In the Asia Pacific, the transition to remote work during the COVID pandemic has been more radical and abrupt than in other regions. Whereas the US and EMEA companies were already on the brink of shifting to remote work, 78% of Asian workplaces were in-person only.

Fast-forward to 2022, and we are looking at a new market, with 43% of the workforce facing hybrid work arrangements. Examining the last two years, we can identify the challenges in the sudden transition, lessons learned, and opportunities that emerged.

Achievements of hybrid work: productivity and accessibility

Introducing remote work policies helped APAC companies be more productive. Cutting the time associated with commute was the biggest time-saver, saving employees up to 2 hours a day.

Also read: Get to know these movers and shakers in India’s logistics industry

On top of that, shifting to working from home fueled the decentralisation of incredibly centralised APAC markets.  Before the pandemic, capitals were the beating heart of many regions. After the switch to remote work, more families moved to rural areas where they had access to better air quality, as well as larger and more affordable housing.

Challenges of hybrid work in APAC: distractions and technology gaps

One of the differences between APAC and EMEA or other markets is that not all employees in the Asia Pacific have access to distraction-free work environments.

Shared housing is a trend across the region, thus, remote work made it harder for employees to focus on work due to increased tensions in families caused by forced cohabitation, especially during a pandemic.

On top of that, in some countries in the region, companies struggled to build infrastructures that would support a remote team.

While in Korea or Australia the shift was smooth, in India, the transition brought forth new challenges: local employees were facing connectivity issues and the lack of powerful hardware.

As such, enabling employees with an environment for focused work and supporting them with a reliable tech infrastructure were the key challenges team leaders had to face.

Employee turnover: is the “Great Resignation” coming to APAC?

The “Great Resignation”, a trend of employees changing their jobs many times a year, is changing the face of work in the US and EMEA. In regions like Latin America, up to 70% of employees contemplate a job change within the next 12 months.

In APAC, this trend is often overlooked but the numbers show that Great Resignation is spreading to Asian markets. 57% of respondents in Microsoft’s recent report on hybrid work stated they would change jobs to prioritise mental health. The key reasons why people leave for better workplaces are looking for higher salaries, seeking personal fulfilment, and finding projects with better employee training and engagement.

Also read: How these innovators are using data to change the world

While hybrid work may not be able to stop the trend once and for all, it can help slow down the “reshuffle”.

Giving teams the freedom to choose their workplaces rather than constraining them to come back to offices, team leaders put employees behind the steering wheel and allow them to balance commitments.

Besides, hybrid work can help teams improve work-life balance, as most were struggling to do so during the pandemic. Over the last two years, one-third of the APAC workforce felt burned out due to the stress and isolation of full remote work. Being able to interact in an office environment would help teams set boundaries, interact spontaneously and reduce digital fatigue.

Solving the challenges of hybrid work in APAC with technology

The key difference between APAC and other markets is the importance of office-based interactions. For companies in the region, an office is a place for focused work, spontaneous interactions, and seamless performance monitoring.

At the moment, traditional collaboration and video conferencing tools (Microsoft Teams, Slack, and others) don’t meet all needs of APAC teams.

66% of APAC companies surveyed by Google say that they don’t have enough spontaneous interactions and have a harder time collaborating with the rest of their teams.

To solve the problem, team leaders in the regions are exploring virtual offices — 2D platforms where people can interact and stay in touch throughout the workday.

oVice, a virtual office provider based in Japan, has seen a sharp increase in clients from APAC, with large-scale clients from Korea, Vietnam, and other countries setting up spaces on the platform. The company’s clients use virtual offices for day-to-day work, corporate events, and educational workshops.

Also read: Supercharging B2B startups with SAP’s enterprise collaborations

oVice helps APAC companies solve connectivity challenges by supporting them with:

• Fast and reliable technology: oVice allows teams with poor network connectivity to stay connected.
• Space for natural interactions: the platform’s range-based audio transmission means that people can join conversations easily and exchange ideas without having to schedule a meeting for every discussion.
• Customizable spaces: team leaders can create office layouts that match brand values and identity, creating a sense of unity and togetherness that teams typically develop in offices.
• Work-life balance: getting into the habit of working only after logging into a virtual office platform makes it easier for employees to separate jobs and personal life.

Two years after its foundation, oVice has become an APAC leader in the virtual office market.

Join the crowd of fast-growing Asian teams using a virtual office by setting up a free trial space on oVice. If you want to see how teams use the platform, visit the oVice tour space.

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There’s a palpable shift going on in the NFT world. I wake up to tweets saying people wish things would go back to the way they were in 2020. They’re obviously referring to the 10x gains typical for a PFP project.

And the time when you didn’t have to keep your guard up so high when everyone could be trusted. These days, opportunities to flip a digital asset for such returns are few and far in between.

As Karafuru, Co-Founder, Jeffry Jouw, puts it, “80 per cent of NFTs are pretty much a cash grab, where they build and sell, and don’t care about what happens after.”

Could the supply of the remaining 20 per cent diamonds in the rough be dwindling? Are we witnessing a bubble about to burst? Is this the end of the NFT golden era? I say no.

Pun intended

To date, the majority of NFT drops are centred around digital art and its collectible nature. It seems that after two years of that, we’re all craving more. In microeconomics, it’s called diminishing marginal utility.

After repeated exposure to a product or service, we derive less and less satisfaction from it. Even with the best marketing, maintaining the mint hype is no longer sustainable unless projects begin to introduce something new.

Web2 business leaders breaking into the Web3 space couldn’t have come at a better time. They’re introducing innovation that NFTs need through what’s known in the industry as Utility, the add-ons you receive with the purchase of your token.

Commonplace Utility that PFP projects provide is access to a community and events, merchandise, voting rights, and use in a future game. What these battle-hardened business leaders are bringing to the table is their experience in recognising what a market wants and delivering it.

Beyond digital

In Indonesia, three formidable startups have banded together to bring the Karafuru project to life. Urban Sneaker Society (USS), The Museum of Toys (MoT), and NFT launchpad, Artivak, successfully sold out their 5,555 NFTs that go way beyond the standard jpeg.

Also Read: How are NFTs contributing in creating a social impact?

USS, with its wildly successful, almost cult-like following has the ability to bring out sneakerheads to its annual IRL convention that averaged 50k attendees pre-pandemic, 35k in 2021. Their online event boasted even more visitors with 120k unique attendees.  Clearly, USS knows how to mount meaningful events both online and offline.

As for Museum of Toys founder, Win Satya, purveyor of everything hip-hop, skateboarding, surreal creations, street art and comics as expressed in toys, he brings his expertise in street culture to the aesthetics of the Karufuru project.

Then there’s Brandon Salim of Artivak, that has guided the launch of at least three Indonesian NFTs. The team leverages such skills and experiences in their wheelhouse when they created Karafuru’s Roadmap which includes the creation of 3D toys, a real-life carnival, complete with partnerships, and much more.

In another corner of the globe, in Australia, the Meta Trees team is creating a project that seeks to reforest a plot of land in New South Wales. Leading this project is a farmer and agriculturist Teale Simmons and soil educator Ray Milidoni, where one NFT minted means one tree planted.

With a supply of 25,000 NFTs and regenerative agricultural practises, they aim to sequester carbon and reverse the effects of climate change en masse. As part of the GreenChipNFT movement, their aim is to create a viable model where Web3 is used for good IRL and scaled globally.

Pinky swear

It’s one thing to promise the moon, it’s another thing to deliver it. That’s why in considering a Utility NFT to invest in, you need to look at the founders.

They need to have a consistent track record of accomplished projects, a deep understanding of their space, and a network of references that you can confirm the results. After all, an NFT mint is essentially a fundraising activity.

For this reason, I’m particularly interested in the work being done at Zoofrenz. Again, this project is backed by a company, Zombot Studios, and not individuals.

Zombot Studios has decades of experience in developing skins for games such as Destiny, Spell Break, League of Legends: Wild Rift, and many others. Many of their team members have been in the gaming industry even before NFTs were invented. When they say that they’re developing a game, they know their stuff.

We’re not just talking about theoretical knowledge that you get from reading a book or a few blogs. Zombot Studios in collaboration with Kosuke Kawamura, and Teahouse Finance, under the guidance of multi-awarded CheYuWu, have come together to create the Zombie Club NFT.

Their goal is to bring more people into Web3 through education that they earned the hard way: by making mistakes and learning from them.

Through workshops, seminars, and social events, Zombie Club aims to raise the proficiency of Asian holders in all things crypto from general blockchain to security in a decentralised space, cold wallets to tokenomics.

Also Read: The art of blockchain: What is the NFT craze all about?

By developing a think tank for the space then connecting the equipped talent with partner retail brands, major players in the industry, and creating an in-house publication unit, the project hopes to be the breeding ground for solutions that make the NFT ecosystem more equitable. With the team behind it, it’s likely to succeed.

Final thoughts

I think we’re way past derivative projects that have difficulty in finding a way to leave their unique mark on the world. Especially with business owners coming into the space and collaborating with others, we’re seeing endless permutations of Utility and Web3 technology neatly packaged into an NFT project. Those are the ones I’m particularly excited about this year.

The trend may have begun with tech and artists leading the way but as we see more people with diverse backgrounds enter the space, we’ll be witnessing even more use cases emerge.

What could happen when those from healthcare, education, agriculture, and governance come in? I can only begin to imagine.

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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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GoTo Group’s shares surged on the first day of trading on the Indonesia Stock Exchange after raising US$1.1 billion in the initial public offering (IPO).

As per a Bloomberg report, the shares jumped 23 per cent and were up 14 per cent to 386 rupiah at 9:41 am in Jakarta (The company offered 46.7 billion Series A shares at IDR338 apiece). This brought GoTo’s valuation to approximately US$32 billion.

GoTo’s IPO is the third-largest offering in Indonesia after Bukalapak and Mitratel.

The group plans to use the proceeds for working capital to support the growth strategy, comprising four pillars:

1. Driving customer growth and engagement through cross-pollination and increasing usage among consumers, merchants and driver-partners,
2. Enhancing hyperlocal experiences and infrastructure to provide consumers with more convenience in their digital daily lives,
3. Strengthening ecosystem synergies, including enhanced loyalty and rewards programs, deeper financial services offerings and further development of value-added merchant services,
4. Investing in high growth areas, including deeper demographic expansion in Indonesia, Singapore and Vietnam, targeted strategic investments, investment in technology and infrastructure, and the transition towards electric vehicles.

Also Read: Bukalapak raises US$1.5B on the first day of its IDX debut, shares jump 25 per cent

Last week, GoTo introduced the Gotong Royong Share Program and allocated over US$20 million to driver-partners. It also formed GoTo Future Fund, an endowment fund that aims to support initiatives and solutions that benefit the lives of stakeholders across the GoTo ecosystem.

GoTo Group CEO Andre Soelistyo said: “…the people who deserve the most recognition for today’s milestone are the people who worked so hard to breathe life into our business. Our success can be wholly attributed to our driver-partners, merchants, consumers, and employees. Therefore, it was a priority for us to ensure they could benefit from our IPO via the Gotong Royong Share Program, one of the most inclusive share ownership programs today. With all of these groups working together, we are genuinely unstoppable as we pursue our mission to empower progress for Indonesia and Southeast Asia.

The group claims its pro forma GTV grew at 46 per cent CAGR between 2018 and 2020 and at 62 per cent YoY between Q3 2020 and Q3 2021. Pro forma gross revenue grew at 56 per cent CAGR between FY2018 and FY2020 and 55 per cent YoY between Q3 2020 and Q3 2021.

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One of the biggest challenges small businesses face is getting the word out about their products and solutions.

Though social media platforms have made online advertising more varied and diverse, providing opportunities for businesses of all stripes to attract new customers through posts, videos, and ads, it’s also become harder for small businesses to cut through the noise.

At Meta, we want to help SMBs connect with their audience and communities by enabling and empowering business leaders to use our platforms and tools so that they go from being invisible to visible, connect with new customers, and increase conversions, such as more website visits, appointment bookings, and sales.

Home to some of the world’s most popular social media and messaging platforms, Meta sees over 3.6 billion people use its services, which include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, monthly.

The power of video

Over the past two years, Instagram and Facebook have become popular video platforms for connecting with brands, and half of the time people across the globe spend on Facebook and Instagram is spent watching a video.

This is a powerful storytelling medium that can help businesses showcase their products, people, and brand story, which in turn can help them win the hearts and minds of shoppers.

For example, homegrown Australian brand Pop Wilder successfully used Meta video tools such as Reels and Instagram Live to reach new customers.

“Our philosophy to bring plants into people’s homes in an easy and innovative way is bigger than the brand itself,” said Mishka Nansi, owner of Pop Wilder.

Also Read: Why every startup needs to embrace video marketing in 2020

“Reels has helped us develop and grow the business while connecting with our customers through visually powerful stories. We love making Reels and showcasing our products on Instagram Live.”

How to use videos to reach new customers

For businesses looking to raise awareness by diving into video content for the first time or by ramping up their video offerings on Meta platforms, here are tips and techniques to consider:

For Reels, the Instagram community loves short, authentic, and entertaining videos that are optimised for mobile viewing, meaning filmed vertically, and that help make your brand come alive.

The first three seconds are important for capturing people’s attention, and it’s important that your video is easy to watch, don’t clutter it with too much text and ensure that there aren’t watermarks that make it obvious you’ve recycled content from other platforms.

If you’re using Stories, many of the best practices from Reels can be employed: keep the videos short, authentic, entertaining, and filmed vertically.

But with Stories, you can add interactive content such as tags, links, and stickers that can help engage people and encourage them to take actions such as visiting a website, shop, or voting in a poll.

The business power of conversations

Apart from videos, messaging has also become a handy way for businesses to connect directly with shoppers to answer questions, provide customer support, and even drive sales.

In fact, 56 per cent of shoppers in the Asia Pacific said in a recent survey that they would like the ability to make a purchase directly through a messaging app and more than half of holiday shoppers across Asia are more likely to buy if a business is contactable via a messaging platform.

This shows the importance of conversational commerce, the ability for customers to chat with businesses, and why small businesses should use it.

By setting up customer communication channels on Messenger or WhatsApp, brands can chat with people in real-time quickly and easily. This in turn can provide a personalised experience and positively influence a shopper’s decision to sign-up for a subscription or class or make a purchase. 

Also Read: Creative content business: What it means for streamers and broadcasters

A great example of this comes from BungaKita, a business that sources ornamental plants from Bandung. Located in Indonesia, the company’s team uses messaging to connect with customers in real-time, engage with them to build relationships, and stay top of mind for their services.

“We build relationships and engage our customers using WhatsApp,” said Rudi Ardiansyah, owner of BungaKita. “I’ve seen my products become better-known thanks to Meta Tools.”

How to use conversational commerce to grow your brand

Like BungaKita, small businesses can use messaging platforms effectively to more closely connect with customers and grow their brand. Here are some quick tips that will help you be well on your way to providing excellent conversational commerce.

Since many small businesses will likely use a customer service team rather than automation to begin, make sure that you respond to people who reach out to you quickly and ensure your messages are clear and succinct, especially if you need a bit more time to respond fully to their query. 

Message tags can help you manage conversations by sending personalised and timely non-promotional messages, such as human agent responses and post-purchase updates and sponsored messages can be used to send promotional updates to people you’ve interacted with via Messenger if they have opted-in to receive them.

As your business scales and grows, you can consider transforming your conversational commerce experience to be fully automated or a hybrid solution that uses both automation and human agents. 

As you become more comfortable with both video and messaging on Meta platforms, you can use both to drive more awareness and connect with your customers in a friendly, conversational way. 

Gaining greater visibility with Meta

Businesses deserve visibility and with Meta platforms and products such as video and messaging, small businesses around the world are becoming more visible in their communities, both online and offline, as more people discover, interact with them, and become customers.

To discover more good ideas for small businesses, check out this space.

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

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

Image Credit: Canva Pro

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In the digital age we live in now, data is the greatest commodity of all, arguably even more valuable than gold and land. Data helps us understand our world better.

Data gives us insight into how humans and machines behave. It helps us identify patterns and sharpens our decision-making abilities. Innovation and analytical tools have been able to manoeuvre data so we can take faster and more appropriate decisions.

Also read: Supercharging B2B startups with SAP’s enterprise collaborations

Data is invaluable and startups have been able to spot the importance of data quicker than traditional big businesses have. Especially in India, several startups have been able to create new and unique products and solutions by analysing data and taking advantage of the insights synthesised from them.

Here’s a low down of some data-driven innovation startups that you should watch out for: 

Sustlabs

If you knew which electrical appliance in your home consumed the most amount of electricity or needed an upgrade, imagine the savings you could make on your electricity bill? Sustlabs offers you a smart solution to distinguish appliance level consumption from the MCB box without deploying any additional sensors inside the homes.

Founded by Kaushik Bose, Sustlabs licenses its ‘FitBit for homes’ consumer IoT stack to global OEMs like Schneider Electric, Legrand, and others. The residential electricity users can now have an itemised understanding of their electricity bills. The stack is affordable as well as modular.

Also read: 5 exciting startups are here to surprise you with their unique ideas

Their product — Ohm Assistant — is a real-time electricity activity tracker and with the use of machine learning algorithms, Sustlabs helps customers learn about appliances inside their homes. With Ohm Assistant, consumers can save energy by making smarter decisions about their appliances.

Sheru

Is it possible to virtually store excess energy? Yes, says Sheru, a deep-tech startup by Ankit Mittal that is building an energy storage cloud for renewable developers and utilities to store excess energy virtually. The infrastructure required for storing excess energy physically is capital-intensive, degrades with time and needs maintenance. Sheru makes battery swapping stations bidirectional so that they can give power back to the grid.

Sheru E.Co (Energy Cloud) aggregates idle batteries at bidirectional battery swapping stations. E.Co helps renewable developers store energy virtually, on-demand and pay-per-use. This also helps battery swapping operators monetise from idle time.

India is targeting 75% energy production from solar by 2030 and lack of energy storage can lead to massive energy wastage. Potentially, causing 20% emissions for the country despite renewable push. Sheru is India’s first startup to solve this problem 

Cusmat Technologies

Founded by Abhinav Ayan and Anirban Jyoti Chakravorty, Cusmat is trying to build an immersive industrial skilling platform to tackle the revenue loss and high operational costs that enterprises face due to the cost of poor skill in their organizations. 

Utilising high immersion technologies like AR and VR accompanied by a robust analytics engine in the back-end gauging performance, they provide an end-to-end solution including post-training evaluation and in-depth post-analytics, reducing the training costs and time by over 400%, directly impacting the bottom-line of businesses. 

The startup has over 30 Enterprise Customers like Schneider Electric and other globally renowned companies like DTDC, Voltas, DHL, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, and others.

Also read: What will the work in 2030 (and beyond) look like?

The active use cases are divided into 2 categories: a.) heavy equipment training such as training on forklift or cranes usage, and b.) hands-on skills such as last-mile delivery, welding, and pump repairing with training now available in multiple regional languages. It is designed this way since it often caters to blue-collar workers who might be able to train better in local languages. The startup has already seen 30x revenue growth and is conservatively projecting a $3M ARR by March 2023. 

The startup is already backed by renowned investors like Venture Catalysts, Map My India, Better Capital, and many other major names in the industry.

To get to know these four groundbreaking startups better, catch Demo Day 2 (DDay2) organised by Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns. You can access the showcase by registering here.

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Photo by Vitaly Vlasov

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Venture Catalysts and 9Unicorns

We can share your story at e27, too. Engage the Southeast Asian tech ecosystem by bringing your story to the world. Visit us at e27.co/advertise to get started.

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Speaking to a potential investor can be a nerve-wracking experience for entrepreneurs. They need to prepare many documents beforehand, and a cap table is one of the most crucial.

According to Investopedia, the cap table (the short form for ‘capitalisation table’) is a spreadsheet or table that shows a company’s equity capitalisation. Startups and other early-stage businesses use this tool to create a detailed breakdown of their shareholders’ equity. A cap table helps you determine the per-share price used in financing.

How can you prepare a cap table properly? What are the elements to be included in it? What mistakes should you avoid?

We spoke to Shirish Nadkarni, founder of three companies, two of which are publicly traded. He is also the author of From Startup to Exit: An insider’s guide to launching and scaling your tech business. We believe that he would be the right person to answer these questions as he had previously written about fundraising in his blog and for the e27 Contributor Programme.

Building a cap table

In an earlier article about the fundamentals of the cap table, Nadkarni recommends founders use tools such as Carta and Capshare to manage equity. However, he also states that using a simple spreadsheet in the initial stages would suffice. 

According to Nadkarni, while preparing a cap table, pre- and post-money valuations are the key elements that founders must consider and include. “Note that in calculating your ownership in the company, you should do so on a ‘fully diluted basis,’ i.e. taking into account your option pool and any warrants that have been issued. The share price for any financing will also be calculated by dividing the pre-money valuation by the fully diluted number of shares.”

“For example, let’s say you’re raising US$1 million, and the investors decide that your company’s valuation is US$4 million. That is the pre-money valuation (before they put the money in),” he explains.

Also Read: Startup funding rounds: A handbook from seed to exit

“Post-money valuation is pre-money valuation plus the financing amount. In this case, it is US$5 million (US$4 million+ US$1 million). Then the amount of equity that the investors will get for the US$1 million they injected will be US$1 million divided by the size or the post-money valuation,” the investor continues. “Here, the investors will get 20 per cent of the ownership of your company. So, the principles that apply while figuring out the cap table are limited. Typically, when you’re doing the financing, you will determine how big the option pool is for employees and how much equity you pay to give to the new investors.”

There is also a concept called ‘waterfall analysis’. It is a way to determine how much each investor gets when the company is sold.

“Investors typically will have something called preferences. In this case, the investors will ask you to return their money before you distribute the funds to common shareholders,” he said.

Now, let’s consider a new scenario: an investor invests US$5 million in your company. However, your firm doesn’t perform as expected and is eventually sold at US$1 million. Then, the US$1 million will go to the preferred investor, with the common investors receiving nothing.

Another scenario is that a company raises US$5 million from an investor. The firm grows and is eventually sold for US$10 million. Here, the investor has a 20 per cent share of the company, so logically, this backer should get US$2 million out of the US$10 million. However, since the investor has a preference, he/she will walk out with the US$2 million and US$5 million, with the remaining proceeds shared among the common investors. 

This is why it is essential to record the order of the preferences and the ownership of each class share. It is something that your legal representative can determine. “This is the calculation that has to be done that produces the waterfall model. We go through each preference first and allocate that money,” Nadkarni says.

What you need to avoid

In our interview, Nadkarni also pointed out the common mistakes that founders tend to make when drafting the cap table. Although these mistakes sound trivial, they can complicate your fundraising journey.

One of those mistakes is forgetting to add employee stock options (ESOPs) in the cap table, which will lead to a piece of missing information that can affect the accuracy of the calculations.

Another common mistake is not including convertible debt in the calculation.

Also Read: SEA tech founders playbook: A to Z of becoming a fundraising legend (Part 1)

“The problem with convertible debt is it does not show up on the cap table because it’s not equity. Debt is considered future equity because we can convert it into equity at some point. Also, people forget how much dilution they’re giving up,” Nadkarni said. “And it’s when the debt is converted, then they realise that ‘oh my god, I gave up so much equity’. It is another common mistake that founders make.”

This is why Nadkarni stressed the importance of meticulous record-keeping for every startup founder.

“Every time you give away equity in the company, you have to record it. You have to be very diligent about it. Even if you’ve given away 1,000 shares and options to employees out of the total 10 million shares, you still have to record it in the cap table,” he concluded.

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e27 has written several articles to help founders in their fundraising journey. We have published articles on the topics such as traction metrics, approaching investors, and questions VCs might ask during a presentation. While these articles are written with beginners in mind, we believe that seasoned entrepreneurs could also benefit from these posts.

Ready to meet new startups to invest in? We have more than hundreds of startups ready to connect with potential investors on our platform. Create or claim your Investor profile today and turn on e27 Connect to receive requests and fundraising information from them.

Image Credit: gesrey

 

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Increasing women’s participation in the workforce and technological spaces is remarkable progress for the entire nation. They have shown that women can become industry leaders and have gained huge fame globally.

Pakistan’s tech industry is booming. There are so many women making a huge difference in the tech world. These women have shown no limit to what they can achieve.

Here are five Pakistani women from the tech industry that you should know as the biggest inspirations:

Jehan Ara

With a critical focus on Information Technology, Jehan Ara comes on top of the list as she is the mastermind behind PASHA (Pakistan Software Houses Associations).

The company’s primary goal is to develop and protect Pakistan’s software industry. It has also partnered with companies across the borders to provide its clients with the finest quality software products and services.

Jehan Ara has worked for nearly three decades in marketing, communications and media in Pakistan, UAE, Hong Kong and the Far East. She is a well-known tech entrepreneur, speaker, motivator and writer.

Her latest project is “Women’s Virtual Network”, which would allow educated women to deal with their employers and other professional workers while providing them with a chance to explore the world of IT in the modern world.

Sheba Najmi

Sheba Najmi is one of the biggest inspirations for the women of Pakistan. She is a highly qualified and accomplished lady with incomparable experience in diverse industries.

She completed her education at Stanford University, worked as a Fellow at “Code for America”, and was a key contributor to many other projects. She also owns exceptional experience serving as a Design Lead at Yahoo Mail.

She founded “Tech for Change”, a nonprofit organisation that focuses on encouraging entrepreneurs, developers and designers in Pakistan to help eliminate the various civic problems in the country.

This, along with many other remarkable achievements, makes her stand among the top Pakistani women who can inspire others in art, tech, and entrepreneurship.

Shamim Rajani

Shamim Rajani is a well-known tech enthusiast and entrepreneur known for her unmatched efforts in launching CodeGirls along with Faiza Yousuf and Hasnain Walji. It is the best Boot Camp for almost everyone in Pakistan to explore, learn, and implement the latest in today’s high-end tech space.

Also Read: Early bird catches the worm: How these startups are warming up VC action in Pakistan

In addition to CodeGirls, Rajani is the COO of Genetech Solutions, COO of ConsulNet Corporation, Vice Chairperson at P@SHA, and Adviser at WomenInTechPK.

This highlights that she has got a lot more potential. It is also important for the government to assist such talented women of Pakistan in emerging and making a new mark for others to get inspired.

Ayesha Mubarik Ali

Ayesha Mubarik Ali is an entrepreneur, artist and designer. She is working towards empowering Pakistani women through tech, art and entrepreneurship. She is the founder of Oshii Brownie, a futuristic fashion brand centred around hyper-real imagery.

Women empowerment and brown skin have been the greatest inspirations, and she has worked on many projects that reflect her creative imagination and thinking. These include Shared Space Cosmic Collisions, Butterfly Effect, Incognito, Cosmic Fusion, Plutchick/Sentiment, etc.

Most of her work is centred around Asian cultures and traditions with a key focus on women in Pakistan. She combines modern technologies with her artistic capabilities to create art that reflects the futuristic perspectives of women soon.

She stands apart from others due to her recent work with the world’s most famous digital and NFT artists. Her work has been widely featured on Forbes Middle East, bringing her added fame and recognition internationally.

Saba Gul

Saba Gul stands among a few Pakistani women who have dedicated their entire life and career to the development and betterment of others in her country. She got her bachelor’s and master’s in Computer Science and Economics from MIT.

Also Read: Women in tech: A global evaluation

After completing her education, she started a nonprofit organisation named ‘Popinjay’. The key objective behind this initiative was to develop adequate resources and ways for the underprivileged girls and their families in Pakistan to improvise their literacy. Her focus is not just to promote basic education but skills and entrepreneurial approaches that can help women to grow and thrive easily.

Future of women in Pakistan

Pakistan is one of the few Muslim countries where women are respected and are independent.

Unfortunately, like any other culture or society, there are some weird perspectives and thoughts in Pakistan that result in severe humiliation and disgrace for the entire country. Despite all the facts, the women of Pakistan have been phenomenal in redefining how they should be treated.

With the rapidly rising sense of literacy in the country, women have stood side by side with men. Among them are the aforementioned renowned names from Pakistan.

These women have made exceptional progress in the quest to achieve their goals, but they have also shown the world that Pakistani women have got a lot of potential.

From science, technology, and healthcare to music, entertainment, and arts, Pakistani women are not stopping when it is to adapt to the changing dynamics of the world. Digital media is also playing a vital role in creating a more positive society that accompanies women’s rights.

They have shown women can be leaders in almost every industry. Due to the cultural biases of Pakistan, girls are not encouraged to pursue careers that are typically seen as more ‘for men’.

Creating opportunities for women in tech will help open up avenues for more educational and career opportunities for Pakistani women.

We should all congratulate these women for their achievements, and we should also support them in all their endeavours. Women can make a huge difference in today’s world, and they have the potential to achieve great things now and in the future.

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As the tech talent war intensifies and more companies chuck large sums of money to poach talents, it is no doubt why 65 per cent of those looking out indicated salary as the primary reason. After all, senior software engineers at the 90 percentile earn US$11,500, according to the Tech Talent Compensation 2021/2022 Report by NodeFlair and Quest Ventures.

However, not all companies are fortunate enough to be armed with a massive war chest to compete with the tech giants like Bytedance, Foodpanda and FAANG. After all, these companies pay at least 25 per cent above the market median on average.

So, how can you survive the talent war against these tech behemoths? 

I have hired the talents: What do you mean I’m not done?

Many companies spend a lot of time and money competing and recruiting the best talents. However, only a handful allocate sufficient resources to talent retention.

Non-technical leaders need to understand that talent churn is significantly more expensive for the engineering team. It goes beyond a simple one-off recruitment cost (which could amount to over US$25,000 per hire nevertheless).

More importantly, there is a hidden cost incurred from the loss in productivity in replacing them and onboarding the new joiners.

Also Read: Tech salary is escalating: How can companies survive the talent war?

Some companies have an abnormally high attrition rate and an average tenure of under a year. It raises many questions about how much work these engineers can contribute, given that it takes two to three months to fully onboard and offboard.

One of the ways to achieve this is through a strong employer brand. According to the whitepaper “Why Your Employer Brand Matters” by LinkedIn, a company with a strong employer brand, especially one that resonates with current employees, will have a 28 per cent lower turnover rate than companies with a weaker employee brand.

It’s not only about money

Besides salary, non-compensation benefits play a deciding factor when choosing which company to join. According to Stack Overflow, the top three non-compensation push and pull reasons for tech talents are:

• Wanting to work with new technologies
• Wanting better work-life balance
• Seeking growth or leadership opportunities.

Companies can re-evaluate their existing working environment based on these aspects. Some changes include getting rid of rigid working hours and granting flexibility to work from anywhere. 

The team can also be structured such that talents could learn from people beyond their immediate circle through initiatives like a weekly Friday engineering sharing.

“Sorry, you only have 9 of the 10 skills we are looking for”

We all have that dream candidate who checks all the boxes. This candidate has all the skill sets we want, everything from Frontend to Backend to DevOps to Data Engineering, and the list goes on. 

The issue: this candidate does not exist. 

Even if this candidate exists, it will likely be out of your budget. After all, software engineers at the 90th percentile are paid up to three times more than those in the 10th percentile.

The truth is that many of these requirements are not crucial. In addition, a big bulk of these skills is transferable as long as someone has experience with similar technology. 

Instead, have two separate lists: the must-haves and good-to-haves. The must-haves list should only have three to four requirements at most, while the rest of the requirements should be on the good-to-haves list.

Reject candidates only if they do not have the must-haves, and then evaluate and rank candidates based on how many good-to-have checkboxes they ticked. Doing so can widen your pool of candidates and reduce the time needed to hire the right person.

“I am interested in the role, but…”

At NodeFlair, we saw how many companies struggle with hiring by having too many ineffective interview rounds than they need. Worse of all, most of the assessments are not conclusive in determining if a candidate is suitable.

Also Read: Singapore faces talent crunch for engineering and product manager roles: Report

Instead, companies should actively reflect and remove interview rounds that are repetitive and ineffective. 

On the other hand, adding a call with HR can add the human touch and show candidates that you respect them. From experience, this increases the percentage of candidates who will complete the interview process, especially when the first assessment is a challenging technical round.

Doing so can complete the entire interview process much faster and reduce the chance of candidates withdrawing their applications. Also, it can improve the health of your hiring funnels as fewer candidates are repelled and dropped off the pipeline.

Build your engineering presence

At any time, only 20 per cent of the market are active job seekers, while 54 per cent are passive and open to new opportunities. 

The top two methods talents learn about companies are through their network and reading about news and articles about the company. Thus, invest in non-traditional recruitment methods, such as attending and meeting candidates at local meetups. 

We at NodeFlair did a poll and found out that 64 per cent say the ideal employer page should contain information about the engineering culture and rationales behind the company’s tech stacks and decisions.

After all, 45 per cent say engineering culture influences their decision to choose a job. You can show that you prioritise engineering by maintaining an active engineering blog. Use it to document technical challenges faced by the team and how you overcame them.

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In this episode, we are excited to welcome Marcello Schermer, Head of International Expansion at Yoco, a South Africa-based fintech startup helping SMEs accept payments and get data-driven insights. Prior, Schermer was Managing Director of Seedstars and a strategy consultant at Detecon Inc.

In our conversation, Marcello talks about the importance of immersing yourself in a new market to understand how trust is built, why it’s crucial to build a cross-cultural team from early on within the whole company and not just within the expansion team, as well as the growing opportunities across the continent of Africa with its fast-growing population and how Africa should be thought of as a source of innovation and not just an opportunity for market entry.

This episode is sponsored by our partner, ZEDRA. Learn more about how the ZEDRA team can support you in expanding to new markets.

Also Read: Ritual Chief People Officer on the importance of culture in international expansion

Find our entire podcast episode library here and learn more about our forthcoming book on global business growth here.

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The article was first published on Global Class.

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