Time and time again, research has shown that the hiring process is biased and unfair. Factors like unconscious racism, sexism, and ageism, even the weather on the day of the interviews can influence hiring decisions.

Another study on decision-making in the United States showed that different judges presiding over identical cases meted out varied sentences. While the average sentence was seven years, identical cases had a four-year sentence disparity, the difference between a five-year and nine-year sentence.

Therein lies the flaw in human judgement. We are unable to exercise objective decision-making due to the existence of noise and the unwanted variability in professional judgments of the same problem.

Where there is noise, there is bias and more than you think

Recently, we had the honour of having Olivier Sibony, co-author of Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement and Senior Advisor to Qualgro, speak on noise and bias at our Qualgro Symposium

Noise exists because of the existence of various factors. These include cognitive biases, group dynamics, mood, stress, fatigue, and differences in skill and taste between assessors and decision-makers.

Bias is one part of the error equation. The other is what fellow researchers in the field term ‘noise’. Noise is the “unwanted variability in human judgements of the same problem”, and it is just as problematic as bias.

Also Read: Building a diverse and inclusive workplace sidestepping tokenism

Such variability leads to injustices, varied hazards, and multiple kinds of costs. Biases can shape a company or industry’s culture and norms if left unchecked. Other research has found this prevalent in various fields, from military intelligence analysis to actuarial science and virtually every industry imaginable, even one as critical as medicine.

The error equation

According to Sibony, errors can be mathematically calculated. Without getting too technical, this essentially means that the combination of both bias and noise leads to making errors, and the reduction of either has an equal impact on reducing error.

Bias and noise exist virtually everywhere, and technically, the only way to eliminate them both is to remove the use of human judgements. However, this is not tenable for myriad reasons, especially since the human element still matters in many areas concerning people (e.g., a medical diagnosis).

Noise and bias in business

As a result of noise and bias, professionals in critical industries can make important and even outrageous errors. You can see these errors of judgement in areas such as recruitment and human resources, marketing, and even when choosing which companies to invest in.

For example, a popular method of judging candidates and hiring them is based not on objective data but on the gut instinct of the interviewer. Unfortunately, such decisions can lead to bad outcomes and incur extra costs for the business.

The next best thing would be for humans to learn how to reduce errors in their decision-making, especially with cognitive biases.

Decision hygiene factors

How exactly do cognitive biases and noise affect entrepreneurs, and more importantly, how can we reduce decision-making errors within the business landscape?

Sibony references decision hygiene factors, a matrix comprising four noise prevention techniques to help make better judgements and decisions.

• Aggregate

In some specific situations, a diversity of input can be useful in the decision-making process, so long as the inputs are independently derived. aggregating independent inputs and then averaging them out would statistically reduce noise.

• Use relative measures, not absolute

Chances are, when people describe things or situations, they will use the same terminologies despite meaning different things. This can be problematic if two people use the word “great” to describe what sort of potential investment needs to have, but  Person A means 30 per cent while Person B means it is in the seven per cent.

Also Read: Why we cannot talk of diversity without inclusion

Since absolute measures can be ambiguous, it would be better to rank or measure items or situations against others. For example, before deciding to invest in a start-up that, say, sounds great on paper, compare them to other start-ups similar in scale and size for their relative performances.

• Structure your judgements

Break judgements down into separate components or dimensions and use quantitative and objective measures to assess and/or analyse sub-components of the judgement you will be making, and score them against a frame of reference.

For example, you can structure an interview process to have several stages where specific competencies are assessed (such as through scoring) and compared to other candidates similar to them (relative measuring).

You can then aggregate independent inputs and average their score or performance.

• Keep intuition at bay

Humans are generally susceptible to cognitive biases such as selective attention, confirmation bias, and selective recall.

This can make you over-focus on some types of information and overlook other relevant ones, leading to terrifying outcomes. Just ask Brandon Mayfield, who was wrongly detained for the Madrid bombings.

“The key point here is that you don’t want to know what you don’t want to know,” quips Sibony, “knowing too much, even accurate information, can mislead you”.

Manage the information process to make it difficult to form an intuition too early. Although it is tempting to engage in intuitive judgements, early use of intuition only serves to add more noise.

Final thoughts

Indeed, many people think they are very objective and impartial, especially when their professional judgements are solicited. However, as illustrated, erroneous judgements and decisions can lead to disastrous consequences.

As executives, the company and the organisation depend on not just the knowledge and experience but, more importantly, the sound judgement and decision-making skills of executives.

It pays to be cognisant of how we may stumble at different stages and work towards strengthening noise-prevention efforts for the health and success of the organisation.

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Metain, a blockchain-empowered co-investment platform focusing on real estate, has secured an undisclosed investment from IDG Capital Vietnam.

Per a statement, this partnership is expected to foster the development of NFT real estate and attract more global investors to invest in blockchain-powered proptech in Vietnam.

Real estate investment promises a very high ROI with the least risk among other investment types (stocks, crypto, saving, open-ended funds, etc.). However, its characteristic creates high entry barriers for individual investors, including big investment capital and an inconvenient, time-intensive multiple-transaction process.

Meatin makes investing in income-producing assets affordable, convenient, safe, transparent, and trustworthy for investors. The platform aims to grow the Vietnam real estate investment market and improve its accessibility using blockchain technology to complement, not replace reliable approaches.

The startup targets middle-income customers.

Also Read: These 21 Web3 startups prove why Vietnam is world’s most surprising crypto hotspot

Duc Tran, General Partner at IDG Capital, said: “Income-producing property is real estate you invest in to make money from current rental payments, appreciation in market price, or adding value with additional revenue streams. Last but not least, their aims are only around Central Business District properties whose evaluations are the most stable with an all-time uptrend, compared to other options.”

“With the high security, instantaneous settlement, transparent and seamless transaction process, blockchain, smart contract and NFT technology are transforming the real estate industry and will become the key trend in the next decades. The next challenges would be how proptech investors’ pennies with a reliable setup and how to grow these pennies via choosing the right investment assets to acquire. And we believe that we are on the right track of that,” said Nhan Tran, CEO of Metain.

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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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Supply chains in Southeast Asia are famously broken. As small businesses are digitising, they are trying to find new sales channels to generate income by exporting beyond their home markets.

Both within Southeast Asia and outside, demand for locally produced products is rising. Buyers are moving away from China as a primary (manufacturing) source and starting to appreciate the quality, prices and diversity of SEA.

However, it’s not smooth sailing yet, and there’s a large opportunity for service providers and marketplaces to jump into the space and address the voids.

The problems with cross-border e-commerce

• Regulators are not catching up yet, and SEA is far from a ‘freedom of goods market’ (such as the US or Europe). Hence all sorts of compliance issues (taxes, import licenses, etc.) that restrict (the ease of) import and export have historically not been addressed.
• Import and export regulations are different for various product categories, adding to the complexity.
• SMEs are getting the demand but don’t have access to the distribution supply chain (DHL and FedEx won’t always entertain SMEs for various reasons) to reach their customers hassle-free yet.
• Existing distributor supply chains are closed and typically demand volume which is not suitable for most SMEs.
• Existing marketplaces (such as Lazada and Amazon) focus on sourcing from China or only satisfy supply and demand in their respective local markets.
• Global risks in the last few years are causing reversed globalisation trends.

The need for solutions

I don’t see regulators catching up fast enough, so we probably should not bank on them to provide a solution for e-commerce in the region.

Innovation is likely to come from startups that, in their core focus on:

• Taking on the compliance burden while offering SMEs a hassle-free import and export experience.
• Offer SMEs a product that offers a quick and easy way to ship products to the buyer’ market (regardless the importing jurisdiction).
• Generate and open up new demand, promote SEA products and build an infrastructure that supports lower (minimum volume) so that small buyers can be reached.

Challenges faced by startups and the massive opportunity

With HH VC Investments, we have looked at several promising players in the space within Southeast Asia.

These are the main challenges these players are trying to overcome:

• There are a lot of moving parts to make this work. Leading to the risk of loss of focus for (typically) financially strapped startups.
• They must ensure sufficient and diversified supply is available for the demand to be satisfied. This is the typical catch-22 for any marketplace, but now with the added layer of cross-border demand.
• They need to leverage existing or generate new demand across different markets with each its own culture, channels and habits.
• They need to build or use existing supply chain infrastructure in various jurisdictions.
• They need to navigate the (sometimes very) complex compliance frameworks of different countries

Just within SEA alone, there’s an ever-increasing middle class that is willing to spend on and try new products from their neighbouring countries.

Final thoughts

There’s a huge opportunity for startups to focus on cross-border e-commerce. This is simply given the sheer number of ever-increasing middle-class buyers that are willing to spend on and try new products from neighbouring countries in SEA.

But it’s still early days.

New entrants will be able to create a huge barrier to entry as these players wouldn’t just be building the infrastructure but also the compliance knowledge in-house.

Those that can overcome the challenges and offer a seamless product will be able to crack the space and have the potential to grow towards the size of the likes of Lazada and Alibaba.

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At e27, we are kickstarting a new articles series to know startup professionals and their lives beyond working hours. 

Bee Kheng Tay is the President of Cisco Systems in Southeast Asia and is responsible for driving the networking products giant’s profitable growth. She also leads its go-to-market operations across the ten countries in the region.

Tay brings more than two decades of experience in the enterprise technology industry across Asia-Pacific and Japan. She is a seasoned leader with a proven track record in building innovative sales organisations.

Tay is passionate about encouraging women to pursue a career in STEM. Outside the world of IT, she has a keen interest in history, psychology, philosophy, and science.

In this candid interview, Tay talks about his personal life, professional life, and hobbies.

Excerpts:

How would you explain what you do to a 5-year-old?

I work for a technology company that builds the internet to connect people, things, and data to make the world a better place. My team helps businesses in Southeast Asia use technology to transform the way we work and play, scale their organisations and offer better services to people.

What has been the biggest highlight/challenge of your career so far?

Like many other women, balancing and navigating the demands of my career and parenthood is challenging. It took me some time, but I have realised that these different aspects of my life are not at odds with each other. Instead, they complement and enrich my life. Staying present and focusing on the task at hand when the time calls for it has been a valuable skill for me.

Once I overcame that mental hurdle, I could accomplish many things. Some of my career highlights include becoming the first female Managing Director for Cisco Singapore and Brunei and the first female President for Cisco ASEAN, all while bringing my two children up as a single mother. In and outside of work, I continue to champion women in tech and advocate for a hybrid work model that empowers employees to work from anywhere and juggle their different roles at home and at work.

How do you envision the next five years of your career?

The tech industry holds tremendous potential to help bridge the digital divide and power sustainable innovation. Cisco’s purpose is to power an inclusive future for all. With the opportunities around us, I genuinely believe that technology is one industry that plays a crucial role in bridging the social divide in the world. This will not happen overnight, and I want to drive this momentum in ASEAN as I grow my career in IT with Cisco over the next few years.

Also Read: What makes Desmond Yong thrive in ambiguous situations

I look forward to working with my team to ensure that people and communities in the region can access the information they need seamlessly and securely and enjoy meaningful digital experiences powered by innovative, intuitive, and automated technology.

What are some of your favourite work tools?

I love that collaboration, like many other technologies, isn’t just a business for us. It helps us power our entire organisation.

Especially in a hybrid normal, it is understandable that employees feel distant from not seeing their team and colleagues in the office daily. However, with collaboration tools like Webex, we can reimagine the employee experience so it is engaging and consistent for our people, no matter where they connect.

We have designed Webex to level the playing field for all participants and enhance their engagement with features such as noise cancellation and voice enhancement technology, as well as real-time transcriptions and translations.

These not only facilitate and enhance communication but also ensure that the meeting experience is inclusive for everyone regardless of working locations and circumstances.

For us, inclusivity is more than a physical location. It supports your work style, whether you are an introvert or extrovert, digital native or occasional user, frontline worker, or remote knowledge worker. One of my favourite functionalities on Webex is People Insights, which provides insights into how employees spend their time and who they engage with most often.

The insights can only be seen by the employee and no one else, and this helps them uncover blind spots in how they work to empower them to stay more engaged, be better teammates, reduce potential fatigue and enhance well-being. This has helped me customise interactions with colleagues and plan my day to get the most out of work.

What’s something about you or your job that would surprise us?

Despite my years in technology, I have always gravitated toward the arts. I am a voracious reader, and my favourite authors are Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Over the years, I have also developed an appreciation for art in its different forms. I’m not an art connoisseur, but I enjoy collecting and displaying paintings and art pieces in my home. Ironically, despite my inclination toward the arts, my favourite model is the Standard Model of Particles Physics, which describes the basic building blocks of all known matter. I am full of contradictions!

Do you prefer WFH or WFO or hybrid?

Cisco has always been a big proponent of hybrid work and is here to stay. As a leader, I have seen how hybrid work has helped achieve the fullest potential of employees by empowering them to be their best selves with the flexibility and convenience to work from anywhere and in a way that best works for them.

We are seeing improvements in overall employee performance, work-life balance, and well-being for employees not just in Cisco but across organisations in Singapore and globally.

Also Read: What Pierluigi Cau loves most about working at GitHub

64 per cent of regional employees have shared that hybrid work has improved their productivity. As a result, they are taking more time for themselves, and 80 per cent say that their total well-being across various aspects of social, emotional, physical, financial, and mental has improved.

But challenges remain in fostering an inclusive environment and a sense of belonging for every employee. This fundamentally requires a rethink of various factors that underpin successful hybrid work, including inclusive culture, employee experience, and well-being enabled by technology and led by trust and empathetic leadership.

As leaders, we need to incorporate empathy, active listening, flexibility, and continuous learning in how we lead and engage with people. For example, Cisco conducts Quarterly Engagement Pulses to evaluate and spark conversations about how each employee feels about their team, the work environment, and themselves.

All employees take part in weekly check-ins with their managers that allow employees to have a focused conversation about their work sentiments, priorities, and strengths. This includes what they loved and loathed doing and the support they need from their managers each week.

What would you tell your younger self?

I would tell my younger self that everything is possible. You just need to want it hard enough, be passionate enough, and set goals to guide you consciously and unconsciously during your journey. But don’t be too hard on yourself and enjoy the journey. Beyond that, it is about believing in yourself and recognising that challenging times too will pass.

Can you describe yourself in three words?

No fear, no guilt, no regret.

What are you most likely to be doing if not working?

I love to read. I am very interested in particle physics, psychology, and philosophy. In my free time, I read non-fiction books on these topics.

Earlier this year, I set myself a target to read the top 100 books of all time on the TheGreatestBooks.org site.

What are you currently reading/listening to/watching?

I am currently in the “Great English Writer” phase. The book I am currently reading is Great Expectations, written by Charles Dickens. I am learning more about William Shakespeare and politics, which extends to watching lectures, reading novels, and watching plays on Macbeth, Hamlet, Henry V, Julius Caesar, Tempest, Merchant of Venice, and Twelfth Night.

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Singapore-based FlexOS, which helps companies manage hybrid teams and offices in a data-driven, employee-centric way, announced today it closed an oversubscribed US$1 million seed round.

Led by Do Ventures, the round was joined by VIK Partners, Vulpes Ventures, Hustle Fund, Wing Vasiksiri (iSeed SEA), and GK Plug and Play Ventures, joined.

Former GoJek VP Windy Natriavi, renowned management consultant Dr Ramesh Ramachandra, Jeff Lonsdale, Julian Low, Kheng Lian, Marc Gottesman, and Amarit “Aim” Charoenphan also co-invested.

Established by Daan van Rossum, Greg Marschall, and Jonah Levey, FlexOS offers companies data-driven tools to engage and retain hybrid teams and operate hybrid offices.

According to research from McKinsey, 90 per cent of companies will switch to hybrid work, combining work from home and work from the office.

In Southeast Asia, hybrid work is often not even a choice for employers.

Also Read: What makes Bee Kheng Tay a remarkable leader

In Singapore, two in five employees will not accept a job if their employer doesn’t provide them with flexibility for when and where to work. In Vietnam, only 9 per cent of Gen Z wants to work in an office full-time. In Indonesia, 83.5 per cent prefer to work in a hybrid mode. Their employers experience challenges when introducing hybrid work.

According to FlexOS, companies must introduce, measure, and optimise hybrid’ policies.’ They must redesign their offices and operate them differently to provide on-demand spaces to focus, meet, and collaborate. Most importantly, they need to be more intentional about employee engagement. A vast body of research shows that connection, community, and company culture suffer when people do not work together in person.

FlexOS supports those companies and their employees. It does so with gamified office check-ins, desk and meeting room bookings, and up to ten monthly events and activities tailored to employees’ unique interests.

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TNL Media Group, a Taiwan-based multi-language media and data platform, has acquired food and recipe lifestyle media iCook for an undisclosed amount, marking its entry into e-commerce.

The deal aims to grow TNL Media’s readership, launch new products, and expand the group’s paid subscription business.

The group will leverage iCook’s experiences to integrate its current e-commerce services with other suitable media brands internally. The group also plans to connect the new app, membership and e-commerce transaction data to its other existing digital products and services.

The objective is to enhance TNL Meda Group’s data analytic capabilities, unify data across all media brands, and connect with the data sources from the group’s mobile ad tech company Ad2iction. Besides, it will look to grow its big data market research firm TNL Research and AI CDP and data exchange company DaEX.

Also Read: YouTube, Twitch co-founders invest in Taiwanese news site The News Lens

Group Chief Content Officer and Co-Founder Mario Yang said: “TNL looks forward to helping iCook’s direct media sales, social media expansion, launching new video and audio products and giving more international exposure.”

TNL Media is a leading digital advertising, data analytics, and media platform. It runs Mandarin, English, and Japanese editions.  The group has nine content brands and eleven subsidiaries, including The News Lens, INSIDE, Sports Vision, Cool3c , every little d, Agent Movie, OHSOWOW, and Business Yee.

With 7 million monthly unique visitors (MUV), the integration with iCook will bring TNL Media’s total reader scale to 25 million MUV and 100 million monthly page views.

The media group’s existing high-profile investors include North Base Media, an original seed investor in The News Lens, YouTube Co-Founder Steve Chen, Twitch Co-Founder Kevin Lin, and Tim Draper.

Also Read: Taiwan’s TNL Media Group ropes in Tim Draper as an investor

Operated by Polydice, Inc, iCook is a leading recipe-sharing social platform in Taiwan and Hong Kong, with more than 250,000 recipes, 3 million registered members, and 7 million monthly unique active users. Beyond recipes, the platform also provides content about food, cooking, life tips, and general health/living knowledge in several formats, such as blog posts, videos, and other rich experiences.

Its gross merchandise volume grew 40 per cent annually amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. It also has one of the largest app downloads amongst media brands, with over 6 million and a paid subscriber base of close to 15,000.

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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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Ever since a conversation with a German Bitcoin evangelist back in 2014 where I learned about some of the radical ideas of the blockchain world, crypto has been a topic that has fascinated me.

I kept up with the main developments in the space over the years, I was a financial journalist after all, but it was not until last year that I decided to take the space seriously, both as a creator and as a tech founder. Specifically, my interest has been captured by non-fungible tokens.

Much has been happening in this space, but the numbers don’t lie:

• The market went from 0 to US$40 billion by the end of 2021
• January 2022 started equally strong, with US$7 billion in sales recorded

Eye-watering numbers for sure, which probably explains why the current landscape of NFT observers and users is divided between very vocal worshippers and haters.

As a cautious optimist on the potential of NFTs, I think both approaches fail. The former group fails to see that, indeed, the space is being held captive by the rampant fraud and speculation of many of its players and ignoring the climate concerns that NFTs and other uses of the blockchain raise.

The haters, however, refuse to see the simple fact that creators are, indeed, finally able to monetise content through NFT sales. This is largely achieved by artists targeting fans and communities directly, often without having to play the algorithmic lottery of platforms like Facebook, YouTube or Instagram. That, surely, must be ruffling some feathers and may explain some of the hate.

That being said, we are just at the beginning. A jpeg image or an ebook being sold as an NFT is a rather static, primitive use of the blockchain or any of the amazing technologies available to us.

If the current evolution of NFTs stops at “I sell a digital item, you buy it”, then we are not adding much to what Amazon has been doing for 15 years. And, as many critics like to say, you do not need the blockchain for that.

That is why the concept of “NFT utility”, meaning leveraging the ability of the blockchain where those NFTs sit to act as a shared, trusted ledger of interactions between holders of a certain digital currency and related NFTs, will be key.

Also Read: How NFTs are surviving and prospering in the bear market

The “ledger + utility” piece will be key to the next evolution of NFTs. These utility features are, in fact, already being used for anything from playing crypto-enabled videogames to unlocking access to special communities to providing discounted lifetime access to sales of music or art by a specific artist. Utility tokens are also being used to engage in creative, collective storytelling exercises.

Will all these projects succeed? Absolutely not. But the seeds have been planted for new ways of giving value to so much amazing work done by writers, illustrators and other artists that I do not think NFTs will disappear, even if they end up evolving into something that is not intrinsically tied to the blockchain.

Storya’s NFT Plans

The implementation of an NFT marketplace on the Storya platform in the coming months has two primary goals resulting from the above:

• Help authors monetise. This has always been a priority for Storya, and NFTs will be just another tool that creators on Storya can use if they so wish.
• Fill the gap. The tech skills gap is something that plagued the old creator economy platform, and Storya is built to fix that. We will do this for NFTs by allowing creators to ignore many of the complexities inherent to the “minting” of these tokens (e.g. understanding differences between tokens, selecting which blockchain to use, and what features to include in a smart contract). Through Storya, creators will be able to dip their toes in NFTs (and specifically on the WAX platform) with minimal knowledge at first, then choose for themselves if they wish to build all the technical knowledge required to help them do more complex NFT projects.

And, given Storya’s emphasis on collaboration, we will also work directly with ambitious creators that want to use NFTs to help them build the NFT projects that work for their specific storytelling experiences.

All in all, despite a lot of the negativity, NFTs are here to stay.

And, as platforms offering Metaverse experiences multiply and continue to rely on blockchain-related technologies to power their marketplaces and events, NFTs will continue to soar.

Storya is already working on testing what the Metaverse will mean for storytellers, but the dream is to see static storytelling experiences (an eBook, for example) transformed into an engaging, interactive “experience” within the Metaverse. The possibilities are endless. Topic for another post!

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The world is moving at breakneck speed. For perspective, the last 100 years of science and technology have transformed it like never before. Now, digital transformation is disrupting every industry, cluster, and ecosystem. However, there is one area that’s been quiet for centuries, and it seems no one has turned their attention toward it.

Broken payroll, outdated pay cycle

The concept of monthly payment of salary has remained the same for centuries. The practice of a fixed, regular payment at the end of the month started supposedly in 10,000 BC during the first agricultural revolution. It still holds today! Although there have been many technological interventions around payroll calculation and disbursements, the pay cycle frequency has not changed in the last 30-50 years.  

At the end of the month, the paycheck-to-paycheck system leaves the financially vulnerable with extremely limited options to prepare for the future. With little awareness and support, employees can break this vicious cycle of debt and take a step towards financial security.

Earned wage access to the rescue

EWA is a concept where employees can get rid of their everyday financial pressure, access their earned wages, and avail of funds when needed. It works wonders for employee benefits as, unlike payday loans, or personal salary loans, earned wage access involves little to no cost and is not a loan. Earned wage access platforms have the potential to eradicate predatory lenders and their inherent risks. 

Also Read: How payment networks are crucial to the rising fintech movement

With the proliferation of mobile connectivity, fintech innovation, and the gig economy, the solutions provided by earned wage access platforms are creating a future where every worker has on-demand financial access that is fair and transparent. According to a report by EY, in India, 81 per cent of employees face a liquidity crunch between pay cycles and close to 60 per cent said they would consider earned wage access as a deciding factor for their next job.

Running successfully across the US and Europe

Over the last decade, earned wage access has gained mainstream attention in the US and Europe. In the US and 36 other developed countries, more than US$1 trillion of accrued salaries are stuck in the employer payroll on any given day. With payroll and benefits innovations like earned wage access, hourly and temporary workers now have access to their earned wages between the two or four-week pay cycles.

Five years ago, Uber rolled out earned wage access for its drivers. Sometime later, Lyft too introduced a similar feature in partnership with Mastercard. Two years later, to reduce worker stress and increase productivity, America’s largest payroll provider ADP started offering earned wage access as part of its benefit programs. The act was swiftly followed by Sage Group, UK’s largest payroll provider.       

As momentum around earned wage access has grown globally, pioneers like DailyPay, PayActiv and Wagestream are leading the march towards faster, on-demand employee payouts. Global payment companies like PayPal, Visa and Revolut have also come forward to support their employers in enabling faster access to earned wages to the frontline workers.

Enroute Asia: Earned wage access is transforming lives

In the last 24 months, the earned wage access revolution has found strong roots across Asia too. In this region, a large number of frontline workers are desperate for faster, more flexible and inclusive financial services to meet their short-term needs. Earned wage access is proving to be a boon for millions of low to middle-income employees who are desperate to escape the vicious grip of predatory lenders and improve their financial well-being. 

Also Read: GajiGesa raises US$6.6M pre-Series A to provide earned wage access to underserved workers, SMEs

In India, a mid-month cash crunch causes an acute financial crisis among marginal workers. The unbanked and underbanked working population have no choice but to turn to high-interest payday loans, which lead to debt traps. To address these pain points, the earned wage access platform Refyne has emerged as a leading solution that claims to serve over 700,000 workers. The company recently announced an US$82 million Series A led by Tiger Global.

Over in Southeast Asia, GajiGesa is reshaping how employers think about employee benefits and financial wellness. Founded in 2020 by Martyna Malinowska and former Stripe and Uber executive Vidit Agarwal, the company has firmly established itself as the market-leading financial wellness platform at the intersection of fintech and HRtech.

It leads the effort to bring financial integrity and security into every workplace across Southeast Asia. Today, the GajiGesa platform empowers over 250 employers and serves over 750,000 workers and MSMEs across Indonesia.

As the pioneer and fastest-growing earned wage access platform in the region, the company has been quick to innovate and ship additional features like bill payment, mobile top-ups, and rewards in its quest to become the holistic employee benefits solution designed to improve financial well-being. Interestingly the company counts global EWA pioneer and leader Wagestream amongst its investors. 

The success of GajiGesa has also spawned several copycats too. Across the other SEA markets, smaller players like Circopay, Nano, Paywatch and others have popped up to capitalise on the growing momentum around earned wage access.

Coincidentally, two of the newer ones have also been founded by ex-Uber executives. It’s not hard to see why. Uber was ahead of the curve in redefining pay cycles for gig-economy workers, with weekly and bi-weekly payouts the norm since it was introduced in 2014. 

Barely a decade on, thousands of enterprises around the world, and especially across emerging markets, are actively embracing new technologies that offer a better and more inclusive financial system that works for their employees instead of against them.

EWA has a unique opportunity to not only define the future of pay but lead the effort to accelerate financial inclusion in economies around the world too.

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Singapore-headquartered Glife Technologies, a B2B marketplace to connect restaurants with farmers, has extended its Series round with a US$3 million investment from Tin Men Capital.

This is a follow-up to the US$4.96 million Glife Techologies raised during its Series A in November 2021 and the subsequent US$2.9 million funding injected by existing investors in May 2022.

Tin Men Capital joins previous Series A investors Heliconia Capital (a wholly owned investment subsidiary of Temasek) and Hibiscus Fund (a fund managed by Malaysia’s RHL Ventures and South Korea’s KB Investment).

Since its inception, Glife has raised US$13 million in funding to support its operations across regional markets, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Also Read: Agritech startup Glife secures US$1.18M seed funding for farm-to-table logistics service

Glife will use the fresh funds to accelerate the launch and operations of its digital marketplace for F&B suppliers and merchants in Q42022 and enlarge its market share in the Indonesian market.

Founded in 2018, Glife connects farmers in the region with F&B businesses through its full-stack solutions for restaurants.  The B2B marketplace aggregates demand for food produce from restaurants and match it with suppliers, giving restaurants better access to a variety of products as well as better prices.

The capital will also be used to strengthen its technology infrastructure to build an end-to-end digital supply chain solution.

Caleb Wu, Co-Founder and Deputy CEO of Glife Technologies, said: “We aim to continue building efficiency and transparency across the food supply chain and create solutions to uplift smallholder farmers across the region.”

“The ongoing pandemic has exposed the brittleness of our supply chain. Disruptions have impacted the flow of produce from farms to customers and venture capital must support industry efforts to embrace innovation and integrate sustainability goals.”

Singapore-based venture capital firm Tin Men Capital recently announced the first close of its second enterprise technology fund. Fund II will continue to invest in B2B technology startups in Southeast Asia. It looks to invest in approximately 10 to 12 enterprises.

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Playground, a new platform dedicated to Web3 gaming and NFT discovery, has announced the completion of its oversubscribed pre-seed funding, co-led by East Ventures and Mirana Ventures.

Also joined the round were Arc Capital ( crypto fund affiliated with Pintu), James Z (Founder of Jambo), Adam Levinson, Murali Abburi (Graticule Asset Management, and Benjamin Zhu (Azure Tide, a digital asset specialist firm), and unnamed senior executives from leading blockchain firms.

Playground was founded to address the ‘Web3 information problem’ — the massive gap in the discovery process for both new and seasoned users.

This stems from the rapid growth of blockchain-enabled entertainment projects and the accompanying fragmentation of information – often subjective, outdated or unreliable – over disparate sources and channels.

Targeting this central problem, Playground has developed a platform to bridge the information gap for all users in Web3 entertainment, with a laser focus on legitimacy and experiences.

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

Also Read: We’re still in the dot-com phase of Web3: Steven Suhadi of Standard Alpha

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

The founding team of Playground has extensive experience, having worked in companies including Binance, Classpass, and Tencent. Founder Clinton Teh (CEO) previously led several strategic initiatives in Web3 gaming and NFTs for Binance’s decentralised chain and was also part of the investment team.

Teh shared: “Despite being experienced blockchain users, our excitement for the new paradigm of digital ownership and decentralisation in Web3 entertainment has been tempered by frustration in the discovery process, where we have met with great difficulty in sourcing, verifying, and aggregating information on Web3 gaming and NFT projects. We believe all users should have a seamless experience learning about projects in the space, from factual information to the actual ‘feel’ of a particular game or interactive experience.”

David Toh, Partner at Mirana Ventures, said, “We believe Playground’s focus on users, experiences, and legitimacy will be a key lever in growing Web3 entertainment adoption in the future.”

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