Winter for tech startups is here. VCs are encouraging companies to extend their cash runway as much as possible.

Sequoia Capital also shared in a recent Founders’ All Hands that “Companies who move the quickest have the most runway and are most likely to avoid the death spiral.”

“Investors are underwriting your ability to produce free cash flow durably. To believe that, they need to see durable growth and improving profitability,” adds Sequoia Capital Partner Ravi Gupta in his recent note.

Many have turned to layoffs and hiring freezes. Over the past month, more than 80 tech firms have reported layoffs, according to the layoff tracker site Layoffs.fyi. This includes unicorn and publicly listed companies like Linkaja, Zenius, JD Indonesia, DataRobot, Netflix and Paypal.

Layoffs can damage employee morale and may even prompt high-performing employees to leave. What if we could pull other levers to drive down cost?

One of the key expenses leaders could look at is reducing cloud costs, especially since more than one in three organisations have cloud budget overruns of up to 40 per cent.

Thus, it is no surprise that cloud costs are one of the first things companies such as Coinbase and DoorDash are looking to cut. Technology leaders in Southeast Asia also share the same focus, with optimising cloud infrastructure cost is the top initiative by 75.23 per cent of our leaders here.

What are the challenges faced when controlling cloud costs?

Many businesses struggle to keep cloud costs under control, with 66 per cent of executives saying that cloud usage is “higher than initially planned this year”.

The first reason is due to the lack of visibility.

Also Read: 5 ways startups can effectively leverage cloud agreements to propel growth

In a recent 2022 Cloud Infrastructure report by Spot by NetApp, 70 per cent of technology leaders reported that they could not effectively monitor and optimise cloud costs.

This makes it difficult to control costs and predict sudden spikes. As usage patterns change, so do costs. Without a clear understanding of how usage patterns affect costs, predicting or controlling spending is difficult.

Thirdly, DevOps experts are a rare breed today, and many startups struggle to get the right talent on board. Several big tech firms have set up regional headquarters in Singapore and scaled up their tech hiring. Smaller tech firms have acutely felt the pinch in talent.

It’s estimated that by 2030, Asia Pacific will be short of the 47 million tech talents needed to meet growing demand. True enough, while 96 per cent of tech leaders say FinOps is important to cloud success, only 10 per cent were able to build a mature FinOps practice, according to Spot by NetApp’s 2022 Cloud Infrastructure Report.

With engineering talent being rare and also expensive, you want them to be building products that add value to the business and help you build a competitive edge instead of spending time managing complex IT infrastructure.

What can startups do to optimise their cloud costs?

The first step is to get visibility into your current consumption. It becomes difficult to make cost-related decisions when you can’t accurately view billing data or cloud spend data over time.

For a start, you need a proper dashboard. Tools that can automatically discover and map your infrastructure can help you get that full picture, not only showing information about instance counts and summary costs across all of your cloud accounts but also providing the ability to look at that information organised by tags, pods, clusters, services, and applications.

India’s leading BNPL startup, ZestMoney, reduced its EC2 spend by around 60-70 per cent with the help of Spot by NetApp.

Also Read: How cloud computing is helping startups navigate the new normal

Their first step was to dig into their cloud spend and get actionable insights with Spot by NetApp. They were able to automate the right-sizing of instances for cluster efficiency enabling significant cost savings.

“DevOps was being asked why infrastructure utilisation was at around 50 per cent for 100 per cent of the actual cloud spend. Cloud Analyzer allowed us to easily see our spending alongside clear, actionable insights to increase efficiency in our infrastructure and cut costs,” explained Ganesh Narasimhadevara, Director of DevSecOps and Platform Engineering.

With visibility, companies can then start to focus on optimisation. One of the common methods is to commit to reserved instances or Savings Plans for one year or three years in exchange for savings of as much as 75 per cent.

However, doing this manually often comes with many challenges.

Firstly, predicting and forecasting consumption is often difficult and not accurate. “The thing about cost reduction is you have to figure out how many resources you want to buy in advance, right?

“You have the concept of reserve instances, which made it very difficult. In our business, we go up and down, we scale up during sales periods, and our traffic is very unpredictable,” explains Ninjavan’s CTO Shaun Chong in a recent interview.

Another key challenge is the sheer amount of engineers’ effort and time to optimise cost. This tedious process requires them to identify the exact amount of CPU and memory needed for every container, pod, and deployment. Manual methods are also inefficient and error-prone, leading to troubleshooting that, in turn, affects application availability.

In a recent Forecasting & Scenario Planning Session for Sequoia portfolio companies’ founders, partners encouraged Founders to “build muscle” by doubling down on product innovation.

“The reason is, long term, the best product tends to win, and that is more true in an environment of scarcity than in an environment of abundance,” they explain.

With that in mind, you want your engineering team to focus on innovation that helps you build a competitive edge instead of spending time on tedious tasks.

Given these challenges, many technology leaders see the value of automating cloud optimisation. It is quickly becoming the tech industry’s new norm.

An automated cloud cost optimisation solution brings significant cost savings as it can fix many issues that contribute to high cloud costs. It instantly reacts to changes in applications’ demand and adjusts the resources to avoid cloud waste and over-provisioning.

At Spot by NetApp, we’ve helped many startups in Asia, including ZestMoney, Trax, PayMaya, and Practo, lower their cloud compute costs by 60-90 per cent.

One of them was Series A startup, SignalVine, which increased its EC2 savings by over 283 per cent. On top of that, they could eliminate internal efforts required to manage their Reserved Instances, freeing up valuable resources to help grow their business.

No one knows how long this downturn will last, but the common consensus is to extend your cash runway.

Also Read: How companies can nurture the next generation of tech talent today

“I have no idea if now will be the same, better, or worse than the 2000s crash. But bad times can last multiple years, and if you can make decisions now that extend your runway, that’s probably the right call,” shared VC and former Meta CTO Mike Schroepfer in a recent tweet.

Given these realities, startups want to avoid being asset-heavy, low-margin, and high burn. A key lever to pull which would make a huge impact on your balance sheet is to reduce cloud waste and optimise cloud cost.

When we act fast and plan well during downtimes, it can even help us acquire market share. As shared in Y Combinator’s letter, “Remember that many of your competitors will not plan well, maintain high burn, and only figure out they are screwed when they try to raise their next round. You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by staying alive.”

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Super, a social commerce platform serving smaller towns and rural Indonesia, has closed a US$70 million oversubscribed Series C financing round led by global VC firm NEA.

Insignia Ventures Partners, SoftBank Ventures Asia, DST Global Partners, Amasia, B Capital, and TNB Aura participated. Bain Capital Chairman Stephen Pagliuca, Kleiner Perkins’s former General Partner Eric Feng’s Goldhouse, and Xendit CEO Moses Lo also joined the round.

This funding brings Super’s total capital raised to date to US$106 million. This includes an oversubscribed US$28 million Series B round led by SoftBank Ventures Asia in April 2021.

Also Read: YC-backed Super raises US$28M to grow its social commerce platform in Indonesia

“Indonesia’s tier-2, tier-3 cities, and rural area’s GDP per capita are 3-5 times lower than Jakarta, yet the cost of consumer goods is higher by 20-200 per cent. More than 30 per cent of Indonesia’s GDP came from East Java, Kalimantan, and East Indonesia,” said Co-Founder and CEO Steven Wongsoredjo. “Super is going after a huge untapped market; thus, we will deploy this investment to enable equitable access for people in Kalimantan, Bali, West Nusa Tenggara, East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, and Papua over the next few years,

Wongsoredjo added that the startup would help more multinational and provincial FMCG suppliers tap into new markets in rural areas and empower more community leaders to optimise their income.

Founded in 2018, Super leverages a hyperlocal logistics platform to deliver consumer goods to agents within 24 hours of the order time. The company said it has partnered with thousands of community agents, such as individuals and warungs, to aggregate and distribute millions of US dollars’ worth of goods to their communities each month.

Super currently operates across 30 cities in East Java and South Sulawesi, mainly targeting the area with a GDP per capita (US$5,000 or lower).

The social commerce venture has launched two private-label brands. A portion of the capital will be used to develop other FMCG private-label brands in the next several years. In addition, it plans to launch cosmetics products, as the desire for this segment is rising across Indonesia.

Also Read: Leveraging social e-commerce to maximise your brand in China

As Super grows its products, services, and experiences continuously, it will launch a feature for community agents to track end-consumer transactions to help community agents offer better-tailored experiences for the end customers.

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Fostering innovation and engaging in strategic collaboration are both keys to sustaining the competitive advantage of businesses. In a conversation with e27, Morikawa Hakaru, Vice President and Head of Industry and Customer Advisory at SAP shares key insights on SAP’s strategy in scaling win-win partnerships with innovation partners as it has done through the years.

In this conversation, Morikawa-san shared SAP’s priorities in Asia, particularly on expanding its innovation footprint. SAP Labs Network is a network of SAP’s core research and development entities focused on developing and constantly improving key SAP solutions. Labs in Japan and Singapore have opened in 2020 and 2022 respectively, focusing on research and product development initiatives in digital supply chain and sustainability. “Japan is a country of manufacturing. It makes sense to focus our research functionality in Tokyo in this area to get the best practices in the country to incorporate into the supply chain of our products,” Morikawa explained.

Also read: How to build a business with scalability in Asia’s vibrant economy?

“The Singapore lab’s focus is on sustainability. Sustainability is one of the biggest topics globally. Southeast Asia will be one of the hardest-hit regions if we don’t handle this challenge from a global perspective. [If managed well], Southeast Asia can be the global frontrunner,” he added.

Fostering product innovation to build customer value

Connecting businesses to enable strategic collaborations as well as to respond to urgent needs by the times is a constant priority for SAP. The organisation has the Ariba network where many use cases of businesses who have partnered amid restrictions during COVID-19 were overcome. As an online business network for buyers and suppliers, it has allowed for a global discovery capability for buyers and sellers.

Businesses from many countries utilised this given the situation over the past 2 years. In the wake of the pandemic surges, for example, temporary hospitals in Manhattan were able to speedily procure beds and other supplies through Ariba. With job displacements involved in the pandemic, as well as job demand surges in certain industry verticals like healthcare, SAP Fieldglass — a contingent workforce management software solution — has facilitated solving HR-related shortages in the healthcare field and served as a matching platform for those workers, connecting those who lost their jobs and matching them to those who have people shortages.

Also read: The future of infrastructure is in tech innovation

This became a very relevant solution for many businesses in Japan. In the endeavour to continuously improve health delivery processes, vaccine distribution, registration, helpdesk support, and the like, SAP Qualtrics has enabled various ministries of health globally to optimise experience management for its constituents by providing deep insights through advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning, thus enabling organisations to help close experience gaps and drive improved user experiences. This solution has also been effectively used by companies to learn how to support their employees better with the remote work setup. 

Other strategic collaborations that SAP has engaged startups with are those with Green Token, a tracking solution using blockchain and mass balance accounting principles, enabling customers to know that the raw materials in business products are sustainably sourced, child labour free and ethically traded. The GreenToken by SAP solution was sourced from the SAP One Billion Lives initiative, the company’s flagship social intrapreneurship programme that aims to improve 1 billion lives through a portfolio of sustainable, shared-value impact ventures. Another startup that was acquired by SAP in 2021 is Signavio, a solutions platform designed to help organisations transform their business processes at scale.

Building strategic collaborations to strengthen innovation

SAP boasts a track record of nurturing innovations over the decades. As a transactions management company, many large companies have built their functionalities over SAP ERP as the core transactions management platform.

With its APIs, innovative businesses can access opportunities and integrate with the business technology platform. As many large businesses already run on SAP, these innovative businesses have potential go-to-market access through this common ground. “SAP has the strongest sales force, and can help bring these businesses to potential customers. [We also] showcase innovations through our experience centres in Singapore, Tokyo, and India. [They can be linked to a] global network, and can open up [more opportunities for ] innovation vendors across regions, even in Germany or New York,” Morikawa-san elaborated.

Also read: oVice, a virtual office platform, uses innovative technology to redefine remote work

He added, “SAP has a stronghold in certain areas, especially in the field of solutions for white-collar workers in the office. [We look for innovation partners to enrich] out-of-office solutions for our clients, such as IoT solutions [for example] in retail shops and manufacturing premises. We are open to innovations via partnerships, enabling] big plays in areas that are not SAP’s area. Working with innovative startups delivers solutions faster, benefiting SAP clients and SAP itself. Furthermore, SAP can help [through its] expertise in understanding the enterprise market, and can provide assistance to tailor-fit solutions, and facilitate access to business decision-makers.”

“There is a usual notion that ERP is completed, not innovating and that it’s a closed platform. [We are] open to collaboration. As a platform where data originated, there is a rich insight to realise in building business processes, which is important whether you are running a large or small business. In the age of innovation, working with SAP makes a lot of sense.”

Join SAP’s roundtable discussions

SAP in partnership with e27 is organising an invitation-only virtual roundtable session to gain perspectives from general partners and limited partners of leading investment firms in Southeast Asia. In this session, the stakeholders will discuss the challenges and opportunities for VC firms, frontier market plays and strategies, as well as deep dives into the potential of the spotlight countries in the region. They will also discuss their methods in supporting the growth of companies in their investment portfolio and key opportunities in their strategic plans for the future.

This 14 July, SAP and e27 will be hosting The Rise of Digital: Accelerating Growth and Customer Obsession, a webinar that will help startups gain insights about managing their digital offerings to be more effective and customer-centric. To learn more about this programme, you can secure tickets from our official page.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by SAP

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

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I’ve had quite a few conversations recently with founders on this topic, but one recently stuck out. A co-founding team of a company I’m fond of (but not invested in) has 90 days of cash in the bank and has had 50+ investor meetings recently. While raising previous rounds was relatively easy for them, now… crickets.

It is a difficult situation, but it can be navigated. We spoke for a while, and I thought I’d share the summary here if it helps other founders who have raised previous rounds and have a revenue-generating business.

What’s going on?

• There has been a correction in the public markets, which is now filtering to private markets
• There is a potential recession looming, and it seems unlikely central banks will intervene in the short term
• Several other issues are at play impacting confidence (inflation, supply chain, geo-political, etc.)

Investors have bigger funds than ever. Why aren’t they investing?

There has been an incredible amount raised by fund managers (across venture, private equity, private debt etc.) over the last few years. Still, the above events have created a challenging environment for raising money for founders and have put pressure on valuations:

• The previously popular method of creating private valuations based on public comps is unattractive at the moment
• Confidence of investors has shifted, meaning higher thresholds are required for new funding and (except for elite companies) potentially a new way of viewing valuation
• We are seeing instances of investors pulling term sheets (and hearing about some investors not completing funding commitments)

Also Read: Base.vn founder’s new SaaS startup True Platform attracts US$3.5M seed funding

What should I focus on?

• Work out whether you are default alive or default dead
• Prioritise survival and maintaining control, make difficult decisions early
• • Understand the potential change (depending on your stage and growth rate) in how others will appraise your company (revenue vs free cash flow)
  • Consider if there are alternative ways to achieve customer-led funding (or increase your runway), there may be options available outside traditional equity
  • If you need to let people go, do it quickly and respectfully. Help them get other roles where you can

• Ensure your updated operating plan is robust and has buy-in. It either gets you to cash flow positive or to your next funding milestone (with a meaningful safety buffer)

  • Road test your plan with key stakeholders

  • Consider getting external input from potential subsequent round investors as to what milestones they’d expect to see

Additional reading

• Adapting to endure – Sequoia

• A Framework for Navigating Down Markets – a16z

• YC advises founders to plan for the worst – YCombinator

• The upside of a downturn – Lightspeed

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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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Southeast Asia’s internet economy alone is poised to surpass US$300 billion by 2025. The wealth of opportunities offered for startups in the region is immense but startups will need to future-proof their processes in order to build scalable businesses. Startups in this region face several challenges associated with scaling in Asia, as they go from startup to scaleup mode.

Businesses not equipped with the right tools and knowledge can end up trying to reinvent the wheel —  inadvertently wasting valuable dollars on technology platforms or software in their quest to accelerate new business opportunities and scale up revenue channels.

Mentoring is therefore extremely important — allowing startups to receive the guidance needed to ensure success. Navigating the various challenges associated with scaling in Asia needs capable mentorship from those with experience in scaling up in these markets. Establishing the ability to go to market requires careful planning and organisations need access to important insider tools and insights that will enable them to build the kind of infrastructure and processes required to scale.

Learn from experts on how to innovate, grow, and scale your startup

So much more than just securing funding

Startups operating in Southeast Asia are also hampered by the lack of access to a constant source of funding that can enable scalability and accelerate growth. Even when they are able to secure funding, there is often a knowledge gap on how to spend it effectively and achieve maximum impact. Talent acquisition and retention is another area where startups often overlook the importance of building a great company culture, specialisation of roles, career paths, onboarding and other factors which affect their talent resources.

Also read: oVice, a virtual office platform, uses innovative technology to redefine remote work

Faced with these challenges, prioritising the right capabilities and infrastructure becomes highly critical. But with the right tools and insights, and propelled by a fast-growing base of digital consumers and merchants, your start up could enjoy a slice of the US$360 billion digital economy projected by 2025. In the MasterClass Accelerator 101 Series, notable industry leaders outlined the priorities startups should focus on so they can continue to scale:

• A Customer obsession: building in the usability and intuitiveness to delight their customers constantly. Invest in customer experience and customer success. 
• Driving exponential growth while keeping investment under control — going from startup to scale-up requires a change of mindset so that you build your business around the idea of scalability and use your resources optimally.
• Improve the way they run their businesses. This entails investing in talent and culture for improved productivity, optimised operations to focus on core strengths, and lower operational costs through best practices, automation, and investing in the right tech stack

How you can innovate, grow, and scale your startup: A masterclass webinar

The MasterClass Accelerator 101 Series is a new programme series by Salesforce crafted with customised offerings and designed to help startups and SMEs scale their businesses.

In the first webinar of the series held on 28th April, an expert panel of startup investors and entrepreneurs discussed the roadmap for startups moving from exploring their potential to scaling their company and actually taking advantage of those opportunities.

Also read: Alpha JWC Startup Series: pitching & fundraising through the lens of a VC

Moderated by Garry Huang, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at 500 Startups, the webinar panel featured Daisy Hoang, SVP of Sales and Success at test automation startup platform Katalon; Danny Chong, Senior Investment Director at Gobi Partners China; and Thomas Lim, Regional Vice President of ESMB Emerging and Growth Business at Salesforce. 

Apart from the challenges and priorities discussed above, the topics discussed by the panellists were: 

• What startups should keep in mind when fundraising — a discussion of the things VCs look for from startups and their founders, that get them noticed and funded.
• Current trends that VCs are seeing in startups that have successfully raised funds in the recent months
• The importance of setting a company culture to scale properly
• Focusing on your core strengths: choosing the right tech stack to support your growth
• How being data-driven can improve your business productivity and operations 
• Small business is big business. How Salesforce is ready to help startups accelerate.

Scaling a business on an international scale involves tackling significant challenges in building a company culture across countries, evolving your product, and putting the right processes in place. The Masterclass Accelerator 101 Webinar provided valuable insights on how startups can scale up people and processes, build the right tech stack, and navigate the funding journey. 

Even as Southeast Asia is poised to enter a digital-first future, Startups and SMEs will need to equip themselves with the tools and insights so they can implement strategies for digitisation. The pandemic has been a major catalyst in accelerating this process of digitisation but even post-pandemic these changes are here to stay. Participants in the Masterclass Accelerator Series can learn how to view digitisation as an opportunity to grow even faster in Southeast Asia’s digital economy.

Also read: Get to know the startups in the 2022 APT 5G Challenge

The webinar series shares important lessons for Startups and SMEs on how to adapt to customer expectations, differentiate their customer experience from competitors, and the technology enablers that can help them continue scaling in the digital-first future. Learnings that will enable startups to build businesses that are sustainable and create long term value for customers and stakeholders.

To learn more about growth tips, watch the webinar during your free time and learn how to drive the future of business with growth and success in this fast-changing landscape.

Watch the MasterClass Accelerator 101: How you can Innovate, Grow, and Scale your startup webinar here.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Salesforce

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

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Twitter recently has become profitable and beat Wall Street’s low expectations. Profitability does not solve the issues that the company has going forward.

The company is not the only social media company that has to deal with fake accounts, trolling, and foreign agents spreading misinformation to influence US elections.

These issues, combined with stagnant growth and executives quitting, have led to questions about who is actually running the company. All the solutions Twitter has offered have resulted in more problems or calls for Twitter to take more action.

According to Michael Connor, the man behind a company called Open Mic pushing tech companies to be more transparent about problems, Twitter is playing whack-a-mole with their problems. In fact, Connor says that Twitter does not even know what problem they face.

Leadership trouble

The biggest issue Twitter has is its lack of leadership due to the departure of Chief Operating Officer, Anthony Noto to become CEO of SoFi. Noto played a critical role in running the company because the CEO and founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, also serves as the CEO of Square. 

Dorsey has taken control of Twitter without Noto despite investors calling for a more focused CEO. Dorsey has rejected those claims and stated that the amount of time he spends is not as important as how he spends his time at the company.

The issues are more profound than that thought. Dorsey has been called an authoritarian leader that is not open to innovation, which is apparent in the lack of innovation at Twitter. This lack of innovation could be the difference between the proper handling of these issues and improperly handling these issues. 

For instance, Mark Zuckerberg has the final say on Facebook as he is both the CEO and Chairman of the Board. However, he is still open to his team changing Facebook so long as he can make the final decision on the change. This has resulted in Facebook successfully navigating their own set of issues.

Also Read: How to use Twitter to market your product as a founder

The leadership trouble that Twitter faces is the biggest issue. Once Twitter can figure out their leadership, it will be better suited to navigate the problems listed below.

Stagnant user growth

The first major existential issue that Twitter has is its stagnant user growth. They have practically no user growth but remain steady with their monthly active users. Much of this might be because of their clamping down on fake accounts, which make up a surprisingly large number of accounts on the platform. 

However, Twitter has faced issues with user growth since its inception because they do not lock its content. A Twitter account is not necessary to view tweets on the site, which means fewer users can receive advertisements.

For instance, a user can bookmark President Trump’s Twitter page and view his tweets without ever having a Twitter account. This makes Twitter a great platform for businesses, but it is terrible for generating revenue. This is an issue that Twitter will have to resolve if it wants to continue making a profit.

Fake accounts

The next issue Twitter faces is the proliferation of fake accounts on the platform. It is estimated that over 15 per cent of accounts on Twitter are actually fake accounts created by either bots or used by individuals to harass users.

This fake account epidemic ties into most of the other issues plaguing the site. For instance, foreign intelligence agencies will use fake accounts to push their fake news stories to the top of the Twitter feed.

Fake accounts are also used to manipulate Twitter hashtags, which can sway public opinion on certain topics. On the other hand, there are entire networks of accounts people use when they buy retweets on their accounts’ posts and tweets.

This makes eliminating the fake account problem one of the most important issues for Twitter. If they can eliminate the fake accounts on the platform, then most of the other problems will resolve themselves. 

Bans will be more effective, foreign governments won’t use Twitter as a weapon, and hateful users will be permanently banned from the platform.

Foreign interference and regulation

Foreign officials using Twitter to spread disinformation amongst Americans is a major issue. In fact, this is such a major issue that social media companies have been called before Congress to testify about the problem.

This has led to many rumours that tech companies will face regulation. Some US senators have even stated that the tech companies will almost certainly meet regulations at some point.

However, no legislation has been drafted, and the Department of Justice has not brought a case against any social media company concerning regulation.

Also Read: Twitter is the most powerful company in tech

At the moment, Twitter will just have to focus on removing as many foreign intelligence agencies from the platform as possible. So far, they have done well with that task. Twitter recently banned over 300,000 accounts linked to a Russian and Iranian plot to interfere with the 2018 general election. 

Dorsey has stated that there is still much more that needs to be done and that these issues will not be resolved before the 2018 election. He does believe that the 2020 presidential election will resolve the issues.

However, Congress will likely force some form of regulation on the tech giant before 2020, but that is still only speculation at this point.

Future plans for Twitter

Overall, it is great for Twitter to make a profit after 12 years in business finally. It gives their investors some relief. Their next major hurdle is to resolve the leadership issue, which can likely be solved by placing the right person as COO. 

Alternatively, Dorsey might even be forced by the company if investors are not satisfied with his leadership as Twitter faces regulation.

Investors have grown increasingly annoyed at Dorsey’s apparent lack of leadership and refusal to answer investor calls for him to step down from Square or remove himself from the CEO position at Twitter. Once the leadership issue is resolved, many of the other issues facing the company will be resolved.

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

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

Image credit: Canva Pro

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Singapore-headquartered HitPay, a payment gateway for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), has secured US$15.75 million in a Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global.

Returning investors Global Founders Capital and HOF Capital also joined the round.

With the capital raised, HitPay will develop SME-friendly features, including support for local and international payment methods and integrations with accounting and e-commerce platforms.

The fintech firm will also invest in top-tier talent to support its clients globally.

Also Read: The future of fintech: The latest trends in the industry

The fintech firm was founded by Nitin Muthyala and Aditya Haripurkar. HitPay was recently accepted to Y Combinator’s accelerator programme.

HitPay is a one-stop payment platform for SMEs. It provides solutions such as local and cross-border payment acceptance and payouts, an online store platform, POS software with card readers, plugins, and payment links. The firm claims over 10,000 merchants use HitPay, and its transaction payment volume has grown by over 8x in 2021.

HitPay is available in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the US, the UK, Europe, and the UAE. It plans to expand to new markets in Southeast Asia in the coming months.

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Fundraising or preparing your startup for fundraising? Build your investor network, search from 400+ SEA investors on e27, and get connected or get insights regarding fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today

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MoEngage, a customer engagement platform for consumer brands, announced today it has raised US$77 million in a Series E round of funding.

Led by Goldman Sachs and B Capital, the round also saw participation from its existing investors Steadview Capital, Multiples Alternate Asset Management, Eight Roads Ventures, and Matrix Partners India.

This is the third fundraising for MoEngage in the last 12 months, which includes US$32.5 million in July 2021 and US$30 million in December.

MoEngage will use the new capital to deepen its geographic footprint in the US, the UK, and Asia markets and also expand in new markets like Latin America and Australia. A portion of the money will be used to explore strategic acquisitions.

Also Read: Five ways startups can improve their customer engagement

Established in 2014, US-headquartered MoEngage provides marketers and product managers with consumer behaviour data and the ability to act on those insights to engage customers across web, mobile, email, social, and messaging channels. The firm claims it has clients in 35 countries. Its clientele includes Alfagift, AllValue, Astrapay, Blibli, CIMB Bank, JD.ID, Lummo, POPS, Syfe, Telekom Malaysia, theAsianparent, and XL Axiata.

In the last 12 months, MoEngage claims to have grown annualised recurring revenue by more than 105 per cent, added 500 new customers, and doubled its headcount to more than 650.

MoEngage has a presence in the UK, Germany, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia.

The firm launched offices in Singapore and the Philippines this year, with an Australian office coming soon.

The startup had earlier raised US$9 million in Series B funding from Ventureast and Helion Venture in 2018.

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Fundraising or preparing your startup for fundraising? Build your investor network, search from 400+ SEA investors on e27, and get connected or get insights regarding fundraising. Try e27 Pro for free today.

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Starting a business or a startup has always been a dream of mine. So as a young entrepreneur, I thought that I had most things figured out. But the truth was I hadn’t. This may sound a little controversial, but the idea for Hipster Inc. came by accident.

The year was 2016, and Bok (the Co-Founder of Hipster Inc.) and I, computer science graduates, started some product companies, including a book barter company called Barterli, where people could exchange books to promote reading.

We pitched this idea to StartupX, and it took off pretty well. Even the National Library Board partnered with us to propel our idea forward. We partnered with some developers to bring our idea to life, and the other incubator companies started to notice that we could quickly launch products and re-iterate versions, so the cohort startups in the incubator we were a part of started to reach out to us for help.

Coming from a programming background and having some entrepreneurial senses, we offered to help. Mainly, we were curious how we could bring their ideas to life and enhance them so their products take off.

So we started helping them part-time for two hours a day. This led to more startups wanting us to help them. What began as a part-time hobby became a full-time business. Bok and I employed more developers, and just like that, Hipster Inc., a humble software development company, was birthed.

Today, the company undertakes projects across various industries like edutech, finance, productivity, travel, F&B for subscription models and even blockchain. The team is now 60 men and women strong. Our USP is that we are developers who know how to put ourselves in the founders’ shoes through our startup ventures.

Also Read: How to generate winning startup ideas

This comes from working with a few dozen startups and directly working with their founders. Observing their thought process and how they solve problems give us good insight. As Sam Levenson puts it, “You must learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t possibly live long enough to make them all yourself.”

Advice to budding entrepreneur: Elements you need to get started

Find an SEO-worthy business name

Now that you have your winning idea choose a name for your business that is unique and relevant. Down the inevitable road, this will help you in SEO and marketing. Shakespeare once said, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Unfortunately, this isn’t true of SEO.

Find a Co-Founder that can complement you

Statistics state that about 80 per cent of partnerships fail within the first year. When choosing a business partner, it is important to exercise caution and be selective. Find someone you can trust. After that is established, the right partner is also someone who will complement you and that has strengths that vary from yours.

In the case of Bok and myself, Bok takes care of business development and finance, and I take care of the technical aspects and operations.

Do your market research and competitor analysis

Sometimes, what you want to create exists already in the target market or somewhere else. Learn about existing solutions, and don’t re-invent the wheel if someone is already doing it unless you can do a lot better. Also, talk to users about their pain points and see what they say about your product before you create anything.

Don’t be disheartened by no’s

When you first start, you will get a lot of no’s everywhere you go. The nos with explanations are very important to hear and introspect. No’s, are also a good sign that you are innovating. Take failures with curiosity and change your course of action without getting disheartened.

Network with like-minded people

This will get you ahead more than any marketing. Give before you get. When we started, we did much pro-bono work for the right client. This allowed some good association with companies no one had ever heard of before.

Partner with as many companies as you can to help them do better. Of course, this also means establishing a brand for yourself and marketing yourself.

Keep learning

Read good books, and watch good videos on every topic related to your startup, sales, marketing, scaling, and product development. Look to people who have pulled a business off successfully to guide you, so you don’t need to re-invent the wheel. Well researched market and products from competitors or someone who did it well before saves time and money for you.

Bootstrap as long as you can

A significant investment isn’t needed to start anything. Work with what you have. There are a million free tools out there at your disposal. Being liquid is important and even more so as the company matures.

On work-life balance

Be prepared to work double the hours. Being an entrepreneur means also doubling up as a manager and supporting HR, the marketing and sales teams.

Entrepreneurs need to be willing to work approximately 60-80 hours a week. Ironically, the push to be an entrepreneur was to avoid working a 40-hour week some.

How to grow your business: How to grow, best practices, what to invest in

Product quality: Real meaning of MVP

Never ignore the quality of the product. Focus on the MVP or Minimum Viable Product, a product of minimum features with top-notch quality rather than an inferior quality product with a myriad of features.

Also Read: Guide to successfully start realising your product ideas

When considering the development of a product, consider how it will impact the customer, and do your research. Before a product is ready for launch, start marketing it. Value and prioritise design and branding. Many startups ignore these aspects.

It can’t be denied that, to some extent, people with good looks get an advantage in life. Good handwriting has its benefits in school. The same is true for a product with a good design.

Be realistic by taking calculated risks

Take risks but the calculated ones. Consider how much money will you lose if a risky venture fails. In our early days, we made the mistake of too aggressively expanding into too many new markets.

That didn’t work out. In Asian culture, making mistakes and failures are not encouraged, but there is immeasurable value in trying things early, failing faster and learning from this process.

Appreciate early clients and serve them well

Learn to love and appreciate your early customers. They may not pay a lot of money but also realise they sacrifice opportunity costs by trusting you with their opportunity. Treat them well, they are going to be testimonials for future customers to come.

Be a true leader to your team

As the captain of a ship, people look to you to be their leader, to impart vision and direction. Employees who join startups do so because they believe in the leader’s vision and think that they are working towards something concrete. They partner with you and, in some cases, sacrifice through pay cuts because they know as the company accelerates, so will they because of the contributions they are willing to make.

In a startup, vision and culture is everything. People skills are more important than any tech skills. Empathy and a high emotional quotient will get you ahead. Always be clear with your team members and promise only what you can deliver.

Value and appreciate your employees, especially those who have been with you for some time. Be humble. Kindness goes a long way. Be realistic when planning future milestones. Focus on creating values and building a great culture.

Hire the right talent

Never hire solely for skills. Hire for personality and attitude. In one way or another, people learn skills if they need to do something, but changing a person’s attitude and mindset is hard. Encouragement and motivation won’t work in the longer term.

Also Read: How startup leaders can delegate to prevent burnout 

People who make great employees are hard-working, always learning, and proactive. During an interview, notice what they do, not what they say. Give them a small task to do to test their sincerity.

Manage pragmatically

Be cognisant of your team’s progress and celebrate that. By being aware of their little milestones, you can ensure that their direction is aligned with your company’s vision.

Active involvement creates a sense of team and allows you to learn from external projects and other businesses’ challenges. While founders should focus on the big picture and vision, they can’t afford to avoid the details.

Customer experience over product superiority

Humans are emotional creatures, and your customers will remember their experience far longer than the feature list and technology you provide. Therefore, ensure you give your client’s the best possible experience from start to finish.

In approaching any new venture or opportunity, and in all your dealings, always try to solve problems. Be patient when starting, and remember it’s a slow and tough climb to the top. At the same time, have a sense of urgency when approaching tasks and launches.

Businesses that seem to have it all together are a product of all the hard work poured into them. The answer to what it takes to do X is whatever it takes. Always challenge the status quo. There is so much still to learn, so we should never stop learning, growing, or evolving.

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Privyr, a Singapore-based startup that helps consumer-facing salespeople and businesses convert leads right from their phones, has raised US$6 million in Series A funding.

The round was co-led by MassMutual Ventures and Vulcan Capital, with participation from Wavemaker Partners, bestselling author Nir Eyal, and Binance Investment Director Gwendolyn Regina.

The new funding will be used to expand Privyr’s product capabilities, increase market penetration, and scale its team from less than ten employees to over 40 within a year.

Earlier, the startup raised US$900,000 from Wavemaker Partners, Entrepreneur First, and several angel investors.

Also Read: Wavemaker Partners closes 4th fund at US$136M, announces new appointments

Privyr builds a mobile-first sales productivity and workflow management tool. It helps salespeople and small businesses better engage and convert their leads into clients through WhatsApp, SMS, iMessage, and phone calls.

The startup aims to make sales interactions more personalised and convenient, leading to much better customer experiences and sales conversion rates.

The company claims over 45,000 sales professionals across more than 75 countries use its product.

Co-Founder and CEO Aaron Lim, said: “Over the past few years, virtually all consumer-facing sales have moved to mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp or iMessage. What used to happen in a few face-to-face meetings has turned into hundreds of micro-interactions with dozens of leads simultaneously. Salespeople are spending hours every day copying and pasting messages, updating spreadsheets, and figuring out who they need to follow up with – it’s a complete mess.”

While many businesses are turning to chatbots and automation to solve this problem, Lim believes there’s room for a different type of solution. “If you’re in a high touch profession built on human relationships, putting a chatbot in between you and your customer removes the personal interactions they’re looking for. Instead, Privyr provides an easier and more efficient way for businesses to personalise engagements and manage client relationships from their phones.”

“There’s incredible demand for simple, mobile-based solutions targeted at individuals and SMEs — particularly in developing markets where sales primarily happen on mobile and WhatsApp,” explained MassMutual Ventures Managing Director Anvesh Ramineni. “Privyr’s solution addresses a massive pain point in the sales process, and the fact that the company has come this far with zero sales or marketing staff is a testament to the widespread appeal of such a product.”

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