Headlines have been enamoured with the cryptocurrency space, with the recent collapse of Terra-USD wiping an estimated US$40 billion off the books in a span of a week. The fallout from the crash still resonates across mainstream media as millions of users await the outcome of bankruptcy proceedings in hopes of recovering funds lent out to centralised finance platforms using decentralised rails such as Celsius, 3AC, and Hodlnaut.

Bridging the gap

However, even in this intimidating climate, governments worldwide are still experimenting with blockchain technologies and cryptocurrencies.

In Singapore alone, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) continues to pursue its goal of a digital asset ecosystem and is even experimenting with decentralised finance (DeFi) cryptocurrencies through its Project Guardian initiative. This hints that governments and the institutions they work with recognise the disruptive potential of the technology if implemented according to their evolving set of rules.

On the other side, crypto-native companies which have weathered the storm are continuing to build towards a vision of a better internet, all captured under the banner of Web3.

Although lacking a concrete definition, the key principle guiding Web3 is to return power back to the individual such that they have autonomy over their digital lives. This entails having ownership over their own identity, finances, and other critical data. Innovation in this space has been growing rapidly together with the number of developers eager to build the decentralised infrastructure of tomorrow.

What is blockchain, and why blockchain?

While it is uncertain which direction the scales will tip between consumer protection and individual autonomy, the underlying technology is here to stay.

Given its novelty and complexity, blockchain has always been conflated with cryptocurrencies due to the latter holding the most potential to change the social fabric between individuals and organisations. Nonetheless, to progress past the headlines and drive real value, it is crucial that this distinction be made. 

Also Read: Are NFTs here to stay (with or without blockchain)?

Blockchains are essentially a data structure which the majority of cryptocurrencies implement. Think of a table data structure highlighting the relationship between rows and columns. The first thing that might come to mind for most office workers is Microsoft Excel, but this is only one of the many implementations of the table data structure.

Likewise, decentralised digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum fall under the cryptocurrency class of blockchain data structure implementations where there are no gatekeepers to network participation and all transactions are publicly viewable.

There are other private implementations of blockchain technology targeted toward institutions which help reconcile data between a consortium of known participants. Whichever the implementation, this blockchain data structure enables us to arrive at a shared truth.

Removing complexities with blockchain

Albeit seemingly mundane, the implications are enormous as it removes the need for a trusted middleman. Taking a simple cash transfer, for example, banks are heavily involved in the process of performing identity checks, holding the cash in custody, to updating ledgers between various banks. To access the bank’s services, I must first open an account by providing my personal information, hand over ownership of my cash, and then instruct the bank to transfer my money on my behalf.

This gets exponentially complex once we factor in different banks, currencies, and countries. The more parties involved, the higher the reconciliation risks and fees that need to be paid as each party takes time and resources to update their own ledgers.

By setting out the rules of engagement in code, blockchain technology opens a new path forward in terms of efficiently maintaining a distributed ledger across a network of participants. No more referring to siloed databases that might be out of sync, but instead, getting the latest transactions straight from a shared ledger.

Not only is real transaction finality much faster, but the wide availability of data also means that any malicious activity can be detected even earlier. Data immutability ensures that transactions can never be altered, and the ledger history will always be available.

Also Read: How to venture into blockchain during a recession

Crucially, there is no limitation as to what the data on the blockchain represents, and hence this technology can be applied to any situation requiring multi-party consensus.

Forging a new path with blockchain

With the advent of Web3, it is clear that the future will involve blockchain technology and will be integrated into the future of work.

However, the blockchain industry’s exponential growth is a double-edged sword in that the relentless innovation in the space constantly adds to the vast wealth of information, which can be overwhelming for those starting out. For those who are not sure where to start, there are many amazing content creators helping users navigate through this dark forest.

Additionally, short and more focused courses such as Smartcademy’s Intro To Blockchain course, which can be completed within a month, can accelerate the understanding of key blockchain concepts and easily transfer to a preferred domain rather than diving deep into code.

This includes understanding the difference between blockchain and cryptocurrency, how blockchain is applied in both the traditional and alternative economies, and the varied use cases of cryptocurrencies.

Behind the headlines of multi-billion dollar bankruptcies and multi-million dollar ape images, blockchain is slowly but surely redefining much of the social fabric in our modern-day lives.

Critically, this disruption is already taking place as we speak: stablecoins enabling cross-country payments for fractions of a cent; decentralised finance platforms enabling trading, lending, and yield generation while maintaining full control over your own assets; Non-Fungible Tokens enabling exclusive access and rights based on ownership of a transferable digital token.

Many novel solutions are being built on top of these decentralised rails, most will fail, but those that survive will likely be our best bet to a more equitable internet.

Underlying the Web3 engine is the idea that individuals should always have the right to choose how to use their digital data and not have to rely on a trusted third party to operate their own data. Imagine accessing services without handing over ownership of your personal data and assets.

This also means that you are not locked into a particular service provider, whether these are social platforms like Facebook or monetary systems like the US dollar. The modularity of Web3 bodes well for the future of individual choice as users will no longer be arbitrarily forced into a particular system. Such opportunities might seem trivial for the average user now, but it will be priceless if and when they are forced to suddenly choose.

In other words, how much of yourself do you still own if powerful organisations outside your control abruptly change tact?

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I am excited to share Chainalysis’ 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index. For the third consecutive year, we ranked all countries by grassroots cryptocurrency adoption. The goal of our index is to measure where the most people are putting the biggest share of their money into cryptocurrency. While institutional activity is important to that, we also want to highlight the countries where individual, non-professional investors embrace digital assets the most.

Our methodology

In order to calculate our sub-indexes, we estimate countries’ cryptocurrency transaction volumes for different services and protocols based on the web traffic patterns of those services’ and protocols’ websites.

Relying on web traffic data means the usage of VPNs and other products that mask online activity, but given that our index takes into account hundreds of millions of transactions, VPN usage would need to be extremely widespread to meaningfully skew our data. Experts we interviewed for the report generally agreed that our index matches their perceptions of the markets they operate in, giving us more confidence in the methodology.

Sub-indexes and how they’re calculated

On-chain cryptocurrency value received at centralised exchanges, weighted by purchasing power parity (PPP) per capita

The goal of this sub-index is to rank each country by total cryptocurrency activity occurring on centralised services and to then weight the rankings to favour countries where that amount is more significant based on the wealth of the average person and the value of money generally within the country.

We calculate the metric by estimating the total cryptocurrency received by users of centralised services in each country and weighting the on-chain value based on PPP per capita, which measures the country’s wealth per resident.

The higher the ratio of on-chain value received to PPP per capita, the higher the ranking, meaning that if two countries had equal cryptocurrency value received, the country with the lower PPP per capita would rank ahead.

On-chain retail value received at centralised exchanges, weighted by PPP per capita

The goal of this metric is to measure the activity of non-professional, individual cryptocurrency users at centralised services based on how much cryptocurrency they’re transacting compared to the wealth of the average person.

We approximate individuals’ cryptocurrency activity by measuring the amount of cryptocurrency moved in retail transactions, which we designate as any transaction for under US$10,000 worth of cryptocurrency. We then rank each country according to this metric but weight it to favour countries with a lower PPP per capita.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) exchange trade volume, weighted by PPP per capita and number of internet users

P2P trade volume makes up a significant percentage of all cryptocurrencies in emerging markets. For this sub-index, we rank countries by their P2P trade volume and weight it to favour countries with lower PPP per capita and fewer internet users, the goal being to highlight countries where more residents are putting a larger share of their overall wealth into P2P cryptocurrency transactions.

On-chain cryptocurrency value received from DeFi protocols, weighted by PPP per capita

DeFi has been one of the fastest-growing areas of a cryptocurrency over the last two years. In fact, as we see in the case of DEXs vs CEXs, decentralised cryptocurrency protocols, which primarily use Ether as opposed to Bitcoin, have now overtaken centralised services in on-chain transaction volume.

Given the importance of DeFi to innovation in cryptocurrency, we wanted our adoption index to highlight countries where users are concentrating a disproportionately high share of their financial activity in DeFi protocols.

Also Read: A new type of digital arts are on the rise. How is Web3 redefining content ownership?

For this sub-index, we rank countries by their DeFi transaction volume, with weighting to favour countries with lower PPP per capita.

On-chain retail value received from DeFi protocols, weighted by PPP per capita

Just as we want our index to incorporate the activity of non-professional, individual cryptocurrency users on centralised services, we want to do the same with DeFi. So, this sub-index ranks each country by DeFi transaction volume carried out in retail-sized transfers, weighted to favour countries with lower PPP per capita.

How our methodology changed this year

The biggest change to our index methodology this year is the addition of two sub-indexes based on DeFi transaction volume and modifying two other sub-indexes to include only transaction volume associated with centralised services.

We did this for two reasons: First, as we explain above, highlighting countries leading the way in DeFi given its importance to the overall cryptocurrency ecosystem. Second, we wanted to address the issue of DeFi-driven inflation of transaction volume.

Deposits to and withdrawals from centralised services show up in on-chain transaction volume, but transactions within those services, such as trades on a centralised exchange, do not. Centralised services track that transaction volume internally, such as in order books for exchanges, meaning we don’t have access to it.

This is not the case with DeFi protocols. Because DeFi protocols are non-custodial and simply route cryptocurrency between private wallets, all DeFi transactions appear on-chain. That means that if you’re using on-chain data, DeFi protocol transaction volumes will receive a bump that volumes associated with centralised services don’t receive.

In the context of this index, that could lead to us artificially favouring countries with higher DeFi adoption over ones with more activity on centralised services, even if the amount of real transaction activity is the same.

In order to address this, we decided to measure each country’s CeFi and DeFi transaction volumes separately, both in total and at the retail level, and use them as equal components of the overall index. This way, every country’s transaction volume is compared more accurately, and we can be transparent about which countries see comparatively more transaction volume in the DeFi ecosystem.

The 2022 global crypto adoption index top 20

Country	Overall index ranking	Overall index score	Centralised service value received ranking	Retail centralised service value received ranking	P2P exchange trade volume ranking	DeFi value received ranking	Retail DeFi value received ranking
Vietnam	1	1.000	5	5	2	7	6
Philippines	2	0.753	4	4	66	13	5
Ukraine	3	0.694	6	6	39	10	14
India	4	0.663	1	1	82	1	1
United States	5	0.653	3	3	111	3	2
Pakistan	6	0.609	10	10	50	22	16
Brazil	7	0.562	7	7	113	8	7
Thailand	8	0.560	12	12	61	5	3
Russia	9	0.541	8	8	109	11	12
China	10	0.535	2	2	144	6	4
Nigeria	11	0.521	18	18	17	20	17
Turkey	12	0.519	9	9	121	19	15
Argentina	13	0.510	13	13	26	21	25
Morocco	14	0.507	19	19	21	33	18
Colombia	15	0.496	23	23	10	27	29
Nepal	16	0.478	17	17	19	34	41
United Kingdom	17	0.473	14	14	71	12	11
Ecuador	18	0.409	37	37	6	45	56
Kenya	19	0.397	43	43	5	9	34
Indonesia	20	0.396	16	16	129	18

Key takeaways from the 2022 crypto adoption index

Overall adoption slows worldwide in a bear market but remains above pre-bull market levels

Our data shows that global adoption has levelled off in the last year after growing consistently since mid-2019. We look at this trend in the chart below, where we apply our index methodology globally by summing all 154 countries’ index scores quarterly, from Q2 2019 to the present, and re-index that number again to show adoption growth over time across the world.

Global adoption of cryptocurrency reached its current all-time high in Q2 2021. Since then, adoption has moved in waves, it fell in Q3, which saw crypto price declines, rebounded in Q4 when we saw prices rebound to new all-time highs, and has fallen in each of the last two quarters as we’ve entered a bear market. Still, it’s important to note that global adoption remains well above its pre-bull market 2019 levels.

The data suggests that many of those attracted by rising prices in 2020 and 2021 stuck around and continue to invest a significant chunk of their assets in digital assets. That also aligns with our previous research showing that cryptocurrency markets have been surprisingly resilient through recent declines.

Big, long-term cryptocurrency holders have continued to hold through the bear market. So while their portfolios have lost value, those losses aren’t locked in yet because they haven’t sold. The on-chain data suggests those holders are optimistic the market will bounce back, which keeps market fundamentals relatively healthy.

Emerging markets dominate the global crypto adoption index

One trend we noted last year has only gotten stronger this year: Emerging markets dominate the index. The World Bank categorises countries into one of four categories based on income levels and overall economic development: high income, upper middle income, lower middle income, and low income.

Also Read: Where is the future of NFTs and metaverse heading towards?

Using that framework, we find that the middle two categories dominate the top of our index. Out of our top 20 ranked countries:

• Ten are lower-middle income: Vietnam, Philippines, Ukraine, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Morocco, Nepal, Kenya, and Indonesia
• Eight are upper-middle income: Brazil, Thailand, Russia, China, Turkey, Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador
• Two are high-income: the United States and the United Kingdom

As we explore later in the report, users in the lower middle and upper middle-income countries often rely on cryptocurrency to send remittances, preserve their savings in times of fiat currency volatility, and fulfil other financial needs unique to their economies.

These countries also tend to lean on Bitcoin and stablecoins more than other countries. Over the coming years, it’ll be interesting to see what solutions the cryptocurrency industry can build to increase adoption in high and low-income countries.

Vietnam holds on to the top spot, the US jumps to fifth, and China back in the top ten

There are also a few individual countries whose rankings stand out to us.

For the second consecutive year, Vietnam is ranked first in cryptocurrency adoption. A look at the sub-rankings shows that Vietnam shows extremely high purchasing power and population-adjusted adoption across centralised, DeFi, and P2P cryptocurrency tools. Other sources have also noted Vietnam’s love of cryptocurrency.

Polling done in 2020 found that 21 per cent of Vietnamese consumers reported using or owning cryptocurrency, second only to Nigeria at 32 per cent, and the adoption rate has likely only grown since then.

Reports from local media suggest that cryptocurrency-based gaming, including games following the play-to-earn (P2E) and move-to-earn (M2E) models, are particularly popular in Southeast Asian countries. That goes not just for users, but builders too, as the top-grossing P2E game Axie Infinity is based in Ho Chi Minh City, with its success inspiring more crypto gaming startups to find success in Vietnam.

The United States moved up to fifth in our index rankings from eighth in 2021 and sixth in 2020. The US ranks in the top three of each sub-index, except for population and purchasing power-adjusted P2P exchange usage, where it ranks much lower at 111th. This isn’t surprising, as our research shows that P2P exchange usage tends to be highest in countries with low purchasing power.

Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the United States is by far the highest-ranked developed market country on our index and one of only two to make the top 20, along with the UK. We’ll explore the reasons for this later in the full report.

Finally, China re-entered the top ten of our index this year after placing 13th in 2021. Our sub-indexes show that China is especially strong in using centralised services, placing second overall for purchasing power-adjusted transaction volume at both the overall and retail levels.

This is especially interesting given the Chinese government’s crackdown on cryptocurrency activity, which includes a ban on all cryptocurrency trading announced in September 2021. Our data suggests that the ban has either been ineffective or loosely enforced.

Bear markets can’t wipe out bull market adoption

As we noted above, while growth has become more sporadic with the onset of the latest bear market, global adoption remains well above the levels that preceded the 2020 bull market.

The data suggest that a critical mass of new users who put capital into cryptocurrency during periods of price growth tend to stay even when prices decline, allowing the ecosystem to consistently grow on net across market cycles.

One reason for this could be the value that users in emerging markets get from cryptocurrency. These countries dominate the adoption index, in large part because cryptocurrency provides unique, tangible benefits to people living in unstable economic conditions. We will explore these dynamics more in the full report.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic

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

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As a blockchain entertainment user, Clinton Teh was frustrated by the massive gap in the discovery process for both new and seasoned blockchain users. It was time to do something about this so-called ‘Web3 information problem’, where the information is fragmented, subjective, often outdated and unreliable.

“I wanted to develop a gateway to Web3 entertainment for all new and experienced users, focusing on user experiences and anchoring on legitimacy,” Teh tells e27. “That’s why I left Binance to launch Playground.”

At Binance, his previous employer, Teh took on roles across investments, strategy, and venture building. Just before starting the works on Playground, he led several strategic initiatives for Binance’s decentralised blockchain. All these experiences came in handy when he started building Playground.

Also Read: ‘Democratising ownership models is the most significant opportunity in Web3’: Infinity Ventures Crypto’s Brian Lu

Incorporated in Singapore, Playground is a startup dedicated to Web3 gaming and NFT discovery. It offers a one-stop platform to bridge the information gap for all users in Web3 entertainment, with a laser focus on legitimacy and experiences.

On this platform, users can interactively discover all aspects of trusted Web3 entertainment projects and be kept abreast of updates and milestones for new and existing projects.

Users will also be able to engage with ecosystems and communities in debates and discourses on a neutral battleground in a burgeoning and rapidly evolving space where experimentation and new ideas abound.

“Playground will be a natural attention conduit mediating ecosystems, entertainment projects, and end-users. We will also be at the forefront of creating new information standards and uplifting the industry from an information transparency and legitimacy standpoint,” Teh continues.

Since Web3 is a global phenomenon, Playground looks to service users from all over the world. However, the current focus is on developing its product. It also looks to build its social presence.

Monetisation plans are on paper. Playground has a clear roadmap for monetisation across B2C and B2B and for building a decentralised economy around the protocol. However, these plans will remain confidential for now.

“Our central focus at Playground is to create value for ecosystems and communities in our initial growth phase. We believe the best Web3 projects have strong characteristics of public goods,” he says.

A few days ago, Playground closed its oversubscribed pre-seed funding, co-led by East Ventures and Mirana Ventures. Arc Capital (crypto fund affiliated with Pintu), James Z (Founder of Jambo), Adam Levinson, Murali Abburi (Graticule Asset Management), Benjamin Zhu (Azure Tide, a digital asset specialist firm), and a few unnamed senior executives from leading blockchain firms also co-invested.

But securing investment was no easy feat, Teh says. “We came to the market to fundraise at a challenging time for Web3 protocols, with the spectacular collapse of the Terra ecosystem coinciding with the blow-up of one of the most prominent crypto-native funds Three Arrows Capital. This was a challenging period for any startup seeking funding.”

“However, amidst this uncertainty, we could close our fundraising round quickly with invaluable support from our investors,” he says.

Also Read: Indonesia may have a bright future in Web3 space, but some homework remains

With a 12-member team, Playground has exciting plans to introduce many new features and products. “We are just getting started and building a long-term protocol. We have plans to introduce many new features and products. We are confident that we can become a bridge for the next billion users into Web3 entertainment,” he signs off.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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Malaysia’s homegrown startup StoreHub, which provides an online platform that enables restaurants and retailers to automate their business, has raised US$13.5 million (RM60.7 million) in a pre-Series B fundraising round led by 500 Global.

Existing investors Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia & India, OSK Ventures and others also joined.

The new capital will be used to maintain positive unit economics and invest in technology innovation.

Established in 2013 by Wai Hong Fong and Congyu Li, StoreHub was started by providing a cloud-based SaaS point of sales (POS) system. In addition, it has also expanded its offering to include QR-based table ordering, loyalty, automated customer engagement, and more.

The platform serves over 15,000 retail and restaurant outlets across Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and others.

Since its launch, StoreHub has served a wide range of SME merchants in Malaysia, ranging from locally-grown multistore cafes (VCR and Nasken Coffee) to restaurants like Grub by Ahong & Friends and WoodFire.

Also Read: StoreHub set for SEA expansion after securing US$8.9M in Series A+ round

“With ‘revenge travel’ and ‘revenge dining’ continuing to drive consumer behaviour in Malaysia and across the region, retail and F&B business owners are looking for ways to improve operational efficiency and maximise their revenue per customer. Our platform automates ordering, payments, and customer engagement,” said CEO Wai Hong Fong.

“Here in Malaysia, we have seen businesses transform themselves to adapt to the new normal. Labour shortages and more demanding and digitally-savvy consumers have increasingly impacted the industry, with restaurants and Mamak eateries especially being hit hard recently. With this, it has become even more critical for businesses to integrate technology into their operations,” Fong added.

In the last 12 months, StoreHub claims to have processed over 128 million transactions worth over RM7.2 billion in gross transaction volume (GTV), a 40 per cent increase over the previous year. New paying stores coming onto the platform have also seen a 5x growth from the year before.

In 2021, StoreHub reached close to net profitability by growing average customer revenue throughout the pandemic.

In June 2020, StoreHub raised US$8.9 million in a Series A+ funding round led by Vertex Ventures, with participation from Accord Ventures and a private family office. The company had previously raised US$5.1 million in its Series A round, bringing its total raised funding to US$14 million.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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The Tech In Asia Conference 2022 just ended its first day at Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre, Singapore.

Held for the first time in-person since 2019, the event featured panel discussions and fireside chats on relevant topics for the Southeast Asian tech startup community.

The event is also known for its Startup Factory showcase, which features booths from 120 participants this year. Featuring startups from various countries –from Indonesia to the US– the section aims to help startups exhibit their works to attendees for potential collaboration in the future.

The following are some of the most unique startup ideas that we met at the Startup Factory at the Tech In Asia Conference 2022.

Supporting the creative industry

While popular sectors such as e-commerce, B2B, and Web3 continued to dominate the list of startups that are participating in the event, e27 noticed several unique verticals among them.

Also Read: In Photos: Tech In Asia 2016 Conference

There were at least two startups that are working to support players in the creative industries through their tech innovation.

The first one of such kind is writeso.me, an India-based platform for creative writers. Similar to Wattpad, the platform helps writers of fiction and poems to get their works published online. But what sets it apart from the similar platforms is that, in addition to allowing writers to make money from the “awards” that readers are giving to them, this platform also has a connection to the publishing industry. Top-performing writers will have a chance to be connected to publishers; the startup also monetises by allowing corporations to promote their products and services in the form of stories or poems.

Another unique startup idea is FRONTROW. Similar to Masterclass, the platform offers educational content hosted by leading names in the industry. But it sets itself apart by focusing on the South Korean entertainment industry. The startup is riding the wave of K-pop industry popularity, which has also opened doors for aspiring international artists to build their careers in the country. The content of the edutech platform is made relevant to the needs of the entertainment industry, such as lessons on singing or modeling.

Keeping sustainability in mind

Climate tech and sustainability are some of the most important branches of the tech industry today, and we also got to see companies coming up with a unique way to tackle these challenges.

Thryft is one example of such startup. The Singapore-based company started out by offering an online store for second-handed books, but it has recently expanded to include clothes as well. By doing this, Thryft aims to encourage its users to approach a more sustainable lifestyle by purchasing second-handed goods (instead of letting them go to waste) and allocating the goods that they no longer use for a better purpose.

Also Read: Tech in Asia raises US$4M from SB ISAT Fund, Eduardo Saverin, among others

Handprint is an example of a tech startup that was launched as a spin-off of an academic report commissioned by the United Nations. From its offices in Singapore and Bali, the startup’s Regeneration-as-a-Service enables companies to measure their environmental impact in one handy platform.

From the Web3 front, there is Singapore-based Greenerre which aims to encourage users to perform social initiatives to save the environment –in exchange of tokens. In addition to this, the company is also building Kenek, the digital alternative to the existing name cards, as part of the effort to cut down the use of paper.

Other things

The Startup Factory also featured innovation from different verticals –from religious tech to productivity tools.

If you have been looking for a serious contender to MuslimPro, you might want to consider Malaysia-based QalbyApp. Founded by former Malaysian singer Mizz Nina, the app provides educational content and lifestyle tools for practitioners. It has begun its expansion to markets such as Indonesia and is preparing to enter the European market through the UK.

Tired of using PowerPoint and Prezi? You might want to consider Present, a platform that helps users convert their documents to quality presentations –with features such as videos– that can be shared online through various channels. Users can also track the performance of their content through the platform.

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What’s common with companies that build the most successful products?

They build great products, and they build great growth and distribution strategies. A growth strategy will make or break your company. A great product growth strategy is enabled by a solid engineering strategy that builds primitives and accelerators of growth.

I recently completed the Reforge Growth Series, and it is hands down the best growth product content and community out there. I learned a ton of fundamentals on product strategy-led growth, which I wanted to capture here (credits to reforge for all the product content below).

As an engineering manager and engineer at heart, I also wanted to add tips on engineering strategies to enable and effectively execute the growth strategy. This will cover high-level pointers on systems to build, and in-depth detail may be covered in a future post.

Why Growth

Growth is the winning sauce for companies because:

• It creates defensibility
• Attracts more resources
• Enables quick and deep learning
• Growth is self compounding

Growth systems

Growth systems allow hypothesis-driven experiments that uncover the truth on what drives activation, retention, engagement, and monetisation. They are systematic, deterministic, sustainable and repeatable.

I will cover below the fundamentals of retention and engagement in this first post and cover activation and resurrection in the follow-up post. I will also interleave high-level engineering strategies for each after the product fundamentals.

Part one: Retention

Why retention? It separates the top one per cent. Retention powers acquisition, engagement and monetisation.

Also Read: Behind the product: How Igloo plans to support insurance sales intermediaries with its new platform

• It increases viral touch points to acquire more users (think slack, dropbox, LinkedIn, Medium)
• It increases LTV, which allows us to invest more in new acquisition channels.
• It improves conversion rates for subscriptions, ads, transactions and premium services
• Ultimately, increased retention brings more engagement and leads to higher monetisation.

Retention is the silent killer

If not paid attention to, it will slow down the growth and ultimately kill the product.

• We can have fast top-of-funnel growth, but if we have poor retention, LTV, DAU/MAU will die down.
• Poor retention is easy to cover up as it is easy to use the wrong metric, has a long-term view and can be deprioritised.

Retention is the output

Retention = (Activation + Engagement + Resurrection)

Common mistakes when setting up Retention

• Wrong Frequency of usage
• Choosing the wrong core action
• Optimising for the wrong audience

Qualitative Definition of retention for your product

At a high level, our goal is to build multiple use cases based on the main use case and push users into a habit zone

Retention metric

Setting up the quantitative definition of retention metric:

• Make sure to align with a direct and natural frequency of usage.
• Do not combine multiple actions into your retention metric. It can easily mask issues and give false positives.
• Do not optimise for revenue. Monetisation is the output of retention.

Determining the right usage frequency:

• Select a use case or the core action.
• Create the action histogram-
• Analyse distribution, daily/weekly/monthly, and so on.

Validating the Core Action:

• Form groups that performed the core action.
• Create a cohort chart and compare the retention curves.

Ultimately the retention curve is the output of how you performed through the inputs. Activation, engagement and resurrection.

Engineering tips

As shared above, retention is the output and is usually a lagging indicator. Most of our engineering foundations will invest in engagement, activation and resurrection. However, there are a few areas where teams should invest in setting the right foundations (in no particular order).

Experimentation: Invest in a scalable and configurable experimentation framework that allows us to validate or invalidate your hypothesis quickly. Great experimentation tools speed us up instead of slowing you down. It’s a red flag if the A/B testing setup is easy to trip on or takes too much time to configure and roll out tests.

Analytics and event tracking: This will form the basis of collecting data that will help us understand current baselines. The shelf like amplitude, google analytics etc are good starting points, and we can build in-house once we have reached the inflexion point of the scale. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it

Scalable data platform: This depends on scaling up experimentation, analysis, machine learning/personalisation and leveraging data to create new use cases. As our user base and data grows, having these capabilities in-house provides a step function change on how we can transform data and tools to meet our needs.

Also Read: How to pursue a product idea into a successful business

Dynamic content: Build or integrate with a platform that allows serving content like strings and media without new releases. This will unlock experimentation velocity and serve the ultimate purpose of validating the hypothesis quickly.

Part two: Engagement

Engagement is non-binary, unlike retention. It’s a spectrum of depth. It’s a measure of how “engaged” is your user base with the product and features. Once a user is engaged, they have formed the habit and are in the “loop”. There are two main habit loops, organic and manufactured.

Organic  habit loop

Manufactured habit loop

Successful products can build great manufactured habit loops. It has four steps:

• Manufactured cue or trigger: Products use data and opportunity to create them. We can choose a combination of these triggers to engage the user per our product. The data foundations built based on the product growth strategy will enable these loops. There are five broad categories: time-based, location-based, update/change-based, network/peer-based, and programmatic.
• Channel: Medium is used to communicate with the user. Email, notifications (push or browser), in-app, digital ads or traditional mail.
• Action: The core action we want the user to perform in response.
• Reward: Reward for the user taking action. There are three major types of rewards: extrinsic (time, money, information), intrinsic (completion, mastery, joy), and social (recognition, confirmation, competition).

Pro Tips

• Leave the user with one more trigger.
• Combine loops. Create the core loop and create supplemental loops to fuel the core loop.
• For example, LinkedIn core loop: New Connection. Supplemental loop: job update, recommendations, people you may know, skill endorsement, messaging.

Engineering tips

• Communications platform and delivery time/channel optimisation: Invest in a communication platform that enables different channels as discussed before (email, push, in-app, ads etc.). The efficacy of lifecycle comms starts to increase when we optimise the choice of channel and timing of the delivery.
• Targeting system: Build a targeting system that allows cherry-picking users to match a certain set of attributes for specific actions. Since engagement is a spectrum, the same message and action will not work for all users alike. It is imperative to understand where each user is in their journey and then communicate with them appropriately.
• Personalisation and ML: Personalisation is a muscle that every product needs to build over time. This will touch and serve multiple aspects of product and engineering systems. Invest in building a decoupled and composable system that can be deployed to learn and personalise the user experience. Users use a product to solve their unique problems at the right time.

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Last week on Thursday, ClavystBio, a company that aims to accelerate the commercialisation of life sciences discoveries and innovations, announced its launch in Singapore.

Established by Temasek subsidiary CLA Real Estate Holdings, the firm is led by CEO Dr Christopher Laing, who is transitioning from his role as Vice Dean at Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Duke-NUS Medical School, and a board that is chaired by Dr Fidah Alsagoff, Joint Head of the Enterprise Development Group (Singapore) and Head of Life Sciences, Temasek.

Despite its recent launch, ClavystBio has made US$220 million in investment commitments to six early-stage companies and three venture partners in life science space.

One of the companies that it invests in includes CoV Biotechnology which is developing booster vaccines and therapeutics that are effective against variants of SARS-2 beta coronavirus. The company’s booster pan-sarbecovirus vaccine aims to protect against future variants and future crossovers of related coronaviruses from animals to humans.

In its work in supporting life sciences innovations, ClavystBio intends to focus supporting early stage companies in the areas of cell and gene therapy, biomarkers and digital health.

Also Read: The role of biotech in taking India from developing to developed

In an email interview with e27, Dr Laing explains the characteristics that the firm is looking for in a potential investment.

“ClavystBio looks to invest in early-stage companies with strong potential to deliver health impact. This usually includes great science, a disruptive platform technology and a committed team with potential to collaborate that can be anywhere from only scientific founders (seed) to a management team with strong experience and skills (Series A and beyond),” he writes. “We are active partners and bring our networks and capabilities to our investees.”

In addition to funding, ClavystBio also provides a holistic support system for startups to achieve success. Dr Laing explains the firm’s approach as follows:

Collaborate: To create programmes with private and public partners that address common critical developmental needs of life science companies, such as access to industry and market expertise, or frameworks for collaborating on intellectual property translation.

Venture: In addition to funding, the firm also helps to secure leadership talent, access resources, and connect with strategic partners and follow-on investors.

Build: To develop a purpose-built innovation district with collaborative life sciences and tech infrastructure and specialised facilities, together with a vibrant community of academics, investors, startups, industry, and professional partners supporting all stages of company growth.

“Startups need more than just capital to maximise their chances of success. We have identified three critical areas where ClavystBio has strong potential to contribute to Singapore’s life science ecosystem and accelerate commercialisation and startup growth. These align with the three pillars of our integrated approach: ‘Collaborate, Venture and Build’,” Dr Laing elaborates.

Also Read: How biotech is changing the global agriculture game for investors

On the future of life sciences

In a statement, ClavystBio highlights the prospect of life sciences as a “key driver” of Singapore’s economy in the future. The firm says that a deep commitment to public research and training has resulted in a rich source of technologies and scientific talent, and today the sector employs 25,000 workers and contributes to about a fifth of the country’s manufacturing GDP.

But there is nothing like a challenging time that encourages innovation in various sectors. In the past two years, in line with the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures taken to tackle it, the world witnessed a heightened global focus on health security has accelerated the growth of the life sciences sector.

Other factors such as “prevailing megatrends” (i.e the emerging global middle income, rapidly ageing population, and rising chronic disease burden) will also drive increased biomedical spending in the next decade with the biopharmaceutical market projected to reach US$65 billion by 2026.

So what is the opportunity that ClavystBio aims to tap into? Dr Laing begins by stressing that Singapore is well-positioned to achieve this due to a number of reasons.

“Many years of strategic investment have produced world-class universities and health systems with a strong research and talent base. Furthermore, the pace of innovation in biomedical sciences and medicine continues to accelerate due to the convergence of biology and technology – and Singapore has a strong data and tech foundation. Over the past decade, we’ve seen a burgeoning community of early-stage ventures in Singapore backed by great science and technology that can transform healthcare,” he says.

“However, the translation of life sciences discoveries into clinic-ready solutions has always been challenging due to several factors including the length of time of the process; access to smart and patient capital; availability of strategic partners and experienced entrepreneurs to scale commercialisation; as well as the lack of purpose-built innovation spaces to support the growth of life sciences companies,” Dr Laing continues.

Also Read: Is a career in biotech right for you?

According to him, ClavystBio’s integrated approach seeks to address these challenges holistically, and build Singapore’s life sciences ecosystem to create the optimal environment for such companies to thrive and achieve commercial success globally.

But what kind of challenges do life sciences startups face? Does a life science startup have a similar growth journey to startups in other tech sectors?

“All startups share common features and challenges in their journey – the need to validate the utility of a potentially great idea, the need to attract the right talent and experience, and the need to find investors who will not only provide capital but will open doors. But life science startups can have some hurdles that are different from other tech sectors,” Dr Laing answers.

“Health is a heavily regulated industry, often requiring very long lead times and expensive trials to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of solutions. This can mean the need to access highly specialised facilities (wet labs, clinical sites), and the need for multiple collaborations. Business models for healthcare can be complex, involving multiple parties (patients, hospitals, government, insurers). And as life sciences increasingly converge with digital technology, the needs and interest of investors and partners can become blurred.”

In 2023, as part of its effort to continue on supporting the life sciences industries, ClavystBio aims to open new spaces and announces new partnerships. The firm is also looking forward to expanding its portfolio companies in the life sciences sector.

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Image Credit: ClavystBio

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TrueFoundry, a machine learning (ML) developer platform, has announced the completion of a US$2.3 million seed funding led by Sequoia India and Southeast Asia’s Surge.

Eniac Ventures and prominent angels like AngelList Co-Founder Naval Ravikant also participated.

Other participants include Deutsche Bank Global CIO Dilip Khandelwal, Head of GitHub India Maneesh Sharma, Greenhouse Software CTO Mike Boufford, and Kaggle Founder Anthony Goldbloom.

TrueFoundry will use the funds to expand its specialised technology team and further product development. 

Headquartered in the US, TrueFoundry was founded in June 2021 by Abhishek Choudhary, Anuraag Gutgutia and Nikunj Bajaj.

During their stint at Facebook, the Co-Founders recognised that smaller companies in the market required a significantly longer time to build and deploy machine learning models than big tech companies. This led to the founding of TrueFoundry, which automates repetitive tasks in the ML pipeline to accelerate ML deployment and live endpoint monitoring.

Also Read: How machine learning really impacts us in our daily lives

Machine learning offers immense business opportunities, yet the development and launch of ML models is a time-intensive and complex process for software engineers, ML engineers and data scientists.

As a result, almost 90 per cent of ML models do not end up in production. For the models that make it to deployment, 50 per cent fail due to the absence of monitoring systems, and 30 per cent have to be reverted due to scaling and latency issues often overlooked during the data training stage.

While large companies can bridge this gap by deploying large, high-end ML platform teams to design and launch ML models, it is less feasible for smaller companies and startups to commit such high investments while building their companies.

TrueFoundry aims to transform the process by automating parts in the ML pipeline that can be automated and empowering ML developers to test and launch models in production quickly and with as much autonomy as possible.

“TrueFoundry was born out of the idea that no business – big or small – should miss out on machine learning opportunities. With our automated platform, data scientists and engineers can deploy machine learning models at the speed and maturity of big tech, cutting their production timelines from several weeks to a few hours. Data is the new oil, and we want to enable companies to use machine learning faster and generate greater business value,” said CEO Nikunj Bajaj.

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Echelon 2022 aims to provide intimate and focused discussions on key topics and business matching services to facilitate business-driven connections during the two-day event. e27 will curate and invite key stakeholders of startups, investors, corporates, and ecosystem enablers to drive towards fruitful business outcomes at Echelon.

The 2022 Echelon edition will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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Singapore-based homegrown direct-to-consumer (D2C) consumer electronics brand PRISM+ has secured SGD 45 (US$32) million in a funding round from TNB Aura.

The company will use the funds for geographic expansion and foraying into the smart home appliance space. It has set its sights on the Philippines market by Q1 2023.

Founded in 2017, PRISM+ offers lifestyle electronic goods and services. Launched as a display specialist, the brand expanded to include audio products and smart home appliances.

Last month, PRISM+ launched its line of air conditioner systems with the PRISM+ Zero Series. The brand introduced a full suite of aircon maintenance and installation services with this launch.

Also Read: ‘Economic crises become less important when investing with a longer-term mindset’: Qin En Looi

It will look to introduce more home appliances in the coming year.

The company is now venturing out of e-commerce into offline channels as it anticipates demand for a physical experience to touch and feel products before purchasing. While most brands shifted their businesses online during the pandemic, PRISM+ quietly prepared for the return of the offline retail experience. In 2021, it partnered with popular furniture retailer Hipvan for a permanent in-store PRISM+ pop-up at Suntec City.

The brand has plans to launch a chain of retail outlets in Singapore and Malaysia. It has already established three outlets in Singapore and plans to open six outlets by the first quarter of 2023.

In Malaysia, it recently launched its first outlet in Kuala Lumpur and will announce more stores in 2023.

Charles Wong, Founding Partner of TNB Aura shared: “We believe the regional D2C market has reached an inflexion point, with digital penetration, payments and fulfilment infrastructure increasingly able to support high-quality D2C offerings across both online and offline formats. PRISM+ is primed to become the regional champion of a market traditionally dominated by East Asian giants such as Xiaomi, Samsung, and LG.”

 

“In this post-pandemic landscape, we are seeing consumers return to malls and retail spaces in full force. People crave the personal touch that has been missing. The electronics industry has long relied on brick-and-mortar stores to sell the immersive experience of their products. We hope to shake up this age-old formula by showing customers that a premium home set-up need not come with a hefty price tag as we retain our direct-to-consumer approach across all our channels,” said Jonathan Tan, Managing Director of PRISM+.

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Respond.io, a Malaysia-based conversational commerce company, has raised US$7 million in Series A funding, led by global VC firm Headline.

AltaIR Capital, Smart Partnership Capital, Sterling Oak Group, and Calendula Ventures also co-invested.

Respond.io will use the funding to continue its push into large enterprises by extending its integration capabilities.

A portion of the money will also go into expanding from its home in Asia to build a presence in the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America.

Respond.io was launched in 2017 by Gerardo Salandra, Hassan Ahmed and Iaroslav Kudritskiy as an omni-channel messaging inbox. It helps businesses leverage this channel and reach their customers directly on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, LINE, Viber, Telegram, and WeChat from a centralised dashboard.

Also Read: How SMBs can use conversational commerce to boost year-end sales

On top of that, the platform provides flexible automation via workflows — you can build chat menus, drip campaigns, internal pipelines, and invoke external actions. Managers can quickly pick up on any conversation and notice if any have been dropped. In turn, clients can enjoy competent and swift responses to solving their problems.

The company claims that over 10,000 companies in 86 countries use the platform, including Klook, Decathlon, Abenson, Yoho, Roche, ShareChat, and Bigo use respond.io. “We process over 140 million messages monthly,” said CTO Ahmed. 

Its revenue claims to have grown 25x since the previous round. 

‘The latest wave of digital commerce innovation was pioneered by small brands using Instagram. It uses social commerce to drive buyers onto tailor-made social accounts and enables consumers to accelerate their purchase decisions through WhatsApp & other messengers,” said CEO Salandra. “We’ve built a platform that enables multi-national brands to deploy that highly innovative strategy at a scale of a million conversations per day across dozens of teams.”

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