While working at McDonald’s and Burger King, Anthony Villanti realised that developing strategies for the geographical expansion of fast food brands was highly manual and cumbersome.

Project consulting involved carrying out costly and time-consuming market surveys to understand customer movement patterns and using pins on paper-based maps to visualise existing store networks and competitor locations to help brands find gaps in the market.

Villanti decided to use his over 20 years of experience in demographics, mapping and market impact analysis across Asia Pacific to create a novel way to address this problem and effect a change.

That was the beginning of GapMaps.

Established in 2013 and headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, GapMaps offers a cloud-based location intelligence and data mapping platform to help network planners make faster location decisions. GapMaps Live provides accurate, up-to-date, validated information about locations. Retailers can use these maps while expanding their store network or optimising existing stores.

Also Read: Hyperlocal mapping: a solution for real-world interactions in retail metaverse

“GapMaps Live allows retailers to visualise their own store network along with competitor locations, resident, worker, and consuming class populations down to the micro level. This way, they can make faster and smarter decisions when planning their store opening, closing and growth strategies,” Villanti tells e27.

If a business needs data that doesn’t yet exist or needs accurate and granular insights in a data-challenged country, GapMaps will build new datasets combining available population data with billions of mobile device location points.

“GapMaps enables brands with physical stores in multiple countries to have one login to manage all their locations. For example, a parent company with a series of different brands operating in different regions can now see and compare the locations of their brands everywhere. Having this data at their fingertips brings many efficiencies and speeds up business planning and decision-making,” he goes on.

Customers can also ingest their own large datasets into GapMaps Live, visualise them through thematic layers, and show comparisons with available data on the platform.

For example, brands can upload sales or customer data to visualise their best and worst-performing stores at a suburb or postcode level and then understand the demographic profile of customers in these locations.

“The granularity of digital data available in GapMaps Live means that demographic insights are accessible for retail stores with the smallest catchment areas. Even café catchments, which are typically no larger than a radius of 250 metres, can now be assessed to determine the count of residents (by Socia-Economic Classification grouping) and workers as part of a location feasibility process,” he adds.

As of today, the firm has more than 500 clients across 23 countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Taiwan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam, and India. It counts brands such as Domino’s, KFC, Starbucks, Burger King, Subway, McDonald’s, Anytime Fitness, and Goodyear among its clients.

It also has a presence in the Middle East, Africa, and Oceania.

Clients pay an annual license fee to access the GapMaps platform. It also has a range of tiered pricing options that vary based on the number of districts, cities or countries clients require our location intelligence insights.

Doubling down on India

India is a preferred market for GapMaps where the growth opportunity is significant. While it represents about seven per cent of its business from domestic and global brands, GapMaps expects it to increase to 25 per cent in 2023 and 40 per cent by 2024-end.

In India, GapMaps mainly targets fast food and quick service restaurants, cafés, fitness and well-being, supermarket, and grocery stores. Anytime Fitness, which operates 110 fitness clubs across India, has used GapMaps Live to enable greater precision in its decision-making when opening new locations.

Speaking of the challenges, Villanti says that as the business continues to mature, cyber risk threats to cloud-based software are on the rise. “We strive to ensure we have a strong security posture and comply with SOC 2, ISO27001, and GDPR.”

A privately funded company, GapMaps foresees significant uptake in the business post-pandemic. “The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive impact on population movements, with fewer people now travelling to the city for work, and people spending more time working from home and moving around in their local suburbs in greater numbers. This also impacts traffic patterns,” he says.

GapMaps Live is helping brands analyse these population movements through mobile devices (visitation data) and census data and understand their impact on their network. This shift is essential across various sectors, including QSR, fitness, supermarkets, childcare centres, healthcare, etc.

“Many of our clients in the QSR and Café sectors are now assessing the catchment potential of a new (or existing) location for the in-store and takeaway potential and, increasingly, the delivery potential. This trend towards delivery is not a pandemic post phenomenon. However, the pace of change has accelerated, and few expect a return to pre-COVID-19 delivery demand.

Post-pandemic, many small retailers are also critically examining their presence in shopping malls. Until recently, retailers assessed the potential of a new shopping mall location by considering the floor area of the mall, the brands that might be present and the catchment population and demography within a primary and secondary catchment.

“Those factors will always be important. However, they can now be complemented with insights relating to customer visitation patterns. For example, how long does a customer typically spend at the mall (long stays are good for food and beverage retailers and short stays are good for fresh food retailers), how far do customers travel to reach the mall, how busy is the mall over the seven days of the week and also by time of day.”

According to Villanti, GapMaps listens daily to hundreds of customers and thousands of users. “By taking the time to understand how you think about your business, we can overlay you and your sector and business meaningfully over our facts and expertise. So everyone can understand it. It means every decision you make is informed, aligned, and you’re in total control of it.”

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FrankieOne, a global platform connecting customers to multiple identity verification and fraud detection vendors via one API, has added US$15.5 million to its Series A+ round.

The investors are AirTree Ventures, Greycroft (an investor in Bumble, HuffPost, and Venmo), Reinventure (Westpac’s venture arm), Tidal Ventures, Apex Capital, Binance Labs, and Kraken Ventures.

This brings the Australian startup’s total Series A funding to US$30 million.

The new tranche will allow FrankieOne to expand its business across Asia Pacific and North America.

Founded in 2019 by Simon Costello and Aaron Chipper, FrankieOne is an identity and fraud detection engine helping companies onboard and protect their customers.

Also Read: 8 ways cyber crimes are impacting your business

The platform connects banks, crypto exchanges, fintech and gaming companies to prominent vendors and data sources across 48 markets through one API integration.

Through their vendor partners, FrankieOne is connected to hundreds of data sources enabling businesses to verify customers from multiple data sources selected from a global data pool, increasing the probability of a fast, automatic verification.

It enables customers to choose their preferred data vendors and to switch to new vendors, fraud detection capabilities and geographies. The solution covers the full customer life cycle, from onboarding to transaction monitoring.

The platform is optimised to verify customers safely and securely and leverages over 350 data indicators to minimise risk and maximise opportunity.

FrankieOne has a presence in Australia, Singapore and the US.

The firm claims its revenue grew 4,700 per over the last 12 months, with customers including market leaders Westpac, Shopify, Afterpay, and Pointsbet.

Also Read: ‘From a cybersecurity perspective, the Asian market still uses legacy tools’

CEO Simon Costello said: “We have been laser-focused on improving the onboarding customer experience and have been overwhelmed with the response, now helping over 170 financial institutions globally. Our platform is helping drive business growth and allows our customers to respond quickly to trends in fraudulent behaviour and changing regulations, which is particularly helpful, given the increase in fraud.”

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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.

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HK payments infra startup XanPool bags US$41M led by Target Global
XanPool plans to use the new capital to fuel its expansion into Europe, North Africa, LatAm, and the Middle East; It is a fiat-gateway software solution for exchanges, wallets, and other cryptocurrency businesses.

Francis Plaza steps down as PayMongo CEO
He has been replaced by acting CEO Isabel Ridad; Plaza’s stepping down comes months after PayMongo was hit by many crises, including the fallout among top leaders and the firing of two co-founders.

Fraud detection startup FrankieOne raises US$15.5M Series A+
The investors include AirTree Ventures, Greycroft, Reinventure, and Binance Labs; It connects banks, crypto exchanges, and gaming firms to prominent vendors and data sources across 48 markets through one API integration.

Former Grab Director’s influencer platform TipTip banks US$13M
The investors include East Ventures, Vertex, SMDV, and BIG Ventures; TipTip enables influencers to create content and connect directly to their fans; It’s established an online-offline presence across 40 cities in Indonesia.

AgriAku raises US$5M more in Series A extension
The investors are TNB Aura, Indogen Capital, Gentree Fund, and Go-Ventures; AgriAku is a B2B marketplace that currently trades goods that are used in the production side of agriculture, which include fertiliser and seeds.

Vietnamese e-grocery app raises US$4.5M for R&D
The investors are South Korea’s Nextrans and Vietnamese VC firm Do Ventures; Cooky combines an e-grocery store and a meal kit delivery service, where customers can shop for individual ingredients and full recipes.

Gojek, ComfortDelGro announce ride-hailing partnership
Gojek currently has 2.6M driver partners in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore; ComfortDelGro’s fleet includes 34K buses, taxis, and rental vehicles in Singapore, Australia, the UK, New Zealand, China, Ireland, and Malaysia.

EDBI’s chief exec to step down, establish new fund
The details of Chu Swee Yeok’s new fund have yet to be announced; Chu joined EDB 36 years ago and became the CEO of EDBI in 2009; After resigning from her position, Chu will serve as senior adviser to the chair of EDBI.

‘Our main competition in SG is the idle cash lying in banks’: Kristal.AI
CEO Asheesh Chanda says approximately US$400B cash is sitting idle, not working for their owners; The Singapore-based private wealth management startup recently raised US$10M+ in pre-Series B.

Temasek admits it could have been defrauded by FTX
Between Oct 2021 and Jan 2022, it invested a total of US$275M in FTX International and FTX US; On Nov 17, Temasek announced it’d write off its entire investment in the FTX, which constituted 0.09% of its net portfolio valued at US$293B.

Crypto.com in top 5 for strong AML; Binance places 42nd
Crypto.com, which has in-principle approval, placed fifth on the list featuring crypto exchanges with strong AML systems; The leaderboard is provided by UK-based Hoptrail and is updated in real-time using both on-chain and off-chain data.

The Philippines can be ‘Korea of Web3’, says Axie Infinity Co-Founder
Jeffrey Zirlin cites blockchain gaming as a possible vehicle for the rise of the Philippines as a digital powerhouse; Axie Infinity, one of the most popular NFT games, transformed the Philippines during COVID-19.

Cultivating an honest culture: Why leaders should be transparent
Transparent leadership is the key to creating a culture of trust; here’s how we’re seeing future-forward leaders put money where their mouth is.

Why venture capital is going big with cloud mining
Cloud computing has been an innovation factor for digital transformation, converging with big data and AI to power business functions.

8 ways cyber crimes are impacting your business
No one can predict when or how they will experience a cyber attack, but we can strengthen vulnerable systems in advance.

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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.

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In an era where people are exploring new ways of working and living, the need for new and innovative communication technologies that allow people to essentially be in two places simultaneously is increasingly in demand. A Japanese startup is promoting its vital technology, which functions as a teleportation space.

tonari’s technology is described as a room-sized portal where two physical spaces are connected, allowing users to feel like they are present together in a single seamless physical space. Unlike the metaverse, which is a separate virtual world, tonari is the life-like experience of being next to each other in the same room.

Starting in 2017 as a non-profit social venture, tonari’s initial funding to develop the technology came from a non-profit grant. After doing the initial R&D to develop the hardware and software in 2018, they incorporated tonari as a company.

tonari Cofounder, Taj Campbell, spoke to e27 to describe their technology and lay out their expansion plans as they look to establish a presence in Singapore. With a background in Computer Science, both Campbell and co-founder Ryo Kawaguchi are former Google employees who decided to join forces and start this venture.

tonari’s mission: connecting people in different locations

“It’s like teleportation” says Campbell. “If you take extremely high-end hardware and build the software, you can push the performance of video communication to its limit. Most of the time, we use video communication on a small screen like a laptop or mobile. In order to blow up the experience to be life-size and immersive, you need a lot more resolution and more fidelity, and you need to do everything fast,” he explained.

Everything tonari does is done with a real-time video display, thanks to their solution’s hardware and software capabilities. Campbell explained that in most video calls, you experience a lag, but for real-time immersive communications, you cannot afford that lag. “You must capture and process the image as quickly as possible. Video gets compressed and sent over the internet, and then it has to get decompressed and displayed on-screen — and you need all of that in 100 milliseconds, or less so people don’t notice a lag,” Campbell shared. “We built all of our software and hardware from zero to achieve that,” he added.

Also read: X-HUB TOKYO’s Demo Day: Welcoming the 9 aspiring Japanese

tonari’s co-founder believes everyone wants teleportation or some form of it. “You make a lot of tradeoffs in your life, so you don’t have to be everywhere all the time,” he remarked. The chief reasons people choose to live where they live are because of work, access to education for their kids, and where family members are. The motivation to create tonari comes from that basic human desire to have all these things even though we physically cannot be everywhere at the same time.”

What does he think is the general impact their technology can have? “There are a ton of applications from having the ability to be in two places simultaneously. All the things you need to do face to face but cannot since you are not in the same location are possible with tonari.” Based on what they believe are people’s priorities, tonari decided to focus first on the workplace, then education, and then the home.

Campbell elaborated that many companies have grown very quickly, building distributed workforces. However, the need to address how they can make their employees feel connected and collaborate better with team members arises. He cited their own company as an example — “We’re here from Japan, and we want to establish a presence in Singapore, but we want our teams to feel connected.”

Also read: Exploring corporate partnerships as a pathway to scaling your startup

“The workplace is much more distributed today,” Campbell said. “The job market is flatter, and way more remote positions exist. Companies are much more open-minded about remote work opportunities, and that change in the workforce will create massive changes. However, companies will still look to build cohesion in their teams and technologies that make people feel like they’re physically together will be essential. 

While the metaverse offers a platform, he thinks that no one wants to wear a VR headset at work, so you need a different solution. Video conferencing fatigue also builds up, and companies are starting to use the budget for remote work to spend on team get-togethers. In the future, he believes there will be many more lean companies that are remote.

Campbell explained that most distributed companies seek ways to build better relationships. tonari believes in people being face-to-face, and through their technology, distributed teams can spend a lot of time within the same life-like environments.

Facing the challenges of scaling up

When the co-founders started tonari as their first venture, they came from a background of building software applications. Learning to scale the operations of hardware manufacturing, installation, and service was a new challenge for them since installing physical hardware requires a hands-on process. People want solutions for different reasons, such as a casual meeting place or a formal desk meeting room. In each case, they need a lot of physical work and scaling has been their biggest challenge. It can be a very capital-intensive process, explained Campbell.

Deciding to expand in Singapore has meant the added challenge of certifying and licensing each aspect of their solution. However, they have experienced many pleasant surprises as well. The co-founder said he expected more failures and more maintenance costs, and has been relieved to experience almost no issues or downtime. Campbell is glad that the tonari team used the RUST programming language — which has delivered performance and security and has been less prone to failures.

As a startup, they continue learning a lot from installing tonari in office environments. They were curious to know if it would actually help people who don’t see each other all the time. Some insights they have noticed is that people are much more chatty in the morning and evening. tonari allows people to engage in more casual social interactions than any remote working tool. Such solutions have helped teams to build camaraderie similar to when they are in the same office.

Launching at Leave a Nest Singapore

tonari recently launched at the Leave a Nest office in Singapore last November 2022. They also have an installation in central Tokyo, a large co-working space called “Center of Garage” for various Japanese manufacturing tech companies working with entrepreneurs and startups in Japan. 

One of the Leave a Nest’s goals is to help researchers and entrepreneurs from Southeast Asia expand their operations in Japan’s huge market. Conversely, the organisation aims to help bridge innovators from the country to the rest of the world, penetrating unique global markets and exploring opportunities overseas.

Leave a Nest functions as a bridge between Japan and Singapore, and tonari is playing an essential role in helping them create this bridge, said Campbell. He added that people from both countries could meet and collaborate, and now, companies in Singapore can see how this connection is built without having to move between the countries physically.

The road ahead

Campbell feels that even when tonari started their work, they knew that achieving the company’s long-term vision would take years. You can build many apps, but designing hardware and scaling it is an even more enormous undertaking. 

He compares it to the Tesla journey — they started by building only 100 cars in the first two years of operations. It took them a long time since they had to make each capability from the start. The co-founder thinks that while tonari is not as complicated, it has a lot of components. With each new iteration and application of tonari’s technology, Campbell feels they will have to learn how to scale each aspect of their operations — which takes time.

Also read: Customer retention strategies are getting trickier. Can you keep up?

Overall, their long-term goal is to build a product which anyone can buy off a shelf in 10 years. 

From connecting workplaces and families to connecting people who are sick and cannot be physically present, such as in ICUs or older family members living in nursing homes, he believes their technology can connect everyone for whatever purpose they want to be connected. 

“I think it’s imperative as a society that we continue to invest in technologies that give us this kind of connectivity,” he concluded.For more information on how their technology works, visit their official website.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, in partnership with Leave a Nest.

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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With Thanksgiving and Christmas right around the corner, many people will think of their favourite charities and how they can offer support during the holiday season. Fundraising is particularly important to charities at this time of year when most are willing to part with a little to help the causes that matter to them most. 

However, according to the Fundraising regulator Annual Complaints Report 2021, the complaints about misleading information increased by 17 per cent. There are also concerns about fundraiser behaviour, citing pressure to donate. What people require is a safe way to transfer surplus income to causes that they want to support.

While the disparity between those who earn a lot and those who earn a little continues to grow wider, giving is a common ground for all who care about others in society.

Giving a little to make an impact

Crowdfunding is something that the public has become familiar with in recent years. Go Fund Me, Just Giving, and Patreon offers ways for the public to offer support for the projects they feel passionate about.

Gitcoin grants have taken this model into Web3. It is one of the best examples of fundraising in the Web3 sector today. It successfully allows anybody to support a mission, team or project they believe in. 

The beauty of their quadratic funding model is that you don’t have to give a lot to make a big difference. With over US$20mm funded, Gitcoin is currently the largest experiment of Quadratic Funding used to fund digital public goods. The idea is simple, all contributions to a project during the defined time period count towards the matching rewards. 

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

This is truly where blockchain technology shines. Although the model focuses mostly on developing Web3-related communities, products and services, it is certainly setting a precedent for future funding opportunities in other industries.

Partnerships in the metaverse

Charities have opportunities to use virtual worlds to engage new audiences, stimulate conversations around their biggest campaigns and help the wider public to understand their vision. Innovative charities are beginning to learn about the opportunities in the metaverse. 

Susan G.Komen, the world’s leading Breast Cancer Charity, recently teamed up with Upland during Breast Cancer Awareness month. Using digital assets to help fight breast cancer. Upland players can purchase unique assets and also display the iconic pink ribbon on their player profiles when they support the cause. This innovative approach to fundraising allows Susan G.Komen to reimagine its reach worldwide.

Engaging with the digital-first donors

How can we support the initiatives we care about and have those initiatives guarantee that the funding is going to those who need it the most?

The younger generation is hyper-aware of their digital footprint and also far removed from the traditional fundraising mechanisms of today. The transparency offered via blockchain technology offers a new, transparent way to track donations, ensuring that all support given to a charity ends up in the right place. 

Charitblez, a recent winner of the re-imagine fundraising award, is planning to use individual crypto tokens to allow existing charities to tap into Web3 communities and offer new ways for the younger generation to engage with a charity’s mission. Oxfam are their first case study, and it will be interesting to see how token contributions differ from existing 

Using crypto as an alternative way to support good causes is one way to disassociate giving from parting with hard-earned cash. This new approach to non-profit funding management adds potential new revenue streams for charities.

Cash is no longer king

How often do you pass a charity bucket on the street and wish you had cash to throw in? It happens regularly. Yet, nonprofits still struggle to find a solution to this predicament. If they hold out card machines, it appears as though they have money to invest in technology.

Also Read: How to create defensible moats in Web3

This creates a perception of wealth that causes people to question the need for support. However, mobile technology has quickly become a staple in all major cities across the world, with over 4.6 billion mobile internet users worldwide.

Many nonprofits recognise the value of mobile technology for meeting their fundraising objectives. However, the implementation can prove cumbersome when archaic systems are firmly embedded into the charity’s organisational culture.

The Giving Block provides an easy way for nonprofits to accept crypto donations and individuals who hold cryptocurrencies to donate to some of their favourite causes. 

As more nonprofits focus on addressing fundraising challenges in a digital era, new Web3 opportunities will allow them to tap into new audiences, create brand awareness and offer alternative methods of support for the younger generation sceptical of traditional means of fundraising. 

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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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Content marketing costs 62 per cent less and generates three times as many leads as outbound marketing. So why do many CMOs and marketing managers prioritise paid advertising?

Unless you have a pile of cash to burn, that’s something hard to understand. Consider just that about 70 per cent of people now get information from blogs rather than traditional advertisements, and bots make up about 40 per cent of all web traffic. But let’s now take a step back and see why focusing on content can be a game changer for your startup’s organic growth in the long term.

If you are trying to grow a startup, especially a B2B one, you know that generating leads can be tricky. Finding the right balance between being visible and providing valuable content that will help your target audience is vital. That’s where content marketing comes in. By creating quality content, you can attract leads that are more likely to convert.

A common error among startups is failing to create a content strategy from the beginning. This can lead to wasted time and resources down the road. A content strategy should be tailored to your specific business and audience.

Also Read: A marketing map to the world beyond third-party cookies

It should outline who you’re targeting, what types of content you will create, and how you will distribute it. By setting up a content strategy from the beginning, with a content calendar adequately planned, you can ensure that you’re getting the most out of your content marketing efforts.

If my direct experience is mainly with financial services, particularly B2B fintech companies from Europe and the US, where quality content is working much better than anything else to generate new leads, the reality is that content marketing works equally well in Asia and other geographies as well as for different verticals that have nothing to do with fintech, blockchain or crypto.

Here’s a closer look at why content is fundamental for startups’ lead generation:

Content helps you attract the right leads

The first step in generating leads is attracting the right ones. You want to make sure that you’re targeting individuals who are likely to be interested in your product or service.

Creating quality content is a great way to do this. By writing blog posts, whitepapers, e-books, and other types of content that can be helpful for your target customers, you are likely to attract relevant leads.

Content helps you nurture your leads

Once you’ve attracted the right leads, it’s important to nurture them, so they continue down the sales funnel. Quality content can help you do this by providing valuable information that will help your leads make a buying decision.

For example, let’s say you sell software that helps businesses manage their social media accounts. You could write a blog post about choosing the right social media platform or create an e-book with tips for creating successful social media campaigns. By providing helpful information, you can nurture your leads and turn them into customers.

Content helps you build trust

Another reason why content is vital for B2B startups’ lead generation because it helps you build trust with your audience. When potential customers see that you’re providing quality information, they’ll be more likely to trust your brand and do business with you in the future.

This is especially important for startups because larger corporations generally hesitate to do business with new companies.

Also Read: We can no longer adopt a cookie-cutter approach to marketing: Gunalan Ram of CINNOX

It is also crucial to remember that the key to success in content marketing is consistency. You need to create and distribute content regularly so that you remain top of mind with your target audience.

Additionally, it’s important to track how your content is performing and ask for people’s feedback so that you can better understand your customers’ needs and pain points and make adjustments as needed.

What is probably more important than anything else is that Inbound marketing is about creating content that solves people’s problems. When you do that, you become a trusted source of information, and people become more likely to buy your products and services.

If, instead, you create sales-oriented content that is not genuinely useful to your readers, then you are just wasting their time and yours.

Content is vital in generating leads, especially for B2B startups, and should be considered a long-term investment.

It takes time and effort to create and distribute content. And you can’t expect too much in the short term. But in the long run, the results can be remarkable and exponential.

So if you still need to start using content as part of your lead generation strategy and you’re looking for a way to grow your startup organically, then the time to start is now.

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Join us in the Singapore stop of the Big Leap roadshow.

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

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

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As I parked my car in the basement car park, I had no idea about the challenges ahead that morning.

Climbing the narrow series of escalators that threaded their way through the converted shophouse, I reached the office on the third floor. I walked over to my manager’s room, shaded by wooden shutters overlooking the busy street in Chinatown below.

I was surprised by his absence.

We had an important business meeting later that morning, and we depended on him to lead it. The economic downturn was depressing sales, and the meeting was an important opportunity we could not forgo.

We repeatedly tried to reach him but without success. The taste of silent panic was acrid and growing. It was time to breathe slowly and focus.

We had most of the materials we needed for the meeting and sixty minutes before our visitors arrived. We gathered a small team and set to work. I don’t think I have seen a commercial presentation come together so quickly before or since.

We finished the materials five minutes ahead, and the meeting started on time. Our visitors were completely unaware of the panic that ensued ahead of their arrival. The meeting progressed well, and we secured the critical partnership that we had been seeking.

Also Read: 6 leadership lessons I learned after we raised our seed round

We subsequently learned that my manager had been unwell and later moved to a new company. This presented an important choice: should I follow him to the new company and continue our partnership, or should I pitch for his now vacant role? I was young and ambitious, and the opportunity of a leadership role was too alluring.

I decided to take on the challenge. I worked every hour available and secured promotion the following year. I soon moved on to a new role and several more after that. In each new role, I would study the objectives obsessively and engineer a plan to achieve them. I became a finely polished cog enmeshed in a corporate machine.

However, the more I focused on corporate objectives, the more frustrated and unfulfilled I became. Through many restructurings and rationalisations, I came to realise how ephemeral corporate objectives could be: these investments could evaporate overnight.

Moreover, the people around me became disengaged, and I developed a reputation for being difficult to work with. I knew that I needed to follow a different path.

The wake-up call

One afternoon a text message from a former colleague popped up on my phone: “When you have a minute, can you call me?”

The company had announced plans to divest three-quarters of its business in the region. As major job cuts were imminent, I was concerned for his welfare.

I had several hours of meetings before I could make the call. I was apprehensive but looking forward to catching up. Six months earlier, he had come to me for guidance. I helped him rewrite his CV and review his career plans.

His joyful tone was unmistakable. He had just secured a promotion in a new and growing team unaffected by the cuts and wanted to thank me. I could not have been more pleased both by the news and his enthusiasm to reconnect so many months after I had left. I walked around the office with a broad smile and a light step that afternoon and for several days thereafter. Despite the dark clouds outside, it felt bright and warm inside.

Also Read: 5 lessons from building a global tech platform in Malaysia

Moreover, I realised that the call had a deeper significance for me. It grounded a growing realisation that investments in people were more meaningful and valuable.

People first, please

I realised that my misplaced focus on organisation over people was a hindrance to my own growth and, more importantly, to those people around me. This focus was fracturing relationships, decreasing the quality of the working environment, and ultimately reducing the productivity of the team.

It became evident that when an organisation described their people as “human resources” either by intention or by implication, they were equating people with corporate commodities such as money, oil, steel and concrete. By using this term, they were diminishing the fundamental miracle of each and every person.

I learned that only by putting people first could I achieve personal fulfilment, create a productive working environment and ultimately optimise the shared value of the organisation. I learned that organisations are resources to achieve human objectives.

I leave you with a simple question:

Are you a human resource? If not, what are you doing to help yourself, your colleagues, and your organisation find a better path?

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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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Amidst talks of growing adoption and decentralisation becoming the norm, the great decentralised exchange (DEX) vs centralised exchange (CEX) debate is more prominent now than ever. This debate has many case studies for us to refer to.

The latest would be FTX. FTX owes nearly US$3.1 billion to the top 50 creditors and is estimated to have “more than 100,000” creditors.

Why trustless DEX is the way forward

• Individual data and asset control

CEX holds custody of your deposited assets and all your personal information. You have no control over how the assets and data are being used. While in a DEX environment, it is non-custodial; typically, only an individual wallet address is connected to the exchange. In other words, you have complete control over your assets.

• Liquidity and market depth

Historically, CEX is known for deeper liquidity and market depth. DEXes, in general, are trying to catch up with CEX’s efficiency in matching and executing orders. But the top DEXes have good enough liquidity and market depth for the major coins, and in fact, DEX’s liquidity is more accurate and traceable.

• KYC and accessibility

KYC is often required for withdrawals exceeding a specific amount or specific trading products, and it is typically region-locked for most CEXes. While DEX has no KYC, traders only need a wallet address. This helps to drive accessibility to true financial freedom.

• User-friendliness

CEX provides a wide range of products, including spot and fiat on-ramps, which is most familiar to traditional and crypto traders, especially beginners. DEX products may be harder to grasp with insufficient onboarding guidelines for traders. Again, this point for DEX is changing.

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

The user interface and experience have significantly improved; some of the newer DEXes look and function exactly like CEX.

• Transaction costs

CEX is known for high transaction or platform costs, especially when the system is hugely loaded with trades at a single point in time. An increasing number of DEXes are integrating scaling solutions that will massively increase transaction workload while keeping costs low and passing the savings on to traders.

• Community involvement

CEXes, are often one-way, non-reciprocal communication from a central operator to traders. Individual traders are seen as clients utilising as service that the CEX provides. While DEXes focus on community-building and involvement, where traders can become stakeholders and have a say in protocol changes or share in transaction fees on the platform.

• Transparency

DEXes offer strong execution guarantees and increased transparency into the underlying mechanics of trading. Trades are trackable, traceable and data is permanently on-chain. This is one of the core basics and the beauty behind the ideology of DEXes.

A new DEX era

The challenge with CeFi and CEXes boils down to a lack of trust and security. This is continually reinforced time and again; this year is no different, with funds, exchanges and even established projects hitting the buffers and leaving behind affected, concerned investors and traders fearing for their assets.

News of increased risk with CEXes come into question of insolvency and possible withdrawal delays, causing widespread panic amongst traders.

I would like to discuss the following DEXes for your reference and research purposes.

dyxX

dYdX is a decentralised exchange (DEX) platform that offers perpetual trading options for over 35 popular cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Dogecoin (DOGE) and Cardano (ADA).

Non-custodial exchange dYdX has climbed to the top of the DEX rankings by trading volume, beating out Uniswap, for the first time. More than US$9 billion has been exchanged on the trading platform in the last 24 hours in 2021, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.

Also Read: Should Southeast Asian startups look to transition from Web2 to Web3?

Also during the same time, according to CoinGecko, dYdX has facilitated more than US$4.3 billion worth of trades in the past 24 hours, beating out Coinbase’s  US$3.7 billion

They changed how DEXes were perceived back then.

ApeX Pro

ApeX Pro is set out to be a dynamic non-custodial derivatives DEX powered by StarkWare’s Layer two scalability engine StarkEx — all to deliver a made-to-order, permissionless platform designed for precision trading.

This comes after ApeX Protocol’s initial ApeX elastic Automated Market Maker (eAMM) launch, where popular inverse perpetual contracts were supported; automatic, fully permissionless and without needing KYC. With full spectrum asset support, ApeX Protocol was able to uplift decentralised derivatives trades.

To add on, they are multi-chain supported. This responded well to the demand from the market.

Just Ex

Another multi-chain DEX is Just Ex. They are relatively new, and currently, they support APTOS, SUI and Solana. They will support Ethereum and BNB Chain later on. This strategy is also different, as we all know that most of these multi-chain DEXes are usually based on Ethereum first.

At the point of publishing, I have not tried the DEX yet, but the fact that it has no slippage, open trade and infrastructure API ready and that they are order-book based are worth exploring.

As usual, I will end with a quote:

The answer is to return to the basics of what blockchain is supposed to be. It is decentralisation and transparency. DeFi is one of the solutions, and we need to work together to build the future. For now, it cannot replace CeFi completely for obvious reasons, but this will not stop us from trying.

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FWD Group, a pan-Asian life insurance company with 10 million customers, has partnered with Malaysian VC firm Artem Ventures to launch TIM Ventures, an RM45 (US$10.2) million VC fund.

TIM Ventures seeks to invest in emerging startups in insurtech and Islamic fintech in Malaysia.

“We at TIM Ventures hope to support early-stage entrepreneurs in Malaysia by not just providing them with financing but also helping connect them with the networks and expertise they need to succeed,” said Sim Preston, MD and Group COO at FWD. “We hope to invest in businesses that share our vision as we work together to change how people feel about takaful (a Sharia-compliant insurance product).”

Also Read: How Islamic finance can work with fintech to promote financial inclusion in Malaysia

TIM Ventures has already invested in four startups:

Senang: an on-demand subscription-based insurance company

Pewarisan: an online platform providing digital solutions for Islamic inheritance planning

Du-It: a Malaysia-based fintech company

Blueduck: a zero-deposit insurance agency

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are a critical component of the Malaysian economy, contributing more than a third of the gross domestic product and providing job opportunities to more than four million workers in Malaysia.

Mahadhir Aziz, CEO of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, said: “We welcome the establishment of this venture capital fund to support the growth of Malaysia’s SMEs operating in these sectors. We will strive to ensure further effective collaborations are formed to support this growing technology ecosystem in line with our new national strategic initiative, Malaysia Digital. We are particularly focused on the innovative Islamic fintech segment, where Malaysia has been a global leader for eight consecutive years.”

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In an extended report recently published by the Coalition for Digital Prosperity for Asia (DPA), it was found that the full potential of Asia Pacific’s digital economy has not yet been realised.

Numbers paint a clearer picture: the value of the region’s digital economy, if captured in full, is estimated to be US$2 trillion in 2021, of which the region was only able to capture a mere 30 per cent.

Within the region, countries sit along the spectrum between “digital isolation”, where digital openness is restricted in order to protect and foster the development of local digital capabilities, and “digital globalism”, where digital openness is encouraged to facilitate cross-border dataflows and foreign direct investments.

By and large, governments have traditionally always needed to make a choice between these two extremes, viewing them as largely incompatible strategies to achieve disparate outcomes.

Yet, with most assumed dichotomies, humanity almost always finds a way to integrate seemingly opposing concepts to reap the best of both worlds, if you will. In this case, the DPA proposes a new approach to governing the digital economy, called “digital prosperity”, which combines the rapid innovation characteristic of “digital globalism” and the nurturing domestic environment of “digital isolation”.

To pursue “digital prosperity”, governments will have to focus on four key enablers of digital economies:

• Policies that facilitate data flow
• The establishment of a competitive business environment
• Strategies to build local digital capabilities
• Setting up the appropriate and adequate infrastructure to support the nation’s digital transformation

Yet, while the directions toward regional prosperity are clear, there is the fundamental groundwork upon which all else is built that is required to ensure that the full value of APAC’s digital economy can be realised.

Also Read: How insurgent brands are redefining India’s consumer growth story

This groundwork is the evolution of our relationship with trust in the digital economy.

Growth from within local economies: Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs)

To illustrate how evolving our relationship with trust is necessary to facilitate “digital prosperity”, let’s explore the critical mechanism by which countries can pursue local enablers of digital economies – the establishment of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs).

In this piece, we take PPPs to refer to a broader relationship in which public and private stakeholders collaborate and pool resources to achieve a common goal. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) succinctly describes the necessity for PPPs in their Global Innovation Index report – PPPs create opportunities to reduce the risks associated with innovation, as it is shared between public and private partners, and this drives the development of new technologies that do not yet exist.

In other words, PPPs are both a means and an end to building local digital capabilities, as well as the set-up of adequate infrastructure to support the country’s digital transformation. In fact, the relationship between PPPs and digital projects is “symbiotic”, as described by the same report.

With PPPs, digital projects are able to find the financial support required for their undertaking, while on the other hand, public sector networks allow the outcomes of these digital projects to be put within reach of citizens – both financially, physically, and digitally.

Take India’s e-Mitra as an example – this is a PPP project that has allowed the government, through local service providers, to deliver e-services to its citizens (such as forms and birth certificates) via dedicated centres and kiosks.

It goes without saying that trust is important in such collaborations. Public and private stakeholders involved must be assured of their mutual participation in the project. Beyond the project’s partnership, if public funding is involved or if the outcome is meant for the larger community, it is important to foster open and trusted communication to earn society’s buy-in and support.

Information quality is the first ticket to building trust between partners and the wider community. In the latest Edelman Trust Barometer report, when it comes to establishing trust for corporates, NGOs, governments, and media entities, information quality is the “most powerful trust builder”. When stakeholders are able to rely on your information, many outcomes instantly become reliable and trustworthy – such as your communications, financials, mission, and vision.

There are numerous ways to preserve information quality, from detailed reporting to effective summaries. The most important element of information quality, however, is the authenticity of the information. Such authenticity (whether the information is true-to-source, has been tampered with, or can be verified) can be achieved through the use of verifiable data – and this is the evolution of our relationship with trust.

Instead of relying on traditional, fallible ways of preserving information integrity, such as official stamps, signatures, and the like, we can create new standards of data formats that have trust built into their structure.

With verifiable data, stakeholders can be assured that the information they are working with is true-to-source and not tampered with – and when in doubt, they can instantly verify the information to validate its truthfulness.

Growth across economies: cross-border partnerships

When it comes to pursuing digital prosperity, we have to look at the other side of “digital isolation” and embrace “digital globalism” in the form of cross-border partnerships.

Cross-border partnerships are key to regional enablers of digital economies by facilitating data flows and the establishment of a competitive business environment. They do so through the creation of opportunities for technology and talent transfer and the influx of Foreign Direct Investments. When managed well, countries can harness such transfers of capability and resources to foster an environment of mutual learning and healthy competition.

Also Read: How technology has revolutionised operational efficiency in consumer finance

In a policy research paper undertaken by the World Bank, technology transfers that can result from cross-border partnerships can be encouraged through the establishment of joint venture partnerships, grant matching, and the improvement of information flows (such as business and regulatory information).

Yet, here is where we face the hurdle of trust again. Quoting Edelman’s Trust Barometer 2022 report, circles of trust are becoming more local, where an individual’s trust in people from other countries has decreased. Increasingly, individuals are more trusting of those who are close to them.

This trend of burgeoning distrust towards “outsiders”, when examined from a policy and business context, is harmful to the pursuit of digital prosperity. It espouses “digital isolation” and rejects “digital globalism”, but for digital prosperity to work and for us to realise the true potential of APAC’s digital economy, we must do both.

Again, we have to change our relationship with trust through the use of verifiable data. If data and information cannot be disputed by virtue of their verifiable and tamper-proof nature, then new doors for cross-border collaboration can open – despite circles of trust retreating inwards.

In fact, one could say that verifiable data is dismantling such circles entirely; when trust is an undeniable and guaranteed fact, when you can take trust for granted, then such circles of trust are no longer necessary.

Embrace the new trust and usher in an age of digital prosperity

To realise the full potential of APAC’s digital economy or even grow the pie, we have to facilitate the smooth transition of local economies towards digital ecosystems and technologies.

We have won half the battle if we begin focusing on the key enablers of digital economies:

• Policies that facilitate data flows
• The establishment of a competitive business environment
• Strategies to build local digital capabilities, and
• Setting up the appropriate and adequate infrastructure to support the nation’s digital transformation

The other half is won through transforming our relationship with trust. The digitalisation of our economies must go a step further than simply adopting digital data but also embrace verifiable data – to create the guaranteed trust necessary for digital prosperity to be possible.

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