Even in 2022, the issue of the funding gap between male and female founders remains prevalent in the global tech startup ecosystem. There are many solutions proposed to help solve this problem, but putting women at the centre by making them a target for impact investment was a popular one. Investors aim to create a positive impact in society by investing in female founders as part of their impact investment strategy.

But is this really the best solution to the problem? What kind of impact does it bring to female founders, the industry, and society in general? Is it possible that focusing on women for impact investment brings more harm than good?

On November 11, at the She Loves Tech Global Conference 2022 in Singapore, the organisation hosted a debate on women as the focus of impact investment and whether it is the way to go. Chaired by Arvin Abraham, Partner at McDermott, Will & Emery, the debate featured leading names in the global startup ecosystem: Kamila Katya Sharipova (Sturgeon Capital), Michael Lints (Golden Gate Ventures), Mohan Lakhamraju (Great Learning), and Shiyan Koh (Hustle Fund).

Opening the debate was Lakhamraju with his argument of how, in the context of a mature market, putting women in the centre of impact investment is counterproductive to the goal of promoting gender equality in the startup ecosystem. Speaking in favour of meritocracy, he dubbed the motion as “an insult to the capabilities of female founders.”

Also Read: Women in Tech: Female leaders shaking up insurtech in Asia

Responding to his argument, Sharipova brought up data about how capital that goes to women has not moved in the recent years and that businesses do not “operate in a vacuum” –this means that business owners need to be aware of how their operations are impacting the society. This called for a form of affirmative action represented by women as the centre of impact investment.

“If you’re positively biased towards investing into diverse teams, or teams that understands diversity … that’s teaching women that investing in talented women is the smartest decision [one can make],” explains Koh as part of the opposition team.

Throughout the debate, concerns regarding the long-term impact of a women-centred impact investment kept on coming up. In his speech, Lints pointed out that impact investment on women is nothing more but a “minimal contribution” and a step to “check the boxes” when it comes to levelling the playing field and promoting diversity.

“We also have to remember that impact investment is often the first one to go during a time of crises,” he stressed.

Editor’s take

As a spectator of the debate, if I were to name a winner, then I would give it to Sharipova and Koh’s team. However, the score margin between the two competing teams is relatively thin.

In deciding the winner, I go by the team that can elaborate on their points and defend their key arguments.

While Lakhamraju opened the debate with a bold point about the values of meritocracy, this point was easily tackled by Sharipova in the opening of her speech when she pointed out that meritocracy was not achievable in every market. In communities where there is an apparent disparity between what men and women can do, there are steps that should be taken by policy-makers (and those who are in power) to ensure that everyone can get to the starting point at the same time.

Also Read: Gina Romero’s quest of unchaining women through AI and digital tasks

The affirmative team returned to the top spot with Lints’s argument about long-term impact and sustainability. While these could have been the points that saved the team’s spot, I noticed that Sharipova’s earlier point on the necessity of affirmative action stood –Lakhamraju and Lints’s ideas were not able to be realised without acknowledging the different situations on the ground.

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

Amit Ghosh is the Chief Information & Services Officer for R3. He leads the global operations organisation responsible for information security, IT infrastructure and operations, customer success, professional services, and technical support. In addition, he also leads its business and growth in Asia Pacific. 

Before R3, he held various senior business development & operations roles at Visa, PayPal, and Hewlett-Packard.

Based in Singapore, he holds an MBA from Chicago Booth and a BTech from IIT-BHU.

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

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

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

As a father of an almost five-year-old, this is an interesting question. My answer would be the following: we build things like you build toys with your legos.

I build something similar to a railway track that can then carry a train with goods from one point to another (this is R3 Corda’s flow frameworks and smart contracts that move data and information).

Sometimes we put different legos in a safe box, give them a good hard shake, and a new toy emerges (analogous to Conclave’s computation in a trusted enclave). Like how you build toys that your friends love, we build things that our friends will love.

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

The biggest highlight of my career is being part of the blockchain industry – to be building and leading teams at R3.

Blockchain technology has the promise and evidence to be as foundational and indispensable as the internet. It is proving to play a significant role in shaping our company and, in doing so, shaping the industry. This is a genuine opportunity of a lifetime. Our business relies heavily on interpersonal relationships with our colleagues, partners, and clients.

Also Read: Try to look at the world through a beginner’s eyes: Joey Alarilla of Playfix.io

In the last two and a half years, the pandemic has challenged and disrupted our ways of building relationships, working collaboratively, and forging meaningful partnerships with customers. 

In addition, hiring, onboarding, and retaining talent virtually was one of the stiffest leadership challenges I have dealt with in the recent past.

R3 was able to weather the storm because our senior-most leaders spent significant time making thoughtful choices for our employees.

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

I envision spending the next few years driving transformational change in technology infrastructure that underpins the financial markets globally and, equally, in the Asia Pacific. We are already in the process of doing so with financial services customers like DTCC, SDX, BIC (India), and other corporate customers like Ericsson and Vodafone.

However, we are just getting started, and there is a long runway ahead. I intend to work closely with my team to deliver large-scale customer projects and make customers successful. And we cannot do that without the help of R3-ers.

Therefore, I envision my next five years entirely devoting my time and energy to finding new talent whilst continuing to develop and support our current talent as best as possible.

What are some of your favourite work tools?

Slack is an everyday essential for me. The collaborative aspect of Slack acts as the R3 team’s bedrock, and it is our go-to tool for internal communication. This goes without mentioning its user-friendly interface and many functions that can be integrated with the app.

So, I consider Slack my favourite tool, considering it integral to my daily work routine.

Besides Slack, Atlassian’s Confluence is another excellent tool that I use on a day-to-day basis. Made by a software company from Australia, Confluence effectively renders R3’s key insights into internal Wiki pages, which is especially helpful in facilitating clarity of thought.

Being able to pen down our ideas and make sense of our thought processes will lead us in the right direction and eliminate the possibility of information misalignment. This translates to more efficient and effective work for the team.

Good organisation and accountability are traits I highly value, especially as a leader when there are multiple things that I often have to juggle. An app that helps to keep me in check is Notion, a note-taking app that’s essentially a second-brain tool. It’s an all-in-one workspace that systematically consolidates all of my tasks, projects, and notes and serves as my primary storage place.

Its minimalistic visuals provide a seamless user interface with regard to connecting and expanding ideas or even sharing them with my teammates. But most importantly, it provides the quickest access to information whenever and wherever I need it. It’s akin to my brain but expanded.

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

Every single one of us can transform if we have adequate self-awareness and a deep desire to change. My belief in this has strengthened over the last few years as I became self-aware and received coaching to work on areas that were a priority for me.

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

Subsequently, when I became a coach, I raised awareness in the person I was coaching, which led to significant changes in their life. When I share my belief openly, most people are surprised by my conviction in this and how important it is to me.

Do you prefer WFH or WFO, or hybrid?

I prefer the hybrid model. I find it amusing, however, that it took a pandemic for us to take hybrid working models seriously and implement them globally. Before the pandemic, we would not even have considered hybrid working to be a possibility.

But I’ve now realised the benefits of working from home and the office.

At home, I can zero in on my work and be hyper-focused instead of being prone to disruptions and distractions that may interrupt my workflow in the office.

Working from the office, however, provides its own set of unique benefits, an important one being human interactions with the team. It’s a prerequisite for leaders to know how to build rapport with their team members, which can be challenging to do via a screen or any virtual platform.

Human connection is best built when you share the same environment as your team – physically interacting with them at work and beyond work settings. Human connections are formed based on experiences, whether getting coffee together in the pantry, bouncing ideas off each other in meeting rooms, or having small talks in the hallways — these are all part of this experience of being at work.

But all in all, it still needs to be a healthy balance between working from home and the office. Only with the hybrid model do you get the best of both worlds.

What would you tell your younger self?

I would tell myself to take more risks and travel a lot more! The courage to try new things and allow me the freedom to do first and think later is something I would love to tell young Amit.

The wisdom, life lessons, and values you gain from taking risks and travelling shape you into the person you are. As the saying goes – we are the sum of our experiences. Without risks, I wouldn’t be where I am or who I am today.

Ideally, I would have liked to challenge the mindset of my younger self, where I used to play safe out of cautiousness and take the leap of faith and believe that everything would naturally fall into place. 

Additionally, travelling or living abroad will allow an individual to understand new perspectives better and take in new cultures – this builds character and shapes one’s outlook.

Can you describe yourself in three words?

Coach. Ambitious. Calm.

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

It’s one of four things – I’m babysitting my four-year-old, being in nature, practising my coaching skills, or writing.

Also Read: Dream loud, dream big and dream now: Surbhi Agarwal of Yellow.ai

Inspired by R3’s CTO, Richard Gendal Brown, a high quality prolific online writer, I’ve recently been practising and honing my writing skills for no objective other than to sharpen my clarity of thought.

I even started my webpage, where I share my perspectives on topics in the cross-section of talent development and leadership and occasionally share a personal story. This is a recent hobby that I am exploring to reinvigorate my creative side. The challenge to improve my writing energises me very much and knowing that I have a long way to go gives me a lot of joy.

What are you currently reading/listening to/ watching?

My current reads:

• Show Your Work by Austin Kleon
• A Simpler Life: A Guide to Greater Serenity, Ease and Clarity by Alain de Botton
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When The Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Al Switzler, Ron McMillan, and Joseph Kenny

I am interested in human psychology and its role in personal and professional development, fulfilment, and leading a holistic life. I strongly believe in the value of continuous growth as a person, and I constantly want to educate myself on the things that can inspire people, make them happier, and view the world more positively than otherwise.

Being able to internalise contentment, self-satisfaction fully, and inner peace is my ultimate end goal – I would like to learn how to rid myself of material wants and desires and grow through introspection.

I also read to understand better the people around me, which goes a long way for my personal development as a leader, mentor, and coach. It is imperative to find ways to improve myself so that I can better support the growth of the R3 team and be of help to them.

—

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The holiday season is upon us. We’ve had 10/10, and there’s 11/11, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, 12/12 and Boxing Day Sales still to come. But this year, the online shopping festival season is shaping up to be different from years gone by.

Rising inflation and increasing costs have forced us all to become more price-conscious and selective when it comes to purchasing decisions, even if we think we’re bagging a bargain.

In fact, according to a recent survey by Gartner, 48 per cent of consumers will begin their festive shopping early this year in a bid to beat inflation. While this presents an opportunity for merchants to drive sales during this crucial shopping period, the same report found that consumers are becoming warier of barriers to purchase, meaning that to capture this opportunity, payment service providers (PSPs) must make sure they’re more prepared than ever.

Here are four things that should be on the radar of all payment businesses this shopping season if they’re to help merchants realise success.

Security, security, security

Security is a consistent point of focus in payments, and so it should be. This is even more of an issue during the run-up to the festive season when opportunistic fraud attempts jump about 30 per cent.

Also Read: How e-commerce merchants can capture growth in international markets

As a PSP, if security isn’t top of your agenda yet, it should be. Your security protocols should be set up to maximise detection without declining payments. False positives will not only result in lost sales but a potential drop off in new customers for your merchants because of decreased brand trust.

To prevent any security problems, you should also check your fraud management protocols and make sure they are optimised to run smoothly alongside your merchants’ festive campaigns and promotions.

Drive conversions through data optimisation

Data is key to driving conversions and optimising the customer experience. Today, e-commerce takes place across multiple channels, including Online-to-Offline (O2O), on social media, and even in the metaverse.

Whenever people shop, they make payments, and these payments provide valuable data about consumer preferences. These include how they like to pay, their spending patterns and habits, and preferred payment methods. If you have strong data analytics tools that interpret payment data, you’ll be an even bigger help to your merchants for the festive season and beyond.

Offer the right choice of payment methods

Getting a grip on your data means you can help merchants increase conversions and optimise payments. When it comes to cross-border payments, optimising payment methods is far from a one size fits all approach, particularly in Asia, where the payments landscape is very fragmented.

People won’t hit the buy button if their preferred payment methods aren’t available. And in 2021, local payment methods, digital payment methods used in a particular country or region, accounted for 77 per cent of purchases online.

Make sure that you are providing the right payment methods for the markets you are targeting or work with experts that know your markets and can advise you on which payment methods you need to drive sales for your merchants.

Always have a backup plan

Although the festive shopping season might not be as busy as it was last year, be prepared for unexpected jumps in sales. While many are tightening their belts due to inflation, they are still aware that the online shopping festival season is the time to bag the best deals.

Also Read: The thesis for cross-border e-commerce in Southeast Asia

Even if your payments usually run smoothly, it’s good to have a backup plan in case one or more of your acquirers or processors has any issues. To manage this, have a clear communications plan ready to use with your merchants in case payments are disrupted. Similarly, you should also consider creating internal protocols to manage disruptions.

For example, if your credit card processor has a disruption, do you have a cross-functional crisis management team in place to troubleshoot? Do people in merchant-facing positions like customer support and sales know what to do and how to respond? What’s your plan of action?

Ironing out how you’ll respond to disruption scenarios and creating a clear communications plan helps ensure when they do happen, everything will be kept under control. And if you’re prepared, it’ll go a long way towards letting your merchants know they’re your priority during this important time of year.

So, if you let all the above sink in and make adjustments where necessary, you’ll be well on your way to being prepared and primed for success ahead of 2023’s shopping festival season.

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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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Global private market exchange ADDX has raised approximately US$20 million in a pre-Series B round of financing led by KB Securities, a subsidiary of South Korea’s largest banking group KB Financial Group.

The round kicked off in May 2022, when ADDX announced a US$58 million raise from the Stock Exchange of Thailand, Hamilton Lane, and UOB.

This brings the total funds raised by ADDX since its inception in 2017 to around US$140 million. The company also counts the Singapore Exchange, Temasek subsidiary Heliconia Capital, Tokai Tokyo Financial Holdings, and the Development Bank of Japan among its investors.

The startup will use the fresh capital to grow ADDX Advantage, a wealth management platform launched earlier this year for private banks, brokerages and family offices. A portion of the funds will go into global expansion.

Also Read: For Web3 to take off, we need to fix the rigidity problem of smart contracts

ADDX allows individual investors access to private market deals that have traditionally been open only to institutional investors, such as sovereign wealth funds and endowment funds. These include private credit and other fixed-income investments, private equity, hedge funds, and private real estate.

The exchange, regulated by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, uses blockchain and smart contract technology to automate manual processes. This reduces the minimum subscription sizes from US$1 million to US$5,000 while allowing secondary trading.

Oi-Yee Choo, CEO of ADDX, said: “The fundamental design of private markets — how and to whom securities are distributed, and whether secondary trading is facilitated — has transformed more over the past two years than it has over the two decades before that. The impact of that change has been positive: access to the means of wealth creation is becoming equal, and capital can flow unimpeded to the most efficient financing projects. In the long run, smooth and seamless capital markets will uplift growth in the real economy, with dividends for both workers and investors.”

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MOGUL.sg, an AI-driven property search portal in Singapore, has raised S$9 (US$6.5) million in its first-ever funding round.

Nech Capital, an alternative investment management company in Singapore, led the round.

With the money, MOGUL.sg is looking to add more features to its website’s 3D map, such as indoor mapping and navigation.

Also Read: What are the key emerging trends and technologies in proptech space?

Launched in 2018, MOGUL.sg aims to make property searches easy with smart keywords, property tagging, and a specially curated agent concierge team to assist homeowners.

It has a library of over 5,000 custom keywords that cater to a refined search that describes the property’s characteristics that the users are searching for. Users can use keywords such as “East-West Line”, “Park”, “Primary School”, and “Balcony” to refine the search results. This enables them to learn about amenities in the neighbourhood and understand what they sign up for before purchasing or renting the property.

Early this year, MOGUL.sg rolled out an interactive 3D map in its property search portal to support searches with an immersive experience to help prospective home buyers visualise the properties and their surrounding areas better. They can see whether the property encounters any view obstructions caused by nearby buildings, check whether the property has an unblocked view of the sea, and even the exact direction of the sun at various times of the day.

“Here at MOGUL.sg, it has always been our aim to improve users’ experience in the property search. We have consistently added features to our website so that users -buyers, sellers, agents, or real estate developers- can improve their productivity with the tools provided,” said Gerald Sim, CEO and Founder of MOGUL.sg.

The firm claims it has over 6,000 registered housing agents using the portal and facilitated over S$50 million of real estate transactions on its website since its launch.

Also Read: Why Singapore becoming a tech hub is a great boost for the proptech sector

Since the start of 2022, MOGUL.sg said it has seen a 20 per cent growth among active and new users.

So far, the startup has collaborated with leading real estate developers, such as Guoco, Keppel Land, Far East, The Four Seasons, and Capital Land, in its property developments.

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Many years ago, in the tech industry, there was this persistent belief that e-commerce would destroy and replace retail in the heart of customers. But fast forward to 2022, despite the prevalence of e-commerce and the challenges that retail continues to face, the two industries continue to co-exist. Instead of competing, they ended up complementing and supporting each other.

According to Looi Qin En, Principal at Saison Capital, at an Echelon 2022 panel discussion on October 28 at Resorts World Sentosa, this would be the direction that Web3 and Web2 companies are taking in the future.

But before they can fully embrace and implement Web3 technologies and business models, there are misconceptions to clear.

“One of the biggest misconceptions we have right now about Web3 is that in building Web3, you can apply the same principles as in Web2. For example, in the matters of how you go to market, how you bring your products, none of the traditional ways of marketing really works,” he said. “There has to be a change in mindset.”

Another common misconception involved what Web3 technologies actually entail. Speaking in the same panel as Looi, Rishi Randhawa, Head of Web3 Innovation at Enjinstarter, pointed out that most of the public today is already familiar with popular Web3-related terms such as NFTs, but that is often the extent of their understanding.

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

“If I ask the audience, how many of you have heard of NFTs? I’m pretty sure 80-90 per cent of you would put your hands up. But if you ask people you know, how many of you have a wallet? Probably about 10 per cent,” he said.

“There’s a lot more to Web3 than just NFTs. I think every business, every brand will have its own objectives, its own challenges that require them to look at the new set of tools and the new set of ways of working to achieve finance.”

This is something that Xander van der Heijden, CEO at UNL, agreed on. “We’ve come a long way, but many of the Web3 technology and infrastructures today are used for cryptocurrencies when blockchain and distributed ledger can solve real-world problems. But that’s where we need to go.”

Building a Web3-friendly culture

For Web2 companies who are looking to start implementing Web3 technologies and business models, where should they start? According to the panellists, they can begin building a company culture that can help team members shift to a “Web3 mindset” more seamlessly.

As Looi put it, Web3 is about “a change in how we are looking at our community and our audiences.”

For Shaun Heng, Head of Spartan Labs at The Spartan Group, from the organisational perspective, a company can start by setting up a small group of employees who are passionate about the space.

Also Read: Web2 founders, get ready for Web3 before 2025 – Insights from Echelon 2022

“Just having this sense of commonality, stepping up and sharing information is already a good starting point,” he stressed. “You don’t need to revamp your entire business model right away. You don’t need to build everything on the blockchain just because you want to expand to Web3. Start small by having the culture embedded in the organisation itself.”

“Subsequently, you will pick up a new model. Once you get a bit more momentum … the employees are on this journey together. This way, you can take a bit more risk, but you don’t need to start with a goal in mind.”

When it comes to case studies, van der Heijden named Reddit as one example of a Web2 platform that had successfully transition into Web3 —in just four months— with the launch of its NFT marketplace.

“You got to listen to the audience. Speak to that community. Figure out what they could be interested in,” he stressed.

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Tuition providers have traditionally built a name for themselves as a one-stop centre for intensive after-school learning, often conducting large classes for each of the 10-odd academic subjects taught in schools.

However, is this still the best way for tuition centres to operate, and more importantly, is this model still keeping parents happy?

As a father myself, I realised very early on that parental expectations for how education is delivered are constantly evolving. Parents, myself included, have become some of the most vocal advocates for supplementary lessons that can upskill their children in ways that school classrooms cannot, rather than simply reinforcing the existing syllabus.

The quality of education provided by tuition centres is also often expected to surpass that of schools so that children glean and retain information more effectively.

Having developed education technology services for five years, I strongly believe this is an opportunity waiting to be seized by tuition providers. Evolving alongside parents and students ensures that tuition centres remain a pivotal part of an ever-changing educational landscape.

Bridging the disconnect between students and educators

If anything, the pandemic-induced shift to digital learning in the last two years has taught us that students thrive when interacting with their peers and teachers in person. While virtual classes and online sessions have made learning more mobile and accessible, the distance and nature of the medium have exacerbated the disconnect between students and teachers.

Also Read: Singapore has the world’s first industry-endorsed sales education programme and here’s what it does

Issues such as distractions from other sources, lack of immediate feedback from educators, and social isolation from their peers are some of the common factors contributing to the disconnect.

Ironically, a key weakness of online earning models is shared by both school and tuition classrooms: teaching far too many students simultaneously. Whether through little boxes on a screen or in a packed room full of children, it is not uncommon for classes to have north of 40 or 50 students, manned by a single teacher.

The debate here, then, is no longer on if virtual learning is superior to the traditional classroom but rather on how we can circumvent this disconnect afflicting both. The answer: personalised learning in smaller, face-to-face groups.

Through this model, teachers will only be handling a few students at any given time. Fewer students mean teachers could give greater attention to each child and tailor lesson plans to their individual needs earlier, leading to more focused and conducive learning.

Besides fostering an environment of greater communication between teachers and students, these smaller groups also allow teachers to supervise the classroom more effectively, which can be key in maximising tuition classes where each session is only an hour or two long.

Embracing soft skills, arts, and extracurricular learning

Through the replacement of UPSR with Pentaksiran Bilik Darjah (school-based assessments) and the abolishment of the PT3 exams, it is clear that the Malaysian education system has begun steering away from the conventionally ironclad emphasis on exams.

Rather than focusing solely on their ability to memorise information, students can instead put to use a wider variety of skills, from critical thinking and communication to sports and the arts.

As demand for a more holistic, “quality-over-quantity” education continues to rise, this is a prime opportunity for tuition providers to expand their classes beyond the standard academic subjects.

For instance, lessons in music, public speaking, art, or philosophy, while not directly used in an academic sense, will give students an edge through naturally honing their critical thinking, presentation skills, and artistic mastery, among others.

Although reworking the existing business model and onboarding specialised teachers with the right expertise may be an extensive endeavour, when done right, tuition centres can fill a niche role in nurturing more well-rounded students.

Also Read: Will hybrid schooling break walls for the next generation?

By helping to hone skills and talents on top of academic potential, tuition teachers become mentors that prepare children for more varied opportunities and avenues in the future.

Supplementing tuition classes with digital solutions

While offline tuition classes are where a large part of the magic happens with vital student-teacher interactions, the online infrastructures that have been carefully built to weather the pandemic still play a key part in a holistic learning strategy.

Rather than choosing between them and having one replace the other, online learning and digital solutions can and should complement offline classes to maximise efficiency and results.

A dual-learning management system, when implemented properly, will not only help students learn more efficiently but also help teachers streamline their syllabi. Students who have missed crucial classes can easily log into a portal or intranet to revisit a topic or even refer to online notes to conduct their own revision before an upcoming exam.

Not only that, teachers can easily track the assignment progress and performance of each student and effectively tackle their individual weaknesses.

Building a social media presence can also be greatly beneficial for tuition providers. Having a Facebook or Instagram profile enables centres to be more easily accessible to the tech-native students of today while also bringing together a community of like-minded parents.

With the abundance of features made available for page owners and managers, such as polls and status updates, educators can always use them to facilitate discussions and make the learning process more interactive.

All in all, like any other industry that has been around for a long time, tuition centres must be proactive in embracing and initiating change to remain competitive. As teachers are the catalysts of success for the trailblazers and trendsetters of tomorrow, it is only fitting that we, as educators, also stay ahead of trends in education.

There is a need to constantly diversify and approach education: it ensures our children, who cycle between school, tuition, and home, grow up as well-rounded individuals while cementing the key part that tuition providers play in fostering that holistic environment in the education sector as a whole.

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

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The sharing economy has helped millions of people worldwide with new income opportunities, especially in low to medium-HDI (Human Development Index) countries, where resources are not easily accessible and affordable to everyone.

It has become clear that these technologies also exponentially accelerate the rate of digital exclusion for unskilled, illiterate, and bottom-income earners.

Rise of sharing economy in Pakistan

Pakistan has fully embraced the route of the sharing economy, with a population of 220 million and a GDP per capita (US$1555) lower than India and Bangladesh. The country also faces the issue of unemployment of about 4.34 per cent, for which 64 per cent are younger than 30 years, and 92 million are illiterate. So, people who can’t find employment now have the opportunity of a flexible and honourable way of earning any additional income.

According to the research made by the NTU Business School. The ride-sharing economy in Pakistan has enabled more women to travel by themselves, as it is frowned upon, unsafe or unusual for them to do on their own.

Apps like Careem, InDriver, and Bykea are now the most prominent players in the ride-sharing economy, and they have set up the ground for catalysing social inclusion and mobility among many disadvantaged or excluded pockets of the population.

But on the other hand, 92 million people in Pakistan can’t read or write. And have difficulties interacting with the apps as they can’t type in English or Urdu.

I met with Muneeb Maayr, Founder of Bykea which is a homegrown ride-sharing startup. He mentioned how Bykea cares about building features and tackling use cases that the global competitors will not.

For example, the app is available in Urdu and enables voice notes and cues on pick-up locations to facilitate a smoother interaction between drivers and customers. Making the app more inclusive to a bigger user base.

Bykea only operates in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad, but only 37.2 per cent of the population lives in Urban areas. Pakistan has a low HDI of 0.544, making it very challenging for growing tech startups and having positive unit economics, as a high percentage of the population in low HDI countries remains unbanked and illiterate.

Also Read: How the app sharing economy is keeping up with the current trends

However, Bykea unit economics remain positive when subtracting the driver’s incentives/bonuses plus marketing from their total revenue. Yet, they expect to build enhanced product features to increase organic revenue growth. But to build killer features, they will require a deeper understanding of their user base and a more intuitive and easier-to-use interface.

Now, considering the current risk-off environment in capital markets. VC’s investments are fleeing to more conservative allocations for which only startups with solid and positive unit economics will get funded for further rounds. Frontier markets would be highly affected in this environment as less high-level talent will be retained, yielding a lower rate of innovation and experimentation.

Yet, while caution is widespread, some bold investors see opportunities in tech, green businesses, and impact funding. A January report from Silicon Valley Bank found that 79 per cent of family offices were making venture capital investments with impact or ESG strategies in place.

Rich individuals now see potential in impact investments. For example, Wall Street investment company KKR has raised a second global impact fund totalling US$1.3 billion.

Final thoughts

There is an open opportunity for startups to integrate ESG into their business strategy from the beginning before even achieving product market fit. And thinking about what KPIs around impact and social development could be extracted from their user bases will be incredibly important for startups in frontier markets, as survival in the current market will require a more comprehensive story of social inclusion, ways of getting there, and real metrics and proving it.

In conclusion, should the ride-sharing apps and newcomers in frontier markets position themselves primarily as ESG-focused organisation?

The work of tech startups, especially in these markets, requires much development on the infrastructural and educational side. A holistic approach is a must if these startups are to survive in the long term.

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In Indonesia, the mortgage to GDP ratio is below 3 per cent, compared to India’s 11 per cent and the US’s 50 per cent. This means a significant portion of the archipelago’s population gets cut from one of the most important purchases of their lives: a home.

When Ilya Kravtsov, credited with building the NFC-based guest management startup PouchNATION from scratch, sensed an opportunity, he researched further. He was convinced that there was an enormous opportunity as the sector remained largely untapped.

“As per a government estimate, the housing backlog is 12.7 million units in Indonesia,” Kravtsov tells e27. “Considering the strong demand (and the growing backlog) and future growth in mortgage penetration, we estimate that there is a chance to build not one but several unicorns in the space.”

Intending to make the most of this opportunity, Kravtsov launched a digital mortgage platform Ringkas with Leroy Pinto, Yoko Simon, and Puguh Widyoko in 2021. While Kravtsov previously founded PouchNATION, Pinto worked for Google and Amazon, Simon held senior engineering roles at Dell, and Widyoko handled leadership roles at large financial institutions.

Ringkas (‘concise’, ‘brief’ and ‘shortcut’ in English) aims to simplify Indonesia’s complicated mortgage application process by providing easy-to-use tools for agents, property developers, customers and banks.

Also Read: Most Singaporeans pay too much for their mortgage. Here’s how innovation can fix that

“Our goal is to provide tools for all stakeholders in the industry to facilitate the mortgage application process and make it faster, more transparent and efficient,” Kravtsov elaborates.

Traditionally, a customer looking to submit a mortgage application with a bank needs to go through multiple steps involving a lot of paperwork, resulting in a lengthy and manual process.

However, with Ringkas, a customer can fill in just one application form digitally and submit it directly to as many banks as she wants. The banks receive the application digitally and incorporate all the customer and asset information, making it easy and quick for them to underwrite. Ringkas then intelligently pre-screens customers and matches them to the target bank based on their risk profile.

For property developers and agents, Ringkas allow them to focus more on their core business (of selling) and less on assisting customers with paperwork and worrying about the high rejection rates from the banks (which, in several cases, could reach up to 40 per cent).

The Jakarta-headquartered startup charges a commission on loan origination services from the banks, whereas property developers/agents pay for the services Ringkas renders.

The company focuses mainly on Indonesia but plans to expand to other regional markets when opportunities knock. To date, Ringkas claims to have secured several billion USD in the supply of houses (in 34 cities across Indonesia) and is currently working with some of the largest banks in the country, including Mandiri, BSI, OCBC, Danamon, Permata, and UOB.

Kravtsov reveals that while there are no established competitors yet, a few early-stage companies are trying to solve a similar problem. However, many of these players focus on the asset-heavy rent-to-own model. “On the other hand, Ringkas focuses on an asset-light business, which is more scalable and aligned with our vision to generate an impact for the masses.”

He anticipates some rejections in the early days as many people tend to fall back on pen and paper. However, as the stakeholders realise the benefits Ringkas brings, the adoption will gradually grow.

In May this year, Ringkas raised about US$2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round from investors, including 500 Global, Iterative Capital, Creative Gorilla Capital, Teja Ventures, and Init-6. As the startup receives more interest from VCs, it will look for more funding in the future.

Kravtsov further shares that his experience building PouchNATION, backed by Traveloka and SPH Ventures, from zero has helped him a lot in the new venture. “At PouchNATION, we simplified the complicated process of paying at large-scale events/venues, making it fast and efficient. At Ringkas, we do a similar thing but in a different industry. Our ambition for Ringkas is also the same: to become the leading brand people think of when considering house financing,” Kravtsov wraps up.

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The post How Ringkas replaces paper-based mortgage application process in Indonesia with digital tools appeared first on e27.

Jakarta-based digital signature and identity company Privy has secured US$48 million in a Series C funding round led by KKR.

Existing investors MDI Ventures, GGV Capital, Telkomsel Mitra Inovasi, and new investor Singtel Innov8 also participated.

Privy will use the capital to support the development of its new consumer and enterprise products. The company also intends to expand into overseas markets to accelerate growth further.

A year ago, Privy announced a US$17.5 million Series B funding round led by GGV Capital.

Also Read: PrivyID is Indonesia’s answer to DocuSign, and it just raised pre-Series A funding

Founded in 2016, Privy provides trusted digital identities and legally binding digital signatures. The company offers a wide range of services, including digital identity, digital signature, digital verification, and document management products and services in various sectors, including financial services, healthcare, and education.

In 2018, Privy became the first non-government institution to be licensed as a Certificate Authority (CA) by Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology. In 2019, it became the first electronic Know-Your-Customer service provider registered under Indonesia’s Financial Services Authority.

Today, Privy has more than 30 million verified users and 1,800 enterprise consumers for its digital signature, digital verification, and subscription products, and it processes more than 40 million digital signatures per year.

Louis Casey, KKR’s growth technology lead in Southeast Asia, said: “Privy has built an industry-leading platform that combines prime features, a user-friendly design, and secure and robust infrastructure. We look to leverage KKR’s global network and operational expertise to take Privy to its next level of growth and extend its leadership in digital trust for individuals and enterprises in Indonesia and beyond.”

Indonesia’s digital economy is projected to reach US$146 billion by 2025 and to become Southeast Asia’s largest digital economy, valued at more than US$300 billion by 2030.

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