Vietnamese startup Marathon Education has secured US$1.5 million in seed funding from a clutch of investors, including Forge Ventures (a VC firm launched in partnership with Alto Partners Multi-Family Office in Singapore), Venturra, and iSeed SEA. 

Individuals including Marcel van Miert, chairman of Vietnam Australia International School, and Walter de Oude, founder of Singapore Life, also joined the round.

With the new investment, Ho Chi Minh City-headquartered Marathon intends to serve students taking the National Curriculum by Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training across grades 6-12.

It also aims to leverage analytics and technology to identify areas where students are weak and recommend the necessary lessons.

The startup is also developing a platform for tutors to reach students across the country, focusing on academics, especially with COVID-19 forcing all offline classes to shut down.

“COVID-19 has also ushered in a new paradigm shift where consumers have shifted to studying online. Marathon’s approach takes advantage of these converging factors and enables the mass market to access top tutors, which previously would not have been possible,” said Wing Vasiksiri, managing partner at iSeed SEA.

Co-founded in 2021 by Duc Pham (CEO), a former investor at the US-based private equity fund TPG Global, and his brother-in-law Tran Viet Tung (COO), Marathon Education targets Vietnam’s fragmented, under-served after-school tutoring market. 

Incorporated in Singapore, Marathon leverages a live large-class hybrid model to ensure students get access to top-quality education from “top one per cent teachers” and personalised attention from curated teaching assistants during and after classes, even when they are home.

“Marathon wants to democratise access to quality tutors for students across Vietnam,” said Pham.

 “It is estimated that offline after-school tutoring penetration in Vietnam is ~50 per cent. However, given most quality tutors are based in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city, students in tier-2 and tier-3 cities do not get access to tutors of the same quality as their peers in metropolitans,” he added.

According to a Bain & Company analysis, Vietnamese parents also view education as the primary means towards a successful career. The average Vietnamese family spends approximately ~20 per cent of disposable income on education, compared to 6 – 15 per cent in other Southeast Asian peers.

Marathon is in a” stringent” process of selecting experienced tutors through multiple rounds of interviews on a referral basis. It is also in the final stage of bringing on board a CTO. 

While it counts offline players in the tutoring industry as its competitors, Pham said it does not compete with existing edutech players such as Topica, Kienguru, Everest, NPX Point Avenue, and Clevai.

“Our shareholder base also counts early investors in Zenius, Ruangguru, Topica, who can help us de-risk growth from areas that have killed other edtech players,” he added.

Also read: Keisuke Honda-backed edutech startup Manabie secures US$3M more to bring Japan’s high-quality education to Vietnam

Pham claims that Marathon allows tutors belonging to the “top one per cent in their respective subjects” to gain more income than their current jobs, as well as focus on their teaching strength while delegating away operations.

Unlike other booming sectors in the region, such as ride-hailing and food delivery, education is nuanced to the local context due to differences in language, culture, and curriculum. Therefore, Pham looks at the speed of execution and pivot quickly as the competitive advantage in this burgeoning market. 

“Our business model at launch does not rely on spending significant capital expenditure on building out a massively differentiated tech stack from competitors,” he said. “This contrasts the approach that some competitors have taken in spending significant cash on R&D to build up a content library without talking to users and understanding market needs, or converting content libraries that have worked elsewhere in the world and hoping that sticks in Vietnam.”

Also read: Flying Cape nets US$1.5M to scale its edutech platform in Southeast Asia, China

Many Vietnamese edutech companies have raised capital in H1 2021. They include educational services provider Equest (US$100 million investment from KKR), AI-powered language app Elsa (US$15 million Series B led by Vietnam Investments Group), and Educa Corporation (US$2 million Series A from Alibaba-backed eWTP). 

By the end of 2023, the Vietnamese e-learning market is expected to be worth over US$3 billion, according to Ken Research, with the increase in the number of foreign players entering the Vietnam e-learning market. 

The impact of the crackdown in neighbouring China

Vietnam’s close neighbour China recently banned firms in the tutoring sector from making profits, saying that this industry “led to money-burning wars and excessive advertising”. According to the Chinese government, it runs against the nature of education as welfare and harms the traditional education ecosystem.

The most significant driver for the crackdown was the predatory advertising whereby ads content focusing on “guilt-tripping” parents and students to urge them to attend tutoring otherwise lead to negative career implications.

“My immediate reaction is that advertising should never be done in this way,” Pham noted. “I think China is 10-15 years ahead of Southeast Asia in terms of edutech development, and therefore we now have all the precedents in front of us to avoid these pitfalls.”

Pham still believes in the benefits of shifting tutoring from offline to online, as in-school K-12 education offerings may over-deliver for some students who learn faster than others and under-deliver for some who learn a particular subject in different ways. 

Moreover, it reduces the burden of spending hours commuting between different offline tutoring classes, which otherwise could be used for sports or entertainment.

“I view K-12 after-school tutoring as modular, and only necessary to supplement areas where students need help, and should not be a ‘blanket’ offering across all subjects,” he added. 

Drawing on his experience working with established education players at TPG Global, Pham has built his conviction in understanding what Vietnamese and Southeast Asian parents look for when choosing education products.

“By having a bird’s eye view of the evolution of edutech players in the region, I will bet my money on Marathon being the next SEA unicorn,” stated Pham.

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Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. 

Research suggests that entrepreneurship has gained much popularity. After all, more people are exploring entrepreneurship instead of conventionally securing employment under corporations or Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

This could be a consequence of mainstream media’s deceptively glamorous portrayal of the entrepreneurial journey. After all, news of startup fundraising and the growth of unicorn companies are covered more extensively in the media, while the reality of the entrepreneurial grind takes a backseat. With that in mind, is entrepreneurship truly a glamorous endeavour?

All in all, entrepreneurship is not easy to figure out. Most entrepreneurs will have their stories of adversity and business struggles to share. If you are new to starting up, you will need conviction in what you want to achieve and how you want to grow your startup and team. 

A clear goal and a well-thought-out plan to success will help you determine whether you want to build fast, sell fast or develop a long-lasting business. These are some of the few factors that will also help you determine if you need to raise substantial funding or not.

So, what is the grind like behind the glamour of entrepreneurship?

Focus, focus and more focus

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is real. More often than not, I have seen entrepreneurs– including myself in the past– fear that if they don’t build another feature or app, they may lose out on market share and even a good chunk of their existing users.

If a startup or small business lets this fear drive the course of their business journey, they may end up spreading themselves too thin. After all, they don’t have much resources that can afford them the luxury to lose their focus on building more features or apps.  

Also Read: How should SMEs and startups prepare to handle a ransomware attack?

Most successful startups that I come across, only have one focus right at the start, such as:

• Google – to build the best search engine
• Mailchimp – to build the best email marketing tool
• Amazon – to be the world’s most customer-centric company

or even that famous hawker I frequent, who focuses on just one really good dish.

Focus is never easy.  It comes with making tough calls along the way.  Some tough calls may kill your business and at times, after knowing your odds, it is up to luck. Take Talenox (that I co-founded) as an example. During our second year in 2015, we made some tough calls:

• Cutting revenues from larger enterprises so we could focus on the SMEs market.
• Dedicating our resources to make Talenox truly self-serve, to ensure onboarding is scalable without need for manual intervention unlike our peers in the market

This move was a first in the region and it was really challenging due to the complexity of payroll and leave management. However, it was definitely a necessary milestone for Talenox to automate further and scale sustainably.

In addition to that, Talenox made the tough decision to stop developing our former Scheduler and Time Tracker modules further. This was done so we can truly focus our resources on HR compliance for Payroll and Leave. It also allowed us to ensure that we build in-depth localised features for each country so that we are one of the best in our niche. 

Our efforts paid off in the coming years, as our peers were chasing to build features for various modules and some even tried to venture to insurtech and machine learning without much success due to the loss of focus.

You only have so many resources as a startup.  To gain initial traction and to scale for growth, you’ll have to stay focused, prioritise well and optimise as much as possible.

Don’t add fuel when there’s no fire

Though adding fuel to the fire means causing conflicts, I’m referring more to adding fuel (funding) if there is fire (good growth). Without proven initial growth, it doesn’t make sense to raise funds to dilute the current shareholding and future rate of returns (ROR) of investors.

In the current climate, there is a ready supply of VC funds and the dwindling supply of good deals or startups in the market to invest in. This makes it relatively easier for entrepreneurs to raise funds to manifest an exciting idea and sustain the business growth spurt brought about by early-stage traction.

Indirectly, this creates an opportunity for financially-savvy entrepreneurs to ensure that their startup looks good on paper. However, their startup may not be sustainable, especially in the long run.

Also Read: Uninhibited African startups in search of a win-win collaboration with SEA

Let’s say you’re looking to grow a business that stays for the long haul. As you focus and get your initial traction to prove product-market fit, it is time to ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you want to build fast, sell fast or create a long-lasting business?
• Does fund-raising make sense for your startup’s goal?
• If yes, how much is needed? 

Your answer to these series of questions will help you determine how you should raise funds.

Build fast, sell fast approach in entrepreneurship

If you are raising funds from VCs, you are planning an exit in five to seven years or at most 10 years due to the investment horizon of most VCs. You may have heard stories that once you have raised VC funding, it is all about numbers and getting growth at all cost.

Culture will be tweaked towards getting more revenue or Gross Merchandise Value (GMV), depending on the valuation metrics that your particular vertical uses. This is simply because VCs need to get the ROR for their Limited Partnerships (LPs); after all, VCs are investments that seek returns.  

How Talenox created a long-lasting business

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. 

Funding can be from angels or family offices with longer horizons; alternatively, you can bootstrap if you are able to.

You will be surprised to learn that there are a number of well-known startups that have not raised funds or even minimal funding to grow.

Some great examples are Mailchimp, GoFundMe, Basecamp, Buffer and Zapier. What is even more surprising is that tech giants like Google and Apple (pre-IPO) only raised a tiny fraction of funds compared to that of “modern” unicorn companies.

For us over at Talenox, we monitor our growth and SaaS metrics pretty closely and we only raised very minimal funding to ensure that we can achieve a “steady state” with positive cash flow.

We do this because we noticed that pouring in funds to get more growth just doesn’t work well in the HR Tech industry in the region currently amongst our VC funded peers.

B2C vs B2B

For consumer-facing startups (B2C), I agree that funding is crucial as it is usually all about who can get the most mindshare in the shortest amount of time and create the stickiness to your product so that competitors will face greater friction to gain more market share. 

As for business facing startups (B2B) it really depends on the region and the level of education for SaaS adoption in the region.  Premature investments will usually result in an over expenditure to acquire users creating a much higher cost of acquisition than what is supposed to be healthy.

Both paths have their challenges and it depends on which path suits you most.

Entrepreneurship is a team marathon, not a solo sprint

Growing a startup is like running a marathon. You will need to pace yourself and not a sprint that you find yourself burning up within a couple of years. Many times, I see entrepreneurs burn out at the early stages of their startup. It is important to realise that very few startups like YouTube get acquired at the very early stage.

In fact, the whole journey of building a startup up is like a team marathon. You are not the only one running the race. You are also building a team with a culture as you run the marathon with them, supporting them and growing with them as they add value to your users and customers.

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

Usually, it takes time to build such a culture. It is even tougher to nurture such a culture if you are a fast-growing startup.

Many startups took a few iterations to get their culture right, while some just focus on growth at all costs and at the expense of culture. The issue with that is that you’ll have a bunch of mercenaries jumping onto the bandwagon to “get rich quick”. If it is the culture you can work with, then by all means go ahead and build that startup.  

The mainstream media is filled with the glamour of successful unicorn companies and company exits. Before you kickstart your entrepreneurship journey, I encourage you to dig deeper into each story, perform your due diligence and reference checks to understand the stories thoroughly.  

Entrepreneurship is never an easy journey and most have failed. Nonetheless, this should not deter you, but provide you a clearer lens of what you are getting yourself into.

–

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: Justin Veenema on Unsplash

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Sometime in 2008, Italy started a revolution by offering properties in villages for EUR1 to encourage people to move to rural areas. These properties range from tiny houses to larger villas. The reason is simple: dwindling or ageing population.

Cut to now, almost 7,600 Italian villages are offering this scheme.

Dr Tausif Malik, a passionate entrepreneur based in the US, sensed an opportunity. “Why not conflate the ideas of entrepreneurship and the EUR1 scheme to support entrepreneurship globally?” he thought to himself.

This led him to launch Startup Villages, a village startup ecosystem to promote villages in Italy and Japan as ideal destinations for startups and sustainable development.

Last week, e27 spoke to Malik for more details of this project.

Below are the edited excerpts:

What is Startup Villages? How and when did the idea occur to you?

Startup Villages is the world’s first village startup ecosystem to promote villages in Italy and Japan as ideal destinations for startups and sustainable development. The project is promoted by myself through my company TMA Worldwide.

The idea occurred to me in 2008 in Chicago. It was summer when I read a CNN news report that Italian villages launched an initiative to sell properties at EUR 1 as an incentive to repopulate the dying Italian villages.

Approximately 7,600 Italian villages started offering the same scheme to invite new residents. As a result, many people bought and refurbished the homes they purchased in these Italian villages, but most were holidays homes, which didn’t trigger economic activity.

Hence, I started toying with creating an economic system and blending my knowledge of reverse migration with the Italian villages, and thus, I started documenting the concept of Startup Villages.

Also Read: Sustainability: the new business reality

The idea of reverse migration idea was germinated in 2018. I established a crypto mining training programme (Bitcoin training programme) based on his theory of reverse migration.

Under this programme, we planned to train young people of Indian villages and offer crypto mining rigs. The aim was to create a sustainable economic environment in India’s villages and make the country the most prominent crypto mining hub globally. But the programme had to be shelved for some policy reasons.

Can you explain how the Startup Village project works?

We are creating a platform and ecosystem to connect the villages of Italy and Japan initially. These two countries have the developed infrastructure, and they are already offering houses for EUR 1. We will move to other global locations later.

We are already in talks with over a dozen villages in Italy.

In the first phase, we tested the idea with two municipalities and submitted the proposal. In the second, we will conduct an online awareness programme for Italian Mayors, investors, startups, and the media. The plan is to launch the signup campaign in September and run a webinar every week.

In the third phase, we will sign in municipalities and do one-on-one training for them. Later, we will conduct a web conference in January 2021.

In the last phase, we will do an in-person Startup Villages conference in Italy and Japan.

The Startup Villages ecosystem will comprise the following:

• Events and meet-ups
• Communities
• Incubation and acceleration
• R&D
• Investors
• Startups

What incentives does SV provide to startups/entrepreneurs who are in moving to these villages? How many startups do you expect to join you in this project? Do you invite startups from across the world?

Italy is already offering incentives to digital nomads and whoever is interested in working remotely.

Japan is already offering cash incentives to tech companies establish in rural japan.

We are inviting startups from across the globe. The advantage is startups relocating to Italy will get access to the European Union market.

How many do you expect to come and join the Startup Villages project from the Asia Pacific?

We estimate that many APAC startups could take advantage of the Italian government’s incentives, EU market, and EU Investors.

In Japan, startups can benefit from the government’s cash incentives, the Shibuya district startup ecosystem, and the J- Startup government initiative.

As we are in phase, we can only give an estimated number of startups after some time.

What kind of startups do you target? Any specific segment/vertical? Can even an idea-stage startup join the project? How long can a startup work in these villages?

In Italy, we target startups in food, dairy, agriculture, automotive & electric vehicles, and fintech.

In Japan, we look for companies in the fintech, future technologies, drones, AI, food, and automotive & EVs sectors.

Startups of any stage can join us in this programme.

Also Read: Chototel gets you a room for US$2 a night in Dubai and Mumbai

The duration depends on the startups and how long they want to stay. But if they take any government benefit and incentives and then they have to adhere to government guidelines.

Can you shed some light on your working partnership with the respective governments of these villages/countries?

As mentioned, we are in the outreach phase, and we have submitted to two Italian villages and conducting an awareness program for onboarding.

How does the Startup Villages project boost the rural economy of these countries?

Startup Villages would be a game-changer to promote reverse migration and generate economic activity in rural Italy and globally.

Below are the advantages for the villages:

• Creates a new brand image for villages
• First-time villages to promote as a startup hub
• Startups get investments
• Startups generate economic activity
• Creates employment
• Attracts news residents and organisations
• Incentives the rural youth to stay back at home
• Generates revenues & taxes
• Develops positive media and public relations

How will startup founders cope with the expenses related to their stay and operations, especially if the startups don’t have any viable business model yet?

Entrepreneurs are hustlers; when they see an opportunity, they will grab it. Most of the successful startups are bootstrapped and don’t seek funding until they are viable.

We can’t comment on these cases. But, if startups need help, we can advise them and educated them. Then, after that, it’s up to them how they can leverage it to their advantage.

—

Image Credit: Startup Villages

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Mindtera, an Indonesia-based personal growth learning platform, has raised an undisclosed funding round led by East Ventures, an early-stage venture fund focusing on Southeast Asia and Japan. 

Hustle Fund, a pre-seed and seed-stage VC based in Silicon Valley, and angel investors including Henry Hendrawan (executive board member of Traveloka) also participated.

With the fresh investment, Mindtera plans to launch new features of the product, strengthen the technology team, accelerate brand awareness, and build capacity in responding to market needs. 

Founded in 2021, 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.

Serving both individual and corporate clients, the startup targets the imbalance between hard skills and emotional intelligence (EQ) by designing and building curriculums and tools around its proprietary multiple-intelligence approach, including emotional, social and physical intelligence.

According to the Harvard Business Review, EQ is twice as important as other skills to achieve personal growth and well-being. During the COVID-19 pandemic, EQ is said to secure society over uncertainties and unprecedented changes.

“As the first institutional VC-funded personal growth learning platform in Indonesia, we want to bring life-changing content to more corporates and people,” said Mindtera co-founder and CEO Tita Ardiati.

Bayu Bhaskoro, a 10-year senior creative professional in multinational advertising agencies, such as Leo Burnett, Y&R, and JWT, joined hands with Ardiati in establishing the company. As a certified life coach and a 14-year senior statistician, Ardiati and her small team of 15 people work in product, engineering, life coaches, psychologists and content creation team. 

“Tita deeply understands the issues that our mass young society is facing,” said Melisa Irene, partner at East Ventures. “We believe Mindtera will pave the way to change our societal understanding about holistic intelligence, and equip people with the right tools so they can achieve fulfillment in life.”

Mindtera claims its products are validated scientifically and clinically by coaches, educators and psychologists. In the future, the company plans to build communities as a daily support system for its clients.

—

Image credit: Mindtera

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Southeast Asia’s tech sector has been breaking records and making headlines in the first half of this year, no small feat amid a global pandemic.

With significant deals for on-demand mobility and e-commerce companies such as Singapore-based Grab and Indonesian giant Gojek, the upturn in activity has already been termed a ‘boom’ and a ‘hot streak’ by UK media outlets including Financial Times and The Economist.

Southeast Asia’s digital economy is expected to surpass US$300 billion by 2025, according to a 2020 report. The region’s tech success story is evolving and international opportunities for partnerships, investment and company expansion are plentiful. 

Specifically looking at the UK – where I am the Chair of Tech Nation, the growth platform for UK tech leaders – the opportunity for Southeast Asian startups is bright.

We recently announced that the UK now has 12 tech decacorns, and that out of the seven new decacorns this year, six of the founders were not from the UK. A compelling argument for Southeast Asian tech entrepreneurs looking to start, scale or grow in the UK. 

The UK tech ecosystem is valued at US$585 billion, more than double the next most valuable European ecosystem, Germany, at US$291 billion and has huge potential in these three key areas for Southeast Asian scale-ups who are ready for their next big step.

A well-connected fintech sector

The UK’s world-leading fintech hub presents an attractive opportunity for Southeast Asian scaleups, not just due to the maturity of the sector, but also because the major global financial centres– London and Singapore– are well-aligned with similar approaches to regulating innovation and encouraging collaboration between fintech and traditional financial services firms.

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Singapore’s Monetary Authority (MAS) have both taken a proactive approach to foster digital transformation in the financial sector.

The FCA’s innovation unit runs regulatory sandbox programmes for fintech to ensure market stability without holding up innovation, and MAS offers a similar scheme alongside an ‘express’ sandbox to rubber-stamp low-risk innovation.

Singapore and the UK recently launched a new financial partnership that will help boost collaboration on important areas including fintech with Singapore and the Asia Pacific region.

Also Read: (Updated) Eezee raises pre-Series A led by Wavemaker, secures government contract

Driven by innovation and technology, our financial services sector continues to deepen its connections with financial centres across the world.

With 10 per cent of the world’s total fintech investment coming into the UK, our fintech sector remains at the cutting-edge of digital finance, with unicorns (and Tech Nation Alumni) such as Revolut, Wise, Starling and Checkout.com who have all scaled into Asia Pacific, born in the UK.

The size of the market opportunity in the UK, presence of world-class talent and levels of investment into its fintech sector, provide real growth potential for fintechs in Southeast Asia.

Accelerated cybersecurity growth

The combination of world-leading universities, a high density of cybersecurity accelerators, and the prioritisation of security on the national agenda has created a cluster of cybersecurity activity in the UK. This includes globally successful companies such as Darktrace which was founded in the UK. 

The pandemic has accelerated growth in the sector, with the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) Annual Cyber Sector Report showing a 21 per cent increase in the number of cyber firms, and almost 4,000 new jobs created in 2020.

Companies and national infrastructure in Southeast Asian nations, including Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, are particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks and breaches.

A recent ‘urgent report’ explained that the region’s growing strategic relevance and low cyber resilience makes it a prime target for cyberattacks.

Southeast Asian scaleups which can leverage the UK’s expertise and experience in cybersecurity have the opportunity to become pioneers in this fast-growing sector.

The UK’s healthtech boom

For more than five years, Southeast Asia has experienced a ‘digital healthcare leap’ with the emergence of accessible health services designed specifically for a ‘mobile-first demographic. 

According to data from Tech Nation, healthtech in the UK is also booming, showing record-breaking investment in 2020 at US$2.33 billion.

The UK is home to more than 3,000 healthtech scaleups, of which around 400 have shown at least 20 per cent growth over the last two years. 

A key factor for success for healthtech scaleups is forming crucial partnerships with healthcare providers, insurers and corporate partners.

For example, UK-headquartered Babylon Health partnered with Prudential insurance to provide its digital services to Asian customers, while Asian ‘superapp’ Grab partnered with Chinese healthcare platform Ping An Good Doctor for a joint venture that delivers online healthcare in Southeast Asia.

Also Read: How Asian governments are leading digital health promotion

The synergies between the healthtech sectors in Southeast Asia and the UK, alongside the importance of international partnerships, have the potential to generate world-leading healthcare innovation without limits. 

The UK and Southeast Asia are perfect partners for the future of tech. Launched in 2021, our Tech Nation International Growth Programme is one of the many ways the UK continues to collaborate in the digital economy globally.

We are working closely with the UK government, specifically the Department for International Trade, as part of the Digital Trade Network, to help not only UK tech firms enter new markets in Southeast Asia but also help build foundational links for businesses, offering the Global Talent visa to tech professionals from the region so they can immerse themselves in the UK’s tech vibrant ecosystem.

I look forward to seeing more international partnerships between our ecosystems, creating the next generation of tech unicorns and decacorns.

–

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: irstone

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Singapore- and Indonesia-based growth-stage VC fund Centauri Fund has received an investment of KRW 10 billion (US$8.5 million) from sovereign wealth fund Korea Growth Investment Corporation (K-Growth).

The partnership aims to boost the tech investment corridor between South Korea and Southeast Asia.

As a new Limited Partner, K-Growth will contribute to Centauri’s goal of backing the most promising startups in the region, focusing on Indonesia.

“With K-Growth coming into Centauri Fund, MDI expects Centauri Fund to help us to scout for innovations to bring into Indonesia, which MDI will bridge to support the initiatives of Telkom and other Indonesian state-owned enterprises,” Li added.

Launched in December 2019 with a target of raising US$150 million, Centauri is run by KB Investment (a business unit under Korea’s KB Financial Group) and MDI Ventures (the corporate VC arm of Telkom Group).

Also Read: MDI Ventures’s new US$500M fund seeks to push digitisation of Indonesia’s state-owned firms

The fund — headed by General partner Kenneth Li (also managing partner at MDI Singapore) and KB Investment CEO Kim Jong Pil — invests in machine learning and fintech, with strong potential for scale and expansion as a growth-stage venture fund.

The ticket size ranges from US$1 million and US$5 million in a startup, from pre-series A to Series B stages throughout ASEAN, with an emphasis on Indonesia.

Telkom Group Director of Digital Business Fajrin Rasyid said: “Hopefully, the collaboration between K-Growth and Centauri Fund can strengthen relations between Indonesia and South Korea, especially in terms of developing the digital economy.”

Since its launch, Centauri Fund has made four investments in the region.

In April 2020, the fund led the Series A financing round for insurtech platform Qoala, which closed at US$13.5 million. It also backed WEBUY, a Singapore-based social commerce startup, alongside Wavemaker Partners in October 2020.

Its more recent deals include an early-stage investment in Indonesian logistics startup Paxel.co in April 2021. It also participated in the Series C round of fintech company Cermati.

In January, Centauri backed the Yogyakarta-based RUN System, which provides solutions for streamlining and revolutionising various business management processes.

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Image Credit: Centauri Fund

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Fresh off US$12M funding round, Loship aims for US IPO
The Vietnamese delivery startup hopes to debut on the NYSE by 2024 after reaching profitability in 18-24 months; It has attracted 2M customers so far; In Vietnam, the company faces more than a dozen rivals from Gojek and Grab.

ALAMI raises US$17.5M Series A+ led by EV Growth, Quona Capital
In January, the Shariah-compliant P2P lender raised ~US20M in debt and equity; Some strategic angels from the Middle East, which were previously involved in SoftBank’s Vision Fund, also joined the round; The move was said to be paving the way for Alami’s expansion into that region.

VNG mulling public listing via SPAC merger at US$3B valuation: report
The first tech unicorn in Vietnam, VNG counts companies including GIC, Temasek and Goldman Sachs among its high-profile investors; GIC, Temasek and Goldman Sachs are among high-profile investors; The firm has been considering a potential listing for several years.

SubPlace raises US$2.4M for its smart lock product in 4 days of launching ECF campaign
The startup plans to set up 250 brand stores across Malaysia within the next 5 years, with an expected uptake of over 100K new users; SubPlace plans to launch in October this year at the price of ~US$566.

AC Ventures, Kenangan Fund join Durianpay’s US$2M round led by Surge
Durianpay provides small e-commerce merchants with a one-stop solution for “frictionless checkout and easy-to-integrate modern APIs and dashboards”; The firm offers businesses and developers access to a broader range of payment options and a no-code interface.

BRI Ventures, SBM ITB team up to launch Indonesia’s first VC courses
The curriculum is designed to help students learn about basic venture investment principles, gain exposure to various startup ecosystems; SBM ITB will open the VC courses under both undergraduate and graduate programmes at its Jakarta and Bandung campuses.

SG fintech startup M-DAQ bags Series D from Affinity Equity Partners
M-DAQ provides specialised tech-enabled financial services to enterprise customers and other downstream fintech companies; Its proprietary FX solutions process over US$7.4B in cross-border transactions annually.

Thai online media platform Ookbee bags funding from Tencent, Sumitomo
It will use the funding to acquire new users across its existing platforms, expand its business across the region, and develop new products; Ookbee operates e-book stores as well as user-generated content platforms across SEA.

Singapore edutech accelerator EduSpaze selects 8 firms for its third cohort
They are Akadasia, myFirst, Schoters, Kalpha, and ZenGengo, among others; Participants can get up to US$370K in funding from EduSpaze and will also receive mentor support and have the chance to implement pilot projects during the programme.

How to successfully build and run a business with minimum capital
One of the first steps in starting a business is to conduct research to identify a gap in the market; Another important aspect of running and owning a business venture is to work on providing a great consumer experience through efficient customer service.

3 factors affecting e-commerce trends in Vietnam
The e-commerce landscape is dominated by three large companies: Shopee, Lazada and Tiki; With a higher monthly traffic count, Shopee seems to be the clear winner at the moment; The e-commerce platform is a cash burner and that’s the reason why you see several rounds happening for Tiki as Lazada is owned by Alibaba now and Shopee belongs to the SEA group.

5 hottest healthtech startups in Malaysia
The current state of healthtech in Malaysia is proof that the country is following through with its objectives; It is teeming with successful digital health startups, including wearables, applications, and platforms that make healthcare more accessible than ever before.

Embedded finance won’t make every firm into a fintech company
Embedded finance helps companies and brands outside of the core financial sector distribute financial services; This requires varying levels of effort from the company and looks like anything from Starbucks offering an integrated wallet and payments within its app to Lyft offering a debit card to their drivers; But that doesn’t make Starbucks or Lyft fintech companies.

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Image Credit: Loship

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Adobe’s people-centric culture has been a hallmark of our success since the company’s founding in 1982, and we are very pleased to have recently been named a 2021 Great Place To Work-Certified company in Singapore.

Last year, when it became clear that work was never going back to the way things were, we saw an opportunity and the need to reimagine the employee experience and develop a future of work approach that leverages the best of in-person and virtual interactions to foster creativity, innovation, and culture.

Digital experiences are transforming how people connect, work, learn, and play. The acceleration of digital in the last 18 months has massively changed the nature of work– and that in turn, has changed the way employees are expecting to work today and post-pandemic.

Adobe put together a team composed of members from different functions to learn from the best of the last year and a half and set the vision for how we would work next.

We conducted interviews and focus groups with hundreds of employees, managers and leaders across various locations, organisations, and tenure, and we regularly surveyed our global employee population to draw a vast array of insights to both inform our plans and test our hypotheses to create a future model that would work best for Adobe.

Here’s what we found.

The future of work at Adobe will be hybrid

• Being digital-first will be critical: As the digital experiences company, we will double down on digital tools and workflows across the employee experience – from onboarding and career development to collaboration and community, to enable our people to be productive working wherever they are.
• Flexibility will be the default: Adobe employees will have the option to work from home approximately 50 per cent of the time and in the office the remainder of the time. We’re empowering individuals and teams to figure out the working cadences that are best for them.
• We’ll gather for the moments that matter: We will have an intentional mix of physical and virtual presences, with in-person gatherings driven by purpose and designed for collaboration.
• Remote work will expand: We believe in the value of in-person interactions however we know that in some cases, a remote work arrangement makes sense for Adobe and the individual. So, we’ve established criteria and guidelines on remote work which we’ll be rolling out in phases globally, and then continue to learn and iterate to make this model successful.

Also Read: A new approach to hybrid working: Let the employees decide when, how and where to work

The employee experience evolution

Adobe’s sweet spot is at the intersection of technology and creativity, so it’s only natural that we lean into our strengths to design the workplace of the future. Our aim is to provide an exceptional employee experience, regardless of location, and intentionally leverage the best of different workplace settings.

We recognise the work-from-home era isn’t necessarily reflective of the future, but there’s the behavioural insight we can draw to inform how we work in this next chapter.

For example, we’ve increasingly traded email for real-time messaging; the desire for community building and informal interactions has heightened, and we’re seeing greater adoption of asynchronous collaboration methods in place of meetings.

At the centre of this transformation is our new smart digital campus app– Adobe Life –an award-winning digital experience, designed with Adobe products, as a solution to power our new hybrid workforce.

As with everything we do, Adobe Life was created with our people in mind, drawing insights from employees’ workstyles, workflows, and workspaces. The app is ripe with functionality to help employees stay productive, connected, informed, and well.

It meets employees where they are. Each office has its own digital campus in the app, serving as a hub of curated news and information catered to their location, including re-entry updates, wayfinding, and conference room bookings.

Employees can stay connected to each other with personalised community engagement and custom notifications powered by artificial intelligence.

And this is just the beginning. We recognise that we have a lot to learn and that evolving how we work will be a long-term transformation. The hybrid future of work is here to stay, and we know that one size doesn’t fit all.

Organisations, large and small, will need to determine how that ‘hybrid’ will look like for them and start putting in place the digital solutions they will need to build that future.

One challenge that many organisations face when transforming for the future of work is legacy workflows. In today’s fast-changing environment, addressing the issue of legacy systems means moving to more flexible technologies that digitise more or all of the workflow steps, and using cloud-based services to deliver this quickly and at a more optimal cost.

Also Read: How to be an effective product team manager as your team grows

To help with that, Adobe has recently announced the availability of Adobe Sign and Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service hosted locally in the Microsoft Azure Southeast Asia region data centre located in Singapore, bringing expanded digital experience management and e-signing capabilities onshore to support local organisations in their future of work vision.

We’ve also introduced the new Live Sign in Microsoft Teams – available later this year – that will offer e-signing that feels like an in-person experience. For example, remote teams can go through the details of a project document on a Teams video call while capturing their e-signatures for approvals – all without leaving Teams.

As remote and hybrid work becomes a mainstay of the future of work, we can expect to see more digital innovations incorporated into employee experience and workflows.

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People matter. Seventy-four per cent of CEOs are concerned about finding talent with the right skills. The third biggest killer of startups is ‘the wrong team’. Even in the era of algorithms, game-changing businesses are built by game-changing people.

With all these challenges identified, how can we identify and attract the right venture talent for corporate ventures?  What do founders even want?

Three simple factors

Over the past decade, we’ve built and invested in ventures with more than 100 of the world’s biggest and best corporations.  Talent, and particularly a difficulty attracting the right sort of entrepreneurial talent, has been a constant theme.

With the intensity of competition for venture talent heating up here in Singapore, we’ve looked to the data to understand how corporates can get ahead.

We’ve spent the past month engaging with 30 founders from across the entrepreneurial spectrum to understand more about why they would or wouldn’t be open to joining a corporate venture.

We’ve found three extraordinarily simple factors that corporations need to get right to attract the right sort of venture talent: Equity, freedom and metrics.

Fire and seasoning

Firstly, how should corporations define the ‘right’ talent? Like cooking a steak – it’s a matter of seasoning and fire. Specifically, we look for seasoned founders forged by the fire of Venture Capital.

Let’s look at the data.

Studies show that ventures with teams who founded three prior startups were nearly 50 per cent more likely to survive, regardless of whether the previous startups were successes or failures.  These teams also logged 11 per cent more sales than teams with no startup experience.

The more experienced the founder, the higher the chances of venture success.

The quantitative data here is more limited.  However, from our experience building 60 ventures and making 1,000 investments into startups, we see time and again that Founders who have previously raised Venture Capital funding consistently outperform others in a corporate venture environment.

Having been accountable for every dollar they spend they know what it takes to deliver on someone else’s investment. Importantly, they also know when to push ahead independently and when to selectively involve investors – a difficult balance to strike.

Also Read: The “shmart” entrepreneur: Skills entrepreneurs need to become future-ready

Build it and they will come?

So we’re looking for seasoned founders who have been forged by the fire of VC.  Most of the corporations we work with assume these people are pretty unlikely to join a corporate environment.

On the surface this seems a fair assumption – why would they join?  But the data tells a different story.

So we’re in the game, what are the rules?

First, we have the talent magnets, the reasons why founders are so open to corporate ventures.  Overwhelmingly, these are:

• Easier access to capital
• Ability to accelerate scale through corporate assets
• The chance to make a bigger impact on the world

The first rule of the game – understand why founders are open to the conversation and are careful to keep these things in mind.

Handling the hurdles

Then we have the hurdles, the reasons why founders might hesitate.  Get these right and the talent pool is wide open.

Equity

Our founders overwhelmingly prioritise equity over salary. In fact, the more experienced (number of previous startups) and the more successful (number of exits) the founder, the more important equity becomes to them.

Equity is not something corporations are used to giving up and it can be tricky to structure, particularly in more heavily regulated industries.  Is it really worth the trouble?

Our data and our experience say ‘absolutely’. Can you attract a founder on a salary?  Sure. Can you attract a seasoned founder forged by the fire of VC?  Probably not.

Also Read: Lucy, a Singaporean neobank focused on women entrepreneurs, bags seed funding

Freedom

Corporations often assume politics and bureaucracy to be the key “founder repellents”. We were surprised to find this wasn’t the case for many founders. Instead, the killer “repellent” for many founders was a concern around autonomy.

Seasoned founders forged by the fire of VC are comfortable with the high-accountability-high-autonomy relationship between founder and investor.  They live and die by their own decisions, and investors back them to do that.

Founders worry they will not get the same backing in a corporate context, and that their ability to truly lead the venture would inevitably be limited by the hierarchical and risk-averse nature of corporate decision-making processes.

Metrics

Finally, misaligned metrics and measurement is a key concern for founders.

Founders need to be confident that the success metrics set for the venture are appropriate and will remain so in the long term.  For most founders, this means measuring the ventures by their market performance rather than internal KPIs.

In particular, many of the founders worried that corporates had unrealistic time expectations when it comes to short-term revenue generation.  Founders expect to play a long-term game building equity value and are wary of being trapped into a short-term revenue generation game.

This also belies a suspicion from some founders around corporate motivations.  They expect to dedicate four to eight years of their life to building a new venture.  Before they invest that time, they need to be confident that the goalposts won’t move.

Also Read: How app entrepreneurs are growing multifold in Southeast Asia

Hearing from the venture talent themselves

To illustrate the data, let’s hear from two very different founders on their views of the corporate venture world.

Sophie Soowon Eom, CEO & Co-Founder of Adriel and Serial Entrepreneur, pinpoints some uniquely entrepreneurial traits and shares her honest thoughts on heading back to the corporate space. For a contrasting view from the inside of the corporate venture world Jeremy Youker, Senior Venture Architect and Founder at Longship Partners, discusses the complementary nature of the Founder-Corporate partnership.

What are the defining entrepreneurial traits that make you, and others like you, a great Founder?

Besides the obvious traits like mission-oriented, relentless, and flexible, a lot of the great founders I’ve met look and sound like they’re from the future! They’re truly convinced about what they believe is not going to happen in the market, what’s going to be the next big trend, where the opportunities are, and what potential risks they have to navigate.

Because they’re so convinced about what the next big thing that will change the world will be there they’re sometimes even willing to be misunderstood. Like Amazon’s Jeff Bezos once said, they can see solutions, threats, and eventual problems that most people don’t see. Their predictions are combinations of intuition and very well-calculated scenarios, which often turn out to be right.

What have you gained from your time as a serial entrepreneur that you couldn’t get during your time in the corporate world? 

Before I became an entrepreneur, I felt like I had to please literally everyone, even in situations where unanimous decisions were not optimal for the company’s long-term growth. After founding two startups, I learned how to be tough when necessary – a skill that’s crucial in being able to make a great impact. With that lesson learned, I exited my first startup, which provided me with funds a typical corporate employee would never be able to dream of.

What would it take to convince you to take up an offer to get back into the corporate world? 

A big plus would be that you get to know and work with many different people for different purposes. But even on these terms, I personally, would never want to go back because the startup communities are becoming so sophisticated and make for an extremely valuable network as well. I love being an entrepreneur in the startup scene. It’s tough, but you gain a lot, learn many lessons, and grow every year.

What must corporates do, be or have in order to attract and retain top Founders?

Ultimately, entrepreneurs bring the mindset, the behaviour, and the expertise on how to scale – essentially from zero to growth. They have very driving personalities which means they’re looking to make decisions as quickly as possible, with just enough information to validate their idea before getting things done. Corporates, in order to attract and keep top entrepreneurial talent within the corporate itself, need to make room for this type of behaviour.

Also Read: Entrepreneurship is at an all time high, but are you doing it right?

Entrepreneurs going into a new corporate venture, or founders, are looking for industry expertise, industry connections, and the ability to leverage some of the corporate assets. What they would be expecting from the corporate is really clear access to those assets that can give them an unfair advantage. This could be access to data, industry expertise, go-to-market distribution channels, Intellectual Property, technology leveraging brand credibility.

What are the biggest challenges or barriers facing corporates in attracting top entrepreneurial talent to lead their corporate ventures? 

Generally, large corporates are not seen as the most innovative, or agile space where an entrepreneur can operate. Entrepreneurs are looking for an environment where they can move quickly, make decisions on their own without a lot of oversight and have freedom in their own operations. But, entrepreneurs don’t recognize the value that a corporate can bring, like access to corporate assets which boosts their ability to really accelerate a new venture.

Part of what we do at Rainmaking is to look for those assets and how we really can give an “unfair advantage” to a new venture. Corporations looking to do corporate venturing would be well-served by taking a close look at themselves, what corporate assets they could offer to new ventures, then working internally, to smooth the way for access to those assets as new ventures are developed.

It is no surprise that Corporate Venture Building is a universe fraught with the cultural inconsistencies of traditional corporations and innovative ventures. This makes the right talent challenging for corporations to attract, although one that is absolutely vital to overcome in order to succeed.

We have learned that the challenge clearly lies in alleviating the skepticism founders have about the motivations and intentions of corporations and we believe that the most efficient way to achieve that will be for corporations to work on the 3 key factors of Equity, Freedom & Metrics, to a degree worth boasting about.

This article is written as part of the Corporate Venture Launchpad programme. The S$10 million pilot programme by EDB New Ventures aims to enable large, established companies new to corporate venturing to launch a new venture in Singapore within six months, supported by venture studios experienced in corporate venture building.

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This article runs 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.

People, team, culture, and leadership are topics brought up frequently by current and aspiring entrepreneurs at the Makan for Hope Festival roundtables. On July 27, Samuel Rhee, co-founder of Endowus and former CEO and CIO of Morgan Stanley Investment Management in Asia, hosted a roundtable discussion on how to build a team and maintain it.

In this 90-minute session, ten participants had the opportunity to tap into Rhee’s decades-long leadership experience across small and large organisations and had many questions answered on the fundamentals of building a successful company – including building powerful teams.

Culture sets the tone for how people are brought together

Corporation originates from the Latin word corporare, which means to “combine in one body”. Organisation is from organisacioun, meaning “act or process of organising, the arranging of parts in an organic whole”.

The etymology guides us on how these entities operate by way of uniting their parts. We do so on the basis of companionship, which is at the essence of the word company that combines com (together) and pani (bread) to mean “share bread together”.

Leading a corporation, organisation, or company therefore necessitates bringing people together. Culture and common values define the way. “What a company espouses may not necessarily just be about winning, like a professional sports team, which is a popular analogy these days”, shared Rhee.

He advised to think of a professional team with a sense of companionship and closeness, like members of a family. Leaders can then try to answer the question of what kind of culture the team would like to create to this end.

Though Rhee admits to “still learning along the way”, he and his co-founder Gregory Van have managed to build what was, until recently, a completely bootstrapped and 100 per cent employee-owned company with virtually no turnover in its product/engineering teams. These teams take up more than half of the company and are carefully recruited.

Also Read: How to build a strong remote workforce for startups

For Endowus, developing a strong mission-driven culture has been central to its team-building endeavours. The leaders strived to ground themselves in the mission, vision, and purpose of the company and articulate them across teams at every step of the way – focusing on solving real problems for investors in Singapore and Asia makes a meaningful difference in people’s lives and in securing their financial future.

They are also focused on raising the quality of financial education and level of financial literacy through Endowus Insights and webinars, for which the company is well known.

As a company grows, bringing the many people together and rallying the common values across the organisation can become more challenging. Charles Debonneuil, President of Intrepid Group and former CMO of Lazada, shared his experience of facing such challenges and remarked on the importance of aligning leaders across different locations. Likewise, by working well with the evangelists within the company who champion its core values and “spread the good word”, the core leadership team can “trickle-down” the key messages more effectively across offices.

The vibrant discussion covered a wide range of issues that spanned how to go about looking for a co-founder, how leaders should spend time with teams, how to instinctively determine a good hire, and how to create a coherent culture across offices, to name a few. Below is a recap of key insights shared.

Key takeaways on how to attract and build a team

The most important thing in attracting and selecting a founding team is to ensure that the members are aligned with the mission of the company. If people do not truly believe in the mission, eventually, it may not work no matter how impressive their capabilities are. Once aligned, the members should be able to balance out each others’ weaknesses with their diverse strengths and skillsets.

Leaders should focus on:

• Meaning and purpose – Endowus team built a mission and purpose-driven organisation, which provides meaning to their employees. With this, there is little need for management to micromanage them. As long as the right types who are aligned with the values of the company are hired, they will perform to a high level with independence and integrity.
• Safety and security – Leaders should be able to provide a sense of security and a safety net for people to do their best work. Ensuring psychological safety for people to take risks with their ideas and know that there are no dumb questions is very important. Basic questions asked and answered in early stages set up teams for better execution and reduce mistakes down the road. It is advisable for leaders to facilitate the conversations so that both extroverts and introverts can speak up. They should also spend enough time with new recruits in the beginning so that the role, goals, expectations, and tools to aid the work process are well defined.
• Connected community within the company – People need to feel connected and need one another to succeed. It is therefore crucial for leaders to constantly work on facilitating relationships. Having superstars is great but they will not solve all of the problems.
• Empathy and responsiveness – Building a good sense of togetherness require empathy and responsiveness towards employees. These are also critical in working together effectively. Effectiveness is more important than efficiency in achieving good outcomes over the long term. Building a lasting business requires investment in relationships both internally and externally.
• In hiring a team, Endowus tries to understand people’s motivations and aspirations to determine the fit, in addition to mutually learning about each other through case studies. The fit may be more intangible than tangible so there is no one-size-fits-all. In the same context, Endowus has a flexible approach to compensation structure as everybody’s needs are different. Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are handed out to provide the opportunity for employees to own the company and conform to one of its core values – alignment. This entails aligning to the best interest of the clients they serve and internally to their team.
• In building and maintaining a team, focus on the people and not the work. Leaders should care about the things that people care about, whether it be money, environment, learning opportunities. It is down to the leader to assess individuals’ needs and capabilities and create an environment for success.
• As a company grows larger in size, there will be more management challenges especially with regards to how time is spent with different teams. It is important to break it down to levels, such as team level, business unit level, and individual level, to ultimately create a flow of management whereby senior leaders delegate down to make the business run organically. By doing this people are given the opportunity to grow, take on more independent initiatives, and flourish in their roles. A flexible mindset on people’s work versus pigeon-holing people is important in this respect. This is more of an art rather than science.

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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

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