming experience for people has become the most important trend that can leverage the growth of this sector in years to come.

“We are democratising the mobile gaming experience for millennials, be it a casual, social, mid-core, hardcore, or professional gamer,” said Malhotra.

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Image credit: 123rf, SHAREit, Bigo, Sky Mavis

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This article is run in collaboration with Makan For Hope, a non-profit initiative by Asia Startup Network. The Makan For Hope Festival brings notable mentors and aspiring entrepreneurs in 30 meaningful virtual conversations over food from Social Enterprises to raise S$125,000 for Fei-Yue to support the children and seniors from low-income families. 

At this Makan For Hope session hosted by exited entrepreneur and investor Qing Ru Lim, she led the discussion with 10 seasoned startup founders, angel investors, and venture capitalists.

The roundtable took a deep dive into the headwinds women faced and discussed the steps we can take today to empower female founders and encourage more to thrive in the Southeast Asia startup scene.

Setting the context

Globally, venture funding allocation to female-founded companies is an astonishingly low percentage –two per cent in 2020, according to Crunchbase News. 

The number is nine per cent in female co-founded companies. In Southeast Asia, the numbers are higher, though still on the low side: companies with female founders or co-founders raised 16.4 per cent of total funding.

Yet, according to a BCG study, women-led startups provide better financial returns for investors — for every dollar of funding, they generated a return of 78 cents. In contrast, male-founded startups generated less than half that. 

On the investment side, only 2.4 per cent of all VC partners globally are women. Yet, having more women in funds provided higher fund returns and more profitable exits, according to a research report by Harvard Kennedy School –VC firms that increased the number of female partners by 10 per cent experienced a 1.5 per cent increase in fund returns each year, plus 9.7 per cent more profitable exits.

Also Read: Levelling the playing field: How to build a home for women in tech

Data from both sides of the table suggest that females could outperform their male counterparts. 

Now more than ever, we need to support more females in startups

Besides the strong hypothesis that women make great entrepreneurs, the other reason for this urgency is the COVID-19 pandemic.

More women than ever are leaving the workforce, as shared in McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace study. Without deliberate intervention, as the report suggests, it will be “unwinding years of painstaking progress toward gender diversity.”

It would also hold our economy back. Furthermore, there has been increasing investment into ESG funds to support the empowerment of women and minorities. 

The timing is favourable, and there is no matter time to act than right now. But how can we increase the number from 16.4 per cent to 50 per cent?

What needs to be done, what needs to be changed? At the roundtable conversation, most believe that change needs to happen at all levels, and women also need to lead the change themselves.

More can be done to sustain the growing trend of females in tech:

At the Government level

One of the initiatives led by the Ministry of Social and Family Development is the “Conversations on Singapore Women’s Development” which aims to shift societal mindsets for a more inclusive society for men and women. While progress in recent years has been encouraging, we can do much more. 

• Qing Ru Lim: suggested increasing access to funding by creating a Perpetual fund to back women-led startups (similar to SheEO, which pools money to loan to female founders at zero per cent interest) and a tax incentive scheme for female-led VC funds, which is already implemented overseas.
• Shao-Ning Huang: seconded the tax incentive scheme because tax is only relevant for profitable companies, which aligns with investors’ interests.
• Yiping Goh: shared that back in 2017, the government raised the paternity leave to two weeks from one week for working fathers. She opined that supporting men in the ecosystem is also important and believes they can create more incentives for husbands to support their wives in caregiving tasks.

At the Investor level

Investors could pave the way to empower more female founders. Women in startups often face headwinds of blinds spots and cognitive bias, making fundraising even harder than it already is.

A recent study conducted by TechCrunch found that women are asked more risk questions than men, which ultimately results in far less money being raised.

Even more surprising is that female investors typically exhibit the same gender bias demonstrated by their male counterparts towards female founders. And for most of them, they may not even be aware of it.

Also Read: How women in tech can navigate the 2021 business landscape

Here are three possible measures to lead change:

• Shao-Ning Huang: VC firms must look at ways to hire more women decision-makers, at all levels, especially at the top. This is important as female investors would have a better capacity to empathise, understand and communicate more effectively with female founders.
• Carmen Yuen: Investors or stakeholders could consider having a team of organisational development specialists offering guidance to their portfolios to overcome gender bias and implement female-friendly policies.
• Qing Ru Lim: Limited partners could promote gender diversity by requesting it to be a mandatory ESG component in Annual Reports of the funds they invest in. The same goes for investors — it will be game-changing for them to seek their portfolio companies to include how they have embraced gender diversity in their investor reporting.

At the personal level

To see sustained change, females also need to start with changing their own mindset and behaviour.

Also Read: How the tech industry can become friendlier for women

The group’s ideas boiled down to five priority areas for action: 

• Senior Minister of State Sim Ann: Women need to revisit their own experiences and highlight the obstacles they have faced or what held them back. She encourages females to champion the change they wish to see.
• Doris Yee, Executive Director of Singapore Venture Capital & Private Equity Association: Education will be instrumental, such as leadership training for women leaders to change the tendency of holding themselves back.
• Edwina Yeo, co-founder, and CEO of Supermomos: She testified to the reality of gender-related subconscious bias, but also the reality that women may voluntarily decide to take a back seat after they have kids. She believes it is about paving the way to ensure these women could still score in their career while juggling other priorities, possible through more flexible work arrangements.
• Yen-Lu Chow, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, WholeTree Foundation and Over-The-Rainbow: He saw how many women, through his experience, have made a significant difference to the lives of people when allowed to lead. He urges more women to say yes to leadership opportunities — stand up, speak up, and be counted.
• Shao-Ning Huang: There is a need for female founders to be self-aware of the hero’s mindset and victim’s mindset that they tend to adopt. Both mindsets are unproductive and obstacles to building good startups. Women also need to be open to enlist help from others, use them and unitedly create a vicious cycle of female empowerment. A single chopstick may be easy to break, but a bunch of them creates a robust and unbreakable infrastructure.

Banding Together is how we can realise the vision of seeing female founders as the new normal.  Here’s how you can play a part— support these ground-up initiatives listed here.

This article is co-written by Jessica Bong.

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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.

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page

The post How can female founders become the new normal in Asia? appeared first on e27.

Momos, a startup providing an online platform for marketing, reviews, and analytics to F&B businesses in Singapore, has received US$6.5 million in a seed funding round co-led by Sequoia India and Alpha Wave Incubation, a US$300-million early-stage fund.

Other investors include K3 Ventures, Captii Ventures, HOF Capital, JIA Group, Hong Kong-based Integrated Capital, and angel investors from global food delivery and software companies.

With the new investment, the SaaS startup plans to bankroll its expansion plans as part of an international strategy, enhance its value proposition for restaurant partners, and further build its platform.

Momos was launched in 2020 by Sai Alluri and Andrew Liu, former executives at Grab, Uber, Microsoft, and Intuit. The platform offers restaurants a unified interface to operate across meal delivery systems, social media, and other online channels, and launch virtual delivery-only brands.

“We started Momos during the pandemic to help restaurants embrace the massive change happening in the F&B industry,” said CEO Alluri. “We think of ourselves as building Shopify for F&B, but in reverse.”

Andrew Liu, Momos co-founder and CBO, added that they realised restaurants faced the same challenges everywhere and consider the region a hotbed for talent and global SaaS companies. 

Also read: F&B’s growing appetite for technology solutions and how it leads to success

According to Aakash Kapoor, VP, Sequoia India, F&B is a vast and growing market, with numerous multibillion-dollar corporations catering to restaurant operations’ cost side, including delivery and POS payments. 

“Momos has built a unique and compelling SaaS platform to instead help restaurants grow their business,” said Kapoor.

The company is working with large and small food and beverage firms in Southeast Asia, including The Lo & Behold Group, Flash Coffee, Guzman y Gomez, and Wolf Burgers. 

Besides, it counts virtual brands such as Tree Side Nasi Lemak, COOP by Neon Pigeon, and Curry Fried Chicken among the partners.

A report by Consumer Foodservice by Location in Singapore says that cafés/bars, limited-service restaurants, and street stalls/kiosks are leading the US$8.3-billion F&B foodservice industry in Singapore, which is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of 2.1 per cent by 2023.

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Image credit: Momos

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The ongoing lockdown orders and temporary restaurant closures have left Vietnam’s F&B industry in a rather grim state. From restrictions on dine-in, delivery and takeouts with only basic essentials and grocery items given the pass, many restaurants have had to shut their doors (temporarily).

However, here are six F&B businesses that have successfully pivoted during these uncertain times.

Using technology to empower charity and enable mobile donations

While not a restaurant, Sayvu is an F&B-tech mobile app that pre-pandemic allowed users to redeem F&B vouchers from their favourite restaurants and cafes in Saigon.

Like any tech app, user downloads is one of the key KPIs as well as one of the largest cost factors. When restaurants could only do delivery and takeaway, Sayvu launched its contactless payment feature which allowed users to use the Sayvu app to make contactless cashless payments at their favourite restaurants.

While this seemed like a promising feature, it proved to be short-lived following stricter restrictions on movement (people are not allowed to leave their homes unless absolutely necessary) as well as an emergence of positive cases in food delivery riders. With this, the prospect of walking to your local neighbourhood restaurant slowly became an impossibility.

A month later, when the government stopped all food delivery and takeaway in an effort to flatten the curve in Vietnam, Jerome Ly felt defeated but inspired to give back to the community after seeing many suffering on the streets.

This was when he launched Vietnam Oi, Co Len, a not-for-profit charitable organisation that partners with restaurants including Baba’s Thao Dien and Lion City Heart Group to cook and deliver meals to residents in quarantine areas and the less fortunate.

Through Vietnam Oi, Co Len, which has delivered up to 70,000 meals to vulnerable at-risk communities, Sayvu has made a name for itself gathering the attention of media giants Nhan Dan TV and HTV9 as well as organisations such as the French Chamber of Commerce.

More than anything, it has touched the hearts of F&B operators (previously not partners of Sayvu) and of course, increased app downloads since Sayvu sells donation meals.

Also Read: Revolutionising the food industry with Malaysia’s StixFresh

An offline-to-online pivot driven by comforting F&B products catered for an anxiety-stricken market

When beer was declared a ‘non-essential’ (I beg to differ) F&B product by the government in July 2021, this necessitated household craft beer brand Heart of Darkness to halt its operations and founder John Pemberton to say “enough is enough”.

At this time, much of Saigon was still in lockdown amid record-high cases and e-grocers were overwhelmed with orders resulting in an average 10-to-14 day waiting period. John Pemberton and his team recognised the bottleneck in the grocery supply system and decided to offer an alternative for Saigon residents.

Within a week, the HOD team partnered up with a fresh fruit and grocery supplier and leveraged its technology, warehouse logistics, manpower and resources to turn this household craft beer brewer into well, an e-grocer business. Best part? Yes, you can get your favourite ready-to-drink Heart of Darkness beers too.

Today, Heart of Darkness has even partnered up with other local F&B brands including Tartine and D’Art Chocolate to sell sourdough bread and made-in-Vietnam artisan chocolate on its e-grocer platform. Cheeky? Perhaps. Genius? Definitely.

This might seem like an obvious inclusion for those thinking DIY meal kits is simply a dish broken down into its parts. To be fair, that’s not far from the truth. Nonetheless, for a restaurant to pivot overnight from offering in-person dining and hot food meant for delivery and takeaway to frozen DIY meal kits is no easy feat considering only certain types of foods can achieve this efficiently and effectively.

Furthermore, the equipment and logistics tied to being a DIY frozen meal kit business are not the same as a conventional restaurant and not many restaurants (especially premium to fine dining brands) would not opt for these options.

While pivoting to meal kits out of desperation to keep the restaurant alive might have been the original catalyst, this strategy is currently accounting for 100 per cent of revenue for several restaurants including Kebaby, Once Upon a Pasta, Rustic Kitchen and Jeffrey’s Kitchen Taiwanese Beef Noodles amongst many others who have been making waves online amongst hungry Saigon residents.

Launching a Specialty Deli by Kashew Cheese

The post 6 pivot stories of Vietnamese F&B brands that are worth your time (and taste) appeared first on e27.

Djarum Group-backed Indonesian e-commerce firm Blibli eyes 2022 IPO
It has picked advisers for a potential initial public offering in Jakarta as early as next year; Deliberations are still at an early stage, and the size of the IPO could depend on which Blibli businesses are included.

Omnilytics to acquire Malaysia’s Supahands for US$20M to enhance its retail tech stack capabilities
This deal is part of the Singaporean firm’s ongoing strategic acquisition drive to expand its product offerings and enhance its retail tech stack capabilities; Supahands is backed by Patamar Capital, Cradle Seed Ventures, Axiata and 500 Startups.

Singapore crypto startup Alethea AI raises US$16M to bring NFTs to life
Investors include Mark Cuban, Alameda Research, Multicoin, Galaxy Interactive, Dapper Labs, and LD Capital; Alethea is part of a select group that’s helping test Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, a language model that can produce human-like text; Through Alethea’s platform, users can create interactive NFTs so they can come “alive.”

Ant Group invests US$15M in Chope
The fundraise comes on the back of a strategic partnership between Chope and Ant Group’s Alipay; Alipay will provide Chope with its mini-programme SaaS and know-how, while Chope becomes Alipay’s platform partner with the capability to integrate a wide variety of mini-programmes.

Dekoruma nets US$15M Series C to expand its experience centres beyond Jakarta
Investors include Nexter Ventures, KTB Network, GDN, OCBC NISP Ventura and Foundamental; Dekoruma offers an ecosystem connecting home furnishing merchants, interior designers, contractors and property developers; Dekoruma also wants to see itself in around eight cities in the archipelago by the end-2022.

Centauri Fund raises US$8.5M from K-Growth to boost investment corridor between Korea and ASEAN
Launched in December 2019 with a target of raising US$150 million, Centauri is run by KB Investment and MDI Ventures: It invests between US$1M and US$5M in machine learning and fintech startups focusing on the Indonesia market.

HIJUP launches US$7M fund to back modest fashion brands in Indonesia
Called HIJUP Growth Fund, it aims to invest around US$138K each in local modest fashion brands and has already backed Buttonscarves and Puru Kambera; Hijup does not intend to fully acquire the companies/brands it backs.

Akulaku CEO William Li: ‘Asia’s BNPL sector has great potential compared to Europe’
The BNPL sector market size and penetration in Asia will be US$134B in 2023, which is only 4% of e-commerce sales, he says; Akulaku has raised US$218M from Ant Group, Sequoia India, and Qiming Venture, among others. It is now in talks to raise US$100M.

Startup Villages helps entrepreneurs move to Italian villages and make the most of their ‘EUR1 house’ schemes
Startup Villages target startups in food, dairy, agri, automotive & EVs, future tech, drones, AI, and food in Italian and Japanese villages in the initial phases.

Medici, a health-tech firm founded by ex-Grab exec, gets seed funding led by Insignia Ventures
With the new investment, the startup aims to foray into the insurance industry; Medici has partnered with companies such as FWD, Bao Viet Insurance, PTI, PVI, VBI, and Bao Minh Insurance to co-launch insurance products; Its healthcare services ecosystem includes telemedicine, health screenings, and a marketplace for drugs and supplements.

Tessaract.io raises US$3.3M to expand workflow automation solutions in new markets
Investors include Wavemaker Partners (lead), CMIA Capital Partners, and M Venture Partners; Tessaract aims to assist professional services firms across the region to automate repetitive operations and deliver a better experience to their customers.

Insignia, Y Combinator back US$2.2M round of Intellect to provide mental health services across Asia
Intellect aims to make mental healthcare and wellbeing support accessible for everyone through its end-to-end, 24×7 mental healthcare system in a single app; It claims to have clocked over 2.5 million users and 20 enterprise clients globally, covering 12 countries and 11 languages.

Ethis Global closes US$1.7M pre-Series A to accelerate global expansion effort
Investors include Malaysia Airline chairman Wan Zulkiflee, Daud Vicary Abdullah (Trustee at RFI Foundation), and Khurram Hilal (Islamic banking lead at Standard Chartered); Ethis operates sharia-based crowdfunding platforms in Indonesia and Malaysia and social finance platform GlobalSadaqah.

Ex-TPG exec’s startup Marathon Education raises US$1.5M to change the after-school tutoring market in Vietnam
Investors are Forge Ventures (lead), Marcel van Miert and Singapore Life founder Walter de Oude; Marathon leverages a live large-class hybrid model to ensure students get access to top-quality education from “top one per cent teachers”.

Vietnam’s bookkeeping startup SoBanHang attracts US$1.5M to venture out into working capital loans
Investors include FEBE Ventures, Class 5, and Business Insider founder Kevin P. Ryan; The startup helps small retailers create e-stores and manage orders to tap into a market of 16+ million nano- and micro-businesses in Vietnam.

VUIHOC gets funding from Do Ventures to provide primary school education through animation, gamification
The edutech helps students cultivate their self-study from an early age; It covers all three core subjects for primary school students: math, Vietnamese, and English; VUIHOC currently offers more than 150 courses, nearly 9K video lectures, and a repository of 240K quiz questions.

Mindtera bags funding led by East Ventures to grow its personal growth learning platform
Hustle Fund and Henry Hendrawan of Traveloka also participated; Mindtera provides curated personal growth learning curriculums across key areas of life — family, love and work, assisting people in a structured manner to better navigate through life.

Indonesian healthtech startup Zi.Care wins Telkomsel backing in US$500K seed round
Investors are Iterative VC, Choco-Up, and Tinc; Zi.Care digitises patients’ medical and health records then stores them on its cloud-based platform; The solution can increase accuracy in medical records while reducing waiting times and administrative processes in Indonesian healthcare facilities.

Talenox co-founder reveals the grind behind the glamour of entrepreneurship
However, if you are thinking of spending time on building a really good product and only raising funds when you experience hyper-growth, then you should focus on getting more revenue on board in a sustainable way and raise buffer funds to help you bridge your cash flow.

The post Ecosystem Roundup: Blibli eyes 2022 IPO, Ant invests US$15M in Chope, Omnilytics to buy Supahands for US$20M appeared first on e27.

Press releases are passe. While there can only be so much news to share at any given time, startup founder stories and insights abound.

If you are a PR or communications professional seeking to get additional exposure for your clients in the tech startup ecosystem, here’s how you can leverage the e27 Contributor Programme.

It is an excellent opportunity for founders, corporate honchos, executives, government officials, and experts to establish their brand within the tech startup ecosystem in APAC. The e27 Contributor Programme is designed to nurture thought leadership in the industry. It is completely free of cost; all it takes is a simple profile set up and an original voice.

As you can see in this list of contributions we have published recently, we cover the whole range from founder stories, webinar videos with key takeaways, podcasts and infographics, funding experiences, employee management guides, entrepreneurial advice, productivity tips, sector-specific analysis, to regional trends.

All the community articles are written by ecosystem players. We simply facilitate its exposure through our widely visited platform with over two million reader base. 

What will your client’s gain?

• Your clients’ articles will be viewed by thousands of readers of our website
• Promoted at least 3x a day across e27 social media channels
• They will also be featured in the masthead on our site as well as our daily newsletters going out to 50,000 subscribers
• Boost their personal brand and position as a respected thought leader in the industry
• Expand their writing portfolio, and attract speaking opportunities, etc.

How can PRs facilitate it

Step 1: Email us the story angle your client wants to share, their bio and company profile
Step 2: Once we discuss it via email and you get a green flag, ask the client to create a profile on e27 and submit their article.
(Note: You cannot submit it on their behalf)
Step 3: We will publish the article. Get the client to share it within their networks.
(You can track the views on the article by visiting the author profile)

Video resource

If you have more questions, check out the FAQ here. We have also tried to address over 25 such queries specifically from PR professionals in an exclusive webinar with Telum. Check it out below:

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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

Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community or like the e27 Facebook page

Image credit: zinkevych

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Singapore-based restaurant reservation company Chope has announced a partnership with Alipay, a digital payment platform operated by Ant Group.

A DealStreetAsia report said, citing regulatory filings that the Chinese tech giant invested US$15 million in Chope on the back of this deal.

Through this collaboration, Alipay will provide the foodtech startup with its mini-programme SaaS and know-how. At the same time, the Singapore firm becomes Alipay’s platform partner with the capability to integrate a variety of mini-programmes to enhance the functionality and scalability of Chope’s platform.

The partnership means businesses of all sizes can integrate into the Chope app through its customisable mini-programmes. It allows F&B operators to reach the Singapoe company’s millions of users, leverage Alipay’s innovative technology, and easily digitalise operations.

Meanwhile, diners can look forward to a broader variety of F&B types and dining services on the Chope app.

Also Read: Restaurant booking app Chope reveals the secret sauce to its profitability in home market Singapore

Arrif Ziaudeen, CEO of The Chope Group, said, “The pandemic has fueled the adoption of digital solutions and services among F&B operators. However, for some, the extreme restrictions have forced them to finally adapt to digital lifestyles not only to remain competitive but to survive. Our partnership with Alipay comes at an opportune time to help lead this evolutionary step-change. Working closely with Alipay and our F&B partners, our ambition is to do with Asia’s giant foodservice industry what e-commerce has done with shopping”.

Founded in 2011, Chope works with the region’s leading F&B operators to offers restaurant reservations, table management, marketing, deals, and delivery. With Chope, diners can discover restaurants, make instant bookings, and save with dining deals. Chope’s demand generating diner platform is incorporated with a suite of integrated solutions encompassing reservation, call, queue, and table management.

The firm claims it has served 83 million diners to date. It has partnered with 5,000 restaurants, including The Lo & Behold Group, JUMBO Group, Soho Hospitality, Lost Heaven, Dining Concepts, Hospitality Management Asia, Ismaya Group and The Union Group.

Chope is operational in seven cities, namely Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Phuket, Shanghai, Bali, and Jakarta.

To date, it has secured US$35.3 million in funding over six rounds from investors, including Square Peg Capital, Openspace Ventures, Singapore Press Holdings, and Innosight Ventures.

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Image Credit: Chope

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