With blockchain becoming popular globally, DAOs (decentralised autonomous organisations) are gaining momentum. According to Investopedia, DAO is an emerging legal structure and used to make decisions in a bottoms-up management approach.

As the concept is still evolving, many are still in the dark and have no idea how it works or what are its uses and benefits in real life.

In this interview, DAO expert Siddharth Krishnan speaks with e27 about the emerging technology, its use cases and benefits.

Below are the edited excerpts:

What is a DAO? How does a DAO work? One needs like-minded people on board for a DAO to work. How can one find and get individuals with a common goal on board?

I would describe a DAO as a tool.

I would touch on certain philosophical aspects of DAO. Let’s look at how coordination has been achieved over the years. We have had massive coordination failures to address critical topics, ranging from climate change to inequality. The reason is that getting people across geographies to coordinate on a goal is very hard.

What DAO does is that it introduces a fabric or a layer for these people to engage and work with each other to achieve a common goal. It distributes power and comes up with different ways in which you can govern these decentralised communities.

It is not different from other community-building efforts we are familiar with in Web2. If anything, what a DAO does is that it breaks down certain components, which lie solely on trust.

For example, if you want to pay someone working on building a community, you need to trust him and what he does, and there’s an exchange between the work and funds.

In the case of a DAO, there are many different ways to reward contributions. For example, you can trust the tool to know that if I do some work, I could then ask to be compensated for the work retroactively.

So after I’ve done the work, I could get paid for it. DAO is essentially a trusted proposal system where people can vote to siphon funds from a treasury into a person’s account like in a shared wallet. It’s a shared wallet with permissions.

While onboarding members, the traditional marketing aspects also apply to a DAOs. We are moving towards a more organic approach. The more communities that you (as a DAO creator/member) are plugged into, the more each community you plug into to form your own circle/network within that community.

It’s through true organic means that you will find the most successful DAOs prospering. This is because they’re attracting people who share the same link. After all, being part of a community, you share the same values and likes, and then you find out about things organically.

Also Read: Zignaly’s DAO aims to remove boundaries from your crypto investment portfolio

That is essential to onboard people because it’s not just about having members in your DAO. The core thing is about getting people to contribute. And if you want someone to contribute, one needs to go above and beyond just sitting in your Discord. You need them to write things for you. More than any marketing, organic connections are the best way to grow your DAO.

There are different types of DAOs. What is a developer DAO that you are more familiar with?

A developer DAO is a DAO focused on growing the software developer community for Web3. It means giving developers a place where they can come, learn and build, and have a community to fall back on every time they need help.

Even if they want to progress out the We3 ladder, you have this kind of DAO to do these things.

They run various activities — from hackathons, education material, and partnerships to community guilds. It’s a decentralised community with members from all over the world.

 

Can anyone start a DAO?

Anyone can start a DAO; all you need is a group of people with a shared bank account. You’re going to a restaurant, and splitting the bill is a miniaturised version of a DAO.

So as long as you have a clear mission as to why you’re doing this and what value you’ll bring to your DAO members, it is easy to create a DAO. The tools are available in most ecosystems.

Once the DAO achieves its mission, can it be disbanded?

As we know, a DAO is all about proposals. So if you structure your governance procedure in such a way that you should have in your process, you can have a proposal saying, ‘okay, we have achieved our mission. I am voting to disband the DAO and channel all the funds from the treasury to every member’s wallets’. If the proposal passes, the treasury will be drained, and the DAO will be disbanded.

Are DAOs relevant for Web2 as well?

I wouldn’t view Web2 and Web3 as different things. Web3 is an evolution or sequel of Web2. Often, the sequels tend to be worse. So whatever we’re building here applies to Web2 as well. I almost view Web3 as a state of mind you develop or have while building new software.

Also Read: Meet the 10 Asia-focused DAOs looking to script history amid the crypto storm

It often means you prioritise value creation and ensure that you’re extracting as little as possible because, in Web2, it’s a zero-sum game. When you want to attract customers, you make things valuable and attractive for them, but at some point, you run out of customers to attract.

To continue growing, you must extract from your existing customer base. You then realise that now if you have to extract from your customers, you also need to from your partners and stakeholders.

When you prioritise value creation, you always ensure you extract as little as possible. And that way, you always ensure that the best product wins. So the best software always wins because as long as it’s creating value, it will always grow.

And when it stops creating value, whoever else creates value should win. Because at the end of the day, the best products should have users. So that way, you’re always attracting, and you’re never extracting. It’s the idealistic model.

But I think we strive towards and can somehow come somewhere in the middle. All will be a better version of the internet than we have today.

Do you need to register a DAO? How can one register it as it is a decentralised organisation?

Legal frameworks are still evolving for this. You’ll notice that there are many different structures that people are adopting worldwide; different DAOs are choosing different ways to incorporate them. I wouldn’t say there’s a right way or prescribed way yet. The best is the way that lets you function and operate the quickest, at least right now in a legal manner.

Incorporation is something that is going to be a top priority for a long time, especially given how diverse jurisdictions are. Just the sheer diversity every day, for example, in developer DAO, you have at least one person from almost every continent in the world. And then you have people spread across distributed even within these continents. So it’s a very tricky thing that will take a long time to establish. So yeah, I would say there isn’t a standard now.

What if a few members quit the DAO before achieving the mission? Can the DAO builder onboard new members then?

If a member fails to contribute or decides to quit the DAO, one will transfer the ownership of one’s NFTs to another member. Either you transfer it out of goodwill to someone more deserving, or you could sell your NFTs on Open Sea so that someone else can buy them to gain access. Currently, that’s how it works.

Can a member manipulate the DAO and indulge in scams? How can such events be prevented?

That is how it’s structured and how the governance works. Right now, because there’s so little information outside, we’re seeing a lot more scams because there is a strong need to do your own research on these things. Over time, as with all the other things we’ve seen in crypto, you become more and more informed on the dos and don’ts in setting up these organisations.

Even with NFT projects, you now have certain signs telling you this is good or bad. These signs will get more and more codified and structured. And it will be ingrained in us. There would be the kind of society with self-imposed regulations that we are doing within our society or community ahead of regulation catching up. It is going to take time. It is up to us as a community to educate people around us. Those are the steps to take right now in forming the best practices for how a DAO could look in the future.

How is DAO relevant to the startup ecosystem?

Every software company starts as a startup, and these startups then grow and scale over time to become big. Over time, people will stop differentiating geography and boundaries, and we will have more and more decentralised communities forming.

After all, an organisation is just a group of people. It means we will see communities form who want to build many things. They want to build products for themselves as well as for other communities. This will be the foundation of the startups of the future.

DAOs, as I said earlier, are tools that enable these communities to function in a more distributed manner. It is only relevant to a startup to become a DAO when they are trying to accomplish something that requires them to be distributed somehow. You must have proposals and run on a blockchain from day one. These things would require some form of transition and should be very objective-driven.

When tools catch up over time, you could have DAOs emerging everywhere and functioning from the first day. The way blockchains work is based on how distributed consensus is achieved. You need to adopt that mindset of power DAO wields, the openness of it, the ability to enter or exit it whenever you want, the ability to have an equal say in decisions, and the ability to democratise certain decision-making processes.

Those concepts are what is relevant to startups today. And if they can leverage the good things and reduce or remove inefficient processes, they will have many benefits.

Can a DAO raise VC funding? Also, is collaboration possible between two DAOs?

Of course, we see that happening regularly. Many models are coming up for this, such as superDAOs and subDAOs. You have DAOs of DAO, and these manage a portfolio of DAOs.

Each DAO is a community doing its own processes and functions. The value of these sub-DAOs is then derived into the Super DAO. All of these community members funnel into this overarching DAO.

Also Read: Accelerating Asia on building a company culture that fosters innovation and inclusion

There are other concepts as well where you can seek funding. Every DAO will be different from other DAOs; it’s all based on how your governance mechanism is set up. If an investor wants to invest in developer DAO, he/she can do so in multiple ways.

For example, they could start by purchasing an NFT to join the DAO. One way to invest is you buy NFTs and participate in proposals. Another way to contribute is to partner with some of our projects or developers; your contributions in this process could be compensated hypothetically in whatever token the developer comes up with.

So there are multiple ways you can contribute and participate. As I said, managing a decentralised community is just a way. I think the ways of investing and ways of collaborating financially remain the same. It’s just how the structure would be, what the process would look like, and what the legality of that is, and I think, is up for regulation to catch up.

Is there a cap on the number of members participating in a DAO?

For developer DAOs, there is a cap on the initial genesis members. The cap is the total number of NFTs they are listed. I can’t remember the exact number of this, but I think it is 2,000.

For DAOs generally, there are no hard and fast rules on how many people can participate. There are different phases. You don’t want to decentralise too quickly or have too many members because you need structure and processes to manage large decentralised communities.

For that, you need to have active contributors; you need to have a motivation for people; you need that incentive mechanism in place to get people to contribute and things like that.

I’m sure we will start seeing larger and larger DAOs as this concept starts seeing more traction.

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The time is now: robots are no longer just tackled during conversations about the latest sci-fi movies. Instead, they are among us, unlocking opportunities to live life efficiently and focus more of our time on matters that require human aspects.

The same goes for how robots can and have enabled businesses to operate more efficiently and scale at a much faster pace. Automating dull, dirty, dangerous, and dear tasks can free up one’s labour force, enabling human teams to perform higher value-adding cognitive work functions.

Human-machine collaboration is a massive opportunity to unlock greater business productivity and efficiency. With unpredictable conditions in many service-oriented work environments and the risks that accompany them, professional service robots can help ensure continued operation while cutting out vulnerabilities ascribed to human error. This is because service robots can readily step in and provide efficient and automated service without exposing customers to usual errors in human transactions.

Also read: Strengthening cybersecurity measures in the face of Web 3.0

This is evidenced by the growth of the robotics sector as technological advancements in AI, sensors, and analytics that enable more autonomy in machine operations are gaining increasing popularity in various service-based industries like restaurants and hospitals.  As such, among all forms of innovations in robotics, professional service robots are projected to dominate the sector by 2030. Because of the myriad of automation benefits that are present outside the factory setting such as efficiency, productivity, and accuracy, these professional service robots are in for new market growth opportunities.

Introducing robots outside traditional factory settings

Professional service robots present a new way of robotic automation beyond the factory setting. Professional service robots also tend to exhibit more autonomy through their ability to “learn” and respond to different problems, as well as mobility that allows them to roam around in unstructured environments as opposed to their industrial robot counterparts that are often fixed to the ground.

Used in undertaking commercial tasks, they take various forms, with many applications in industries like healthcare, retail, logistics, and facilities management.

There are various applications of professional service robots: they can be used to assist with concierge tasks or way-guiding, make deliveries of goods, and help in security patrol. Examples of this are retail service robots, front office service robots, and event service robots.

Also read: Optimising business solutions through customer-centricity

Innovations in accelerating the viability of incorporating robotics technology into business operations are also emerging. Robotics-as-a-Service business models, or RaaS, where robots are leased out instead of sold outright, present a great alternative to businesses that want to optimise their operations through professional service robots but don’t necessarily have the capital to invest in large-scale robotics augmentation. With these product and business model innovations, enabling digital transformation for businesses through professional service robot technology is now more accessible.

As robot deployments become more common, however, users are deploying more than one type of robot, with each type needing its own unique interface to command and control. Through robotmanager, a robot fleet management software, managing different types of robots has never been easier. Streamlining your robotics solutions under one universal software, robotmanager can help businesses optimise their use of service robots.

The perks of professional service robots

The business case for incorporating professional service robots into business operations is apparent: it optimises operational resources, increases productivity, and reduces costs, enabling better business performance. This has been applied in the transportation industry, through autonomous vehicles for last-mile delivery solutions. A collaboration between Grab and NCS showcases this, where they enabled a food delivery service in Sentosa, Singapore through an autonomous vehicle robot. This initiative helped cultivate a more convenient meal delivery experience for beachgoer customers in the area.

Facility management in the retail and logistics industries has massive optimisation opportunities from this technology too, through next-generation automation and AI solutions. Shopping malls and airports can use professional service robots to bolster security, deliver concierge services, make deliveries, and streamline facility upkeep tasks like cleaning.

Find out how you can get on board

To learn more about professional service robots from experts on ways and means to integrate robotics into your business operations, catch the upcoming NCS webinar Advancing Automation: Practical tips and tricks to integrating robotics into operations on August 24. You may sign up for the webinar here.

Also read: Freshworks bolsters startups with cloud-based sales and support solutions

The session panel features Wynthia Goh, Senior Partner at NCS; Matthew Festo, General Manager at Open Robotics; Alex Lai, Chairman of ICT Section at IET Hong Kong; and Siew Min Ang, Senior Vice President, Airport Operations Management for Changi Airport Group. The panel will be moderated by Connie Ang, Senior Director for Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, and Centre Director of FutureNow Innovation Centre at Singtel.

The panel session will discuss the following topics:

• A deep dive into the robotics ecosystem and the importance of key partnerships for a successful robotics business with robot vendors and robot developers through an open-robotics collaboration approach
• How various industries can capitalise and benefit from integrating service robots into their operations, and share trends and case studies of successful applications in different tech and non-tech industries.
• The ROI use case of integrating robotics into business operations, assessing whether a business is ready for adopting this technology. 
• How the Asia Pacific region has enabled best practices across different industries in both tech and non-tech sectors, as well as scale robotics infrastructure to optimise overall business operations.

NCS is a leading technology services firm with a presence in the Asia Pacific and partners with governments and enterprises to advance communities through technology. NCS provides differentiated and end-to-end technology services to clients with its NEXT capabilities in digital, cloud and platforms, as well as core offerings in application, infrastructure, engineering and cybersecurity. To learn more, visit https://www.ncs.co/en-sg/services/intelligent-platforms/mobile-robotic-workforce/

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

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 rise of live streaming e-commerce, often referred to as live commerce, is a new and revolutionary marketing channel and platform based on the initial success of TV Shopping.

By borrowing ideas and formats from this traditional method, retailers are able to create live streamed content where the stream host or Key Opinion Leader (KOL) can interact with the audience, showcase the products and answer questions in real-time.

Furthermore, live commerce connects the shopping cart functionality directly with the live stream, allowing users to purchase items without leaving the stream, as well as, taking advantage of any time-limited content or deals which may be available to them during the stream time.

Retailers are exploring this new channel of marketing as a direct-to-consumer alternative to the current methods used. However, most countries in Asia are still relying on large corporates to provide streaming services, with few startups in the space to bridge the gap.

Live commerce appears to be a natural evolution from video-based marketing or video-first commerce. Most brands embraced video-based marketing by starting out on social media platforms such as TikTok or YouTube, utilising influencers in the space with a strong following similar to the company’s target demographic.

Often on-demand videos of short to medium length were used to promote and sell the products. Users could comment, but live interaction was not possible through this format, and shopping cart integration was not possible yet. However, the on-demand nature of these recorded videos did indicate a higher engagement and conversion rate compared to traditional e-commerce solutions.

Also Read: Why live commerce is here to stay in Asia

This led to the development and growth of live commerce, allowing brands and consumers to interact with each other via live streams directly. This led more retailers to embrace the sales model known as direct-to-consumer, as live commerce opens doors for this direct engagement.

Based on the strong results in this space, leading brands, such as L’Oréal and Nike, have announced that they will be focusing on direct-to-consumer solutions, like live commerce, moving forwards, and the expectation is that other brands will soon follow.

How the live streaming e-commerce space is evolving

Live commerce originated in China, and with the popularity of influencers (or KOLs), as well as the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. China has seen the live stream market grow 57 times between 2017 and 2020 and has not shown signs of slowing down. After gaining rapid traction in China, other countries around the world have slowly started exploring and adopting similar methods to drive online sales.

Asian countries, in particular, have been quick to adopt live commerce solutions, although not at the speed of China, and have found that the solution can improve sale conversion due to the following factors:

• Interaction with the influencer or KOL drives the conversion rate up, increasing the sales and followers for a retailer.
• Users are able to ask for more details on the product, view it from multiple angles and gain a better understanding of the product compared to just photos and a webpage description. Furthermore, live commerce doesn’t require users to go to a store to check the product in person to help them make the final decision on purchasing. This improves the users’ trust in the product, which leads to a higher purchase rate.
• Users are able to get time-limited offers or discounts more often when taking part in a live stream, allowing them to get better deals on the products they are interested in. Around half of the customers that engage with live streams have stated that they are engaging due to the high discount rate available.

These factors are driving retailers of various sizes to explore and experiment with the opportunity of live commerce in various markets and started to evolve how people shop online.

This rise in direct-to-consumer live commerce approaches for retail companies is creating demand for platforms and services related to supporting the businesses behind the live stream. Many retailers face challenges in starting up their own live commerce channel and are seeking third-party suppliers to help bridge the technology and marketing gap generated by a new channel.

How BeLive is helping companies evolve into a new market

BeLive, founded in 2014, has been taking live commerce by storm, creating opportunities for retailers of all sizes to leverage live commerce for their own brands and tap into the direct-to-consumer market.

Unlike some of the more extensive services in the space that are currently available, BeLive has focused on identifying and resolving pain points for each retail customer, providing a tailored experience through custom live streaming platforms for the brand, and supporting the development of the stream contents. By providing end-to-end solutions and empowering retailers to leverage video and live streaming through their own platforms, retailers are able to tap into next-generation consumer behaviours.

Also Read: BeLive lands US$4.5M funding to develop AI, ML capabilities in live-streaming

As retail companies face the upcoming wave of disabling third party cookies in browsers, it becomes more important for first-party data to be able to provide the information needed for retailers to keep identifying their target audience and successfully marketing to them.

Startups such as BeLive can offer these retailers the opportunity to gain end-to-end support for their video-based marketing channels, and bolster their direct-to-consumer channel, meanwhile gathering and reviewing the analytical data through the live streams hosted on a white labelled BeLive platform hosted on the retailers’ own website or app to understand the audience they are engaging deeply.

Beyond just the idea of reaching and understanding their audiences, retailers are also turning to live commerce as a new format for entertainment sales. Real-time engagement with the audience can enable communication and entertaining content based on the products being sold as well as the influencer or KOL featured in the stream.

Based on a recent survey of South Korean users who engage in live commerce, 47.3 per cent of them highlight that they are there to support the KOL or influencer featured, while McKinsey found that a quarter of adults are more likely to purchase items recommended by them by these influencers or KOLs.

BeLive taps into their partner network solutions, an offering beyond just the platform, to support retailers in finding the right influencers, graphic designers and production houses to enable a successful live streamed show.

This support proves vital to retailers of all sizes, allowing their solutions to be streamlined into one location rather than a fragmented approach which currently exists within the market.

How BeLive is expanding into new markets

With BeLive being one of the first advocates for live commerce, their vision was to build a platform to connect streamers and their fans. After having their solution white labelled by Rakuten in 2019, they catered to an uptick of brands looking for their own live commerce solutions who were steadily moving away from the offerings on social media.

Kenneth Tan from BeLive said, “I’m pretty happy to say that right now we power 100 million viewers every single month indirectly through our solutions. So that’s a huge influence that we have, and I think this influence comes with a lot of responsibility as well.”

This demand for the live commerce sector has seen an increase in the need for solutions like BeLive’s to connect together three key verticals in the market in order to create the ideal environment for live commerce to flourish.

This includes content creator companies or advertising agencies, e-commerce enablers and systems integrators and finally, cloud infrastructure players. With these key players, BeLive is able to support the end-to-end services of their retail customers.

Also Read: The era of live commerce has finally arrived. Will retailers embrace it?

One area that BeLive has specialised in is building this network across Asia, allowing them to enable cross-border live commerce, connecting retailers to an audience beyond their country borders. Their current focus is to expand this further through their efforts in the Rainmaking Expand: South Korea program, collaborating with players in the key verticals as they explore connecting retailers with the rest of their Asian network.

How startups can support companies to keep up with the latest trends

Even as China makes record e-commerce sales every year through live streaming, there is still a significant gap in specific markets within Asia when it comes to approaching live commerce.

For example, in South Korea, we still see a strong dependence on more prominent players in the space, meaning that retailers have to utilise the tools, platforms and payment systems implemented by these companies, with a lack of deep data on the audiences, or control in the customer flow.

Although there is an increase in digital agencies that are helping retailers bridge the knowledge gap on how to manage live commerce, there is a low number of options available to enable retailers to run their own streams on their own platform or website.

This area within the e-commerce sector shows early signs that it is ripe for disruption by startups. As solutions in all stages of the live commerce funnel become developed by a variety of startups, similar to BeLive, we are expecting a shift and rapid growth within the market over the next few years, enabling the adoption of live commerce to grow.

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Niv Della, a Filipino beauty and skincare products company operating under Colourette and Fresh Formula brands, has raised an undisclosed sum in seed capital from Foxmont Capital Partners.

The startup was founded by entrepreneur-turned-content creator Nina Dizon-Cabrera.

The firm utilises social and digital community-powered marketing strategies.

Colourette and Fresh Formula are gaining traction in the fast-growing D2C beauty and skincare category that has seen increased regional and global attention from investors.

Colourette is available on e-commerce platforms, including Shopee and Lazada.

Also Read: How technology can influence the beauty and cosmetics industry

The firm claims it has grown considerably in recent years while expanding its footprint across online and offline channels.

Nina Cabrera said that the confidence in grassroots beauty and cosmetics brands is growing rapidly alongside the rising demand for high-quality yet affordable beauty products.

The Philippines has emerged as the fastest-growing e-commerce industry in the world. The beauty and cosmetics industry’s young and tech-savvy population create a vast opportunity for homegrown beauty brands like Colourette to reach new heights and gain market share.

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Fundraising or preparing your startup for fundraising? Build your investor network, search from 400+ SEA investors on e27, and get connected or get insights regarding fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today.

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The world is waking up to a green revolution. From banning the use of single-use plastics to creating a sustainability awareness in manufacturing and production industries, many initiatives are driving the environmental preservation wave today. The Paris Agreement, especially, requires countries to follow through with their greenhouse gas emission reductions as promised during the summit.

So, how can countries take measures to reduce their carbon footprint? In a continent as large as Asia, a land that is home to about 60 per cent of the world’s population, every step towards pollution reduction counts.

When it comes to controlling greenhouse gas emissions, the most effective way is to make the use of energy more efficient. By reducing the consumption and reliance on traditionally generated energy, Asia would take a big leap towards a cleaner future.

One effective way to manage energy consumption is using modern smart building technology, like automated lighting and intelligently managed HVAC systems. Let’s dig deeper into the various ways building technology can help Asia move towards a greener, healthier future.

The confluence of security solutions, analytics and utility automation

Energy consumption is the highest during peak times in commercial buildings. Being larger in size, the management of HVAC and lighting becomes a matter of complication. These buildings have spaces that are intended for different purposes, which define how frequently these spaces will be utilised and by how many people.

Also Read: Why Asia Pacific is a hotbed for bold ideas in material technology and sustainability

By integrating your building’s commercial access control system with automated HVAC control and an analytics platform, an efficient way to manage energy consumption can be achieved:

• Security cameras would give the data input regarding the frequency, quantity and duration of use of each space of a building by the populace while also keeping your building secure by deterring up to 61 per cent of burglaries.
• The analytics engine would then draw up a trends chart that would display the usage patterns of each space, clearly determining the high and low use areas of a commercial building.
• The automated/managed HVAC system can then utilise these trend charts to deploy services according to space use.

The commercial access control system sensors, furthermore, can be programmed effectively to communicate one-time use areas to prevent HVAC from deploying resources for such cases. Space utilisation combined with intelligent analytics and HVAC management work to streamline energy consumption based on space occupancy.

Service automation

Automation has always been a driver of efficiency, wherever it is applied. In fact, in a study published by Report Linker, it was found that the market for building automation systems is expected to reach an amount of US$148.6 billion by the end of 2027, rising at a compounded annual growth rate of 11.4 per cent. These figures alone spell out the seriousness of the global building management industry to optimise its energy use through automation and its implements.

To that end, the automation of HVAC management systems can prove to be instrumental in achieving energy consumption efficiencies in managed smart buildings. HVAC would need to be digitised and integrated with access control systems to reduce energy consumption when occupancy is low:

• The system control activation mechanism is a great way to adjust a building’s energy use according to occupancy. The system relies on utilising access card data to deduce the occupancy of a space. Integration with HVAC, lighting and other utilities allows the automation engine to switch up or down the energy consumption accordingly
• The event management mechanism relies on high-footfall event analysis to adjust energy consumption. For example, if a commercial building hosts conferences, meetings or seminars during a week, the resource planning software can be programmed to receive inputs from digitised building use schedules to plan the deployment of building services intelligently

Building management systems are smart, automated and reliable today. Integrating them with building services, access control and building use patterns sets a great foundation for managing efficient energy use.

Building management IoT

Internet of Things, or IoT, is a way to intelligently analyse the space use of a building through integrating various access controllers, sensors, and other security devices on a single, communicative platform.

Also Read: How blockchain can enhance sustainability in fashion

When these devices transfer their data to a building management system, the smart analytics draw up the trends and patterns of space use, allowing the management system full control over service deployment (HVAC, lighting and others).

The best benefit that comes from enabling IoT with smart building management is the access to real-time data that can provide high-quality, actionable insights to plan energy consumption effectively.

Furthermore, by automating the HVAC and lighting of the building, the building management system would practically run itself and learn from the analytics of building use, polishing its resource use more with each run.

Wrapping up

Energy consumption is one of the highest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions across the globe. In Asia, with a huge portion of the population inhabiting the continent, these emissions are far more prominent; the need to manage energy consumption is far more pressing than in other continents.

The adoption of smart buildings is helping lead the effort to reduce energy consumption, with the smart building market projected to grow by 10.9 per cent from US$72.6 billion in 2021 to US$121.6 billion by 2026. Implementing automation, IoT, and smart analytics with smart building technology in managing energy use is a great start in the revolution for a cleaner future.

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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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Alibaba said to be doubling down on SEA amid tech correction
Several industry sources said to DSA that Alibaba’s investment team has been on a SEA tour in the past 2-4 weeks, zipping across Indonesia, Vietnam and Singapore to engage directly with startup founders.

Accelerating Asia on building a company culture that fosters innovation and inclusion
To achieve its mission, Accelerating Asia needs to implement an organisational culture that supports and promotes the values they live by, says Co-Founder and General Partner Amra Naidoo.

Vision Fund’s US$21B in losses drag SoftBank Q1 earnings down
The Vision Funds, which posted a total of about US$21B in losses, saw its investments in publicly listed companies depreciating amid concerns of an economic recession.

Indonesian logistics firm Paxel secures US$23M funding
Investors are Astra Digital International, Central Capital Ventura, and MDI Ventures; Paxel provides same-day local and intercity deliveries, smart locker service, a local snack platform, bulk delivery offering, and waste treatment solution.

Singapore investment platform Xcelerate scores US$11M funding
Investors are Altair Capital and Exacta Capital; Xcelerate provides software solutions and services catering to the GRC and ESG requirements of corporates operating across geographies.

Crypto exchange Hodlnaut shuts down due to current market conditions
The Singapore-based exchange said the move will allow it to focus on stabilising liquidity and preserving assets while working toward a solution to its current situation; It was exposed to the collapse of the Terra blockchain protocol in May.

Binance, WazirX butt heads amid money laundering probe
Binance is distancing itself from its subsidiary exchange WazirX after the latter’s assets were frozen by Indian authorities last week following a money laundering investigation.

SIG, Singtel Innov8 invest in metaverse platform DataMesh
DataMesh helps companies to develop an internal metaverse platform for frontline workers in the manufacturing, construction, and operations sectors.

Crypto.com secures Korean operating licenses
The crypto exchange also acquired payment service provider PnLink and virtual asset provider OK-Bit; Crypto.com earlier secured approvals in Singapore and Dubai, and registrations in Italy, Greece, and Cyprus.

NTU, Royal Golden Eagle to launch US$4.3M textile research centre
The centre aims to bolster innovation in textile recycling and apply research outcomes; It will focus on sustainable textile recycling, automated textile waste sorting systems, eco-friendly dye removal, and new textile development.

SG’s consumer goods brand Cloversoft raises 7-figure seed funding
The lead investor is Apricot Capital; Cloversoft manufactures eco-friendly, high-quality household facilities, notably Singapore’s first unbleached bamboo tissue; It has customers across Malaysia, Brunei, Cambodia, Myanmar, and Taiwan.

Filipino D2C beauty, skincare brand Colourette closes seed funding
The investor is Foxmont Capital Partners; Colourette has fostered a community mindset by utilising social and digital community-powered marketing strategies, and actively engaging with the Colourette Club in product creation and innovation.

SG social networking firm NextBlock raises US$362K pre-seed
Investors are Plug and Play APAC, Farquhar Venture Capital and Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan; NextBlock aims for its platform to improve neighbour-to-neighbour communications by acting as a hub for users in a neighbourhood to come together.

BS Capital acquires Premier Taxis to boost vehicle leasing business
In addition to strengthening BIS Motoring, the group will also take over Premier Taxis’ street-hail service operator license and Class 2 ride-hail service operator license – both issued by Singapore’s Land Transport Authority.

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In 1944, the Bretton Woods Agreement, an American-led system designed to govern monetary relations between participatory states, established the principles for international financial relations and provided the basis of the modern global banking system.

Because of its Western-centric origins, the orthodox financial system operates using the concepts of low-risk vs high-risk territories, pre-supposing that emerging markets carry an inherently higher risk than more economically developed countries. This infrastructure is effectively neocolonialist in its certainty that Western ideals and practices are intrinsically superior and should be exported and enforced onto other peoples and systems. 

Southeast Asia (SEA) has recently witnessed game-changing growth and innovation in banking services. With the World Bank estimating that emerging markets will account for 63 per cent of global trade flows by 2035, this should be an era of unfettered and rapid growth for SEA economies.

However, legacy banking protocols stymy the potential of the markets, rejecting individuals and organisations based purely on geographical and geosocial preconceptions. While 99 per cent of payments within and between parties in US, EU, and UK countries are processed in under two hours, payments into and out of emerging markets are vastly more complex, despite US$6.4 trillion moving annually from these markets.

This Anglocentric financial orthodoxy remains, voluntarily or otherwise, blind to how to measure and adequately identify risk in non-Western markets and defaults to forcing a suboptimal legacy model. Alternatively, it ignores emerging markets entirely, claiming they are ‘too risky’.

Whilst Fintech generally creates fluency and ease of use for Western market users, the fact that such businesses lack custody services of their own means that making a transfer or opening an account is slick for a Western party. Still, the fundamental drawbacks of the system remain when interfacing outside Western markets where the Fintech banking partners are not quite as comfortable.

Adapting to the decentralised nature of Web3

However, the truly global and decentralised nature of Web3 allows for the opportunity of a borderless, unbiased system that will go a long way to abolishing these issues, meaning that risk factors are analysed through raw decentralised data alone, as opposed to within the sphere of existing, institutional presuppositions. 

Currently, financial institutions have in many ways to ‘trust’ a potential client’s representations when they are onboarding, e.g. asking for identity or corporate formation documents and statements of banking history.

In a Web3 environment, there is an environment of permissionless data, which importantly takes trust out of the equation, or at the very least, minimises it. So in a compliance sense, data from third parties about a potential customer takes out the first-person bias and, in many ways, can be treated as a superior data set.

Moving into this way of thinking and operating Web3 technologies can allow Southeast Asian countries to be viewed through a clearer lens by developed market banks on a level playing field by raising the quality of the KYC/AML provided. 

True fiscal inclusion means ridding the infrastructure of geographical, cultural, and racial bias, which we at Tintra are heavily invested in providing. Our unique solution is to build a scalable banking infrastructure with patented machine learning and artificial technology on a full Web3-enabled platform.

Because people’s values, behaviours, and even thought processes are often radically different from one culture to the next, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for understanding each region. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ are subjective constructs, and with the rise of Web3, these gaps and, conversely, nuances will diverge to make a more level playing field. Well, at least that is the potential.

The evolution of Web3 marks the beginning of a financial revolution across Southeast Asia, and its potential is boundless. My hope is that it heralds an era of unprecedented growth in fiscal inclusion across the region so that Singapore does not stand alone as the sole global banking destination in the region but acts as the driving force for regional revolution in banking.

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Cars are often synonymous with mobility, social status, and most importantly, freedom. As a result, owning a car is both an aspiration and an expectation for many people. But that is often easier said than done, especially in Singapore.

High excise duties and Certificate of Entitlement (CoE) prices regularly see Singapore’s top global rankings for the highest car ownership costs. That is even before considering all the ancillaries of owning a car, such as insurance, tax, maintenance and more.

Ride and car-sharing services have emerged as popular alternatives to traditional car ownership, but the sheer mobility of having a personal vehicle remains unrivalled and highly coveted. In fact, last year, car ownership rose by four per cent even as people were driving less due to circuit breaker restrictions. To cater for this demand, it is important for stakeholders in the automotive ecosystem to work together and help drivers overcome the hurdles to car ownership.

Addressing the barriers to entry

Cost is the primary barrier to car ownership in Singapore. According to the Land Transport Authority, this year’s first round of CoE bidding saw prices rise as high as US$99,999. That is just for the right to own a car for 10 years.

Then there is the Additional Registration Fee, excise duty, GST and the price of the actual vehicle itself, not to mention fees for petrol, insurance, road taxes, maintenance and more. This often results in a staggering final bill.

Also Read: Exploring the future of connected vehicle technology and transportation industry trends with Geotab CEO Neil Cawse

The second hurdle is complexity. Aside from choosing the car model, a significant amount of paperwork must be completed for CoE bidding, loan and insurance applications, tax filings and so on. Second-hand car buyers also must do their research and inspections to avoid being saddled with a lemon.

The final step is usually the time-consuming ‘shopping around’ for the best prices on essential car services such as servicing and maintenance.

Last but certainly not least is flexibility. The astronomical fees associated with CoE bidding alone tend to mean that successful bidders are effectively ‘locked in’ to a car for at least 10 years. However, a driver might start a family or emigrate for work at that time, and their car needs may change.

After the CoE expires, car owners then face the dilemma of either renewing the CoE and paying higher road taxes or applying for a brand new one, both costly but necessary options.

Connection through collaboration

Much of what makes car ownership so onerous is the fragmented state of the automotive industry. Customers spend a lot of time and effort comparing prices and service packages. If players in the automotive ecosystem can collaborate to provide a more streamlined experience, this would greatly improve accessibility for drivers and boost the overall industry.

Car subscription is one example of a unified and connected automotive ecosystem. A typical car subscription package wraps the A-Z of car ownership up in a neat all-in-one package. Users sign up on a digital platform in minutes and get everything included for the duration they want with a single fixed monthly fee, car, insurance, maintenance and more. This also ensures dealers have a continuous stock rotation, while workshops and insurance providers have a steady stream of customers.

This solution also streamlines and simplifies the ownership process. Drivers no longer have to negotiate individually with different companies and navigate a maze of regulations that differ according to the various related industries. They have an easy benchmark to compare value between providers, which was more challenging in a fragmented landscape.

A connected ecosystem can have a positive impact on cost due to economies of scale. Partners in a car subscription package, for example, often gain access to a wider customer pool due to cross-promotion and greater audience reach. They can thus offer attractive deals such as brand-new cars, enhanced service offerings and full insurance coverage at more affordable prices, allowing drivers to tailor their car ownership to their changing needs, tastes and budget.

Also Read: How is smart cabin disrupting the automotive technology to glory

Drivers also become more receptive to new automotive technologies because of the reduced upfront investment and commitment required in such ecosystems. Using the car subscription example, platforms can offer electric or autonomous vehicles for customers to try out affordably and flexibly. Based on the customer feedback collected, ecosystem players could then create more advanced and efficient products and services.

Integrated for the future

Ultimately, car ownership is about access to mobility. However, the very concept of mobility is constantly evolving, especially as we step into a technologically-driven world, so the ecosystem must evolve alongside it to keep pace.

Meeting the driver’s needs must be at the forefront of the industry’s goal to achieve sustainability, which can only be holistically achieved through collaboration between all industry stakeholders.

The time is ripe for all players in the automotive sector to join forces in creating an integrated and seamlessly connected automotive ecosystem designed to serve drivers better. Our pursuit of a more mobile future depends on it.

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In the world of social media, wasting money, time, and resources is both easy and incredibly commonplace. When sites like Facebook have almost three billion users, and others like YouTube and TikTok aren’t far behind, regardless of the mistakes, it’s an essential industry to reach.

Revolutionising the way people interact

There are several key ways that social media has revolutionised the way people interact. News is now updated moment to moment and is always available, contact is possible anywhere, and with anyone, information is available for all topics and endless, and groups built on common grounds and interests are easier to find than ever.

This means that from region to region, country to country, group to group, social media has found a way to influence everyone. This puts a lot of power in each individual’s hands. Corporations spend infinite amounts of money increasing their audience and promoting their products through influencers.

A strong social media following will build loyalty and create a lot of buying power. On Facebook, only 4.2 per cent of those who view a post will engage with it in any way. Also, only 11 per cent of posts will even be spread to non-followers. These are numbers consistent with social media platforms at large.

Numbers like these make it hard for those with smaller audiences to make much of their platform. This is why growing one’s base and creating loyalty is far more important than attempts at blowing up in one post or trying to make quick money early. Promoted posts are how one makes money in large part, but too many too early will destroy audience trust.

Finding your audience

Keeping this all in mind, it’s essential to understand how to do this. For the process of finding your audience, there are several phases of interaction. The first phase is where one can work to set the groundwork. This phase has three significant aspects of the environment, foundation and sensitivities.

The environment is figuring out what’s going on in the market. Once one knows their content and if it’s entertaining, educational, or fulfilling any other market, they can work to fit that market better. The next step is building a foundation, collecting data, using a wide scope of content, and honing in on what works. This is where a lot of the hard physical work will take place.

Also Read: Know thy customer: The only rule for startups looking to build trust on social media

Finally, as a part of the first phase, one must have sensitivities. An awareness of the needs and emotions of their audience will help to produce better content. If the demographic is seen to be primarily male or female, young or old, that changes what content will be received best. One can also work to change the audience if need be by being sensitive to that audience.

The next phase is characterised by tone and timing. This is where one has to go beyond looking at demographics and understand the attitude given by the content and how it comes across. This is the tone. Timing understands when one uses the basics of phase one to have more control and understanding of the timing of their content and audience reaction.

Finally, the last phase can be summed up with emotions. This is not the emotions of the audience, as that is covered primarily in phases one and two, but instead the emotions of the content creator. Learning to keep a calm and level head is an essential step in building a good audience.

This means no impulsive reactions to the audience and their potential criticisms or compliments. Instead, one should work to take in the audience responses and use the more common comments as a basis for micro improvements. At the end of the day, comments are not consistent, but the data is.

It’s through the use of these few phases that someone can start to garner a solid and, importantly, reliable audience. Anyone can get lucky with a big hit and have a good idea, but it’s the measured and tactical approach to creating content that will lead to real success.

This is a plan for success that is universal, applying to content from all countries and areas. And while there are other little tips that can help, things like using less formal language, not relying on clickbait, not overdoing paid posts, etc. These aren’t what separates the successful creator from the unsuccessful.

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It has been a busy period for Accelerating Asia, the regional network of startup programmes and an early-stage venture capital fund headquartered in Singapore. In addition to actively fundraising for its latest fund, the programme is also recruiting its seventh cohort, which is set to begin in October.

In an interview with e27, Accelerating Asia Co-Founder and General Partner Amra Naidoo shares her excitement for the upcoming cohort. “I was happy when we got our first cohort, and now we’re on to seventh,” she says. “Every cohort is a milestone [for us].”

The regional tech startup ecosystem might recognise Accelerating Asia as a programme that focuses on the Pre-Series A stage companies, defined as those with a level of traction, revenue, and active customers. These companies may have also had investors abroad; they join the programme with the goal of “taking things to the next level.”

Accelerating Asia is also known for making milestones such as having 40 per cent of the companies in its cohorts led by female founders.

“We would never drop that standard or change the criteria for anyone,” Naidoo says. “When we talk about that 40 per cent number, a lot of work has been done in the backend to create a culture where, hopefully, female founders would think of Accelerating Asia as a good investor they want to work with. It comes down to things like our Code of Conduct.”

Every individual – from mentor to founder to investor– who is working with the organisation has to follow this code of conduct religiously. “We’re strict about blacklisting people, not engaging them to work with us again. It is about being upfront with our values. I think that helps to create this kind of environment where, hopefully, lots of different types of people feel comfortable coming to us,” Naidoo elaborates.

In this feature article, she explains in detail the kind of company culture that Accelerating Asia built to support its mission. We divided the article into three parts:

1. Saving the world, one startup at a time — where we focus on the history of the organisation and how it came up with its structure and mission
2. Enabling innovation — a focus on the values that they implement and how they are using them to run their operations
3. Supporting the ecosystem — a look into what the organisation offers to its portfolio companies, including how they measure performance

Also Read: Meet the first batch of startups that received investment from Accelerating Asia’s US$20M Fund II

Saving the world, one startup at a time

The journey of Accelerating Asia began in 2018. At the time, Naidoo and co-founder Craig Bristol Dixon were running an accelerator programme for a corporate when they found out that it was shutting down, and they had to figure out what to do next.

“We felt that there was a need for an independent accelerator programme that has high quality and that is serving a specific stage of a company. It is what we have been doing with the corporate accelerator, but not in the fullest sense. So that’s essentially how we started thinking about Accelerating Asia,” she explains.

When they first began, one of the first things that they needed to figure out was the revenue model of the business. “In the early days, we gave ourselves a little timeline to see if we could get something off the ground. We consulted a lot of industry professionals. We spoke to the Singapore government to other VCs. We spoke to the JFDI team, who is infamous in the region for their work starting up that accelerator programme, just to see what we needed to do to make this sustainable on its own. As I’m sure you’re aware, it’s just really difficult to have an independent programme.”

Following the research, the co-founders came up with three business lines:

1. The accelerator
2. The consulting/partnership arm
3. The venture arm

These three business lines enable Accelerating Asia to balance the commercial and idealistic sides of the business. When starting up Accelerating Asia, the co-founders knew their passion lies in working with startups. Still, they were aware of the challenge that they were facing: how to remain financially independent and sustainable as it is “really hard” to charge the startups “enough money to continue a high-quality programme.”

“That is where the second part of our business came in, which is essentially a consulting or a partnerships arm. We run startup programmes for partners, be it governments, universities, or multinationals. That is the early revenue stream for Accelerating Asia before it evolved into a fund,” says Naidoo.

“We naturally started thinking, ‘Well, if we are working with all these startups, we should invest in them too.’ That’s essentially how Accelerating Asia ventures, the third part of what we do, was set up. Looking back on it now, it all made sense to do it the way we did. But we essentially started three businesses around the same time, and it was a lot of work.”

Naidoo admits that running these three businesses can be quite challenging. “They can be competing in terms of how much time it takes you. But we found that they all create a really strong ecosystem, and they all feed into each other.”

Also Read: How the ‘Paris agreement’ for plastic is accelerating climate justice in SEA

Despite its importance, the commercial side of the business was not the only thing that Naidoo and Dixon set up at the beginning of their journey. Beyond that, Naidoo and Dixon also figured out the values they wanted to promote through Accelerating Asia.

The co-founders believe that entrepreneurs are one of humanity’s greatest catalysts for positive change –this becomes the guiding principle for the organisation.

“Craig was the one who put it down into such a beautiful sentence. And then … our marketing team had a go at it and made it even better. It embodies everything that we’re trying to do at Accelerating Asia … for [Dixon], he’s spoken a lot about how there are some entrepreneurs out there that could be working on some incredible things. If they just had the resources and the support, they could make [their impact] a reality and change the world,” Naidoo elaborates.

“I’m approaching it from a different perspective. I was working for UN Women for quite a while, working with a lot of social entrepreneurs. I got to see so many different business models and thought that if we could make these more scalable and sustainable and use technology as a tool to do that … The change and the impact that you could make could be amazing. So, we arrived at the same thing around the same time, but just different ways of getting there.”

I asked Naidoo how far along does she think they are in this journey of fulfilling their mission? As a response, she believes they are still at the “very beginning” of their journey. In our conversation, she also mentions how she was inspired by the works of other organisations in the industries –and the challenges faced by the community.

“The tech and investment space is not exactly known for its diversity or inclusiveness. We want to be different or even more than that, to set a standard for what it could be in this region and what it could look like.”

Enabling innovation

With the level of complexity that their operations can have, there is a need for Accelerating Asia to be methodical in how they are running things. The organisation believes that it can achieve this by implementing a culture that promotes the values they live by. Those three values are:

1. Flexibility
2. Trust in disagreement
3. Clarity

The first value they implement is flexibility. “We’ve always been quite flexible regarding where and how you work and how many hours you work. We don’t have any set office hours in the organisation. We do have team meetings and things like that; as long as you make it to those team meetings [then it is fine]. If you’re a night person and want to work in the evening, go ahead. If you’re a super early morning bird, you can do that too,” Naidoo elaborates.

An example of an initiative they implement is a Flexi Friday, where team members are not allowed to host meetings or events during the day. They would also be freed from the expectation to answer messages immediately on Fridays, enabling them to travel for the weekend and return to the office on Mondays.

“All of this is based on trust. The whole idea is that work should be something that you enjoy coming to; hopefully, you can thrive and find your flow … that’s the kind of environment we wanted to create.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic strikes, this flexibility that the team has implemented allows them to adjust and transition to remote working smoothly –they would even attribute their survival during the crisis to their ability to be flexible. 

Also Read: Accelerating Asia to launch Fund II in H2, ups investment size to US$250K

Another value that they implement is related to handling conflict and disagreement in the team.

“We have a disagree-and-move-on policy. Everybody in the organisation can be very opinionated. That’s why we hire people … to have their opinions about certain things. But there has to be a point where we just have to decide. And so, even if you disagree with something, the decisions must be made, and then you move on,” Naidoo says. “There are so many different things we’ve tried to implement; we’re constantly testing different things and frameworks.”

Another aspect I am curious about is how the team members work with each other, as some companies in the startup ecosystem are known to have a unique approach to it. Some are more project-oriented, while some are more team-oriented. In the case of Accelerating Asia, the first thing that one needs to know is that the company is being divided into three divisions that work on the different aspects of the business: The accelerator, the fund management, and the partnerships.

The accelerator is certainly the core of the activities in the company. Still, there is the fund management division that works closely with the LPs and the partnership division, which works on business development relationships and partner programme executions.

Despite these divisions, Naidoo points out that there are team members whose role sits across these three different areas. “For example, I’m more on the operational and administration sides, but much of my work also sits across the fund as the general partner. Whereas Craig is more on the portfolio and the startups as well as sitting across the fund.”

The team managed the role of its members using a matrix approach or swim lane diagram, which Naidoo sees as helpful in clarifying who is responsible for what, especially when many projects are happening with competing levels of priorities.

“We have just started testing out something called the DICE framework. When you’re running a project, who is the Decider? Who are the people that just need to be Informed of the project but don’t need to be actively involved in it? And then who are you bringing into the team to Consult on certain things, from marketing to legal? And then who are the team members Executing?” she explains each acronym.

“That helped us get some clarity internally, especially when you’ve got lots of different people doing lots of different things.”

In terms of the tools that they are using, Accelerating Asia relies on “the classics” such as Slack and Google Drive.

Supporting the ecosystem

So, what kind of support does Accelerating Asia give to its startups? Naidoo gives the answers by explaining what sets them apart from a similar organisations.

Also Read: A snapshot of the 11 startups joining Accelerating Asia’s 4th cohort

“Our accelerated programme is not the typical theory-based programme. We are very hands-on. We’re probably better described as hands-on investors rather than an accelerator programme because people just have preconceived ideas about what accelerator programmes are. So, our team are there for the startups.”

In the three months that a startup is involved with Accelerating Asia, the organisation assists them in hiring, restructuring the company, and legal matters such as contracts and agreements. They also assist the startups in marketing. fundraising, and even storytelling.

“We tend to work very closely with the founders themselves. But we have also worked with some of the smaller teams with the senior leadership team because that’s just as important at that stage,” says Naidoo.

As investors, Accelerating Asia does not set specific performance targets for its portfolio companies. However, they still expect to see growth. To ensure this, following graduation from the programme, they will catch up with the startups through phone calls every six months to see if they can help with anything.

“During the programme, we’re much more hands-on, and the feedback circle is quicker than six months. We’re seeing them almost every day, so it’s about creating an environment where they can trust you with any problems that they’re having. If there is a slowdown in growth, we can see why and what’s going on there and help them as appropriate.”

But what happens if a portfolio company fails to perform? What actions will the organisation take to prevent and handle that? To answer these big questions, Naidoo begins by explaining the qualitative and quantitative aspects of measuring a portfolio company’s performance. 

“The quantitative side is easier. We look at the company before they apply for the programme, and we have a certain set of metrics that we look at, things like monthly recurring revenue, user retention, and growth rates. We track them for every month of the programme until graduation and then every six months after that to see growth,” she elaborates.

“The qualitative aspect includes things like new partnerships or media coverage that they have, or growth of the founders themselves. Several founders were recently announced as Forbes 30 under 30. So, it is the other things that signal growth in the company and of the founders themselves,” she adds.

With all that they get to offer to startups, how does Accelerating Asia promote their works to the startup ecosystem? 

The organisation’s website is certainly the starting point for learning about its mission and how to apply to its programmes, but Accelerating Asia also runs webinars and events to help promote its activities, such as a monthly open house session at the Draper Startup House in Singapore. 

Also Read: Accelerating Asian IPO markets: How long can the initial public offering boom last?

“When we do travel around the region, we also have several startup events that we run. We’re always hopping around so they can get in contact with us. When we are in a recruitment cycle as we are right now, and applications are open, this is the best time to approach us. Just come and talk to us, drop by the office and things like that,” Naidoo says.

“Outside the recruitment cycle, it’s better [for startups] to put themselves down in the pre-application. Because they can start the application process, we can keep tabs on them and keep in contact with them.”

Last words

In an ecosystem where most accelerator programmes are affiliated with a corporate –from telco companies to banks– an independent programme has an opportunity to stand out and provide a unique experience for its participating startups. Most importantly, to stand out from the rest, an independent accelerator programme has to have a mission. 

As explained by Naidoo at the beginning of her conversation with e27, there is a certain “homework” that Accelerating Asia needs to do when setting up its organisation. It had to figure out a way to support itself and be sustainable as a business. In addition to that, they have to set up a system that can help support its mission. 

So far, if we look at the organisation’s portfolio companies, many of them are imbued with missions that align with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), from quality healthcare and education to employment and economic growth. While many of their companies, including Dana and Waitrr, may not secure unicorn status yet, they are experiencing steady growth. They are working in a field that creates an impact –in addition to making money.

This is not the first time that values such as flexibility and the willingness to disagree come out as key values that enable an organisation to stay resilient and grow. These are some of the traits that are often associated with the startup ecosystem. Still, it is always fascinating to see how each organisation implements it in their unique flavour.

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Image Credit: Accelerating Asia

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