3D food printing, restaurant tech, blockchain, virtual kitchen, functional food and drinks are at the forefront of the food industry that will impact us in 2022.

Southeast Asia is a region that is intensely passionate about food. Every country in this part of the world has a long and proud culinary tradition that inspires great pride. But when it comes to innovations in the foodtech industry, Southeast Asia is still lagging behind the US, Europe, Israel, and other western countries.

Yet several foodtech companies in this region are working hard to catch up, building on trends that look likely to grow even more significant in the years to come.

Here are five such trends we’ve identified and the homegrown Southeast Asian entrepreneurs spearheading them:

Food delivery

Food-obsessed Southeast Asia had been one of the earliest adopters of food delivery services even before the COVID-19 pandemic, in which lockdowns increased the demand for such services exponentially.

Grab Food, by Singapore-based ride-hailing app Grab, is a leader in the region, but FoodPanda and Gojek have significant market shares too. With a compound annual growth rate of 11 per cent, competition in this sector is heating up, leading to further innovations, including financial products and possible mergers with other e-commerce players.

Having firmly entrenched themselves among the region’s most well-known – and well-used – brands, food delivery services, and apps look to grow from strength to strength.

Plant-based and cell-based meat

The meat industry has been identified as one of the biggest causes of climate change, producing 60 per cent of greenhouse gases from food production and 35 per cent of all global emissions.

This is one of the driving factors behind the rise of plant-based meat products, an industry that is estimated to be worth US$85 billion in 2030.

Popular brands such as Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have developed plant-based meat that meets the standards of consumers who are health and environmentally conscious but reluctant to give up meat.

Also Read: The spotlight on foodtech: Why we believe that what we put on our plate will determine the future

Both brands have had high-profile launches in Singapore and Thailand, partnering with major fast-food brands like McDonald’s and Burger King. This will only raise awareness, interest, and ultimately, demand for more plant-based food products.

Urban or vertical farming

Most Southeast Asian countries have been traditionally agrarian societies. The agricultural sector in this region has been facing numerous problems, amongst which are climate change, water access, urban expansion, and rising consumer demand.

There is also a growing demand for transparency over where food comes from and what pesticides were used. Using the latest aquaponic or aeroponic techniques, vertical farms in urban areas offer an exciting solution.

It’s probably no surprise that Singapore – being a tiny island where land is precious – is leading the way with companies such as Comcrops and Sky Greens, but the Philippines has also introduced new laws to promote urban farming, and there are homegrown efforts in Malaysia and Thailand as well. Such efforts are likely to grow in profile in the coming year.

Next-gen functional food and drinks

Southeast Asians have long practised traditional methods of wellness and nutrition, such as TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) and Ayurveda. Hence, it’s perhaps ironic that when these ancient practises become trendy in the West, they become popular all over again in their native countries.

Recent research has found real health benefits in foods and ingredients such as tempeh, green tea, turmeric, and ginger, all of which have been traditionally prescribed as health boosters.

Known as functional foods, these ingredients reflect growing demand from consumers who want to eat healthy, prevent disease, and strengthen their immunity.

Startups such as Bangkok-based Jamulogy, which produces nutritionally dense functional drinks based on the Indonesian tradition of jamu, are meeting this demand.

Also Read: How COVID-19 accelerated digitalisation in the F&B industry in Malaysia

3D food printing

3D-printed food sounds like something out of Star Trek, but this promising new technology is estimated to hit over US$432 million in market value by 2025.

The main challenge for 3D food printing is incorporating a variety of ingredients, tastes, and textures. The many enterprising startups in this field are hard at work tackling this challenge; some have even managed to include regular ground beef.

The most exciting application, however, is providing personalised meals with precise amounts of ingredients for optimal nutrition, serving the needs of everyone from hospital patients to malnourished communities.

Singapore-based Anrich3D, a spinoff of Nanyang Technological University, is one such startup that is planning to go commercial within the year.

An emerging industrial trend too exciting to be ignored

Although Southeast Asia still has a lot of catching up to do in the foodtech scene, the region’s longstanding passion for food makes it a place to watch for some of the more exciting innovations to come.

With rising foodtech accelerator programmes in the region, such as Space-F and Big Idea Ventures stepping in to drive the growth of the region’s promising foodtech startups, we will indeed witness a variety of innovations disrupting the way we enjoy our food.

2022 will be the year that homegrown foodtech startups in this region see rapid growth and perhaps even make a few international headlines.

Having been long overlooked by the West, it’s about time Southeast Asian food culture gets its time in the spotlight.

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Singapore-based mobile gaming startup Potato Play announced today that it has raised US$5 million in a new financing round from investors, including Everblue Management, Play Ventures, Atlas Ventures and Beenext.

The startup intends to grow aggressively with new hires and scale its hit casual puzzle game Merge Restaurant globally with the latest infusion.

The round comes one and a half years after Potato Play raised US$1.75 million in a seed funding round led by Beenext.

Founded in 2018, Potato Play uses data-informed rapid-iteration to create and publish casual games.

Also read: Mobile, e-sports, live streaming shaping SEA’s gaming startup landscape in 2021

The startup claims its games clocked 18.2 million downloads, including popular titles such as Merge Restaurant, Merge Rush Z, Sword Hunter, Merge Quest, Crossing Gaps and Pocket Racing.

Potato Play has witnessed multiple recent successes in the merge category — a subgenre of puzzle games wherein users combine/merge objects of similar type within the game to create new and improved items. 

This category is slated to grow 19 per cent YoY within the US$93.2 billion mobile gaming market, per a Newzoo report.

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When it comes to investing in the climate tech and sustainability sectors, Amasia decided to take a different approach than other venture capital (VC) firms in the scene. Instead of focusing on deep tech innovations, the Singapore- and US-based firm focuses on capital-efficient software solutions.

In an interview with e27, Amasia Managing Partner John Kim gives the example of solutions such as carbon capture –and why it is not the direction that Amasia is taking.

“It is a very capital intensive technology … that could be part of the solutions. But there are still lots of question marks with this technology, such as the fact that you have to use a lot of power to get the carbon out of the atmosphere. And this costs a lot of money,” he says over a video call. “At some scale, it should be able to help us. But at what cost? And what are the ramifications of that?”

Another point that sets the firm apart from its peers is its focus on shifting behaviour as a solution to mitigate the risks of climate change.

It has built a framework of behavioural change that helps the firm in deciding their investment direction: Review (how to help consumers, corporations, and government make better data-driven decisions about climate), Renew (or shift focus towards reuse and recycling), Rethink (how to rebuild infrastructure to enable expansion to remote places), and Rebuild (a less wasteful supply chain).

“Climate change is obviously a big issue; perhaps the biggest issue of our generation. A lot of people who are trying to solve this problem are trying to do it with some sort of breakthrough technology. But if you look at history, from the 1800s until now, our emissions have gone up by around 1,000 times. The overwhelming majority of it actually has to do with per capita emissions,” Kim says.

“As time goes on with new breakthrough technology, we are able to produce [whatever we have been manufacturing] more efficiently with fewer emissions. But the issue is that when something gets cheaper, people tend to buy a lot more of it,” he stresses, explaining why the change in behaviour should be the starting point in the mission.

Also Read: How consumers are prioritising sustainability beyond the single lens of eco-friendly products

Mindset shift

When asked about the climate tech startups scene in the Southeast Asian region, and the challenges that they are facing in scaling their business and securing investments, Kim says that the “classic” hurdles faced by other verticals are also relevant to these startups.

The sheer size and diversity of the region have always been known to possess unique challenges to startups when they intend to expand their business, but with climate tech startups it is especially relevant considering the different climate policies that each country is implementing.

Then there is also the challenge with local investors’ perspective, particularly the patriarchs of family offices that venture capital tends to team up with.

“If we compare to the US or Europe, it doesn’t matter how old you’re, what industry you’re in … everybody just knows that this is the thing that we got to get on board, we just have to do this. In SEA, we are catching up quickly, but I still it’s a little behind from that perspective,” he says.

“They call it the noise-to-signal ratio; there just tends to be a lot more noise in emerging markets than there is in developed markets. And I think that’s just because the data is more trustable in a sense,” he continues.

This is why there is a greater urgency for Amasia to convince investors that a balance between profits and impact is possible.

“[When we first began], the idea of impact investing was very, very nascent. There was still this idea in people’s minds that if you’re going to make a positive impact on the world, you’re going to get fewer returns,” Kim explains.

“As time goes on, there’s a lot of data, a number of academic studies that are demonstrating that, not only that you can make money and create an impact, but these two things are kind of mutually reinforcing … People used to think that these things are mutually exclusive, but they tend to see it as mutually reinforcing now.”

This is also the reason why Amasia focuses on capital-efficient software companies instead of deep tech companies.

“If you look at venture returns in general … historically, the funds that performed the best have a little bit more focus on software. The world of bits versus the world of atoms. There are some funds that do very well, for instance, in biotech devices, but in general, if you look at the averages, software-focused funds tend to do better,” Kim elaborates.

Also Read: COVID-19, the environment, and the tech ecosystem: what opportunity is available out there for us?

“The intersection and the Venn diagram of capital-efficient software companies –which has historically returned better within venture and investing in general– with the sustainability-focused solutions, that is where we’re going to actually make an impact. The fact that there are not that many other people doing this, just made blindingly obvious sense to us that there needs to be a firm at the intersection of these two things.”

Making an impact

Amasia supports companies at the seed to Series B across the US, SEA, India, Europe, and Latin America. They are putting emphasis on founders who aim to foster behaviour change through their solutions –they also need to have global ambitions.

The history of Amasia began with Kim and US Partner Ramanan Raghavendran having dinner one time in Singapore –and the conversation developed into impact investing.

They began by doing angel investing before eventually securing “millions of US dollars” through two funds.

Recently, the firm announced a lead investment in a US$7.5 million Series A for Living Food (a farm-to-fork e-commerce platform that aims to promote responsible and sustainable consumption) and participation in ClimateTrade’s pre-Series A funding round.

In the near future, Amasia aims to continue supporting its portfolio companies and is now considering raising new funds. But Kim says that the firm is not in a rush.

“We’ll probably start having conversations towards the end of this year,” he closes.

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Image Credit: Amasia

 

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The recent surge in popularity of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) has fostered diverse conversations across many segments of society.

Some are bullish on these digital assets that are non-interchangeable and stored on a blockchain, leading to the growth of this industry from US$100 million in 2020 to US$41 billion in 2021, reaching near comparable levels to the conventional art market.

Others are less excited, calling NFTs elitist, encouraging bad art and environmentally unfriendly.

What is clear is that we are in the early days; in an informal poll I conducted on LinkedIn two weeks ago, more than 6 out of 10 do not own NFTs.

While nascent technologies are prone to draw polarising views (e.g. the early 2010s when Facebook (now Meta) was criticised for enabling stalking compared to growing social capital), there are valuable career lessons that each of us can learn from the rise of NFTs regardless of our stance.

We, as individuals, are like non-fungible tokens. There can always be another designer, writer, engineer, investor, or entrepreneur, but no other designer, writer, engineer, investor or entrepreneur like you (non-fungible).

Just as tokens represent an asset or utility, we too represent value that we offer to our customers, users and employers.

Value yourself like an NFT

Liquidity: Like NFTs, talent is illiquid, unless established within a community with strong demand.

The non-fungibility nature of NFTs where one token is one of a kind and never precisely the same as another creates illiquidity.

Today, the majority of NFTs sold on OpenSea, the leading marketplace, have not been sold for 90 days or more, signalling that, for the most part, NFTs are not liquid.

Also Read: Making sound NFT bets: Think before you mint; ruminate before you ape

As a result of this illiquidity, it is hard to correctly price NFTs until a community forms around the NFT collection and a critical mass of individuals generates demand. Talent is no different.

The skills, knowledge and capabilities you have are illiquid until it is visible (a community recognises it) and desired (there is demand for it).

For example, I may be the best author in the world (I am not, stay with me), but if no one comes across my work (no community). There is no desire to read my work (no demand). I cannot convert this talent into value, whether further writing opportunities, engagement, network, or cold hard cash.

While it is tempting to focus on the returns, we can potentially gain from our talent (in the form of salary, stock, company benefits, etc.) as it is similarly tempting to obsess over the floor price and trading volumes from NFTs, it is worthwhile to take a step back and reflect on what community we want to visible to, and what we want to be desired for.

Understanding who and what gives us liquidity can identify if you are ‘correctly priced’ and valued in your current role.

Some questions to consider

• Who is the community I am part of? Is this the community I am proud to be part of? Whether you realise it or not, you are part of a community even if you do not work in tech. Your community is the group of people you most frequently interact with. It may not necessarily be your colleagues, for example, a teacher’s community is primarily one made up of students.
• Is the community around me sufficiently large for my ambitions? Just as founders and venture capitalists look for “billion-dollar market size”, the size of the community often determines the upper limit of what is achievable.
• Is there a desire for my skills and capabilities within this community I am in? Value is only created when there is demand. Why is one NFT collection worth 6/7 figures (Bored Ape Yacht Club) whilst others are sold in dollars? The fundamentals of supply and demand hold that value is created and recognised when many more people want what is less available.

Rarity and value are closely correlated, so find a way to be rare

This brings us to rarity. The rarity of NFTs, talent or anything else in the world is closely correlated with value. There is a caveat, though, what I discussed above has to hold first, rarity without a community that demands it is worthless.

I have a crushed piece of paper with some scribbles next to me as I write this article. This is a one of a kind, non-fungible artefact that is worthless because it is not visible by anyone, even if it is, it is not desired.

Happy to be proven wrong if anyone is keen on buying a crushed paper ball.

Also Read: More than hype: 3 reasons why NFTs are here to stay 

The struggle we often face is: what is rare in today’s day and age, where everyone on social media seems to be killing it in their field?

In almost every nook and cranny, there appears to be champions and winners who have captured the lion’s share of the reward. What could possibly be rare?

As it turns out, NFTs can give us a clue. The rarity of an individual NFT within a collection is often not just defined by the rarity of a single trait (though it can be helpful to have a 1/1 trait), but the collective rarity across multiple traits.

Don’t have a particularly rare skill? Combine it with another, and it starts to be unique. Add in yet another for a trifecta combo, and the likelihood that you have a rare combination of skills that few others have increased dramatically. What are three skills that can make you one of a kind (or a 1/1 NFT) when combined?

Utility: The future is as important, if not more, than the present

The third key driver of an NFT’s value is utility. What do I stand to gain by owning the NFT?

The majority of NFT projects have roadmaps:

• “Compete against GaryVee in an hour-long ping-pong duel!” (VeeFriends)
• “Every Lazy Lion owner can receive a banner image NFT featuring their own unique, randomly generated private bungalow!” (Lazy Lions)
• “We will launch a children’s storybook NFT” (KumoXWorld; Disclaimer: I’m a Kumo Resident; aka own a KumoXWorld NFT).

The most successful NFTs sell the future alongside the present. Why might one spend 6 to 7 figures on a Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT?

Besides the hedonic value and social status, the future of BAYC is exciting more NFTs (spins offs such as the Bored Ape Kennel Club) or exclusive invites to events from New York to Hong Kong.

Also Read: Demystifying NFTs and DeFi

We are no different when pitching ourselves to prospective employers, investors or partners in answering the question. “What do you stand to gain by working together with me, besides what I can bring today?”

Laying out where you are headed generates not only excitement (“I want to be associated with you before you reach your ambitions”) but also creates alignment (“Let’s grow together”).

I find the most exciting NFT roadmaps to be those where the community is actively involved in shaping future outcomes. There is an innate desire for humans to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

We are drawn towards the opportunity to shape our future alongside others who share similar interests or goals. Find individuals within the community that recognise your talent, and enlist them in your journey.

While rareness, liquidity and utility are helpful to assess the value of NFTs, it is important to recognise that value is ultimately in the eyes of the beholder. What is valuable to me may not necessarily be valuable to you.

It is common for us to think of careers defined by the companies and roles. Yet, decisions on how we are valued are ultimately made by ‘buyers’, individuals seeking us out for our talent, such as the recruiters and hiring managers (if you are an employee) or customers and investors (if you are a founder).

These decisions, like NFT pricing ones, are often based on highly subjective preferences, which is why it is critical to find the right ‘buyer’. Individuals who value us for who we are and want to engage with.

There is much we can learn from the boom in NFTs to shape our careers, discover a community that desires what we can offer (be liquid), develop a combination of skills (be rare), bring others alongside you for the ride (showcase utility), and above all, surround yourself with individuals who value us for who we are (right buyer).

While the jury on the impact of NFTs is still out, we can all take a leaf and increase our value at the workplace.

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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

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Singapore-based shared micro-mobility startup Beam has secured US$93 million in a Series B round of investment led by private equity firm Affirma Capital.

Sequoia India, Hana Ventures, ICT Capital, EDBI, AC Ventures, RTP Global, and Momentum Venture Capital also participated.

Beam will use the funds to expand into Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Turkey.

The startup also plans to introduce e-mopeds into its vehicle portfolio. The new 5th generation Beam Saturn e-scooter has 12-inch wheels (20 per cent larger than the average e-scooter) combined with hydraulic suspension for the smoothest riding experience. It has fully swappable batteries with sufficient capacity for 110 km of riding range.

A portion of the new funds will be used to introduce cutting-edge safety innovations to protect pedestrians, enhance councils’ control of city spaces for zoning and parking, and drive safer usage of vehicles by riders.

Also Read: Neuron Mobility extends Series A by US$12M to accelerate e-scooter expansion globally

Beam was founded by Alan Jiang (CEO) and Deb Gangopadhyay (CTO). Jiang previously led the APAC operations of bike-share operator ofo (shut down in 2018). He also played a key role in launching Uber across Asia, including China, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Gangopadhyay has experience in building successful SaaS tech startups in Silicon Valley.

The startup claims it has grown revenues by 15x since its launch in 2020, despite experiencing mobility restrictions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Beam has operations across five countries: Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Gangopadhyay said: “We bring our 5th generation Beam Saturn e-scooter to cities with MARS technology that will provide significant advancements in safety, city zoning control, rider behaviour management, and sustainability. We have also created innovations to reduce risks to pedestrians with the Beam Pedestrian Shield, an onboard AI camera that can instantly and accurately detect pedestrians to prevent collisions. It can also detect footpaths to reduce vehicle speed or even prevent riding completely automatically.”

In June 2020, Beam raised US$26 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia India and Hana Ventures, with participation from several unnamed investors across APAC. Two years earlier, it announced a US$6.4 million seed fundraise led by Sequoia India, Founders Fund, ZhenFund, and Class 5 Global.

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EDP Renewables acquires Sunseap for US$815M, to set up clean energy hub in Singapore
The deal will enable the Madrid-based EDP to have a wider global reach and diversify its growth sources; Sunseap had raised US$4.8M in Series C led by ISOTeam in 2017.

Princeton Digital Group (PDG) raises over US$500M funding led by Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala
The funds will enable PDG to deepen its presence in Japan, India, Singapore, China, and Indonesia; PDG operates a portfolio of 20 data centres with over 600MW of secured capacity and spanning five countries.

Beam secures US$93M in Series B round to introduce 5th generation e-scooter, expand in Asia
Investors include Affirma Capital, Sequoia India, Hana Ventures, ICT Capital, EDBI, and AC Ventures; Beam is expanding into Japan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Turkey and introducing cutting-edge safety innovations to protect pedestrians.

The inside story: How ThinkZone Ventures created a ‘pureblood’ US$60M Fund II by tapping into local resources
The unfavourable prospects due to the COVID-19 crisis forced ThinkZone to tweak its strategy and tap into local conglomerates’ funding sources.

Shiok Meats backer Aera VC hits US$30M first close for climate-tech investments
It has also launched an investment DAO, with 2000 ETH earmarked for pre-seed projects using blockchain to address climate and carbon-related challenges; Aera expects to make up to 30 seed investments over the next two years.

SG blockchain firm TenX’s CEO allegedly behind US$70M The DAO hack
Toby Hoenisch could be behind the infamous hack of the decentralised VC fund on the Etherium blockchain in 2016, claimed crypto-journalist Laura Shin in her new book; The hack resulted in the theft of 3.6M ETH, which was worth US$70M at the time.

Vietnam VC firm Thinkzone Ventures launches US$60M fund
Backers are IPA Investments Corporation, Phu Thai Holdings, and Stavian Group; Fund II will invest in pre-seed to Series A rounds of startups across various verticals; It will look to invest up to US$3M per startup.

YGG’s Axie Infinity assets grew to US$25.5M in Q4 2021
These gaming assets cost nearly US$1.7 million, which marks a 15x growth in value for the decentralised gaming company; Developed by Vietnam-based Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity continued to be the top game for YGG in 2021.

Better Bite Ventures launches US$15M fund for early-stage alt-protein startups in Asia
Better Bite Ventures has already backed ten companies in Asia and plans to back a total of 20-30 ventures; In SEA, it has backed four startups – Meatiply, Next Gen Foods, and Umami Meats (all Singapore), and Green Rebel Foods (Indonesia).

Animoca leads NFT platform Ucollex’s US$10M Series A round
Ucollex is a trading platform for digital collectible toys; Its latest raise will fund its blockchain tech and metaverse capabilities as it looks to tap into the anime and manga communities as well.

OpenCommerce bags US$7M Series A to allow Vietnam’s SMEs to bring products to global consumers
Key investors are VNG Corporation and Do Ventures; The cross-border e-commerce startup claims it has helped more than 86,700 sellers from 195 countries establish their e-commerce stores internationally.

Edutech startup Zenius acquires Indonesian cram school giant Primagama
This acquisition by Zenius potentially lead to the development of a blended learning platform that merges online, offline education infrastructure; Zenius is backed by Alpha JWC Ventures, Openspace Ventures, Northstar, Kinesys, and BeeNext.

Potato Play rakes in US$5M to scale casual puzzle games globally
Investors include Everblue Management, Play Ventures, Atlas Ventures, and Beenext; Potato Play uses data-informed rapid-iteration to create and publish casual games; The startup claims its games clocked 18.2M downloads so far.

Singapore startup MiyaHealth nets US$4.8M to take its products to Indonesia, Europe
Investors include ST Engineering Ventures, Elev8, and angels; MiyaHealth leverages AI and predictive analysis tools to help patients choose affordable healthcare, manage their chronic illnesses, and improve the experience.

Auto-financing startup Broom raises US$3M pre-seed funding
Investors are AC Ventures, Quona Capital, and co-founders of Kopi Kenangan and Lummo; Broom provides a single platform for autos-SME to digitise their business processes, such as managing their inventories, getting access to financing, and managing their sell-side tools.

Property data startup Urbanmetry scores US$2M pre-Series A led by Monk’s Hill
Urbanmetry harvests, cleans, and analyses large amounts of city data through AI and proprietary algorithms to extract trends and patterns in the built environment; Urbanmetry boasts over 150 corporate clients in the region.

Uzbek fintech startup Iman nets US$1M in seed funding
Investors include Battery Road Digital Holdings, Tesla Capital, and Uzcard Ventures; Iman is a halal fintech startup that offers investment, P2P lending, as well as buy now, pay later products, all of which follows the murabaha structure.

Singapore fintech firm M-Daq to buy cross-border payments startup Wallex
Wallex Technologies helps businesses in Indonesia, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau to make cross-border payments into more than 180 countries; Wallex says it currently supports almost 2K banking and tech clients.

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Broom, an online financing company for small-scale auto dealers in Indonesia, has attracted US$3 million in pre-seed funding.

AC Ventures led this round, joined by Quona Capital and several angel investors, including Kopi Kenangan’s and Lummo’s co-founders.

Broom will use the money to introduce new products and services, expand its presence in major cities in Indonesia, and double the team by the end of 2022.

Established in 2021, Broom provides an end-to-end financial solution for auto dealer inventories. Its platform allows auto-SMEs to digitalise their business processes, such as managing inventories, accessing financing, and managing their sell-side tools.

“Broom aims to be the first choice for used car dealers to develop their business by providing various products and services,” said Pandu Adi Laras, Broom Co-Founder and CEO.

Also Read: AC Ventures hits final close of Fund III at US$205M to back early-stage Indonesian startups

Auto dealers generally work very traditionally, with most stock counts being done on a whiteboard. While trying to go online, they find it challenging to sell on platforms and find the right buyers within their locations. Financing is generally hard. Some go to loan sharks for 6-week loans paying significant interest.

Broom addresses this problem by providing dealers with three solutions through its platform, starting from operational enhancements, online sales enablers, and access to financing.

The company offers a short-term loan facility with a competitive interest rate; it has partnered with financial institutions to provide low-cost financing. This allows customers to access loan facilities by utilising their existing inventory as collateral with a fast approval process.

Currently, Broom has over 2,000 used car dealerships in the Jabodetabek area.

“As digital solutions penetrate every industry, embedded finance represents an enormous opportunity. The used car industry sees US$14 billion of annual transactions value, and MSME car dealerships represent over 80 per cent with little to no access to affordable financing. Broom seeks to empower these dealerships with financial products and enablers to help them scale,” added Adrian Li, Founder and Managing Partner at AC Ventures.

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As consumers become savvier, mall operators must move beyond performance and benchmarking to stay relevant and submit to retail trends. Malls will become the go-to place for brands to connect with their customers and create more personalised shopping experiences.

In Singapore, retail sales rose to 1.9 per cent for a third straight month in November 2021, as reported by the Department of Statistics Singapore. With increasing retail sales, the future of retail isn’t about brick-and-mortar vs online shopping.

However, the real opportunity will be consistently delivering new experiences and bringing physical marketplaces to a level-playing field with data visibility.

Retail customers have changed

As a Singapore-based retail-tech company, our retail data platform has paved the way for retailers in Singapore, Malaysia and The Philippines to make data-driven decisions by rejuvenating the mall as a retail ecosystem.

In our latest findings, retail customers have changed, with approximately 70 per cent of customers wanting mobile-first and unified omnichannel experiences.

Today, they have higher expectations of a mall and retail experience. They want mobile-first and unified experiences and will not tolerate customer friction and extra steps.

If a customer has to wait one day to receive rewards or is limited to how many rewards they can claim, they will simply go to another mall that provides immediate rewards without any minimum spend or maximum claim.

Dealing with the transformation of the mall business

Currently, malls are already finding ways to gather data at the store level and use it to further personalise their offerings, similar to ‘online malls’ and e-commerce platforms.

Access to significant amounts of mall management data such as consumer purchasing behaviour, sales, SKU data and real-time transactions can be a game-changer for most mall operators.

The question for most mall management and retailers isn’t whether or not they will consider it; it’s simply a question of how much they will continue to invest. 2022 will be about making better-informed business decisions.

Operating on the same level of intelligence as e-commerce

Even in a world of surging growth in new markets, e-commerce and technologies, one thing is crystal clear – that retail is and will continue to be king for the foreseeable future.

Companies that choose to shift their management paradigms to embrace this new normal first, will reap the lion’s share of benefits.

Also Read: How to ace your mega sales campaign: Best practices for merchants

The first on the list is putting customers at the centre of people’s businesses. Retail automation simplifies the manual processes and allows physical retail to operate with real-time intelligence, and run campaigns like live shopping events.

It also creates seamless customer experiences, such as instant earn-and-burn for mall loyalty points and instant car park redemption.

Secondly, make more merchants make more money, by increasing variable Gross Turnover (GTO) and running exciting campaigns, you are enabling your merchants to operate with the same level of intelligence as e-commerce.

Thirdly, running more effective partnerships can be a game-changer. The retail ecosystem is rich with many stakeholders such as banks and product brands, all vested in making the retail ecosystem successful. When this is done, malls tap on the expertise, resources and publicity of partners and have a great multiplier effect.

What’s stopping us from getting there?

Imagine mall-wide digital giveaways, physical live 11.11 events in malls or treasure hunts, voucher drops and gross merchandise value competition – all seamlessly enabled through real-time transaction data.

This could be the future. We have already seen clear visibility of real-time sales data, and all we need is to scale our processes and for departments to see the same thing.

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UCOLLEX, an online platform that sells unique and limited edition NFTs for toy and pop culture collectibles, has scored US$10 million in a Series A funding round. 

Animoca Brands and MCP IPX One Fund (owned by Japan’s MCP Asset Management co-led the round.

The fresh capital enables UCOLLEX to invest extensively in blockchain technology and tap into metaverse frontiers, increasing its presence across the worlds of anime, manga, and toy communities.

Also read: Demystifying NFTs and DeFi

Established in 2021, UCOLLEX caters to next-generation creators by making their NFT artworks available to everyone. The firm also enables creators to build their fanbase economy where fans can engage with creators’ metaverse through exclusive interviews and live-streamed drops with artists.

“UCOLLEX is closing the loop between creators and collectors, providing a world where collectors can feel at home and live their passion for collecting through the best 3D art and innovative VR experiences,” said Founder Robert Tran.

At UCOLLEX, people can invest in digital collectibles without opening a wallet, trade their digital collections on its marketplace, and discover rare projects and collaborations.

Last fall, it joined hands with crypto exchange Binance to support the first NFT launch from luxury fashion brand Jimmy Choo.

Data from market tracker DappRadar shows NFT sales volume reached US$25 billion in 2021, presenting a solid market demand for NFTs. This attracts more and more creators to use NFTs and Web3 technologies to increase their artwork’s visibility.

Founded in 2014 by Yat Siu, Animoca Brands has a growing portfolio of more than 150 investments in NFT-related companies and decentralised projects contributing to building the open metaverse. Its investments include Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot), Yield Guild Games, Harmony, Alien Worlds, and Star Atlas.

This February, Animoca announced the launch of its Guild Accelerator Programme to foster the P2E gaming ecosystem and the acquisition of Melbourne-based Grease Monkey Games to develop its motorsports game catalogue.

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Ian McKee, CEO of Vuulr, discusses how brands can differentiate themselves with content in a crowded and competitive market. Now that entertainment is an internet-delivered product, the brands that deliver it need to play by the internet’s rules.

The foundation is differentiation

In the endless sea of choices available to the audience today, one burning question for every brand is how to stand out. Such that audiences find you, stay, and then invite their friends.

The only answer is by not playing it safe. As Seth Godin (the marketing author) says in Purple Cow,  in today’s cluttered landscape, playing it safe means you are, like many other brands out there, forgettable — condemning you to pay the advertising tax to keep reminding your audience that you exist.

The alternative is to be remarkable and differentiated in a way that is valuable to the audience so that audiences make and repeat remarks about you to their network— which, in turn, reduces your cost of acquisition and retention. Think of the buzz around Squid Game.

The winds began to perceptibly shift in 2020 when Parasite and Bong Joon-ho won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director.

Beyond the validation those awards meant to a relatively unknown South Korean filmmaker and the value of diversity in storytelling, there was this revelation: Parasite, acclaimed by critics and hailed as the first foreign-language film to win the top prize in the Oscars’ 92-year history, was also wildly popular in the key market of the United States.

Also Read: How Singaporean startup Xctuality helps creators, brands accelerate into metaverse

A year later, we witnessed the same phenomenon in the streaming space when Squid Game captured viewers’ attention on Netflix.

Squid Game was made by Siren Pictures, a Korean-based outfit that had earlier made three films prior, none of which had gained traction outside of Korea.

It was made with a production budget of US$21 million for ten episodes. Contrast the average US$2 million per episode of Squid Games with Stranger Things, with its US$12 million-per-episode budget.

Still, this was a risky bet. And, clearly, it paid off— only Netflix knows the absolute numbers in terms of acquisition and retention, but from a marketing perspective, it was a huge hit, with the title and Netflix shaping the global zeitgeist for weeks.

The signals are now undeniable: audiences have become receptive to excellent storytelling and quality content, whether or not it comes with subtitles and recognisable faces.

As the leader in the streaming-entertainment space, Netflix might have been tempted to rest on its success and hedge against its risk. Instead, in an industry that too often reacts slowly to change, the company understood the importance of bold, swift action.

Sticking with a proven formula is easy. It is comfortable. It requires no internal justification.

But it’s the wrong thing to do in today’s fierce battle for audiences.

Test and learn

Not every title will be a hit— nor should it be. If it is, then you’re not taking enough risks!

Acquisition teams should move out of their comfort zones and search for content that may not even have US distribution.

By the time it has, it is no longer as remarkable as it needs to be. Your competitors are just as able to pick it up as you are, so you gain no competitive advantage.

New, upcoming sources of production— Korea, Turkey, India, Nigeria (Nollywood) and, now, almost every other producer country— are where hidden gems are to be found.

Also Read: Podcast platform SoundOn gets strategic investment from Taiwan Mobile

For those without the infrastructure or scale of a Netflix, how can they go about sourcing and discovering content globally?

Digital solutions platforms help

Online content marketplaces have aggregated massive catalogues of content globally. They now provide the convenience to buyers of a single destination to easily search for content, no matter where it originates. This allows acquisitions teams to look further than what has distribution locally.

With standardised metadata, in English, with trailers and screeners instantly available, online content marketplaces allow acquisition teams to quickly search for and evaluate titles to find those remarkable titles that will differentiate your platform.

Once you’ve acquired a piece of content, you can push it out and learn how it performs. If it moves the needle, turn up the marketing machine (as Netflix did for “Squid Game.”) Unique, objectively interesting content gets people talking. And word of mouth can be a powerful, organic promotional tool.

New pricing models, e.g. per viewer, per minute (or, if yours is an ad-funded platform, a percentage share of ad revenue), means that taking these more adventurous acquisition choices does not mean having to pay a flat rate and the platform taking all the risk.

In the end, there’s no magic formula or set of data points that can consistently predict which titles will hit and which won’t. Entertainment is a creative industry, and creating content is still principally an art rather than a science.

But by understanding your brand, your audience and precisely what you’re measuring for (retention? watch times? new subscribers?), you’ll have what you need to build a global acquisition strategy and truly differentiate your brand in a crowded, competitive market.

First published on Media Play News on January 21, 2022

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