In the last decade, the complexion of the finance industry in Singapore has changed dramatically. With the digital transformation, financial institutions and their clients have embraced technological advances and changed the way that we trade, communicate, and interact with one another.

It is a good time to reflect upon Andrew Grove’s famous book, Only the Paranoid Survive, where he reveals his strategy for measuring the nightmare moment every leader dreads when a massive change occurs and a company must adapt to the new paradigms or fall by the wayside. In the financial world, the paradigm we may face is “customers need banking but may not need a bank; they need stockbroking but not stockbrokers”.

A career in the finance industry has transformed in tandem, and there have been two key drivers for these changes. Firstly, we have seen a geographic shift in the balance of the finance industry, as investors look toward the faster-growing markets in Asia.

These changing tides put Singapore in a prime position to solidify its position as a global financial centre, and financial institutions will need to be quick and agile to respond to new developments in the industry.

As a financial institution, we have made it a part of our ethos to be at the forefront of new developments in the industry. In 1996, we launched Philip’s Online Electronic Mart System (POEMS), an online desktop trading platform, and changed the way people trade. We have consistently innovated and evolved, and in 2017 we launched the redesigned POEMS 2.0, to optimise the user experience.

Secondly, the digital transformation has redefined the role of the financial institution. With customers increasingly going mobile, financial institutions need to adapt their services in kind.

For instance, we launched a mobile-friendly version of POEMS to pre-empt customers’ needs in 2010, and we have continued to listen to the feedback of our clients to improve the user experience. In 2022, we launched POEMS Mobile 3, taking in the feedback from our clients to optimise the user interface and user experience.

Since our early days as a brokerage firm, we have evolved into an integrated financial house with a presence in 15 countries serving over 1 million clients, with Assets Under Management accounting for a total of more than US$35 billion.

Also Read: Mergers and acquisitions: Key to building an embedded finance ecosystem

As the complexion of the industry changes with high technology, how do we ensure we are relevant to our diverse set of clients? How can we utilise technology to provide them with the right information so that they can make informed decisions about their investments? How do we, as the financial institution, give our traders, financial advisers, and trading representatives the right tools and skills to give clients the service that they deserve.

The refinement of a ‘high-tech, high-touch’ approach

While we embrace technological advancement, we are constantly reminded that human beings are essentially “social creatures” and we strive for interactive relationship building.

At PhillipCapital, we advocate a ‘high-tech, high-touch’ approach, where we constantly look for innovation to not only provide clients with new and more efficient ways of working but to also build and maintain trust with our clients.

While we have ridden the wave of technological advances, we continue to maintain an avenue for clients to get in touch with a financial adviser or a trading representative to preserve the relationships that are key.

In the world of excess, with thousands of financial products, we need professionals to curate products and present the solutions to clients. The advancement in Big Data and Artificial Intelligence will aid us tremendously in this area.

In more recent times, we have seen a growing trend of investors starting earlier in their careers, around the late 20s or early 30s. Meanwhile, our loyal customers have grown with us, and in the later stage of their lives, they are bringing the next generation of investors to start their journeys with us. As our clientele diversifies, we are constantly looking to adapt our services to cater to their varied outlooks, objectives, and preferences.

As we see different demographics of investors emerging, we also see new roles for our sales force emerging, younger investors may prefer to have a space for constructive debate to make more informed decisions, and the role of the advisor is to educate and advise through these forums.

For older investors, the role of the advisor may be more tuned to building on the trust that we have forged over the years and helping the customers navigate their investments in the digital era. In short, we have seen the rise of influencers and Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) in many sectors including retail and finance.

The content curation of these KOLs and the delivery to the audience have been widely accepted and appreciated by consumers and clients, as these KOLs continue to educate and engage the investing public.

Evolution of the fintech and financial literacy space

We have seen renewed interest in the fintech space, as well as services such as user interface and user experience support for our mobile applications. We are also working hard to deepen our digital capabilities while supporting our talents to harness their potential to serve the next generation of clients.

We have built a strong local talent pool of over 100 tech specialists, all of whom have been trained to leverage tech-enabled financial solutions to cater to a diverse range of customer needs and goals.

We have also seen a growth in the information and education space. As an industry, we are constantly looking at new ways to promote financial literacy and responsible trading, through new technologies to interact with our customers, as well as experimenting with new platforms or services to give our customers the requisite knowledge and research in a timely manner.

On a regular basis, we curate topics of relevance and currency and conduct webinars for our clients and the public. Every quarter, we hold Strategy Stock Picks webinars. Picking individual stocks is time-consuming and requires expertise.

For our research team to pick a stock, for every company in their respective sector, they will need to analyse the company, prepare a financial model, interview the company management, and weigh the risks of the individual companies.

The process requires extensive time and expertise, and our research team applies the skillsets of a consultant, an accountant, an FBI agent, and an insurance actuary, it’s a lot of effort and work!

In addition, we avail a wide array of educational tools on our POEMS platforms such as market journals, research reports, and videos. Some of these materials that benefit the public are also made accessible on our social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. As such, we have seen a need to form teams to develop and maintain these platforms, as well as curate and package our research in an engaging, yet informative way.

We are also working closely with our innovation team to engage, such as hackathons and financial education programmes. Given our presence in Asia and beyond, and our commitment to promoting financial literacy, we have developed PYTCH, a studio driven by research and strategy established to create financial content focusing on financial news, industry trends, investment strategies and talks, live TV, interactive TV, on-demand streaming TV, and an educational platform for both local and overseas investors.

Building a strong learning culture

With a constantly evolving space comes new opportunities for financial institutions to learn and grow with their employees. Both companies and their employees have a shared responsibility in building a strong learning culture, one that promotes adaptability and resilience among all employees.

Also Read: From sommelier to AVP of Customer Success at a tech unicorn: Lessons from my career journey

On the part of companies, training and reskilling programmes are beneficial to help employees deepen their expertise and acquire new skills. We have developed training roadmaps across all job functions to meet both current and future skills and competencies, in areas like wealth management, tech-enabled financial services, and data analytics.

This allows our employees to acquire transferrable skills across all domains in the finance industry, and plan long-term careers with us, such as offering opportunities for trading representatives to become portfolio managers.

At the same time, training and reskilling can aid in the development of soft skills in areas like critical thinking, problem-solving, and creativity, which allows our financial advisers and trading representatives to relate to customers, educate them, and value-add to the digital services.

Having a blend of both hard and soft skills will enable current employees to not only broaden their technical capabilities but also adapt and excel in the fast-evolving industry.

Effervescent skills for employees in the finance industry

All in all, we have seen that employees with the right mindset and ethos have embraced these challenges and found a home with us. We have identified four key attributes that have helped our employees in their careers in the finance industry:

• An eagerness to learn

Whether you are a fresh graduate or looking for a career switch, there is a seat for you if you are open and willing to learn. This industry welcomes anyone with easily transferrable skills, even if they are not from a financial services-related background.

• Being agile and staying relevant

Change is a constant in the finance industry, so it is important to always be on your toes and embrace new developments, especially when innovation continually pushes the sector to evolve. Those with the learning agility to learn, unlearn, and relearn in an increasingly flexible environment will be able to grow with the industry and find a fruitful experience in acquiring new skills, refining their current skillsets, and staying up-to-date with the new developments in the space.

• Being “paranoid” and building momentum

Reflecting on Andrew Grove’s book, it is important that we continue to strive and never rest on our laurels. With the fast-evolving world, we need this type of character and personality in employees and entrepreneurs. Momentum is such a succinct word but in business, we need momentum to keep on building and adapting to the world.

• Putting clients first

The human touch is still vital in understanding and empowering our clients to take charge of their financial future. Our role is to guide our clients along, focus on the bigger picture and recognise how we can optimise the new developments in the industry to serve our clients’ needs. As such, the onus is on us to never lose sight of their ability to effect meaningful change in our clients’ lives. In essence, be “client-centric”.

A service-oriented industry

As the financial landscape in Singapore continues to evolve, a career in the industry can be fast-paced, dynamic, challenging, and enriching. A rising tide raises all ships, and as the global finance industry looks to the East, we need to ensure that we remain at the forefront of change.

Also Read: How regulation is about to make “green finance” the new normal

However, at its heart, the finance industry remains service-oriented, and we will continue to put our clients’ needs first, as we adapt to the changing tides.

In addition, we will continue to help our employees to sharpen their skills, develop new capabilities, and keep pace with this ever-evolving industry. However, we cannot lose sight of our purpose, to help our clients achieve their investment goals and objectives.

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Zuno Carbon, a Singapore-based greentech startup, has closed a pre-seed funding round led by Blue InCube Ventures with SEEDS Capital.

The funds will be used to grow Zuno Carbon’s team and accelerate product development and marketing efforts.

Zuno Carbon provides organisations of all sizes with solutions to simplify carbon accounting through automation and process optimisation. Its goal is to enable ESG teams to shift their focus and resources from reporting to reducing their environmental impact with the help of AI-generated insights.

The startup’s solutions will initially target the energy, real estate, and manufacturing industries — which are the source of most of our greenhouse gas emissions.

Also Read: How carbon in the metaverse can help solve the real-world climate crisis

Zuno Carbon’s solutions have been deployed around the globe in Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the US, and Qatar.

“We are taking modern engineering approaches to constantly work with our existing customers to enhance our capabilities and make carbon reduction as painless as possible,” added Jon Adams, CTO and Co-Founder of Zuno Carbon.

“Sustainability has moved up the priority list for not just world and business leaders, but consumers and investors. Everyone wants to save tomorrow, and we believe that our technology gives us a fighting chance to see it through,” said Hari Nair, CEO and Co-Founder of Zuno Carbon.

“Zuno aims to simplify both the accountability “score-keeping” and engineering “take-action” aspects so an entire organisation can take coordinated actions to create an impact,” commented CL Goh, venture builder at Blue InCube Ventures.

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Juragan Material, a B2B marketplace providing a procurement solution for sourcing building materials, has raised US$4 million in seed funding led by Go-Ventures, with participation from SIG.

The startup will use this funding to grow its team, strengthen market penetration of its B2B construction and building material marketplace and innovate and deepen the capabilities of its product ecosystem.

“The construction sector is a significant contributor to Indonesia’s GDP. Building and construction materials represent a US$72 billion market with over 200,000 construction establishments. Despite its importance to Indonesia’s economy, the sector’s supply chain is highly fragmented with multiple layers, resulting in unpredictable demand and supply, lack of pricing transparency, inconsistent quality of materials, and an overall lack of coordination. Less than 1 per cent of supply chain transactions are captured digitally, so contractors and project owners must resort to highly inefficient and cumbersome procurement methods,” said Arum Putri, Vice President at Go-Ventures.

Also Read: How the construction industry got “smart” and cleaned up its impact

Founded in 2021, Juragan Material has over 9,000 SKUs and 180 brands across structural, architectural, mechanical and electrical products onboarded onto the platform. Contractors and project owners can benefit from reduced effort and time spent sourcing products, fewer errors on-site, and better control over project timelines.

It claims to have doubled its GMV monthly on average last year while maintaining positive unit economics.

Tito Putra, CEO and Co-Founder of Juragan Material, said: “We are focused on building a trusted technology platform for procuring construction materials. Building and construction materials represent one of the most complex supply chains. Juragan Material aims to provide top value to contractors and project owners by offering them the most comprehensive selection of products, improved supply visibility, and reliable logistics to manage their projects more efficiently.”

“This new funding will allow us to scale our impact through continuing to improve our platform and launch more innovative tech solutions, such as workflow management tools and services. They will drive greater efficiencies and transparency to support the productivity of our stakeholders,” he added.

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Home to 700 million people, Southeast Asia represents a large, expanding and ageing population for healthcare technology to address. Unlike the global macro markets which are correcting amidst rising investor uncertainty, healthcare in Southeast Asia is showing strong growth, compared even to the records set in 2021.

Based on data from Galen Growth, the leading digital health data platform, 21 new VC deals were closed in Southeast Asia in the first half of 2022 compared to 19 in the same period last year. In terms of the dollar value of those investments, US$452 million was invested by VCs into SEA digital health in the first half of 2022 compared to US$206 million in the same period last year.

We predict that 2022 digital health investments in full-year 2022 will land in the US$750 million range, up 20-25 per cent year on year. This stands in stark comparison to global VC funding which has pulled back substantially, falling to US$247 billion in the first five months of 2022 compared to US$257 billion in 2021, according to Crunchbase data.

This divergence is accelerating, in May 2022, global VC funding fell below US$40 billion for the first time since November 2020, whereas SEA healthcare is ramping up.

Why is SEA digital healthcare VC a bright spot in the global VC market?

We believe due to regional supply-demand fundamentals and the ground shift brought about by COVID-19. An analysis of indicative “bellwether” deals in the first half of 2022 suggests that healthcare technology-enabled primary care services are where the action is at, as reflected in recent investments.

Also Read: The emergence of telehealth in post-COVID-19 Southeast Asia

For instance, SwipeRx, an e-pharmacy platform; Us2.ai, a cardiology diagnostics platform; Jio Health, a telehealth platform; and Med247, Altara’s most recent Vietnam investment and national leader in technology-based primary care. In combination, those four SEA deals raised in excess of US$65 million in Series A/B capital this year.

Healthcare investment thesis for SEA

Altara’s Investment Thesis is focused on the five critical market segments that make up the majority of the digital health sector in this region:

• Tech-enabled providers
• Platforms and online marketplaces
• B2B SaaS
• Drug and device producers
• Digital models of health insurance

We will focus primarily on regional startups that aim to solve problems within the largest patient and revenue pools. These include digital screening and diagnosis, hybrid online-offline patient services, and digitalised pharmacies, which are forecasted to compose 75 per cent of the market in 2022, according to RedSeer a market research firm.

We will also focus selectively on the life science value chain and healthcare deep tech startups that emerge from the Singapore life science cluster.

Predictions for beyond 2022

In the longer term, we believe that as the market matures, the SEA opportunity set will move from addressing access to primary care towards a focus on the later stages of the patient journey that involve specialised and higher-value services in areas such as cancer, ageing care, and speciality pharma.

If you’re an ambitious digital health entrepreneur looking to build the healthcare economy in SEA, we look forward to partnering with you.

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ShopBack bags US$80M Series F from Asia Partners to be IPO-ready
With this latest investment, the company has raised over US$230M in total to date; ShopBack has more than 35M users across 10 countries and powers US$3.5B in annual sales; It also facilitates 1M shopping journeys for 10K+ merchant partners every day.

Indonesia’s Deliveree nets US$70M in Gobi, SPIL-led round
The logistics startup operates in Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines; Deliveree’s gross transaction value grew by 3.2x over the last 24 months, and it is on track to exceed US$100M by end of 2022.

Crypto broker Voyager Digital issues default notice to 3AC
This is on account of the fund’s failure to make required payments on a loan; The loan was for 15,250 bitcoin (approximately US$324M) and US$350M worth of USDC.

Sky Mavis to make Axie hack refunds this week
Once Sky Mavis reopens the software bridge breached in the attack, affected users will be eligible to withdraw one ether for each one they had in March; In April, the firm raised US$150M from Binance, Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm to pay back all affected users.

Snoop Dogg’s son, Gushcloud to launch Web3 fund
The fund will provide opportunities for Asian founders based outside America; Gushcloud International has also announced its move into Web3 by signing on Champ Medici, a Bored Ape NFT owned by Cordell Broadus, son of rapper Snoop Dogg.

Solana launches web3-focused smartphone Saga to improve crypto-mobile relationship
Saga aims to implement digital asset products and services, so users can easily transact with their cryptocurrency through the device, as opposed to a laptop browser.

Kakao-backed blockchain firm Klaytn partners with OpenSea to boost NFTs in Asia
The tie-up will include conference collaborations and ecosystem grants; Through these initiatives, the companies aim to “scale-up the NFT ecosystem, strengthen ties, and bring greater visibility to Asian NFT projects worldwide.

Harmony loses crypto worth US$100M after security breach
The attack adds to this year’s litany of exploits targeting bridges, which allow users to move tokens between blockchains, taking the total lost to more than US$1B in 2022 alone: In Feb, Wormhole bridge suffered a US$326M hack, and in April Ronin was exploited for US$625M.

SoftBank to fund smaller deals after nearly US$10.9B annual loss
This year, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 investments amounted to around US$100M to US$200M, which was disbursed over 50 funding rounds; SoftBank is currently invested in 475 companies, though some of its bets have yet to yield results.

Emissary Capital closes US$47.6M fund on Fundnel
Emissary is a Malaysia-based boutique investment firm focusing on ASEAN; The microfund aims to invest in potential unicorns following Carsome’s success, propel the startup ecosystem to create job opportunities and fuel the global economy.

VinaCapital Ventures buys stake in Web3 analytics firm M3TA
M3TA’s AI-powered platform helps guilds manage their members and scholars by processing data on digital assets and performance; The platform also includes learning and education features.

Temasek unit SeaTown leads Vietnam startup OnPoint’s US$50M Series B
OnPoint provides a one-stop solution that enables consumer brands to accelerate their online growth on multiple channels, including e-commerce marketplaces, social media platforms and brand-owned websites.

Indonesia’s consumer insights platform Populix nets US$7.7M Series A
Investors include Intudo Ventures, Acrew Capital, Altos Ventures, and Quest Ventures; Populix provides research and data collection for businesses and individuals to make more informed business decisions through quantitative and qualitative studies.

PagarBook to buy Indonesian staff management firm Vara for US$5.6M
PagarBook is an India-based payroll and staff management app; Both companies were participants in Sequoia Surge; Vara had raised US$4.8M in seed funding from Go Ventures and other investors.

East Ventures leads US$4.5M in Indonesia’s Fresh Factory
Fresh Factory runs a network of hyperlocal cold-chain fulfilment centres; It currently has more than 20 warehouses across Java, Sumatra, Sulawesi, and Bali; The funds raised will go toward expanding warehouses to smaller cities in Java.

Indonesia’s Rlvnt Art Labs raises pre-seed led by ad agency Tech Ad.
Rlvnt Art Labs is an Indonesia-based NFT studio; It is set to launch its sci-fi and fantasy-inspired NFT collection this summer; The League of Guardians collection will consist of 9,999 randomly generated digital avatars.

New China supercomputer fast enough to match human brain
the Newest Generation Sunway has a speed of a billion operations per second an over 37M CPU cores – 4x as many as Frontier, a supercomputer built by the US Department of Energy.

SG fintech firm Moolahgo launches cross-border payments for Visa accounts
It allows the firm’s users to make money transfers to over 3B Visa cards globally; Moolahgo has partnered with payments solution provider Checkout.com to launch the cross-border payments service.

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It has been talked about time and time again, how the abrupt arrival of the pandemic has led to the upheaval of the daily processes and the mass exodus of workers from a typical workplace.

In fact, in Singapore alone, 63 per cent of businesses in Singapore have been affected negatively by the pandemic, with industry challenges further exacerbated by periodic industry barriers such as manpower shortage and dynamic changes in consumer behaviour.

While the market is slowly recovering and more are pivoting digitally, we still see businesses plagued with the same challenges, especially those that choose to stick to old business planning processes.

With this, NJ Group has seen success in acknowledging how critical it is for a business to prioritise continuity planning, seizing relevant opportunities and staying vigilant in times of uncertainty.

Prioritise business continuity planning

Future planning is essential for every business to ensure survival in times of economic instability. This could entail business risk management, product development, and product innovation. Across industries, a common theme we are seeing is that businesses are infusing technology and fad trends into products as an innovation point.

Whether it is creating crypto food tech or claiming ‘healthier’ meals with plant-based options, players are trying to innovate their products to appeal to a wider range of customers. We see some businesses finding success in this while some are due to face more turbulence in their paths.

The problem with the latter is that innovation is an expensive and time-consuming process, and a failed innovation during this volatile period can cause a company to retrogress.

NJ Group launched Eagle this year in March to address how to maintain service quality and experience in our restaurant chains. Eagle is a web-based AI platform that collects, monitors and manages customer feedback in the service industry with minimal manpower.

This not only tackles service quality issues but with the power of automation technology, Eagle addresses current and future manpower crunch cycles that often occur in the F&B service industry. Our team recognised the long-standing issue of manpower shortage and how that often directly impacts the level of service quality that patrons experience.

Also Read: How barePack and &Repeat aim to reduce waste by introducing the circular approach to food packaging

This is why we thought of creating a platform that takes authentic and real-time comments from customers and uses AI to generate suggestions on how to make business processes better in just six seconds.

Be in the right place, at the right time and seize opportunities

While future planning helps chart out the next steps, unforeseen events can happen and we all saw how the pandemic took everyone by surprise. Even so, mapping out business goals ahead of time can help soften the blow and land companies in favourable market positions that offer new business opportunities when old revenue streams cease.

When a company is conscious of the changing climate, it can be of favour and be confident in implementing long-term sustainable strategies, instead of pursuing short-term gains to stay innovative and stay relevant.

NJ Group’s successful business planning allowed us to enjoy some advantages during the pandemic. We were at the right place and at the right time, two of our restaurants that were strategically placed in hotels were presented with the opportunity to supply food for people who were quarantined in the hotels or were on stay-home-notices.

NJ Group was able to maintain topline services with minimal compromise on the bottom line. We even managed to achieve a 20 per cent increase in sales revenue in the past year, in Cali outlets in Park Avenue Rochester and Citadines Balestier.

Fortunately, we were able to leverage the downtime presented by the pandemic to identify real problems that were previously overlooked and craft appropriate solutions to resolve them. In this period, we reached milestones like launching our own table reservation system, food delivery, menu management solutions and automation technologies like Eagle for our restaurants.

Leverage and keep up with research and development (R&D)

With robust plans in order, stable and resilient companies should also look deeper into investing in R&D to further innovate or reinvent their products to fit the evolving needs and wants of the market, especially in the fast-growing F&B sector.

Also Read: The future of food tech lies in building digitally autonomous restaurants

R&D can be closely associated with digitalisation and innovation. Either way, R&D ensures that the company would stay alert to market developments and be ready to equip itself to pivot for the future. Companies can now also tap into resources offered by the Singapore government which supports the creation of new revenue streams through the recently launched Food Services Industry Transformation Map 2025 (ITM).

Backed up by Enterprise SG, the ITM drives more efforts on R&D, to cater to the changing consumer preference for convenience, health and wellness, and sustainability.

Besides promoting revenue growth, R&D possesses the power to provide businesses with infinite fallbacks in times of need. In 2017, NJ Group invested in R&D to create COBIE, the Friendly Food Butler.

Before the pandemic, COBIE served a combination of technology innovation and culinary satisfaction to guests at their tables or even in their hotel rooms as an automated room service provider. This was initially seen as a value-added service that improved restaurant operations in recent years. Our R&D has been key to our expedited growth, even with unexpected limitations such as safe distancing measures and quarantine notices in hotels.

And the tides are changing, the dynamic consumer behaviour is more exciting than ever, with new products becoming more groundbreaking, made with newer flavours and unimaginable combinations of ingredients.

We are seeing F&B businesses concentrating their efforts on catering to the sustainable crowd and becoming more inclusive of a wider range of dietary preferences as well.

While the F&B landscape is a challenging one to navigate, as business leaders, it is a responsibility we should take upon ourselves to strategically plan, and always remember to stay prudent to our roadmaps, be loyal to our business goals, and keep moving forward vigilantly.

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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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Taiwan Accelerator (TA), the team behind X-PITCH, is once again opening its doors to early-stage startups for X-PITCH 2022. Known as the X Games for startups, contestants go through a series of high-intensity pitch challenges (15-second, 60-second, and 3-minute pitches) to win awards and investments.

Last year, 3,680 startups from 42 countries and over 28,000 ecosystem stakeholders participated in X-PITCH 2021. It has become one of the largest startup contests in Asia. In the past, the events were held in skyscraper elevators and self-driving vehicles. This year, the competition will take place in MRT trains and the Metaverse.

“We try to do something new and exciting every year, bringing an unprecedented experience to all participants. In addition to the prizes, awards, and exposure, founders also benefit from activities like pitch training, fundraising workshops, market access webinars, investor matching, and more. Last year, 70 per cent of TOP150 startups said X-PITCH added value to their fundraising campaign and business development, this is the most important purpose of this event,” said K. Yu, Founder of Taiwan Accelerator (TA), the organiser of X-PITCH 2022.

e27 joins X-PITCH 2022 as the Investor Relations Partner

The TOP150 who will make it to the investor matching programme will receive extended e27 Pro memberships to access Connect — an e27 Pro feature that will be used to facilitate the investor matching between the TOP150 startups and X-PITCH 2022 investment partners.

This year, the investment partners will be able to use the e27 platform to connect directly with the 150 startups and facilitate communications regarding potential investments. 

After X-PITCH’s investor matching programme, the TOP150 startups will be able to continue their fundraising journey on their own and connect with more investors from e27’s 400+ active and verified investors in the region. 

Also read: 18 X-PITCH startups raised cross-border funding

Open for applications

Exclusive for early-stage tech startups, X-PITCH has discovered and accelerated many of tomorrow’s stars. Past contestants successfully raised millions of dollars through the event and connected with investors, corporates, government agencies, incubators, accelerators, professional firms, and media for collaboration. 

For startups interested to join X-PITCH 2022, you can send in your application by 31 August. Founders from Asia and worldwide are welcome to sign up through their website: xpitch.io.

The TECH FOR GOOD theme of X-PITCH 2022 highlights the challenges in the post-pandemic world as well as innovations that will make meaningful social impacts for the public good. Participating teams should focus on applications and services that accelerate digital transformation around five major categories backed by Web3, AI, 5G, edge computing, and next-gen technologies. Ten awards will be presented at the Grand Finale on 10 November. The top 3 teams will win up to US$1 million in investments in total.

X-PITCH 2022 is supervised by the National Development Council and Overseas Community Affairs Council; and co-organised by global partners including Kaohsiung City Government, Startup Island Taiwan, Agorize, Block71 Singapore, BSSC, DOST-PCIEERD, HKSTP, JETRO, and MDEC. The domestic semi-final venue is sponsored by Kaohsiung Rapid Transit Corporation. 

Connect with TA

Formerly the first seed accelerator in Taiwan, TA is a startup ecosystem connector and the organiser of X-PITCH. e27 Pro members can directly connect with TA by visiting their profile here and clicking Connect.

 

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Singapore VC Panthera Growth raises first half of US$250M Fund II
The fund plans to invest in growth-stage startups that have achieved product-market fit across India and SEA; Investments will be disbursed to about a dozen portfolio companies with an average cheque size of US$20M each.

Go-Ventures said to be closing US$200M Fund II in Q3
The fund is expected to see a mix of LPs, including sovereign wealth funds, family offices and insurance firms from across Europe, the US, China, South Africa, and APAC; Go-Ventures has about 25 firms in its portfolio.

Stripe, LinkedIn Co-Founders back Entrepreneur First’s US$158M Series C round
It will target a direct investment of US$100M over the next three years in hundreds of entrepreneurs; EF also said the aggregate value of companies created through its platform in Singapore has exceeded US$1B.

Malaysian proptech firm Speedhome to cut workforce
The number of affected staff was not disclosed; Speedhome has 99 employees; As per a spokesperson, the company was advised to “recalibrate” its business plan, citing “higher interest rates, economic uncertainty and funding environment.”

SG e-commerce roll-up firm Una Brands lays off less than 10% of staff
In SEA, the company has seen a “negligible” impact from the macro-environment due to “strong” growth from brands, especially those on the Shopee and Lazada marketplaces, says CEO Kiren Tanna.

Ascend Vietnam Ventures’s early-stage fund AVV Alpha exceeds US$50M target
AVV Alpha intends to invest up to US$2M each in 25 startups by 2023; it will then follow on with cheques of up to US$5M; In the past nine months, the VC firm has invested in ten startups, including Kilo, Virtual Internships, and Mandu.

‘Vietnam can be an excellent launchpad for regional, global startups’
Eddie Thai says the country has great tech talent, affordable startup costs, and a relatively accessible local market; The GDP is forecast to grow at least 5 per cent this year and 7 per cent next year.

Ankiti Bose resigns from Zilingo’s directorships
Bose claimed that Zilingo’s board of directors had failed to show any reports issued by Kroll or Deloitte, which were investigating her alleged misconduct, that would justify her termination as CEO.

Mapan closes US$15M Series A round to grow its ‘Arisan’ service in Indonesia
Lead backers are Patamar Capital and Astra Digital; Through Mapan’s Arisan product, lower-income groups can increase their buying power to purchase household goods such as cookware, electronics, and furniture.

HK’s FreeD raises US$15M to open Singapore office
Investors are Daiwa ACA APAC Growth, Musketeer Capital, and the SOSV Select Fund; FreeD will use the funding to expand its tech teams in HK, South Korea, and Canada and build its commerce teams in new markets.

Funding Societies acquires payments solution startup CardUp
CardUp is a payment solution that helps individuals and businesses make payments to suppliers and collect payments from customers digitally; CardUp’s payment services will complement Funding Societies’s lending products.

Philippine’s Edukasyon.ph secures bridge funding
Investors are KSR Ventures and Lorinet Foundation, and Bisk Ventures; Edukasyon.ph is an online platform that gives Filipino students access to resources for senior high school and university learning as well as scholarships, online courses, and internships.

Mastercard CMO backs yufin’s US$1M funding round
Other backers are Kathy Burdon (ex-Cadence Capital), 77 Capital, Boleh Ventures, and Zennon Kapron; yufin enables SMEs in the Philippines to accept digital payments, sell online on digital stores, order from B2B marketplaces and access better loans.

Seeds Capital backs SG greentech firm Zuno Carbon’s pre-seed round
Another investor is Blue InCube Ventures; Zuno aims to automate organisational carbon accounting and help companies measure greenhouse gas emissions and streamline compliance monitoring.

Meet the 10 Asia-focused DAOs looking to script history amid the crypto storm
The main advantages of a DAO are that every investor has voting rights and can contribute to the project.

Tencent, Ant, Baidu, others pledge to stop NFT secondary trading
While the Chinese government currently does not have any specific regulations on NFTs, it has banned crypto trading; Tencent and Ant Group have opened their online digital collectible marketplaces in recent months.

Three Arrows pulled up by MAS for false information
It is also accused of exceeding the assets under management threshold for a registered fund management company; When the firm obtained registered fund management company status in 2013, it was allowed to manage assets of no more than US$179.6M.

Taiwan to roll out digital currency for public use after trials
The digital currency will only be issued after properly educating the public about its benefits, setting up regulations, and putting up a legal framework.

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Eropa Stein is the Founder and CEO of Hyre, a hospitality platform that directly connects talented event staff with event organizers, eliminating the need for event staffing agencies altogether.

We talk about our experiences being mentored, as well as how we identify potential people we want to mentor, decide if they are teachable, and what the cross-section between what they need help with and what we can help with, and how to keep them honest and responsible and on track to success.

Talk to other entrepreneurs in this Discord server.

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The content was first published by We Live To Build.

Image Credit: fizkes

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When it comes to startup success, founders get the lion’s share of the credit. Investors come a close second. But a venture’s fate is determined by more than just founders and investors.

One crucial, often overlooked group are the various people who bring the two together. These people largely go unacknowledged because their presence goes against the mythology surrounding founders.

This prevailing myth is that of the relentless founder. The founder gets a brilliant idea, and then he stops at nothing to get the capital he needs to scale it up. He cold emails hundreds of investors, chases them at conferences and coffee shops, and even in the face of rejection after rejection, continues to pitch with unbridled enthusiasm.

This relentless founder does not even let decorum get in their way, seizing any opportunity to “elevator pitch” a prospective investor until he gets a signature on the dotted line.

While such myths make for great montage scenes in movies, reality seldom works this way. Rarely does the entrepreneur just independently and directly connect with an investor.

There are many professionals, who I genuinely believe are unsung heroes in tech, that facilitate these interactions in a wide variety of ways. They are, in short, connectors, to borrow some terminology from popular non-fiction author Malcolm Gladwell from his book The Tipping Point. 

Also Read: Finding the stars in the night: Launching Southeast Asia’s next generation of startup investors into innovation space

Highlighting these connectors is important. The tech ecosystem does not only need people who identify business or investment opportunities, we also need people who recognise opportunities at an even higher, more abstract level: They see how the right connection of entrepreneurs and investors can yield exponential results.

A diversity of connectors

These connectors span a wide variety of industries, and each archetype is as deserving of recognition as the next.

The first is event organisers, who create programming in which entrepreneurs and investors can meet. The formats of these events are wide, from a kind of free-for-all networking to a more structured, speed-dating format. 

The latter format is how Zopim founder Royston Tay, met legendary investor Tim Draper. While Tay admitted to just crashing the closed-door pitching session, the opportunity was still nonetheless generated by the event organiser gathering top-tier investors into a single point in space and time. 

Draper also did not invest at that point, but his early interest was pivotal in goading Tay and his team to build out the prototype for Zopim, which would eventually be bought by Zendesk. (As an aside, this example also underscores another important point: Investors can help entrepreneurs in more ways than just direct investment). 

Now that the world is reopening from the pandemic, we need event organisers to resume their role in crafting event concepts that are exciting enough to attract the very best investors, who will summon entrepreneurs in tow. While purely online events may occasionally work, Zoom fatigue is very much real and so on-site or hybrid events may be the best. 

Another category of connectors is what I like to call tech diplomats. They generate cross-border investment interest. Such is difficult because it requires intimate knowledge of the business opportunities in one nation and the investment appetite in another. 

One such example is Emil Banno, who represented the Philippines at the Japan Cryptocurrency Forum in 2018, and has raised over US$100 million of Japanese investment into the Philippines, across a mixture of primarily traditional and also some tech-enabled sectors.

Banno is now taking on the mantle for the Web3 industry in the Philippines, partnering with BLX to build out any tech-related investments on its blockchain. Such is key in building Japanese confidence in Philippine crypto, fintech, and other nascent Web3 verticals in the country. 

Tech diplomats like Banno are crucial. The tech ecosystem in the Asia Pacific can often be isolationist, where each country is viewed or treated as a market unto its own, rather than a part of a larger, interdependent economic region.

Also Read: ‘Climate tech: SEA needs more time to improve startup quality, attract capital’, says Earth Venture Capital’s Tien Nguyen

Such will require people who have the cultural expertise to bridge the gap between two cultures, and more importantly, understand what will attract investors from one market to back the entrepreneurs of another.

The final category of connector I’d like to cover is community organisers, specifically those at coworking spaces. While coworking spaces have more recently become associated as nothing more than cooly designed workspaces, this new understanding represents mission drift.

Co-working spaces were originally designed where people from diverse backgrounds and industries could, as the name implies, “co-work” with one another, and in so doing, create value. In the halcyon days of coworking, many coworkers reported closing business deals at their spaces or even fundraising for their ventures. 

There are some co-working spaces where this spirit still exists. One such example is Cerebro Labs in the Philippines, which in addition to being a coworking space, is also a tech and business incubator. Such formalises the organic investor-entrepreneur connections that could previously occur, and in so doing, gives entrepreneurs a physical hub in which to meet and learn from investors.

Co-working spaces in the Asia Pacific need to get back to these roots, whether through official programmes like Cerebro or more casual introductions between members who are entrepreneurs and members who are investors. Such elevates coworking into co-creation.  

Event organisers, tech diplomats, and coworking spaces are still just a small subset of the connectors who facilitate interaction between investors and entrepreneurs in the Asia Pacific.

It’s beneficial to not fill in all the blanks when it comes to discussing this topic, so others in the community can answer the million-dollar question: Who helped you meet your investors?

The response to this question will spur long overdue recognition, and in turn, accelerate even more connections.

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