Vietnam’s Marathon Education has added more funding to its seed financing round led by Vulcan Capital, the startup said in a statement.

Forge Ventures, DSG Consumer Partners, Goodwater Capital, and other unnamed angels also participated.

While Marathon Education refused to disclose the amount, a source told e27 the edutech firm raised a seven-figure USD from this round.

The round follows Marathon Education’s participation in the Y Combinator accelerator programme and a 30 per cent monthly growth rate in the first year of operations.

Also Read: ‘High cash-burn growth strategy is ultimately unsustainable’: BrightCHAMPS’s Ravi Bhushan

A year earlier, it bagged US$1.5 million from Forge Ventures, Venturra, and iSeed SEA.

With the new capital, the edutech firm will ramp up its focus on product development in 2023. It plans to launch programming courses and improve the current technology offering to improve students’ academic performance during and beyond live classes, particularly in the virtual classroom experience and out-of-class adaptive learning and performance analysis.

Marathon Education will also look to expand its “online-to-offline” experience centres beyond Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City to provide an opportunity for parents and students to experience the immersive live-class experience anywhere in Vietnam.

While focused on scaling, the firm will also maintain unit-economics profitability.

Co-founded in 2021 by Duc Pham (CEO), an ex-investor at TPG Global, and his brother-in-law Tran Viet Tung (COO), Marathon Education provides live interactive cohort-based classes in large- or small-class format to K-12 students in Vietnam.

Pham says the company has quickly grown to work with 30 “star” tutors nationally, with an average of 20 years of experience providing test preparation classes to top students in Vietnam and hundreds of individual tutors.

Currently, the platform makes accessible all subjects supplementary to the Ministry of Education’s curriculum. In Q3 this year, Marathon started offering IELTS and English language lessons in small-class format taught by exclusively English native teachers.

Despite being a large market with US$2bn of annual revenue driven by parents’ intense focus on children’s education, online penetration in Vietnam’s K-12 afterschool education market is low at 3 per cent.

Also Read: BrightCHAMPS acquires SEA-focused edutech startup Schola for US$15M

The offline market remains fragmented and faces key issues, including the inaccessibility of top teachers to students nationally, inconsistent quality, low brand trust, and lack of application of technology in delivering personalised learning and improving academic performance.

In August, Vietnamese startup Schola, a live-learning platform for kids to master communication and English skills, was acquired by Indian edutech company BrightCHAMPS in a US$15-million cash and stock deal.

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In-person events are back in Singapore after two years of absence. The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) stated that in the first three months of 2022, the country hosted more than 150 in-person events attended by over 37,000 delegates. With at least 66 international events secured for the rest of the year, it is no surprise that the numbers are predicted to continue increasing.

For attendees, this meant preparing stacks of business cards to support networking activities at these events. But this concept is outdated. As awareness of the importance of saving the environment grows among customers in the global market, startups worldwide are figuring out alternative ways to make networking more efficient and eco-friendly.

Meet Scard, one example of that startup from Singapore.

Their solutions enable businesses and individuals to build interactive business card within minutes that seamlessly connects with social media profiles to gain maximum visibility; it also doubles up as bio link tools. The digital business card may be digitally printed or produced through physical contacts, such as an NFC-enabled card or stickers, and allows users to exchange information by simply tapping their phone or scanning a QR code. Users can also customise their digital business card with a profile picture, logo, custom domain and any links they like to share.

“In addition to taking an interest in Scard’s features and functions, we have seen many potential customers keen to embrace the sustainability component of our product to reduce wastage and their carbon footprint. By positioning Scard as being part of the movement to incorporate greater green practices in the MICE industry, it is our hope digital business cards will take off,” explains Scard CEO Eric Lim in an email to e27.

Also Read: 7 unique startup innovations we saw at Tech In Asia Conference 2022

“With a possible recession looming, companies looking to cut costs may also find digital business cards an attractive alternative to printing large volumes of business cards,” he adds.

The market potential for this tech solution is also promising. The company cites a Market Research Future (MRFR) report in a press statement that predicts the global digital business card market to a value of S$337 million (US$235 million) by 2027.

From paper cards to Scard

Scard launched its software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform in March 2022. Its journey actually began in 2005 as a local branding and printing card company. However, as the customers’ awareness of the importance of sustainability increases, the company noted how demand for traditional printed name card services has fallen.

On the other hand, their digital business card platform has seen a 50 per cent increase in the number of users over the last few months.

“Scard attributes this not only to the return of live events but also to increasing demand from users who want to embrace and integrate sustainable practices within their personal experiences. They believe that digital networking will become a key component of any impactful actions taken by the events industry for the present and future,” Lim says.

The CEO explains more details about their transformation journey.

“Eight years ago, we attempted to digitalise our business card with a jpg/gif image. We could not devote more time to this endeavour due to the hectic nature of our core business. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, our business was impacted when in-person events and conferences stopped,” Lim says.

Also Read: In September, the SEA startup ecosystem was all ready to go out again

“For the next two years, this allowed us the opportunity and time to assemble a competent development team to re-focus our efforts on designing and developing a digital business card which we believe would have immense potential in a post-pandemic world.”

To acquire new users, the Scard team regularly attend business events and conferences that allow them to interact with potential customers.

“We are also tapping on overseas markets as we have seen a growing demand for digital products such as Scard, which are readily accessible and easy to use,” Lim says.

It also provides a rewards system to encourage people to go paperless and reduce the production costs of their business.

“We are not just making a digital business card. We’re building an ecosystem, which is why security and privacy are important. Besides the myriad of features, Scard has robust security features implemented to give every user full control over what to share and peace of mind,” Lim says.

In developing their products, Scard begins by understanding the 5-Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) from the perspective of creators and users. For them, a product would not be useful or popular if it did not understand the solutions that the creators and users are seeking. After that, they will figure out the H (How).

Also Read: Global Web3 companies on why Asia Pacific is the future of the industry

“Our development team would then start designing and implementing different methods, practices, tools, and techniques into our product prototype. From then on, it is a constant trial and error process where we would test the product out and improve and/or refine it based on feedback from user experience,” Lim elaborates.

“We have been helping customers develop solutions for the past 17 years so it is something we are experienced in and passionate about. The only difference is we can gather more diverse viewpoints about our products based on different market demands and sharing of individual experiences.”

Playing the cards right

Scard says that there are currently a few hundred users in their database, with backgrounds that range from company owners, experts in digital marketing, artists, to salespeople.

Run by a small team of fewer than 10 members, the company is looking to raise additional capital to expand its team and develop its business platform to support companies of all sizes. The software is currently bootstrapped with a six-digit investment.

“We want to grow our user base and make sure that digital business card solutions continue to progress in usage and changing mindsets. The main focus right now is to make sure we deliver Scard based on our three pillars of innovation, security and sustainability,” Lim says.

“However, our development team is constantly brainstorming ideas and we look forward to introducing new products in the future to suit an ever-changing business environment.”

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

Image Credit: Scard

The post Throw your paper-based biz card away because Scard has a better alternative appeared first on e27.

Indonesia-based aquaculture startup eFishery today announced that it had secured an IDR500 billion (US$32 million) loan from DBS Bank Indonesia, marking the bank’s first funding for the aquatech sector and the startup’s first loan deal, Tech In Asia wrote.

This funding followed a US$90 million series C funding round co-led by Temasek, SoftBank, and Sequoia Capital India that eFishery announced earlier this year.

The funding will support the expansion of eFishery’s business and improve its quality and productivity, to increase its production and scope by 300 per cent going forward.

Also Read: Founders of Fabelio, Gadjian, and eFishery reveal their top productivity hacks to start the day

The startup also hopes to connect its farmers to international markets with the support of the new capital, in addition to expanding its services and products globally.

Founded in 2013, eFishery has banked a total of US$140 million in funding to date. This number also included the current loan deal.

The Bandung-based startup held the record of the largest-ever VC financing for an aquaculture startup globally with its Series C funding round in January.

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

Image Credit: eFishery

The post eFishery secures US$32M loan from DBS Indonesia to support expansion move appeared first on e27.

Thailand’s edutech startup Globish, which provides a live online learning platform, has announced closing its US$2.5 million Series A+ funding round.

The Digital Economy Promotion Agency (depa), Premier, N-VEST Venture, Top Itthipat, ECG Research, 500 Tuktuks, and Stormbreaker Venture also participated.

Strategic investors, including Nani Nitcharee Nitinavakorn (an executive from a renowned startup in the UK), Dusadee Tancharoen and Ubonwan Khorthavornwong (brand specialists), also joined.

Globish will use the money for expansion into other ASEAN countries. It recently began expanding in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and plans to expand into more markets, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Globish’s learning platform allows learners to have their private classes. The company has developed curricula to match learners’ behaviours and meet the needs of the global labour market.

Also Read: BrightCHAMPS acquires SEA-focused edutech startup Schola for US$15M

Globish conducts 300,000 English and Chinese classes for learners comprising 20 per cent students and 80 per cent working-age people.

Globish has proactive plans to penetrate domestic and international markets with the target of 500,000 classes this year and add instructors and coaches to support the expanding market. By 2025, it is expected to generate an income of US$35 million.

Takarn Ananthothai, CEO and Co-Founder of Globish, said the company will continue to upgrade its organisation to become the edutech leader of ASEAN. It will turn its sights on the global market by extending its platform beyond languages to other skills and will be one of the Tomorrow Educational Leaders by 2023.

“Globish will penetrate domestic and international markets with native coach teams of more than 400 individuals from various countries, such as the UK, the US, South Africa, Egypt, India, Ukraine, and the Philippines. The plan is to increase to 1,000 coaches to support the market expansion,” Ananthothai added.

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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. 

Here’s the full list of the speakers for the 2022 edition, which will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

The post Thai online learning platform Globish closes US$2.5M Series A+ appeared first on e27.

With Southeast Asia being a hotbed for innovation, the region is experiencing steady and continuous economic growth. This is to be expected given the amount of new and exciting business models sprouting in the region. With a population of over 270 million people, there is no better microcosm for these developments than Indonesia.

The country of over 17,000 islands is expected to grow by 5.4 per cent in 2022 and another 5 per cent in 2023 according to a report by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). But there are disparities in this growth, one of which is the economic growth of rural and urban areas.

Over 80 per cent of Indonesia’s population is currently residing in rural areas. This will change in less than 10 years due to the rapid growth of its cities, which is faster than other Asian countries at 4.1 per cent. By 2025, Indonesia is expected to have 68 per cent of its population living in cities, in an almost complete shift that leaves the rural economy behind.

Also read: How an 87-year-old enterprise aims to change the packaging game

As with its Southeast Asian neighbours, this denotes an uneven development between rural and urban areas. While the cost of living in urban and rural areas may not vary by a large amount (about 10 per cent in the 20th century), given factors such as low wages and high prices of goods and services, greater social mobility is afforded in urban centres where most innovation is concentrated, making it a more attractive choice for young professionals.

The key to addressing this disparity is by harnessing smart solutions to empower underserved small business owners and end consumers. Doing so encourages employment, entrepreneurship, consumer patronage, and other drivers of economic growth in rural areas.

Impacting lives to drive economic growth

One company spearheading this mission is Dagangan. Ryan Manafe, Dagangan CEO and co-founder, recently spoke with e27 about his vision of transforming rural Indonesia for the better.

“[Dagangan] ignited an old dream to spend more time and contribute to my country; to create concrete and real impact,” shared Manafe during a call.

Before starting Dagangan, Manafe worked in various companies that exposed him to the challenges that rural areas face, particularly those in logistically-challenged areas.

Having served various roles in various institutions – from his stint at the Indonesian Presidential Work Unit for Development Supervision and Control to starting SUN Energy, a renewable energy developer that would grow into Indonesia’s largest solar company giving rural and remote areas in Indonesia access to sustainable and eco-friendly energy – Manafe’s experiences have helped shape Dagangan as a company that aims to impact lives, especially among people in rural areas.

The Indonesian social commerce platform does that by establishing a tech-enabled hub-and-spoke network that provides small business owners access to goods at affordable prices. The network is based on a trust system that connects community leaders who can cascade information to the rest of the community, as well as establish a reliable platform that provides quick and quality goods and services.

Also read: Accelerating Indonesia’s rural economy through social commerce

By promoting and improving “rural commerce”, Dagangan expands opportunities for market access in rural communities and provides small business owners greater access to materials and opportunities outside their area.

One concrete example of how Dagangan has transformed not just on a macro level, but on the matter of individual lives, is the testimony of Mrs Herlina, one of Dagangan’s loyal customers from Magelang, Central Java. After using the Dagangan platform, her daily sales increased three times to more than IDR 1,500 per day.

Social commerce has helped her to expand a high variety of products with a very competitive price, which helps attract more customers and provides more value creation for the products in her store. Mrs Herlina used to have her store inside her living room but now, only two years after working with Dagangan, she has already expanded the store with a dedicated space in front of her house. She was also able to purchase a car to help with her business’ transportation needs. This is only one of the many examples of how Dagangan impacts rural communities.

A vision of growth and impact

“In first-tier cities, there’s greater accessibility to super apps — though none of these apps is accessible in the rural areas. So, our vision is to focus on addressing a key pain point first by providing access to basic necessities at an affordable price. This is done through the supply chain network of hub and spokes, rural commerce, last-mile delivery, educating, and building relationships with the people,” shared Manafe.

Dagangan covers land areas not typically reached by most mainstream e-commerce platforms—within at least an 80,000 km radius—and because of this, has reached 17,000 villages in rural Indonesia in the last 2.5 years alone.

“The last fundraising round that we did was led by the bank BTPN Syariah Ventura. So we leveraged their fintech solutions. We onboarded the existing solutions that have been developed,” explained Manafe.

Because of its model, the business has grown the average basket size by 24% month-to-month in the past year, showing how customers are satisfied with the business and its reliability. This has led to an increase in the share of wallet to improve the purchasing power of local partners.

Also read: Japanese startups seek strategic partnerships in Southeast Asia

Dagangan also recognises that a central pain point is the need to establish trust: in tier three and tier four cities, there is ​​still a lack of trust, which is why part of Dagangan’s solution is to build relationships with community leaders.

The social commerce platform’s hubs have grown by 200 per cent, operating as many as 40+ hubs as of writing. This has led to spurring growth in these areas and allowed the creation of over 300 jobs. The Dagangan team has also grown three times in the last 12 months.

Its exponential growth has given Dagangan more ambitious goals by year’s end: to cover the whole of Java island. Apart from this, it also seeks to expand rural commerce to Kalimantan and Eastern Indonesia within the next 12 months while expanding its team fourfold.

At the end of the day, to ensure that no one is left behind even within communities, it’s important to educate small business owners and their networks about the benefits of rural commerce and to empower these owners with the tools and resources needed to scale. Moreover, apart from the innovative tech component, the main benefit that comes with Dagangan’s solution is its ability to connect, foster, and build trust within the community. It is through this that the larger trade and commerce ecosystem is rendered sustainable.

Dagangan also sees opportunities to partner and work with local producers to bring goods and services across tier-3 and tier-4 villages to tier-1 cities. From these expansive forward-looking targets, the business ultimately aims to transform and accelerate Indonesia’s rural economy, one partner at a time.

The post The future of the rural economy is here appeared first on e27.

In just a short span of two years, incidents on the world stage have exposed the vulnerabilities of the global food supply chain. Faced with the crippling effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries faced an uphill battle in ensuring their citizens have stable sources of food and medical supplies during the early stages of 2020.

The twists and turns of food security

And while food supply has since stabilised, it has accelerated the Singaporean government’s push for food resilience through self-sufficiency and brought forth the necessity of locally grown produce. The 30 by 30 goal set out by the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) took centre stage, but as the pandemic woes eased, other issues came to the forefront.

With the unexpected fallout from the Ukraine war, the increase in the prices of gas and agricultural products threw the world into yet another food price-supply shock. With Singapore producing only around 10 per cent of its food, the reliance on imports puts us in a precarious position where we will be caught off-guard with unexpected disruptions in the upstream supply chain processes.

Back in 2010, I entered the glitzy world of casino gaming where I was based in Macau, the then gaming hub of the world. It was definitely an eye-opener, and we would often see people splurging on fine dining and luxury goods.

I was exposed only to the consumption part of the food supply chain, and it did not occur to me what goes on behind the scenes. After almost six years in casino gaming, I decided to move back to Singapore and looked towards the green economy industries as the area I wanted to venture into.

The beginnings of Artisan Green

I stumbled upon vertical farming projects and was fascinated by how they married technology with traditional agriculture. I saw this field as one that is forward-looking and was intrigued and wanted to be able to play a part in providing food sustainably.

Also Read: GREENS aims to empower Indonesia’s 240M non-farmers with its meta-farming solutions

The vertical farming industry back in 2016 was still in its nascent stages, and market data was not readily available on its commercial viability. However, after some research and financial modelling, I found that integrating plant science to increase yields, engineering to obtain economies of scale and having a sound commercialisation plan was the breakthrough the agritech industry needed.

2018 was the year that Artisan Green started its operations as a modern indoor farm using controlled environment techniques and hydroponics. Within the first year, we established ourselves as the only indoor farm growing baby spinach, one of the most sensitive crops to grow indoors in Singapore.

Through continued research and experimentation, we managed to grow our own produce that surpassed the quality of imports, netting our first success in our foray into the vertical farming world.

Due to the constant need for research and development, we understood the necessity of using a system that enables us to conduct more experiments in a shorter time frame. Especially since we are now embarking on building our new farm, which will increase the production area from 300㎡ to 5,400㎡, the integration of automation and AI is central to scaling production.

Scaling up production with automation and AI

Singapore is known for its scarcity of resources such as water, food, and land. Through innovation and technology, Singapore has managed to ensure a robust water supply. There should be no reason why we are not able to ensure this for food resilience as well.

Also Read: How an 87-year-old enterprise aims to change the packaging game

One way to achieve this would be through using automation to convert the farming process into a factory line, increasing productivity and efficiency. Increasing our production footprint by almost twenty-fold does not increase our labour force proportionately, and in fact, through our Automated Storage and Retrieval System, which automatically conveys crops to different stations, from seeding to post-harvesting, we will only experience a four-fold increase in headcount.

Developing an AI platform in our farming system reduces the time needed to conduct experiments and get results quicker. We are currently building a digital twin of a plant that is fed with the various parameters and data from our experiments to subject it to different climate conditions and nutrient formulas to simulate the real plant’s responses.

This accelerates the research process without having to go through the time-consuming process of going through multiple iterations of experiments. With this digital twin, we can create virtual farms and allow us to optimise the various parameters in our controlled environment that we are normally not able to.

With Singaporeans now being more aware of sustainability and adopting healthier lifestyles, the consumption trend for local food products with traceability will continue to rise. Consumers now understand the pitfalls of a nation relying mainly on imports, and the shift of their mindset towards local produce requires concerted efforts from the government, consumers and finally, the innovation of farms themselves.

The support of the community has been a great boon to local farms and has allowed us to develop this nascent industry where it is slightly more mature and accepted by consumers. Consumers now get a wider range of choices and can purchase local produce that has not gone through the long journey of travelling thousands of kilometres before arriving on their tables. Every packet of produce bought from local farmers also contributes toward our long-term food security and creates a new economy for Singapore to excel in and export out to the world stage.

Nonetheless, climate change is still a major concern, and erratic weather conditions have subjected farms to crop losses and lower than normal yields. This has brought up the necessity of indoor farms to ensure a stable supply.

And while indoor farms will never replace the traditional outdoor farms, we can still play a part in the supply chain and ensure consumers have access to pesticide-free, fresh, and clean produce grown locally at their doorstep.

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

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The post How AI and automation can shape the future of farms appeared first on e27.

Singapore- and US-based international insurtech company bolttech has completed the acquisition of a majority shareholding in Axle Asia, an established insurance broker in Indonesia.

Axle Asia will become a subsidiary of the Singaporean firm and subsequently be rebranded.

This deal will accelerate the deployment of bolttech’s insurance exchange capabilities and complement its existing presence as a device protection provider in Indonesia, per a statement.

Also Read: Insurtech unicorn bolttech invests in digital insurance advisory Sherpa

“Becoming part of bolttech will enable us to innovate and bring more choice to customers in Indonesia at an accelerated pace,” said Junaedy Ganie, Commissioner, Axle Asia.

Founded in 2008, Axle Asia has served diverse corporate clients from a broad cross-section of industries in Indonesia, from its offices in Jakarta and Surabaya. Its portfolio balances general insurance and employee benefits. Axle Asia also provides personal lines to support its clients’ needs.

Launched in 2020, bolttech aims to make connections between insurers, distributors and customers easier and more efficient to buy and sell insurance and protection products. It works with insurers, telcos, retailers, banks, e-commerce and digital destinations to embed insurance into their customer journeys at the point of need.

The firm claims it serves customers in 30 markets across North America, Asia, and Europe. It has more than 800 distribution partners and 200 insurers in its network and is licensed in 36 international jurisdictions.

Also Read: iPhone co-inventor-backed insurtech unicorn bolttech adds US$30M to Series A

In March this year, bolttech made a strategic investment in UK-based digital insurance advisory Sherpa. Last December, it added BRV Capital Management as a strategic investor in the company. This followed a US$30 million investment towards its US$180-million round from EDBI and Spanish firm Alma Mundi.

bolttech’s other backers are Tony Fadell (Principal at Future Shape, inventor of iPod, and co-inventor of iPhone), Alpha Leonis Partners, Dowling Capital Partners, B. Riley Venture Capital, and Tarsadia Investments.

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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. 

Here’s the full list of the speakers for the 2022 edition, which will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

The post bolttech acquires majority shares in Indonesian insurance broker Axle Asia appeared first on e27.

I plan to write some thought pieces every other month to document the activities that are happening in the Southeast Asian tech startup –ones that we did not get to publish as a feature or news article. It would be a neat way to wrap up our editorial calendar for a month, enabling us to look back and understand what the month meant for us.

For September, the highlight seemed to centre around the return of events in many Southeast Asian countries.

In Indonesia, we attended the NXC International Summit, where we witnessed notable announcements such as Indonesia’s upcoming plan to launch a crypto exchange.

Meanwhile, to say that the last two weeks were intense in Singapore is an understatement.

There was the Singapore F1 weekend for the rest of the community, but the event also happened to be in conjunction with several major tech events in the country. We went to TOKEN2049 to speak to three global Web3 companies on their strategies to win over the Asia Pacific market. In the same week, we also received invitations to at least five other events in the Web3 space.

Our friends at Tech In Asia also hosted their conference just the week before.

We can even say that September was the month when the MICE industry in Singapore was making its comeback as the borders reopened and the world started turning again. But what does it mean for the tech startup ecosystem?

Also Read: Echelon 2022 to discuss the state of the SEA startup ecosystem

As the world keeps on turning

Last week did come with its own disadvantages as Singapore recorded 6,888 new COVID-19 cases following the return of F1 Grand Prix to the country after two years of absence. There is no doubt that this part is unfortunate. It reminded us that the fight against the pandemic is not entirely over.

But for the tech startup ecosystem, perhaps this is a moment where we can be a little bit hopeful.

Every event has its own uniqueness, and startup ecosystem members go to events for different reasons. I recently spoke to some founders about attending events; some believed it remains a great opportunity to promote their works and secure sales. But in principle, the advantage of attending events is its networking opportunities.

Personally, by visiting just one event in the past two weeks, I was able to secure leads for many of our projects from the Contributor Programme to regular feature articles. Seeing the startups that exhibited their booths at the event and the sessions on the stage gave us a glimpse of what is happening in the ecosystem.

(It also felt great to be able to reconnect with familiar faces after two years of not meeting in person.)

But in the context of Web3 space, the hosting of TOKEN2049 and similar events in the last week of September did help to get the word out about the Web3 space. Because let us face it: There are still several people out there who are still questioning the legitimacy of this vertical. The great homework industry players have in growing it involves advocating and educating the masses about its prospects and advantages, and events –especially ones that coincide with major events such as F1– are the right opportunity for it.

This is the kind of hopeful moment that we needed as we enter the final quarter of the year, closing in the works that we had done before –and preparing for a new one.

I want to close this note by reminding you that Echelon 2022 is set to happen at Resorts World Sentosa on October 27-28. This will be a great opportunity for us to reconnect. I cannot wait to see more familiar faces at the event.

The post In September, the SEA startup ecosystem was all ready to go out again appeared first on e27.

As Juwai IQI’s COO and CIO, I lead the effort to manage and build our technology platform and “super-app” Atlas. Today, Atlas has more than 20,000 users, all of whom are agents in Juwai IQI’s global real estate network, IQI.

Here, I’d like to share the five most important lessons we have learnt from creating this global tech platform from our headquarters in Malaysia.

Talent matters

The first and most important lesson we learnt is that when it comes to building a global tech platform, talent matters. A lot. Having a great team is critical to success.

Salaries for software engineers vary country by country, with some, such as the United States, paying more for the same talent as in other places like, say, Malaysia. But a good team-building strategy can’t be focused on paying the least. It has to be centred around finding the best available talent. I’m proud to say we have been able to attract and retain some world-class engineers and operators thus far and continue to grow our team.

We did this by building a strong culture of excellence and teamwork. We were very intentional about the values we wanted to instil in our team, and we hired people who aligned with those values.

Setting a good foundation is even more critical because our team is still in its early stages of growth since we intend to employ more than 1,000 tech and data staff in Kuala Lumpur. Especially after we take possession of our new larger offices, we will need to fill many, many roles. These include platform and mobile app developers, data scientists, and social network community specialists.

Also Read: Tips on building your startup out of that spark of frustration 

So, if you’re working on building a global tech platform, my advice is this: talent matters. A lot. Invest in your team and your culture and establish your core values early.

Put the users first

Another important lesson we learnt is that you have to put the users first. Always.

When we began building our platform, we constantly asked ourselves: what do the users need? What are they trying to accomplish? How can we make their lives easier?

It sounds simple, but it’s not always easy to do. There are a lot of competing interests and agendas in any organisation, and it’s easy to get caught up in those and lose sight of the users. What’s more, corporations tend to focus on the desire to create the perfect solution, but application development only succeeds when you focus on the user’s needs.

If you keep the users in the front and centre of everything you do, you’ll easily stay on the right track. For us, that has meant consulting directly with our users, engaging with them at every stage of development, and receiving direct feedback on what they think about our latest release and how we can improve it.

You also must manoeuvre delicately around the difference between what users say they want and what features they would actually embrace.

One lesson we learnt from our users is to avoid over-engineering the product. A product plan can include many features that users simply don’t want. For example, we found our real estate agent users wanted to maintain personal control of their lead and client information. We had to build around this desire. Some other real estate platforms have struggled because their business models depend on agents sharing this data.

Think globally from day one

From day one, we knew we wanted our business to scale internationally. That meant our platform would have to be used by real estate agents worldwide. So, we made sure it was built to be scalable and accessible from anywhere.

We are committed to localising our content and supporting different languages so that users worldwide can use our platform in their mother tongue. From the very first, our app has supported multiple languages and currencies, has been hosted on servers worldwide and has relied on robust infrastructure to accommodate future growth.

Thinking global also meant that we had to be more ambitious. We weren’t simply trying to digitise a formerly offline process. We hoped instead to re-engineer the process, reduce complications, and make our agents more efficient.

In this journey, we constantly walk the tightrope between doing too much and too little. We can neither present our users with entirely new and unfamiliar ways of doing things nor offer them too few efficiency advantages. We must strike the right balance.

Be willing to pivot

The next lesson I want to share is that you must be willing to pivot. Pivoting means changing direction – both when things are going badly and also when you identify an opportunity you hadn’t planned for.

Our platform looked very different when we started than it does today. We had to make many adjustments along the way based on user feedback and changing market conditions.

Early on, we found our users would often fail to enter complete and accurate addresses, including postcodes. As you can imagine, valid addresses are critical in the real estate business. Even so, our users told us they wanted to save time by entering partial addresses while on the go.

We resolved this challenge by creating code to use machine learning to identify correct property addresses from the available information. This took more work but also resulted in higher satisfaction and usage rates.

Also Read: The profitability trade-off: How startups navigate uncertain times to achieve quality growth

So, if you’re building a global tech platform, my advice is to be willing to pivot. Be flexible, be adaptable, and be open to change. It can be painful but can also make your platform much more successful.

Data is vital

The final lesson that I want to share is that data is vital. Without data, it’s impossible to understand what’s working and what isn’t, identify new opportunities, or fulfil your broader business goals. If you’re considering building a global tech platform, make sure you have a plan for collecting and analysing data. It will be essential to your success.

Sometimes, you collect data even in the absence of an immediate plan for making use of it. I find that data is like money: it is best to save what you can because, eventually, you’ll find a need for it.

Data allows you to understand your users and make decisions that will improve your platform. And because our users are the agents in our network, data also gives us deeper insights into our business. Without data, we would be flying blind.

These are the five most important lessons I learned while helping build a global tech platform in Malaysia for Juwai IQI. I hope they are useful to you as you plan your own development efforts.

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Ecoxyztem, a venture builder for climate tech startups in Indonesia, has received undisclosed funding from TAP Applied Agri Services, Konservasi Hutan Indonesia (a global investor from Pegasus Tech Ventures), and Roni Pramaditia (Chairman of Medco Foundation).

The funds obtained will be used as working capital to develop at least four startups annually.

It will also reach more business actors in the climate tech sector, which can contribute to reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the archipelago.

Ecoxyztem provides access to talent, venture architecture for business modelling, go-to-market activities through business matchmaking, and investments.

Also Read: ‘There’s a lack of urgency among companies in achieving net zero targets’: Unravel Carbon’s Grace Sai

Currently, Ecoxyztem has four startup portfolios: Waste4Change (waste management), ReservoAir (solving flooding problems), Ravelware (driving the green industry transition), and Enertec (working in the energy efficiency sector.

Ecoxyztem conducted three launchpads: Circular Jumpstart, Urban Innovation Challenge, and Climate Innovation League. They acted as a medium for Ecoxyztem to get to know over 45 climate tech startups in Indonesia through learning classes and mentorship programmes.

The team is currently promoting the #TrustinEcopreneur movement to raise public awareness about climate tech solutions and increase the confidence of ecopreneurs.

Jonathan Davy, Co-Founder and CEO of Ecoxyztem, said: “The venture-building process from Ecoxyztem is needed by ecopreneurs (environmental business founders) in the early stages of their business growth. Ecoxyztem becomes an institutional co-founder for startups by facilitating their business growth with methodologies tailored to the Indonesian context.”

Bijaksana Junerosano, President Director of Ecoxyztem, said, “Ecoxyztem was born based on the concern of environmental issues, which is growing faster than the solutions. Through the venture builder model, we believe it will encourage the creation of more innovative solutions to address the environmental issues around us.”

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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. 

Here’s the full list of the speakers for the 2022 edition, which will be co-located with SWITCH at Resorts World Sentosa from 27 to 28 October 2022. Learn more here. 

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