This article is published as a part of a partnership with Recruitery. Recruitery is an all-in-one hiring platform that provides headhunt, payroll, taxes, and compliance solutions for remote teams in SEA. 

The rising cost of living puts immense pressure on families and individuals as they struggle to meet their basic needs. This problem originates from several factors, including inflation, the increasing cost of essential goods and services, and wage stagnation. The living situation is especially acute in developed countries, where the cost of living is rising faster than wages.

As a result of this tendency, businesses globally are confronted with various difficulties, particularly in staff cost reduction.

For example, several Silicon Valley and Southeast Asia companies such as Zenius and LinkAja recently terminated the employment of hundreds of talents to restructure their human resources departments. The layoffs vary, but those ones cite a need to streamline operations and reduce costs. 

So besides layoffs, is there any alternative to save costs other startup founders are applying?

Hiring international employees

It’s also where you hire. Recruiting international employees, particularly in countries with low employment costs (such as Indonesia, Vietnam, and India), is the initial strategy of many companies in the modern era; however, the quality of the workforce has remained the same, even better.

Carro, Singapore’s unicorn, is one of the best case practices. Though their headquarter is in Singapore, their engineering staff is mainly dispersed in Vietnam and Indonesia. According to the founding team, the formation of tiny groups across various regions was not deliberate but rather the outcome of restrictive recruiting conditions.

Also Read: Winter for tech startups is here? Here’s how to deal with it

“It is really tough to get A players with affordable costs here,” says Co-Founder Kelvin Chng, “so we decided to go where the talent is, instead of being fixed on just one nation.”

Top three low-cost countries in South East Asia

Each country in Southeast Asia is at a different stage of development, but they all provide many chances to introduce new technology and establish business models. The market is now determined by the consumption quality of a constantly expanding middle class. 

The population’s engagement in the digital world is increasing due to the development of affluent consumers. Therefore, now is an excellent opportunity to enter and ride the present economic wave. Numerous markets are still in their infancy, and the chances for disruptive technologies are excellent. Its enormous GDP is the second most intriguing market after the United States. 

In 2022, the gross domestic product of the five largest nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations would increase by 5.1 per cent. 

Innovation’s robust foundation is providing a tremendous boost to company development. Moreover, incentives offered by the government for creating new tech businesses are a further aspect contributing to this phenomenon. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that foreign IT titans establish headquarters and regional centres in Southeast Asia.

Indonesia 

Indonesia is one of the largest populations in the world, with more than 275 million people inhabiting its archipelago. With a median age of 28 years, the country also has a comparatively young workforce. The following are some of the other labour market advantages of Indonesia:

• The cost of living in Indonesia is also inexpensive, being roughly 50 per cent less than the U.S. average and 56 per cent less than Singapore.
• Most organisations hiring hidden talent from Indonesia seek programmers, designers, and data entry specialists. In addition, numerous locals provide tech assistance for firms in the United States and Europe. 
• The majority of Indonesian university graduates have a very high level of English proficiency.
• In Indonesia, the IT sector is a tailwind generating demand for expertise. Artificial intelligence, DevOps, data, and programming are the dominant topics of discourse.

Indonesia’s monthly minimum pay and cost of living, combined with its large population, make it an excellent location for employing remote workers. The monthly minimum wage ranges from IDR 1,765,000 (US$127) to IDR 4,416,186 (US$317), depending on the job region.

Vietnam

Over the last decade, Vietnam has achieved such success in the software outsourcing industry that many nations see it as an outsourcing hotspot in Southeast Asia.

Here why:

• Because of its outstanding mitigation techniques, Vietnam effectively battled diseases, pandemics, and infrequent typhoons. This demonstrates remarkable resilience and commitment to business continuity. 
• According to MarketInsider, this is the fifth-best nation for outsourcing. In addition, multiple U.S. corporations have claimed that outsourcing to Vietnam may save them up to 90 per cent of the entire cost, particularly in software development.
• Many talents are now willing to experiment with new AI, machine learning, and blockchain technologies.

It can be said that if you’re looking for cost-effective solutions with cutting-edge technology, Vietnam is the best place.

India

Like Vietnam and Indonesia, India is one of the leading centres for remote workers, particularly in the ICT sector, with over 1.3 billion inhabitants. Other remarkable advantages include:

• India has one of the world’s fastest-growing populations and the highest literacy levels. Moreover, with over 125 million, India is the world’s second-largest English-speaking country after the United States. So it’s no surprise that so many multinational corporations prefer to use India as a remote workforce.
• India’s unemployment rate has naturally increased due to the recession caused by the COVID-19 virus in 2020. However, there has also been a growth in demand for sophisticated abilities in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data scientists due to the increasing shift toward digitalisation.
• The Indian workforce is highly educated and uses English as one of its official languages.
• According to figures compiled by the specialised employment firm Xpheno, the IT industry in India added over 500,000 new positions in FY22, twice the predicted net increase in its active workforce for the fiscal year. These numbers demonstrate the expansion of the IT employment sector.

Firms consider highly valued non-salary perks and the primary wage when calculating remuneration in India. Having a good work title is desirable and maybe just as crucial as negotiating pay.

Also Read: Hiring made easy: How to survive the talent war against tech behemoths?

Employers are obligated to provide statutory bonuses if they have at least 20 workers, and the employee earns less than INR 10,000 (US$128) per month. The sum varies between 8.33 per cent and twenty per cent of the employee’s income or INR 100 (US$1.29), whichever is greater. In addition, workers may anticipate significant salary increases and promotions after their yearly evaluations, with 15 to 20 per cent or more gains. 

The significant advantages of employing remote employees in India are their low wages and extensive skill sets. In addition, with the technology industry’s growth over the past few decades, the demand for highly qualified IT developers and engineers will continue to rise.

How to start hiring globally

First, founders must collaborate with local recruiting or global hiring solutions. One of the key advantages is saving your time and human resources as they are usually equipped with the requisite expertise and direct relationships with the talents you’re looking for.

What happens after you hire successfully in local countries where you don’t have the local entity? Both ways for you to consider:

• Signing independent contractors
• Using a third party to hire your employees compliantly. 

Each option has its own pros and cons. The first one will help you waive employment costs such as taxes or insurance, but it would not be intriguing to top-tier talents. The second one can cover the weakness. However, they require substantial expertise in local compliance to master the labour risks.

In addition to being concerned with legality and ensuring retention, businesses must also provide effective onboarding and payroll administration. Working with a third party to perform these tasks should be the primmest way to assist you in alleviating your strain and guarantee that everything is completed correctly.

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A sea of new Earned Wage Access (EWA) startups are cropping up across Southeast Asia, piquing investor interest and quickly becoming one of the most discussed fintech solutions of 2022, and for good reason.

A solution that at its core aims to alleviate the financial struggles of the low-income workforce by enabling access to earned wages before payday, EWA doesn’t just help employees manage cash flow issues between paychecks, but it also allows employers to play a bigger part in protecting their workforce from predatory money lending.

With 35 per cent of the Southeast Asian workforce falling into the minimum wage income bracket, that’s millions of people living paycheck to paycheck, who are only one unexpected bill away from financial disaster. Given this, the industry’s growth comes as no surprise, with new entrants and competitive solutions propelling the market forward.

The competition is welcome because it’s leading to greater innovation, more localisation and ease of use.  So with all EWA players now chasing the same goal and looking to offer the best possible solution to SEA’s low-income workforce and their employers, how do they all stack up?

We believe that there is a lot to learn from the super apps such as Grab, Fave, and Air Asia that provide a wide suite of services to their consumers, be it financial, retail, or even communications and transportation.

These apps excel by consistently developing new solutions and products that add value to users’  lives, even if the link to the initial service offered might not be immediately obvious. EWA solutions need to take a leaf from their playbook and consider leveraging solutions that open new doors for their users.

Fostering financial inclusion

Bain & Company reported that 55 per cent of Malaysian adults are unbanked or severely underbanked, and according to Bank Negara Malaysia the underbanked population consisted mainly of low-income workers. These are trends reflected across other parts of SEA,  too.

We believe that given EWA’s financial nature and access to employee payroll information, their solutions have the power to foster financial inclusion among the low-income workforce by building a pathway for them to become a part of the banking system.

Also Read: How this app is helping low-income workers to achieve financial stability

While the uptake of digitalisation in banking has doubtless made some aspects of banking more accessible to SEA’s tech-savvy population, many fundamental and necessary financial services such as access to credit cards, housing loans, and car loans still lie in the hands of traditional banks.

For EWAs, this is a golden opportunity to create a solution that doesn’t just help them bridge the cash flow gaps between paydays but also adds other financial benefits to a perennially underserved market. EWA companies can take the next step and put financial inclusion first by partnering with major banks to help people build a credit record, and in turn, add that extra value to the end-user.

The road ahead for EWA in SEA

When we look at the future of this increasingly saturated market, the road ahead is clear. In order to push the industry forward and stay competitive as an EWA player, these companies must look into how they can further add value to the users’ everyday life and stay relevant.

While bridging salary gaps between paychecks is a good start,  the next step is to diversify offerings in a way that further benefits the user.  In order to do this, it could be a good start to look into other areas of necessities that might not yet be fully available to the low-income workforce, such as insurance.

Given that an EWA solution’s end-user is the lower-income workforce, health insurance is a service that still seems to be out of reach for most workers. EWAs could look at establishing partnerships with insurers to offer unique and affordable insurance plans to keep the workforce safe.

The possibilities for EWAs are endless.  Eventually, telecommunications offerings, mental health support, and even child care services could all seamlessly integrate themselves into an EWA platform, as long as the company is brave enough to take the next step into diversification.

By putting users first and enabling access to services and solutions that are not yet available to them, an employer who is looking for an EWA solution and cares about their employees is most likely to choose the solution that adds the most value to their employee.

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Indonesia-based rural-focussed e-commerce startup Dagangan today announced that it has closed US$6.6 million in its Pre-Series B round led by Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) subsidiary BTPN Syariah Ventura.

It included the participation of existing investor Monk’s Hill Ventures, and Hendra Kwik, CEO of Payfazz, a leading financial services company serving SMEs and unbanked Indonesians.

The funds from this strategic investment will be used by Dagangan to expand into new markets and improve the capabilities of their product and technology development team. Dagangan will also work with financial institutions in banking and fintech to develop new financial services.

Dagangan is an e-commerce platform that provides same-day and next-day delivery for a wide variety of household needs, including basic necessities, fresh and frozen food, and apparel. Their customers are able to conveniently purchase items from multiple channels in one place.

“Our ultimate goal is to build Indonesia’s largest integrated retail and e-commerce marketplace serving the 90,000+ villages where 80 per cent of the nation’s population reside,” said Wilson Yanaprasetya, President and Co-founder of Dagangan.

“To achieve this, we focused on designing a clear path to profitability from day one through a lean organisation structure, consistent growth, and tech-enabled product innovation. Today, every single transaction made on the Dagangan app is profitable; this is extremely rare for an early-stage startup.”

Also Read: In the age of e-commerce, complete and accurate data analytics is key

In addition to Dagangan’s white-label products, the platform also sells items offered by its resellers and third-party partners.

Based in Jogjakarta, Dagangan implements a hub-and-spoke model in its business operations. The company has micro-fulfilment centres (hub) in tier 3-4 cities and rural areas in Indonesia to reduce logistics costs, with the aim to make it efficient and affordable for their customers to access daily necessities. At the same time, it also aims to enable large producers to reach new markets that were previously difficult due to logistical challenges.

This funding follows an US$11.5 million Series A round that Dagangan closed in September 2021. Since then, the company said that it has recorded business growth of up to five times.

Currently, Dagangan has more than 40 hubs across the Special Region of Jogjakarta, Central Java, and West Java, and its products and services reach 15,000 villages in 40 districts.

“We aspire to serve more communities in remote areas and spearhead further growth in Indonesia’s rural economy. The funding from BTPN Syariah Ventura is more than just an investment, but the beginning of a close partnership to build an inclusive digital ecosystem for all Indonesians,” shares Ryan Manafe, CEO and Co-founder of Dagangan.

“They share the same enthusiasm as our team towards improving the lives of people in rural and suburban areas, and have demonstrated a proven track record of growing local micro, small, medium enterprises in rural Indonesia.”

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Image Credit: Dagangan

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Data: you give it, you want it, you love it, you hate it. Consumers exchange it for convenience, corporations collect it for decision-making, and governments struggle to keep up with the frenetic churn. As an organisation, how does one make sense of the chaos? 

It seems like data makes today’s world go round. Politicians rely on it for consensus, organisations for sales, and individuals for self-knowledge. There’s so much data going around that it’s become invisible, ubiquitous and all-encompassing in our lives. Your Apple Watch that tracks your steps? That’s data collected. 

Five minutes of scrolling through TikTok includes a massive amount of data collection. Besides the apparent data on video watching, other data being collected consists of the user’s phone model and its operating system, the keystroke rhythms people exhibit when they type, and even reading the copy-and-paste clipboards of users. 

But it isn’t just TikTok; much of the app’s data collection is comparable to other data-hungry social networks such as Facebook. Similar data is also being collected for dozens of other apps, including Reddit, LinkedIn, the New York Times and the BBC News app.

Research suggests that the volume of data/information created, captured, copied, and consumed worldwide is close to 100 Zettabytes. According to Seagate, 1 Zettabyte = 30 billion 4K movies, 60 billion video games, or 7.5 trillion MP3 songs. 

Also Read: Insurance 4.0: Harness your data reservoir for genuine impact

These 100 Zettabytes contain multitudes of information. To make that helpful information, one must first learn how to interpret and package the data into palatable, digestible content, crafting a story from Zettabytes.

Start small and use a scale to build familiarity

Author Chuck Palahniuk teaches how a writer can convince a reader of something beyond their own experience: you start with what the reader does know, and you move in baby steps toward what they don’t. 

Most people wouldn’t fathom how much of a Zettabyte is, so we break it down into things we’re familiar with: 30 billion 4K movies, 60 billion video games, etc. But it can still be difficult to comprehend 30 billion 4K movies, so we use another familiar precedent: Netflix’s entire catalogue has around 1,000 4K movies. Data storytelling is about packing and repackaging the same information until it makes the most sense. 

By doing this, we take something we all know and love and use it as a bridge to understanding something we might not be familiar with. You see this everywhere in data storytelling.

Apply scale with the use of metaphors, images and text

Visualisation is a common strategy in data storytelling, but it bears repeating. When you have data that is unfathomable, try instead to use visualising.

Brain studies have revealed that mental imagery impacts many cognitive processes in the brain: motor control, attention, perception, planning, and memory. Data visualisation is key because the human brain is not well equipped to take in so much raw, unorganised information and extract usable learnings from it. 

For instance, a viral TikTok visualised Jeff Bezos’s wealth in rice grains. By using rice grains, an item that most people are familiar with, the audience is presented with comprehensible imagery. The TikToker used one grain of rice to represent US$100,000.

Most people know that Bezos is one of the richest humans alive, and yet, seeing the massive mound of rice grains that represents his wealth is still shocking. This data visualisation was so effective that the video went viral, with Insider, New York Post, Buzzfeed and Forbes covering it. 

So, with our Zettabyte, how do we visualise it? We’ve already added the familiar precedent of scale, where one Zettabyte is 30 billion 4k movies. While we all know what a 4K movie is, the notion is still intangible. So we bring in a familiar object that many of us use daily: an iPhone. 

Also Read: How these innovators are using data to change the world

Using simple calculations, we would need about 195 billion iPhone 13s with 512GB of storage to get to 100 Zettabytes of data. We can introduce physical spaces to add a spatial metaphor to make the data visualisation even more dimensional. 

Now we’re closer to fathoming how much tangible space is needed for 100 Zettabytes. 

Data-driven business decision making

Ultimately, data storytelling is for better decision making. Whether it’s to internal stakeholders, clients or telling the story of your business to people, one can use a wide range of tools and approaches to find, manipulate and visualise data.

Knowing how to build a data plan for your organisation, which includes forming hypotheses and using data to judge their validity, is a key foundation to successful data-driven decision making. 

At Hyper Island, we cultivate a Data Mindset– a mindset that builds data confidence by learning how to develop a clear story from a dataset such as analytics data using visualisation, developing a high-level dashboard for their organisation and describing how it supports the business and evaluating various data tools and their narrative qualities. 

While the potential of data is immense, one must also understand the social, ethical and legal issues that must be considered. Around the world, from the US Department of Justice to the EU, Big Tech companies are facing lawsuits and antitrust enforcement over data privacy.

Regulation has been lax in the last decade, but the tide is turning, and one needs to know that data collection is a double-edged sword and learn how to wield it. 

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Indonesia-based culinary startup Mangkokku has announced the closing of its US$7 million Series A funding co-led by Alpha JWC Ventures and Emtek, with participation from Cakra Ventures.

“We will strengthen our online and offline presence through outlets to serve more customers, flagship dine-in restaurants with excellent customer experience, a new mobile application, and most importantly, new dine-in exclusive dishes to cater to all preferences. With those, we aim to be an all-rounder New Culinary Retail company,” said Co-Founder and CEO Randy Kartadinata.

Established by renowned Indonesian chef Arnold Poernomo and serial entrepreneurs Kartadinata, Gibran Rakabuming, and Kaesang Pangarep, Mangkokku provides professional chef-level dishes in rice bowls accessible to everyone. The dishes are crafted with a local taste familiar to Indonesians, with “high-quality ingredients and top chef-level recipes, but always with a contemporary twist”.

Also Read: How foodtech startups are bridging the tech gap in restaurant ecosystem

The foodtech startup currently operates 50 branches in the Greater Jakarta area, Surabaya, Bandung, Malang, Semarang and Solo. Mangkokku claims it serves more than four million bowls annually via its online and offline channels with dozens of permanent and seasonal menus.

The firm has launched more than a dozen collaboration menus with prominent brands and celebrity chefs in the past year, including MasterChef Indonesia judges and winners and Garena’s Free Fire game.

Mangkokku recently launched its first of many flagship outlets in the city centre of Jakarta with a modern, cosy concept and special dine-in menu. Mangkokku will open more flagship restaurants while expanding its cloud kitchen to new areas and cities.

The startup is set to launch its mobile app by Q3 2022. It will feature order services, self pick-up, loyalty programmes, and special promos.

In addition, Mangkokku also aims to reach its 100th outlet this year and open another 100 next year.

“Ricebowl is our starting point and now we are ready to take the next step forward. We are launching our holding company, Nusantara Culinary Group, to bring more delicacies from our kitchen. We start with beverages and packaged sambal and will roll out other types of dishes this year onwards to become an end-to-end culinary solution for our customers,” Randy added.

In 2020, Mangkokku received US$2 million seed funding from Alpha JWC Ventures, and since then, it has grown 6x in sales and tripled its number of stores.

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