Filipina actress and celebrity Yassi Pressman has announced her entry into the Web3 domain by launching two ventures — PEG, a gaming guild, and BrandNation, an influencer marketing platform for digital and Web3 brands.

The 27-year-old actor also secured US$2 million in seed funding for the two startups, led by cryptocurrency exchange and digital asset custodial provider Sonla.

The capital will help drive the deployment of the proprietary PEGFi interoperable and integrated digital financial infrastructure targetting GameFi and Web 3 market participants. A portion of the capital will go towards supporting BrandNation.io.

Pressman, a celebrity with 20 million followers on social media, says she aligns deeply with P&E (play and earn) gaming and influencer marketing. She can attract large strategic clients in GameFi and Web3 for PEGFi and brands and influencers for BrandNation.io.

Also Read: ‘In Web3, talent is hard to find and expensive’

BrandNation.io is an online platform that effectively matches influencers with brands. Its features make it easy for brands and influencers to interact with one another, beginning with the core user experience.

Brands will be able to automate the campaign creation process for influencer marketing in a few clicks, gain access to real-time data about each campaign, and achieve mainstream adoption through collaborations with even A-list celebrities.

BrandNation.io can be integrated with all social media platforms, such as Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter, and real-time rewards and payments via PEG Token, the native token of PEG and the PEGFi ecosystem.

The PEG Token is backed by BLX, the native token of BLOX, a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) registered in Wyoming, the US. Users and brands with PEG can more efficiently transact directly with one another for collaborations and partnerships through the PEG and BrandNation.io platforms.

“Changing gaming and influencer marketing will not happen overnight, even with this seed funding. We’ll need a strong community to band together, inspired by the vision of what our respective industries can one day be,” said Pressman.

Also Read: Singapore gets an NFT-gated Web3 co-working space Metacamp

“Web3 products are not built through advertising, but through the community. Pressman has the influence needed to attract the critical mass of users for both PEG and BrandNation.io. She can lead them toward a more professional, efficient, and digitally enabled gaming and influencer marketing industry, respectively,” said Kiran Sharma, Senior Partner at Sonla.

In February this year, Pressman invested in the Philippine mental healthcare company, Mind You.

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At e27, we have kickstarted a new articles series called work-life balance to learn more about tech enablers and executives and their lives beyond working hours.

Vaibhav Aggarwal is a Senior Engineering Manager at Coinbase, leading core features and foundations for scalable growth. He is currently based out of San Diego, California, and he previously worked at LinkedIn and MyFitnessPal.

Aggarwal loves solving problems and building products. He also spends a lot of time thinking about new ideas, learning, work-life balance, living in the present and sharing that with people around him.

He is a regular contributor of articles for e27 (you can read his thought leadership articles here). 

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

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

I work with many smart people building cool things on the internet, computers and phones. I focus on getting more and more people to use those cool things.

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

I have been fortunate to work at amazing companies and build great products. My biggest highlight has been working with my teammates on their growth as individual contributors or transitions to management. It has been highly fulfilling.

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

In the next five years, I want to become the best in the industry for leading product growth and the growth engineering strategy. I want to propagate the knowledge and help scale the companies I work with.

What are some of your favourite work tools?

Slack, Google docs/sheets, Xcode (when I was a developer).

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

I’m from New Delhi. I moved to Fargo, North Dakota, for school and survived -30F for over four years.

Do you prefer WFH or WFO, or hybrid?

I prefer a hybrid model. I am currently fully remote, living in San Diego, which I genuinely enjoy.

Also Read: Blockchain promises to be as foundational and indispensable as internet: Amit Ghosh of R3

However, there is something to be said about social currency and energy. Every now and then, I wish to meet my team in person to work together, deepening our human relations and not working with boxes on the screen.

What would you tell your younger self?

Play long-term games. Do not optimise for the short term. Have one or two key goals and focus on that. Lastly, life is long, so have fun as you go along.

Can you describe yourself in three words?

Builder, curious, determined.

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

Sitting on the La Jolla shores, at the gym, learning something new, generating ideas.

What are you currently reading/listening to/ watching?

I’m currently reading Almanack of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson

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Asia-Pacific (APAC) economies have shown resilience in the face of extraordinary change. The region has seen immense growth in the past two decades, with the World Bank reporting that the share of people living in extreme poverty dropped from over 22 per cent in 2000 to just below five per cent on average.

Amidst the global pandemic, countries remained active in pursuing income support and credit creation measures while leveraging digital technology to weather the storm and seize opportunities to come out stronger.

Despite the current uncertainties in the global economic environment, the APAC region is expected to dominate global growth in the upcoming year, per the latest S&P Global Market Intelligence report.

Need for APAC to fuel the energy transition

As the region continues to plot its rise, it also must channel all the resilience it can muster to address the existential challenge that climate change poses. It is a known fact that APAC countries are on the frontline of climate change.

The region’s many low-lying coastal cities are exposed to flood and typhoon risks, and extreme weather events have become common. As the region grows and energy demand reaches unprecedented levels, finding alternative energy solutions and making existing carbon-intensive energy infrastructure efficient has become an urgent necessity.

Also Read: Humble Sustainability raises funding to bring excess inventory back into circularity

Accelerating the energy transition will be crucial not just for sustainable growth but also for survival.

Accelerating tech-led sustainability

Technology is what allowed the energy revolution to begin, and it is what will help us in wholesale and broad-based transition to energy-efficient systems.

In fact, Schneider Electric recognises that solutions already exist to transform easiest-to-decarbonise sectors such as utilities, buildings, industry and transport, with more on the way to impact the hardest-to-abate areas.

Our analysis shows that it is possible to reduce emissions to the levels needed to put us on the course to reaching net zero by the middle of the century through the mass development and implementation of existing technologies.

Continued technological advances will also offer new possibilities for organisations to optimise performance in areas such as emissions and waste management, as well as to measure and achieve sustainability targets.

During the recent Asia Clean Energy Summit in Singapore, it was also discussed how decarbonisation technologies such as green hydrogen represent a game changer for the energy transition. It is encouraging that countries like Singapore are looking at how to take this forward.

At the opening of the Singapore International Energy Week (SIEW), the government announced that Singapore would look at how hydrogen can complement and diversify the country’s power mix alongside solar, imported electricity, and other potential low-carbon energy sources such as geothermal energy.

Green hydrogen technology is a prominent example of how technology can further sustainable growth objectives. Its mass adoption has the potential to fundamentally transform the energy landscape, with its demand expected to grow to 500-680 million metric tons by 2050, according to an IEA report.

Green hydrogen technology uses renewable sources and water to generate clean energy that does not release carbon dioxide into the air. Hydrogen can be stored, transported, and used as a feedstock in industry, as transportation fuel, as heating fuel, and to generate electricity in various applications. Its disruptive potential has been felt in the global economy, with investments in low-carbon hydrogen technology increasing exponentially, backed up by policies from countries.

Nevertheless, it is still in its infancy and determining how to achieve cost-effective production is challenging. Finding the path towards efficient green hydrogen production would require new technologies and the availability and perennity of government subsidies to support green hydrogen projects.

As the production of clean hydrogen accelerates over time, the electrification and decentralisation of the power supply will also require more digital solutions to manage the distribution of energy and its usage in a safe, reliable, sustainable and efficient manner.

Data will be the lifeblood of these kinds of energy transition possibilities. It can help companies set a baseline to know what needs to be changed, measure changes over time and ensure there is meaningful change.

Most importantly, data can provide information for faster and more efficient decision-making. Any organisation seeking to achieve clean energy goals must have a robust and valid data set regimen, including all sources of emissions.

In line with this, it is encouraging to know that according to Schneider Electric’s 2nd Building a Greener Singapore report, close to three quarters (71 per cent) of Singapore business leaders who were surveyed in September 2022 believe their organisation is making good progress in energy management and are transitioning towards renewables.

This marks a 10-percentage point increase over the past 12 months.

Collaboration is key in pursuing a net zero future

As the climate crisis continues to exacerbate the global energy crisis, APAC countries cannot afford to rely on traditional modes of energy generation and energy infrastructure for sustained growth. Collaboration between private and public stakeholders will ensure that viable alternate energy technologies and data-driven solutions are operationalised.

Also Read: Sustainable growth in the SEA startup ecosystem: Why tomorrow starts today

For instance, Schneider Electric launched our SME Kickstarter Decarbonisation Programme this year with support from Enterprise Singapore to offer sustainability coaching and knowledge transfer to local SMEs, which make up almost 99 per cent of businesses in the country.

Specifically, we have pledged to provide training and mentorship to participants over three years to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and guidance needed throughout their sustainability journeys, with a deep focus on decarbonisation.

Participants will take part in workshops covering key sustainability concepts and emissions reporting frameworks, and we have also pledged to support them in establishing their Scope 1 and 2 emissions, developing decarbonisation roadmaps and identifying opportunities for energy efficiency.

Ultimately, there is no one solution to tackle the climate crisis. A “one-size-fits-all” approach is not possible in bringing forth climate action in a region known for its diversity. Companies play a crucial role in creating real, achievable plans to tailor-make energy innovations for different markets, industries, companies, and stakeholders in the region.

These plans require a comprehensive and deep reflection on the priorities and objectives of stakeholders to make any kind of tangible change possible.

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Since Web3 is a new domain, it is tough to find talent, according to Dr Vilma Mattila, Co-Founder of 5ire Chain, a sustainability-driven blockchain company.

“It is not building a Web3 company or raising funding, but finding talents is the biggest challenge,” Mattila said during a panel discussion at a Web3 event organised by Nasscom in Bangalore a few days ago. “When you are building something new, people always want to take reference of something past. So finding talent is very challenging, not from a skill-side, but from the mindset and behaviour side.”

Shaurya Agarwal, Founder of Flam, a 3D avatar-based social metaverse company, agreed. Since Web3 is so early and everything is new, you must find people who can take first principles. “So the way the interfacing or design happens is like first principle thinking. So finding talent is the biggest challenge we face.”

“Talents are very expensive, too,” Agarwal shared. “It is hard to find people who are good at Perception Engineering or understand Game Engineering. Game artists and even design hires are hard to find and expensive. I was talking to someone working with Facebook (Meta) the other day. He mentioned that at one point, Meta started hiring almost everyone in the AI space. So if you want to hire someone in AR or VR, Meta has already offered them something, making it even harder for companies like us to hire.”

According to Dr Mattila, the best talents can be found in India, Vietnam, the US, France and the UK.

Also Read: To leverage Web3 technologies, Web2 companies may start by building the right culture

“We are also finding talent from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam. Vietnam has a fascinating ecosystem where we can find 3D game artists and designers. We have also found people who understand Web3 in Vietnam,” added Agarwal.

The panel discussion, titled ‘Fund Raising in the Age of Web3.0 and Metaverse‘, also touched upon the other aspects of Web3 and Metaverse. According to panellist Ajeet Khurana, Founder of Reflexical Pte Ltd, it is tough to raise funds for Web3 investors in the current environment. “Until the markets turned down with the first interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, it was extraordinarily easy to raise funds. However, with the market downturn, it has been challenging to raise funds.”

Ankur Choudhary, Research Partner at Woodstock Fund, a Web3-only fund in India, shared a similar sentiment. “The market downturn is one factor that has made raising capital very challenging. Besides, Web3 is an emerging space; not many people understand this space, and this is a big problem. However, time will solve that. Regulatory clarity is the other challenge. Regulations are currently quite fuzzy, and clarity about this will go a long way in helping people become more comfortable,” Choudhary noted.

Woodstock is an early-stage Web3-only fund that has made around 65 investments since its launch in 2019.

Choudhary further said he observes three megatrends in the Web3 space globally: convergence, financialisation and virtualisation. “Convergence is where we believe you will have communities, cultures, technologies, and economies coming together. In financialisation, we see DeFi being one of the major things. More regulation will come and should come in for it to play a larger role. On virtualisation, we have the metaverse and gaming.”

“As a Web3 fund, we will invest in the intersection of these things. We mostly tend to focus on the infrastructure and tooling to help bring brands and consumers onto these various worlds and metaverse that have been built.”

The session was moderated by Anirvan Chowdhury, Vice President at Premji Invest.

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URECA, a Singapore-headquartered climate tech company, has announced closing its pre-seed fundraising round at US$1.5 million.

The names of the investors remain undisclosed.

The startup will use the capital to scale its operations across Southeast Asia. In addition, it will accelerate the launch of its marketplace that enables people to invest directly in climate solutions, planned for early 2023.

Originally from Mongolia and headquartered in Singapore, URECA aims to empower and mobilise grassroots communities against climate change by providing a universally accessible platform for carbon offsets.

Also Read: How Zuno Carbon plans to help organisations reduce their environmental impact

In addition to providing a marketplace for carbon offsets as investable assets, URECA also enables individual households and SMEs transitioning to clean energy to produce and sell carbon offsets through its digital MRV (measurement, reporting and verification) technology. These can range from the homeowner with a rooftop solar panel to a company owning a large wind farm.

The MRV technology uses IoT engineering and machine learning to remotely verify carbon offsets which then can be traded on the company’s blockchain-powered marketplace to provide a transparent and accessible platform for verified, high-quality carbon credits.

URECA plans to expand its reach into other high-quality carbon offset projects.

The company is already working on energy efficiency programmes and is exploring moving into nature-based solutions. URECA will use technology and fieldwork to ensure that the verified credits listed on its marketplace are of high quality and meet the most stringent requirements.

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

“This pre-seed investment round positions us to get more people involved in the fight against climate change and will enable us to become a leading climate tech player in the region,” said Orchlon Enkhtsetseg, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of URECA.

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Accelerating Asia, an accelerator VC firm that runs programmes for early-stage startups, has announced investments in ten new companies joining the cohort 7 programme. 

The new investments take Accelerating Asia’s portfolio to 60 startups that have raised over US$50 million, with cohort 7 having raised US$5.2 million before joining the programme.

The cohort 7 startups have a market presence in nine countries across Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Myanmar, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and South Korea. 

They cover various verticals, including hospitality, enterprise software, telecommunications, entertainment, logistics, retail technology, healthtech, and e-commerce. Collectively, every startup addresses at least one sustainable development goal (SDG).

The new investees of Accelerating Asia have an average monthly gross merchandise value (GMV) of over US$46,000 and revenue of over US$13,000.

About 60 per cent of the startups have at least one female co-founder (Easy Rice, Shoplinks, Kooky, BizB, Healthpro.id, and SafeTruck). As per the release, it is “significantly higher than the average portfolio”, given just 17.2 per cent of private capital in Southeast Asia was deployed to female-founded startups. 

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

Amra Naidoo, General Partner at Accelerating Asia, said: “The ten startups we invested in have even more significant milestones in revenue, user acquisition, and other metrics than you would typically associate with early-stage startups. We believe this is a positive sign for not only Accelerating Asia, but the ecosystem in Asia Pacific as a whole. Our startups are finding product-market fit faster than ever, allowing them to focus on scaling toward market leadership.”

Below are the brief profiles of each cohort 7 startup:

Cocotel (Philippines): A one-stop solution for hotel reservation needs. The proptech company helps independent hotels and resorts with technology, property management, and digital marketing.

Hishabee (Bangladesh): A full-stack business solution that helps over 100,000 Bangladeshi small businesses save time and increase their revenue by selling online and everything else they need to run efficiently. 

K-link (Myanmar and Thailand): An omnichannel cloud contact centre platform provider that supplies hundreds of global brands with high-end telecommunication services without expensive hardware and complex telecom infrastructure. 

Kooky.io (Korea): An entertainment platform where superfans meet K-pop artists by turning their passion into active support that helps to grow their favourite artists.

Safe Truck (Malaysia): An internet of things (IoT) fleet management system that tracks and collects telematics data, analyzes with an AI-powered application, and helps transporters get lower rates in end-to-end fleet procurement.

Shoplinks (Singapore): It helps supermarkets in Southeast Asia monetise their transaction and loyalty data by delivering personalised promotions to shoppers through chat or apps for consumer brands, tripling their ROI.

Easy Rice Digital Technology (Thailand): An agritech company that digitises and enhances quality assessment (QA) of staple food to make its delivery from farm to fork quicker, cheaper and healthier. 

HealthPro (Indonesia): A platform to help healthcare facilities get their on-demand healthcare workers effortlessly.

BizB (Pakistan): It is a re-commerce marketplace for buying and selling preloved apparel and accessories, helping women earn money, save money and contribute to making fashion sustainable again!  

Ulisse (Singapore): An IoT hardware and software platform that helps business decision-makers save costs with commercial places that perform better with data. 

Licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Accelerating Asia runs programmes for early-stage startups. In September 2021, it launched Fund II worth US$20M. Accelerating Asia invests up to US$250,000 in pre-Series A startups. 

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The last three years have been turbulent for everyone, especially employees who have had to deal with constantly changing working conditions as a result of the transition from old to new technology and the rise of a flexible workforce.

As we begin to regain some sense of normalcy in our lives, the world is now dealing with an impending economic recession that will affect many companies and businesses worldwide. Companies throughout the region, and now even internationally, are being forced to restructure their operations, adapt their workforce to a more flexible working environment, and become more agile to respond to changes in market conditions and consumer demand more quickly.

As businesses in many countries had to adhere to government regulations to have their employees work from home, office space became somewhat obsolete. Because it gives employees more freedom to finish their tasks at work while taking care of their personal needs, workplace flexibility encourages employees to pursue greater independence and promotes a healthier work-life balance. Employees will feel more in control of their work as a result, which will boost their job satisfaction. 

This begs the question, is office space truly necessary?

How important is office space today?

Traditionally, real estate has been necessary to many companies because it provides them with an available resource that can serve both their employees’ and clients’ needs. According to PwC’s Pulse Survey of 2022, it is said that 22 per cent of companies are scaling back their investments in real estate, more than any other business area. This is likely a response to the increase and even the maintenance of hybrid and remote work in many companies worldwide, like Singapore and Malaysia. 

Also Read: Coworking office spaces are better investment for startups and entrepreneurs

As a result, investments in real estate have been declining more than in any other area of business. Given that we have an economic recession looming above us, it gets us thinking: Should companies look at reducing their office space to reduce their total costs and move into partial co-working? 

While office space may be necessary for businesses, it is a fact that employers and employees alike may not be able to return to their pre-COVID-19 office routines because the pandemic has changed what used to be the norm.

While business leaders must always keep costs under control and their bottom line in mind, they must also consider the health of their employees. Employee expectations have also changed, and some may no longer wish to return to their normal office routine, which might affect employee productivity.

Furthermore, with the economic recession looming overhead, along with many other factors such as the emergence of new COVID-19 variants, businesses should consider re-evaluating how they can leverage office space and incorporate remote working most effectively and efficiently into their business models.

Businesses need to consider different solutions

One way that businesses can incorporate remote working in the best way possible is by making use of a co-working space that can provide the best of both worlds for themselves and their employees. By working in a co-working space, companies enjoy all the benefits of a more productive workforce with less time, effort, and cost associated with improving and coordinating workspace facilities. 

Employees are also beginning to see the benefits of working from co-working spaces, especially with the uncertainty of the resurgence of the COVID-19 virus and the incoming economic recession. With firms seeking flexibility to protect themselves and their employees, co-working spaces have been enquired about more and are also increasing in demand.

This shows that while office space is necessary for a business, it might not be a wise investment in the long run, at least for now, and perhaps an investment in co-working spaces might do better for businesses.

Co-working spaces benefit not only employees but employers as well. Those that provide space for full-time employees are typically set up in accessible locations where employees can choose from various types of spaces, such as a separate private office, a shared space, and so on. Co-working spaces also offer companies a great way to expand their office space across different locations.

The majority of companies typically choose to lease a space for their offices. What they fail to realise is that leasing will probably cost their businesses more money and bind them to the property for at least three years without any lease flexibility.

Also Read: WORQ secures US$2.4M to grow its co-working spaces biz through partnerships, acquisitions

Additionally, companies are usually responsible for any costs related to the leased property that may need to be renovated, including design fees, agent fees, legal/landlord fees, furniture and fixture costs, and security costs, such as setting up CCTV cameras throughout the property and improving door access.

Flexibility is the future of work

The move to utilising co-working spaces is essential and optimal during this time of uncertainty with the looming recession. Co-working spaces are growing in popularity with today’s dynamic workforce, which makes the experimentation of co-working spaces for businesses worth a shot.

WORQ is also able to ease the doubts of employers by providing enterprise solutions and assisting in designing and operating a business’ space the way that they want it to be. 

There are more pros than cons to the use of co-working spaces, contrary to what employers and employees may believe, and WORQ can prove this. It is through WORQ that we may ultimately witness an improvement or a growth of businesses as we tide through the uncertainty that is the global economic recession.

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Back in September, a region-wide study reported that the “glamourisation of productivity” and “rise and grind” mentality had taken its toll on employees across the region. Interestingly, while Singapore employees spend less than or as much time at work as others across Southeast Asia, they reported the lowest levels of engagement and job satisfaction.

In the communications and PR sector, we’ve become so accustomed to work and play bleeding into one that punching out your timesheet at the end of each day can feel alien. Mobile phone push notifications, LinkedIn direct mails,  “just one more thing” messages on WhatsApp – it doesn’t matter if you’re physically away from the laptop, you’re still actively engaged. But positive change is happening in the workplace.

Defining work-life harmony

Over the last few years, you may have heard various thought leaders debating work-life balance, then work-life integration, and now we’ve reached what’s termed work-life harmony.

This is most succinctly described as where work and life are no longer demarcated but become interdependent elements, where an employee can align their passions with their profession. This mindset shift feels much more attuned to the era of the great resignation and other trends showing employees are more conscious than ever of how, and crucially why they expend energy for the benefit of their employer.

For managers, the nature of work-life harmony throws up interesting challenges when leading high-performing teams, but in addition, it gives pause for thought in one’s own daily routine.

One of the many work productivity processes I’ve tried implementing is the Eisenhower Matrix. I’ve always admired the simplicity and perspective it gives when prioritising tasks through a clear lens – from the urgent and important to the not urgent and unimportant.

Having this perspective in your own daily work can have powerful personal effects, important stuff gets the attention it deserves within a manageable timeframe, and overall, you better manage your own expectations as well as those of your colleagues.

Also Read: How to make remote work more seamless and less distributed

With balance, a better sense of perspective and creating healthier boundaries as core tenets, what if managers were to consider a similar matrix when engaging their employees?

For example:

• Important/urgent – actually business critical, may require immediate overtime, be transparent with the team on the “why” and compensate and reward the effort required.
• Important/not urgent – nothing breaks if this can be left until the morning; consider when this task is communicated to the team, and if it’s late, schedule the request so it’s timed to hit inboxes in the morning.
• Not important/urgent – consider what can be outsourced or automated in advance, and if absolutely necessary for team input outside of office hours, communicate a strong rationale.
• Not important/not urgent – will the cost of burdening your team and affecting morale with such a task outweigh the time spent doing it yourself? If yes, take it on for the team.

A large part of the thinking here is about conserving your team’s energy levels, where each task can chip away at an invisible energy bar. Alongside that, there’s an overlapping bar for tolerance, where too many delegated tasks, delivered without a clear rationale, affect both energy levels and sap morale. When those drain to the bottom, team retention inevitably wanes and employees will leave your company.

Final thoughts

As we enter an uncertain next 12 months for the global economy, difficult periods are inevitable, and senior managers will need to get to know their team’s unique ways of working more than ever before. But crucially, this is not about surveilling or requiring more oversight on what each person is doing at any given time.

If the right boundaries are set and explicitly communicated, mutual respect and empathy are shown, and a very clear “why” is framed around a department’s mission and goals, managers can keep their valued employees energised and engaged.

Our ways of working have changed forever over the last two and a half years, and it’s important for each senior manager to define what work-life harmony means for their team, secure buy-in, and then go out of their way to ensure employees can actually achieve it.

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The Philippines is, in many ways, a promising market for the growth of digital banks. As of today, six digital banking licenses have been issued.

The question is, can these new players become profitable and hold their own against incumbent banks

Challenges and opportunities for digital banks

According to figures from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), over 70 per cent of the Philippines’ adult population is unbanked as of 2019, which presents a large unaddressed potential customer base. World Bank data showed that 41 per cent of Filipinos have borrowed from family and friends, showing a high demand for credit and a lending gap that digital banks can help plug.

Many traditional bank accounts have costs or minimum balance requirements that many people cannot afford. Documentation, or lack of it, is also a common issue, as millions of Filipinos do not have any formal identification.

Millions of people in the Philippines, an archipelago of more than 7000 islands, also live in remote areas with no access to a branch and, therefore, no way to open a traditional account, presenting a huge pool of untapped opportunities for digital banks to expand into.

Today, fintech solutions used by digital-only challenger banks have made it possible and cost-effective for banks to provide digital bank accounts for people who cannot get to a branch; non-bank fintech has made digital payments increasingly widespread, and alternative lenders can now use a range of methods to assess creditworthiness and grant SMEs access to vital finance.

Indeed, a study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) found that digital financial solutions can address around 40 per cent of the unmet demand for payment services and about 20 per cent of the credit requirements of poor households and small businesses in Asia.

A key challenge for digital banks is differentiation because they are targeting the same customer base, offering similar products and services and trying to build a similar elevated digital experience. It will be hard for consumers to find significant differentiating factors between them, so they will be drawn in by two main factors, rates and trust.

Whilst the digital-only banks, with their lower startup and operational costs, will look to attract customers with loss-leading rates, they will not be able to compete with the trust and brand recognition enjoyed by digital spin-offs from existing banks.

State of play in the Philippines

With the Philippines’ final digital bank license issued in September last year, it was notable that the BSP decided to cap the number of licenses at six instead of the original seven, as well as imposing a three-year moratorium on digital banks.

Also Read: Looking to expand your business? Head down to the Philippines!

This development is significant for both incumbent banks and traditional banks. For traditional banks, this can mean more time to adjust and adapt to the emergence of challenger banks. The additional time window to implement upgrades and revamp their digital offerings would no doubt be welcomed.

If traditional banks can evolve successfully to meet the customer’s needs, they can leverage their relatively larger customer bases, well-established infrastructure and offerings, combined with strategic investments into digitalisation, to gain an advantage.

However, digital banks also stand to benefit from the BSP’s decision. Under the BSP’s digital banking framework, scalability has been identified as a key criterion for a license, and the three-year moratorium can help new licensees secure first-mover status in the industry to attract a critical mass of customers.

Additionally, a cap on the number of digital bank licenses, along with the three-year moratorium, instils certainty on the level of competition, meaning the licensed digital banks can focus on developing innovative financial products that best serve the needs of Filipinos in a sustainable and scalable manner.

Need of digital banks to do to succeed in a competitive environment

In the Philippines, there are several technologies and infrastructure drivers that will play in favour of virtual banks over the coming years. These include the rapidly rising adoption of mobile and e-payments, expansion of the country’s credit data infrastructure and increasingly open access to relevant digital information via APIs.

Digital banks will also likely benefit from lower technology costs by being built on cloud infrastructure. Instead of investing in their own expensive hardware, digital banks can dedicate more of their funding and revenue to attracting new customers and eroding incumbents’ market share by focusing on customer experience, something the established banks have traditionally not done well.

Also Read: How digital banking is driving financial inclusion in SEA

Just as incorporating cloud capabilities can help reduce hardware costs, neobanks can also harness the potential of Open Banking and leverage the expertise of fintech instead of spending much-needed resources to develop solutions themselves.

A ‘plug and play’ Open Banking model will enable them to build a technology stack tailored to suit their specific needs and objectives, with proven fintech solutions that are cutting edge, substantially reducing the time to market.

Banking as a Service (BaaS) also offers opportunities for digital banks. BaaS is the provision of retail or wholesale banking products and services, in context, as a service using an existing licensed institution’s secure, regulated infrastructure with modern API-driven platforms.

BaaS simultaneously creates the opportunity to reach more customers whilst lowering the acquisition cost per customer significantly. In short, BaaS makes it simple, fast and cost-effective to integrate regulated products into the customer journey.

Another opportunity for digital banks is the rise of cashless services like Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL). The adoption of such services has been accelerated by COVID, and BNPL is now the fastest-growing in the Philippines.

To take advantage of this additional revenue channel, digital banks collaborate with e-commerce players to embed banking products, such as unsecured loans, in merchants’ point-of-sale processes.

BNPL options often do not require an interest payment or minimum monthly payment, which can make it more attractive to customers than borrowing on a credit card whilst also exposing banks to a new segment of consumers who don’t have access to credit cards.

Final thoughts

The Philippines is on the cusp of a digital banking revolution. While concerns about the viability of digital banks are certainly not unfounded, the technology is now turning the Philippines unbanked and underbanked populations into a viable demographic with enormous potential for financial institutions.

By choosing the right technology and the right strategies, digital banks can be profitable and make a significant contribution to solving financial inclusion in the country.

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NirogStreet, an Ayurveda tech startup based in Delhi, India, has received US$12 million in a Series B round of funding led by Jungle Ventures.

Existing investors Spiral Ventures, ICMG Co-Creation Fund (managed by ICMG Partners), DoorDash’s Gokul Rajaram, SMBC APAC co-head Rajeev Kannan also participated. Besides, the family office of Anthony Weldon also co-invested.

“This new fundraise will help us strengthen our supply chain, service offerings and tech that will help us realise the vision we are working to achieve,” Ram N Kumar, Founder and CEO of NirogStreet, said.

With technology-based interventions, NirogStreet enables doctors by giving technology to run their clinic, access to quality medicines inventory in real-time, and avenues to learn and earn while also closely working with the government, regulators, and research organisations.

Also Read: How these five startups are changing the game in health and well-being

It has over 50,000 Ayurvedic doctors in the community and encourages them to create and publish case studies and research reports to bring evidence-based treatment similar to modern medicine.

In addition, NirogStreet has built an end-to-end supply chain infrastructure for Ayurvedic medicines. The company has created a verified marketplace of Ayurvedic medicines from which doctors can directly order and fill prescriptions while staying on the platform. NirogStreet manages the fulfilment direct to the customer door.

In December last year, NirogStreet secured US$4 million in funding led by CE-Ventures.

As per government estimates, there are over one million AYUSH doctors in India, of which the majority are Ayurveda practitioners. Over 600 AYUSH medical colleges introduce over 30000 new medical graduates every year. The industry has grown significantly over the years, and as per government of India releases, it is a massive 18 billion category, primarily led by practising and prescribing doctors. The recent pandemic has also increased the awareness of preventive healthcare, and there is an evident underlying shift in consumers’ attitudes toward Ayurveda and natural healing.

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